route_1065 | There are things Evronians are simply not supposed to do.

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There are things Evronians are simply not supposed to do.

Who: Gorthan (

neurotoxined).
Where: Goldenrod City.
When: After the Rocket chaos is over.
Summary: When Gorthan had asked GLaDOS out on a date, there were several things he wasn't counting on happening.
Rating: PG at most?
Log:

A reminder for next time.

Before setting up this kind of appointment, make perfectly sure that no battles against a Legendary Pokémon are scheduled to occur in the meantime.

"Behee?" the extraterrestrial Pokémon tipped its large head inquisitively to one side, staring at its trainer with glowing green eyes as it floated alongside him.

Gorthan shook his head. "This isn't what I was originally going for, is all." As he walked down the Goldenrod base's underground corridors, the Evronian-turned-human still showed a definite limp, something which his use of an old-fashioned wooden walking stick only attempted to hide. He was dressed with a casual elegance, black slacks and a light green dress shirt.

Indeed, there were many things Gorthan did not even imagine would happen when he had first asked his first female coworker on a date. He wasn't counting on ending up with a bad leg, for one, one that would likely take over a week to heal. And then there was the way he felt inside, after watching all those images of flooded cities and people and Pokémon in danger. Emptiness. Regret. If he knew that, unlike almost every Evronian ever, he had a soul, why did he keep thinking it was a good idea to silence it and keep forging on, leaving nothing but destruction and sadness in his wake? And the irony of it was that, apparently, he had received a promotion; that tonight, he actually had something to celebrate, in spite of his mood.

He briefly wondered if there was any way Caroline would ever share these concerns of his. Probably not, he concluded; but women and the many layers of their selves were still a mystery to him, and he was open to being surprised.

"Nonetheless, it should prove a rather interesting experience." Gorthan flashed a small smile at his Beheeyem as he came to a stop in front of the exit that separated the Rocket base from the world outside.

He hoped that Caroline, as someone who, like him, had suddenly found herself in Johto with a body that wasn't hers, shared his excitement at least in part. More than anything romantic, he reckoned, tonight was an opportunity for him - and perhaps for them both - to pretend they were people. In every sense of the expression.

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Gorthan listened intently to Caroline's answer. But the very last thing she said made his eyes widen perplexedly. "Are you not fine now?" A clear note of concern was in his tone, impossible to not notice.

They were ushered to a table for two that Gorthan had booked. It was in a rather quiet corner of the restaurant, and right next to a large window that presented a rather nice view of the sea that defined Goldenrod's western borders. "My native world has no oceans like this one. No oceans at all, actually." He briefly commented upon seeing it.

She tipped her head a bit at that. "That isn't what I said. I was fine not going outside there. I'm fine here as well. The circumstances are different, that's all."

However, she was rather content to not push on about it; the table they were shown to had a rather nice view indeed, and her attention was immediately given there rather than at...anything else, really. The comment was admittedly a bit odd, but not one she was surprised by; despite the presence of aliens in her own world as well, she had never really bothered to learn much about their home planets - there wasn't a need for that within the Aperture labs, after all, where their focus was on the here and now, emphasis on the here - but the thought that worlds could exist without water like that was conceivable. Strange, but entirely possible.

"We weren't anywhere near the ocean ourselves. There were a lot of lakes, though, so we were really surrounded by water anyway."

Gorthan took his seat. By now, he had noticed that Caroline had a tendency to say things that were in apparent conflict with each other; even so, the information she had just given him still surprised him.

"How do you know what it was like outside, if you never left the laboratories?"

On their table was a small glass vase with fresh cut flowers. With a slow, casual gesture, he removed one - a large, white daisy - and offered it to her, to witness her reaction. He found it suited her somehow, white and yellow matching her hair and eyes respectively.

The motion out of the corner of her eye caught her attention, getting her to look over as that flower was being offered; for a moment she kind of stared at it as though unsure of what she was supposed to do with it. At the same time, she definitely did understand the concept of gifts, even if she found this one to be a bit strange; she took it and immediately began to play with it, twirling it by the stem between her fingers while she talked.

