The Weighted Companion Cube Loves You
Hello.
NAME: Weighted Companion Cube
FANDOM: Portal
CANON: During the first (currently only) game, while falling into the incinerator tube, right before burning to death.
LOSS: Memories of how or why it was created, pretty much everything before Chell first sets eyes on it. Only retains vivid memories from that point on, and hazy remnants of communal memory of its other 'lives'.
PERSONALITY:
The Weighted Companion Cube was built for a short list of very limited reasons. It was built to be picked up, carried, and dropped. It was built for a very singular purpose, and nothing more. Its entire existence revolved around being maneuvered and kept, for an eyeblink of time, by Aperture Science's test subjects. And then, after this task was obediently completed, the Weighted Companion Cube had a destiny with the incinerator. It was an endless cycle of anticipation, temporary bliss, and then brutal heartbreak.
But, the Weighted Companion Cube never complained, living out its countless number of recycled lifetimes loyally and obediently.
That is not to say, however, that the Weighted Companion Cube is incapable of greater thought. Aspirations. No, any article--animate or inanimate--that has gone through the surreal string of experiences that it has, and absorbed so much of the turmoil and energy of its surroundings and the players within it, is destined for higher thought. This is what makes the tragic moment of abandonment, when the Weighted Companion Cube is separated from its caretaker by stinging betrayal, so heart-rendingly agonizing. To hurt that deeply, one must know what it is like to dream, and love, and hope.
And indeed, the Weighted Companion Cube knows these feelings well, and yet...it remains the eternal optimist that it is known to be.
It has seen an entire spectrum of human condition in brief blips. Granted, some were longer (and more deranged, even to the point of finding itself the object of worship a couple of times) but they always ended in the same way: death, and rebirth.
The Weighted Companion Cube was recently severed from this cycle of reincarnation, however, and reached some sort of bizarre nirvana. Finding itself in this strange new plane of existence, with all but the faintest hints of its distant memories wiped away, without being able to recall exactly how or why it was made (beyond a dim understanding of 'Mother'), the Weighted Companion Cube is once more starting over...this time in an ethereal Castle.
Though the complex thoughts that run through its inanimate mind speak of vast dreams and fears and desires, its only way of directly communicating--the slightly scuffed pink heart on each of its faces--says everything that it could ever want to say.
THIRD-PERSON:
It couldn't move, it couldn't speak, but--somehow--it stood a little taller. Posture mattered alot, you know, for first impressions. The Weighted Companion Cube sat straight and obedient, brimming with silent bliss, as the Test Subject entered the room and laid eyes on it. Yes, as the disembodied robotic voice was saying, the Weighted Companion Cube would accompany the Test Subject through the entire room, serving its purpose with pride and valor.
She was coming closer! This girl, this Test Subject, was the Weighted Companion Cube's very favorite, it suddenly decided. Something about the look of her, the strong way that she reached out--- ...oh! The touch. Being picked up off the ground made the painted hearts on each facet of its body feel as if they could actually beat! With every step through the convoluted test chamber, at every turn of the dangerous puzzle, the Weighted Companion Cube and the Test Subject worked as one. The Test Subject was the legs and eyes and brain of the operation, for sure, but the Weighted Companion Cube knew that it was just as integral to this test as the girl was. Holding down buttons while its partner teleported around the room, valiantly taking laser blasts for its temporary caretaker, the Weighted Companion Cube did its job flawlessly.
For a brief moment, while it held down a pressure plate and struggled to feel brave while its caretaker disappeared from sight, it thought back to the anguishing memories of the Test Subjects who didn't make it, and those who were far too good at surviving and stole away into cracks in the system. Those were frightening and dark times...but this Test Subject. She...she was a ray of light. Perfect. They would work well together.
FIRST-PERSON:
I hate fire.
Fire is everything that is wrong with this world. Destruction, hunger, power-gone-wrong...heartbreak. Fire is what tears us apart, inside and out, tearing and devouring and ending. Sometimes I wish that everything was flat and planar. Walls, floor, ceiling, sides; smooth and perfect and inanimate. Like a room, like a box.
Sometimes I wish I was that way. I wish that I was perfect and flat and unmarred, my paint clean and polished. I know I started out that way. But now I am dirty, and my edges are scuffed. My paint is dull. And I think....alot. All that fire...being burned over and over again. I can't remember it very well, but I know it happened. That fire has gotten into me over time, just a little bit, and I will never be the same.
But, it is the same fire that I see in the humans. It is evil and inevitable, and it will always burn, but I can't imagine being without it.
I may be a little scorched, and I may always hate fire at the very core of my being, but I think...I ultimately think that everything I have seen and become is worth being burned.
Oh, and...
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