Be brave

8:02 pm

She couldn't see the moon yet out her apartment window. She'd check again in about 10 minutes. Maybe 9…Who was she kidding? She'd be checking every minute, every second until the ancient satellite came into view through the San Francisco skyline. The instant she saw it she'd be out the door, up the stairs to the roof, just as she had done nearly every night for the past two years, give or take the first few months she'd spent getting situated in this utterly vast, unimaginably alien world She had referred to as "the surface."

The surface was surprisingly intact when she arrived. Apparently that "apocalyptic event" the recording spoke of was just an earthquake (although after seeing pictures and books, and earthquake themed gift shops across the city, "just an earthquake" seemed disrespectful.) With Her out of commission, there was no way to detect the tremor, no way to brace for it, and so the facility which was built to withstand temperatures ranging in the thousands was woefully unprepared for the mere shifting of tectonic plates, which were able to bring down the off-white plates constructing Aperture Science.

Needless to say, assimilating into society wasn't the life or death struggle she suspected came with Armageddon, but it was still a daunting task for someone so isolated from the world that through psychological trauma she had lost the ability to communicate.

Fortunately, GLaDOS didn't expect her to completely fend for herself. She'd given her that Companion Cube for the trip, which at first she considered as adding insult to injury. But she was glad she had carried it with her those first few hours and put up with its incessant humming, because eventually she tripped over a rock and discovered two very important things. One: the cube opened up and revealed a brown envelope, containing everything she would need to start her new life; including but not limited to a passport, birth certificate, and a bank account containing all of the income she had accumulated through a lifetime of slave labor at Aperture. Second: the humming had been her own. That realization had made the other goodies seem trivial.

So as she continued on her way, leaving the empty cube and white boots she'd been wearing, she continued humming. When she'd exhausted every tune she could remember, she figured she'd try words next. Instinctively the first word she said…was "apple."

She stopped walking and finally allowed herself to cry. If only she'd been able to talk to him…

The white sliver of light in the sky brought her out of her dreamlike state, and by force of habit she snatched up the black box on the coffee table and headed down the hall to the staircase, driven by the very thought of hearing his voice again. The first friendly voice she'd ever heard. Adorable, quirky, delightfully British…it was music to her ears.

Please, please, please be out there… She'd been thinking the same thing when she'd gone in for that final confrontation, the only difference in her plea being please be in there, somewhere inside that sadistic murderous creation of Aperture. It wasn't supposed to be that way. It was supposed to be her and him against the world ruled by GLaDOS. But nothing in Aperture ever turned out quite as planned. Instead it was her and a potato, scrambling through a living hell, one out to destroy a pesky tumor, the other to rescue her best friend. Her only friend.

She didn't blame him for what happened. He was trying so hard to help, so hard to feel useful. When he was plugged into that chassis, he finally got his wish. He was in control for the first time in his life. His meager existence had consisted of moving back and forth endlessly on a management rail, being told what to do or more often than not, what not to do. For a moment he was his own person.

Then that moment ended.

If it hadn't been for that God-awful potato and her incessant need to torture and humiliate anything that wasn't her…who knows? But it was like giving heroin to a desperate addict and then telling them they had a problem. The result was catastrophic and beyond anyone's control, especially his. He needed an intervention. He needed to be rescued from his own destructive behavior. She'd been unable to do either. She could still envision the terror in his "eye" and voice the very last time she saw him. The bravest person she'd ever known, so helpless and so afraid…

Wait…him? Brave?

But she had no doubt about it. She'd never thought of herself as brave, and it wasn't just out of modesty. She had known that everything GLaDOS threw at her was dangerous, but she faced it anyway. Big deal, knowing what you're up against. He had been lied to all his life by everyone, been told he would die if he tried to do anything. Granted, GLaDOS had lied to her a number of times, but GLaDOS wasn't coy about it. He had no idea what was going to kill him. He was afraid of just about everything, but that didn't stop him from wanting to be free, didn't stop him from going back for her after he'd nearly been killed. She had faced lasers, pools of acid, incinerators, and those creepy little bastard turrets. He was facing the unknown, and that had been the one thing she had been truly afraid of.

It seemed liked ages before she reached the roof, but elevators brought up painful memories for her. Not bothering to brace herself for the cold skyscraper air, she hurried over to the concrete ledge and started setting up the black box, which she had named Pippa. She had a habit of naming pieces of machinery, though she would never say why. Tonight was a little different though. She was hooking up an extra device to the black box. Hopefully it would give it the boost it desperately needed.

Crossing her fingers, she flipped the switch, and an invisible beacon was sent into the sky. A very distinct "PING" audible only to a robot. But this time it had a little help. The satellite uplink she'd just added would bounce the signal off every dish, antenna, or bit of space junk within its radius. She prayed he would hear it this time. The rest would be up to him.

She stared at the moon longingly, hoping he was still somewhere in its orbit. She knew the odds of him picking up the signal were slim and that him being able to do anything about it (or still being alive for that matter) were even slimmer. But she'd learned a lot since she took her first breath of fresh air. That we all needed something to believe in. And she believed in him.

"Be brave," Chell murmured, her eyes never leaving the sky, "be brave, Wheatley…"