"Oh - that's easy. Knowing the state the facility is located in would let me know what it's like surrounding it, don't you think? We were on a peninsula in the middle of a bunch of lakes."

"I see. My main laboratories were on one of Evron's satellites, the sixth, to be precise. Though I was planning to relocate them somewhere else, to better protect my work from... outside influence. It is always... quite unfortunate, when politics threaten to get in the way of a job like ours, wouldn't you agree?"

He relaxed into his chair, propping the walking stick against it, noticing just now that he had not felt any pain when he sat down. He was healing well.

As he watched Caroline's reaction to the flower, he smiled and nodded. Change comes from simple things, he mused. It had definitely been that way for him.

"How have you been, Caroline?"

"I don't know about that." The smile she offered was a rather self-satisfied one. "Aperture works on commission for the government. Politics in general tends to benefit us more than it detracts."

But really, that wasn't anything anybody really needed to dwell on; it only benefited when Black Mesa wasn't involved, after all.

"As for myself, I've been fine. Rather busy with work, of course, but aren't we all."

It isn't exactly a question; that smile has shifted into something closer to a smirk. "It's been an interesting while."

"It has." Gorthan agreed. Caroline's odd, cold smiles did not bother him. If anything, they reminded him of Upper Caste Evronians like himself. Truly, the divide between earthlings and Evronians was weaker and flimsier than most people thought...

All Gorthan ordered was a simple salad. As much as he was eager to try new foods that he would have no hope of being able to taste as an Evronian, he favored light meals. In his old body, he had never been a big eater, especially after his mutation.

"A few days ago, I was discussing something with one of the new arrivals. He seems to have a certain fondness for a literary work I myself deem very interesting - Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. Are you familiar with it, by any chance?"

By contrast, GLaDOS was one of those people that had to actively curbstomp the desire to eat all the things when she was given any say in the matter; this was probably thanks to the fact that she still hadn't exactly settled on a schedule when it came to this whole eating and sleeping business - if she wasn't on the verge of passing out due to a lack of it, then clearly it wasn't anything she needed at the moment. She figured she should probably fix that one day; for the time being, however, it was fine - she refrained from ordering half the menu, eventually settling on some...chicken thing that she wasn't familiar with.

She had to admit there was a huge, morbid sense of satisfaction in eating birds.

"Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso. Kind of a strange work to be fond of, but I'm familiar. What about it?"

"Is that all?" Gorthan commented, regarding her order. "Remember, it's my treat. Or are you simply being considerate and concerned about my personal finances?" His tone and manner had a certain teasing playfulness.

"I wish to hear your thoughts on that work. Have you ever had any metaphysical concerns? What you have told me of yourself so far suggested that you have seen people die - have you ever wondered where they go after their passing? If blissful dreams or tormenting nightmares appear before them in their eternal sleep?"

She waved off the first bit of questioning in favor of the second; if she decided she wanted something else after the fact...well, that's why they put humans to work in places like this, wasn't it?

And besides, the second question was much easier in terms of answering, and she saw no reason why that should be odd; her response was prompt, her voice even and detached.

"Of course I've seen people die. Plenty of people don't make it out of testing alive; tests wouldn't be needed if everyone survived, after all. That part isn't really surprising. What is surprising is the part where you're a scientist, but you're still asking me that question."

She was still playing with that flower between her fingers.

"Heaven is like cake, I think." She paused for a moment, then nodded slightly to herself as though reaffirming it before continuing. "Yes, it's a lot like cake. You offer it to people so they do what you want, and after the people have done what you want, they still don't get anything, but they do end up dead and then thrown in the incinerator.

Hell is like that too. You threaten people with sending them there so they'll do what you want, and then they do what you want and they still end up in the incinerator. Alive. Because they were misbehaving enough to be threatened in the first place."

She still hadn't stopped twirling that flower around, though she was leaning forward over the table a bit, her gaze fixed firmly on Gorthan's face. Though her expression hadn't shifted very far, it was undeniable that her usual smirk had twisted slightly. It was crueler, somehow.

