 I am not what you would typically call a gamer. I play video games primarily on my phone, as well as nursing what's coming to nearly a decade of World of Warcraft addiction. But other than that, and some hidden object games, as well as Skyrim, only in third person though, I don't really game. I'm in my mid-40s, a mother of two darling pains in my ass, both at home adults. One's a mother herself, the other a college student. My husband occasionally plays video games, and we play World of Warcraft together, but my kids and granddaughter are the real gamers of the family. Both of my kids grew up gaming, playing video games, and generally preferring them to other forms of entertainment. My granddaughter is the same, with Minecraft being her love, although she and her mother will occasionally play online on call of duty. So obviously, I'm not too knowledgeable about gaming. I've always been more of a book person myself. Well, books and fantasy shows. Fantasies always been my favorite genre. Maybe that's why I love World of Warcraft. But although I might not know video games, I do know people. I have a degree in psychology, and have worked in the field in some way for most of my life, whether it be a dicks, the physically disabled, criminals or the mentally disabled. So besides for standard mother's intuition, I have my education to rely on when something's wrong. So when my younger daughter, the college student, was becoming withdrawn, well more withdrawn than usual, I was worried. She had a history of depression, think a shitty Florida school system, gender dysphoria, due to being transgender, and bad genetics for that one, as well as self-harm, and a few brushes with suicide. So of course, I tried to find out what was wrong. For anyone who's dealt with a moody goff teenager, you know why this was pointless. Sarcasm, deflection of questions, and general disinterest, as always, kept her feelings from me. Unable to do much more, I hoped for the best, told her I was there as always, and left. In hindsight, I wish I cried more. I never have, and that cost me so much. Things only got worse over time. She was skipping classes more, leaving her room less, and eating more. I figured her depression had gotten worse, maybe over some relationship trouble, and continued to do my best to help, which still failed. Despite the increased eating, she was always a stress eater, and the lack of movement, she was losing weight. At first, I was happy for her, since she'd always wanted to do so. Then, it kept happening. I was more worried. She was bulimic, and I kept a lookout for it, but if she was, she was also a ninja, because there was no way to prove it. Her breath smelled the same as always, I never heard her puking, while secretly listening to her in the bathroom via the thin walls, and in general, there was no proof of her puking at all. But of course, I was still worried. I couldn't find out what her and her therapist talked about, due to confidentiality agreements, and so I had a dead end. I thought about institutionalizing her, but I figured she'd never forgive me, and our relationship has always been on rocky ground, due to many differences between us. Besides, she wasn't showing any signs of being suicidal, and I did snoop enough to check for bloody razors or knives in her room, which there was. So, I figured there wouldn't be enough evidence for it anyway. Then one morning, I found that her, and her car, were missing. Had it not been Saturday, I might have brushed it off as her actually going to class for once. But, it was Saturday. So I called her phone, only for it to immediately go to voicemail, which meant that it was off. I checked her room, and she had taken it with her. She never turns it off, and it wasn't likely to be dead. Even if it was, she had a car charger. If it died, she'd have plugged it in. I began to worry even more. She didn't have many friends, and after checking with the few she did, I found she was nowhere. So I decided to drive to the school, to look for her car in the parking lots. That's how I discovered what had happened. On the opposite side of the highway, there had been a massive pile-up. The cause was a car going over 120 miles per hour the wrong way, slamming into a tractor trailer, causing it to slam into numerous other cars, causing over 50 deaths. The car was the same make-and-model as hers, which wasn't very common. I knew it had to be her. I felt like I'd been punched in the gut. Why? Why did she do it? Not the massive death toll she had taken with her, that sort of thing wasn't beyond her. She was no angel, unless you called her the Angel of Vengeance, but why had she taken her own life? The previous times were primarily her planning to shoot herself, so why this method? Why blast down the highway, aiming for the largest vehicle around? I had to have answers. I raced home to check her computer. If anything was going to help, it was that. Unfortunately, it was locked. My mind raced. It was a pinlock. I tried various four-number combinations, but none worked. Then, I remembered her pin for her bank card. It worked, and it unlocked the computer. However, it was not the screen I had seen before. Rather than her usual taskbar at the bottom, with some stuff like U-Torrent, Spotify, Google Chrome, and Steam, it was all the same icon, a red broken-up circle on a glossy black background. The desktop was the same. Every spot possible was the same. I tried to find a way to open any web browser, anything, on her computer, even Steam, but to no avail. Under the numerous icons was a robotic face, a sort of curved rectangle, with a gray and black design, and one solid yellow eye. The icon read the same, P, Omega symbol, or, double-bagger symbol, A, L. I figured it was meant to be read as, Portal, since the bizarre spelling was obviously wrong. But I had to wonder why it was typed like that, and what it had to do with her suicide. So I opened it. I had heard of the game Portal before, my kids have played it, and tried to get me into it, but first-person games gave me migraines. So I looked up on, and found, how to put it in third-person on my phone. Happy that, at the very least, I could play it without my head splitting open in pain, but I had to actually now play it. The game started with all the logos you'd expect from a game starting, although the one for the developer, Valve, certainly was weird. On my phone, I checked it, and it was correct though. The main menu came up, the view of a security camera outside a cell, which I confirmed was correct as well. I tried to load a game, but there were no saves, which I found extremely odd. So I started a new game, and the chapter select screen was, once more, normal, although nothing was unlocked. It was like nobody had ever played the game before. It dawned on me that, if anything was off, I wouldn't know, so I watched a play-through on my phone before starting. As soon as the game started, I put it into third-person mode and continued. A voice came on the intercoms, Gladys. Hello, and welcome to the Aperture Science Enri- Wait a minute, how are you here? I was confused. This wasn't correct. She paused for a moment, before continuing. Oh, it's you. Well, welcome to the Aperture Science Enrichment Center anyways. I didn't even know we had to bring your mother to work day, and I run the place. Well, that's science for you. You always learn something new. Prepare for testing. I was extremely freaked out, and knew it couldn't be some sort of game modification, or else it wouldn't have known I was her mother. I wondered how she knew, and nothing could come to my mind. While the game played normally, well, normally as someone playing Portal in third-person, who sucks at games like Portal can play, but Gladys' dialogue was far, far different. She mocked me about the death of my daughter, as well as many past events in general, stuff only a few people, and my digital journal on my own computer, knew. She was cruel and insulting, knowing all my secrets. I went out of my way to destroy security cameras, but rather than being upset, she would only say, I still can see you, Anne. Each and every time. Every time I destroyed a camera, she mocked my efforts, but I never gave up. When it came to the companion cube, the game nearly broke me however. Other than the hearts on the popular item, there were the faces of my closest family, six in total, one for every side. Occasionally, it would talk, although Gladys still claimed it couldn't. The voice was of my now-deceased daughter. She told me to give up. She told me it was hopeless, that there was nothing that I could do. She told me that Gladys would win, that I'd just be another casualty. In time, I stopped listening, although not without trying to mute the game. Not settingly, it wouldn't stay muted, so I stopped. Finally, I got to the burner, and crying, I had to toss the cube into the fire. I knew it would be the last time I'd hear my daughter's voice, and Gladys made sure to remind me of it. Over and over, she'd mock me. It took me several hours, several hours of listening to the mocking, and the fatalistic voice of my daughter coming from the cube, but I finally burnt it. Gladys still praised me on how fast I burnt it, and this time, it could have been true. From there on out, there were no more gameplay modifications, although still more, seemingly infinite Gladys dialogue. Finally I yelled at her to shut up, and she did. I was glad to be rid of the bitch, although I knew I'd have to fight her. Finally, it came to that. I met the mechanical monstrosity, and she greeted me with sarcasm and insults, as she had been doing for ages by now. I ignored her, waiting for the morality core to fall off, so I could do the fight. However, it never happened. She kept gloating. She kept on mocking me. She was insulting me, taunting me about all of my painful pasts. She lasted longer than most, you know. But she died, like all the rest. And now she's here, testing. After all, there's always more science to do. Just told me. By now, I've figured out how Gladys drove her over the edge. My daughter had always been near the edge in the first place, and Gladys mocking her for apparently weeks, taunting her over her insecurities, past trauma and faults, must have just pushed her over the line. Maybe she had been cutting again, and yet it's better than I thought. Maybe she was burning instead. All I knew was that day I had to die. I also have to give her credit. The pile-up was her idea, not mine. I started firing the portal gun at Gladys, not that it did anything. However, it did seem to annoy her enough. Well, that's enough hard to super-computer. The rocket turret rose up out of the ground, and quickly killed me. Luckily, it had auto-saved rights before it rose, and the same thing repeated. I tried to escape in many different ways, but it always failed. It never fired if there was a portal near me, and so I never could redirect it to Gladys. I still can see you, Anne. I can always see you. Gladys bragged. I pulled at my hair. There was no way a character could see into a reality. There was no way anyone could see into this room, unless they had a camera. It finally dawned on me. The webcam. I taped over it with a piece of duct tape, and things suddenly went far, far differently. The battle was easy from there on. With Gladys enraged, I had figured out her trick. Finally, I killed her, and the center blew up, but not without one final comment from the AI. I'll be back, Anne. I watched throughout the credits, sickened to hear the monster's voice sing, and made sure nothing was abnormal from there on. I closed the game, and my daughter's computer was back to normal. Whatever had happened was gone now. I went back to my home, and sat down, turning it on. I locked it, only to find a terrifying sight. The desktop background had been replaced with Gladys's face, and all the icons were portal, with the same intimidating spelling.