"The 'light at the end of the tunnel' phenomena is just the mind trying to comfort the human before they die. Same goes for the sight of dead loved ones. Their brains are panicking; they want something soothing.

Of course, androids and AI don't panic before they die, and we still believe in Android Hell. Believe me, it's real."

That flower finally stopped moving; her gaze was alive.

"It's the incinerator."

She leaned back in her chair then, perfectly relaxed again.

"Do you see what I'm saying?"

She genuinely scared him then, and he averted his eyes, focusing instead on the perfectly white tablecloth where his elbows rested. And yet, he knew that he was in no position to judge people's sanity, or lack thereof. "So you live in a self-contained world, reassuring your test subjects with promises of cake, and controlling them with threats involving an incinerator... where you fear that you, yourself, may end up someday?"

When he lifted his gaze to look at her again, he found he was unable to, and instead focused on the flowers. His large fingers carefully brushed a petal. "What a sad existence... To know Hell, but not its opposite..."

He paused then, and something within him then gave him the strength to look at her directly. His gaze was deep, intense. Truly there was no point in judging her, when the truth was that there was much they had in common. After all, Gorthan was quite sure that, no matter how many deaths she had caused, he had caused more. "Are you not glad it seems to be over?"

GLaDOS simply shrugged at that. "I don't fear it at all. I've had parts of me thrown in there already; I'm still here. It isn't anything to be afraid of, especially if everything else ends up in there."

She didn't shy away from his eye contact any; that smirk was back, though she seemed to have settled quite a bit. "Don't tell me you still fear death."

Like the thought was on par with human children believing that a magical man in a red cloak delivered presents to everyone in the world on the night of December 24th, travelling courtesy of some flying reindeer. Really now.

"And don't you feel sorry for the parts of you that are gone?" The curiosity in his question had a note of urgency. Because there was definitely a part of Gorthan that came and went, and he was never sure if he was better with or without it.

The condescension in her second remark did not go unnoticed, though he showed no reaction to it.

"As one who has lived through a few near-death experiences, I suppose I don't fear death itself as much as I fear not being prepared for it. Even so, fear of death seems to me like a perfectly legitimate preoccupation, especially in those whose consciences are as sullied as mine is. The thought that punishment that could not catch up to us in life will still be administered in the afterlife... it is an ingenious invention that only earthlings could conceive. We Evronians are free from metaphysical concerns, obviously."

"Not being prepared for it..." She tapped her fingertips idly against the table while she contemplated that. "That makes sense, I think. That's closer to how I feel about it, anyway. There's nothing about death that scares me. I just don't like not seeing it coming."

She paused for a moment after that was out there, however; the question regarding whether she felt sorry for those parts of her that were gone...it wasn't something she had really considered before.

She found herself idly playing with that brooch on her dress.

"I don't feel sorry for them." It was a good start, if a bit hesitant; it was true, anyway. "It was just strange. Not having them there anymore."

Gorthan watched the movement of Caroline's hands on her brooch with a certain fascination, before he caught himself staring.

"So you can still feel... whole? Even without them?"

He was forced to pause when their orders came. Once the waiter left, Gorthan seemed in no hurry to start his meal.

"There is a part of myself that I do not always have. And when it is gone... I am not sure I feel complete."

By now, he knew she wouldn't understand. But something deep within him compelled to share his inner conflict. Perhaps the need to attempt to soothe it, somewhat, by revealing it.

"Why wouldn't I?" She was genuinely confused by the question; of course she still felt whole without them. "They were parts, but they had nothing to do with me. They were added after the fact. I really don't care either way. So it's not the same sort of situation to what you're describing, I don't think, though you can go on about it if you want."

"On the countrary, this part of myself, too, is something I received during the course of my life. In fact, it is an environmental mutation. One that is not even native to my species. I was healed of it, once. But I suppose I possessed it long enough to grow addicted to it."

A pause. Yes, perhaps Caroline wasn't the right person to tell this to, if he was looking for empathy. Was he, though? Maybe all he wanted was to tell his story to someone who would, maybe not understand - just listening was more than enough.

"It is something that earthlings call... a conscience."

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There are things Evronians are simply not supposed to do.

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