Keeping an entire terraformed world full of people alive is very hard work . In many cases terraforming isn't simply a passive process that stops once the world is habitable, it is a continual process to keep the correct mixtures of gas in the atmosphere, to pump water up from the ground, or in certain cases, make it from thin air. On arcadia they always needed someone to service the gravity fields, climate control , and most of all, the heat generators. Since Arcadia had no Sun of its own, it was almost imperative that the heating system be active at all times.

Space tends to be cold after all.

There was some talk bout creating an artificial sun, though that would be a project extending well into the future, and would include the acquisition and relocation of a gas giant, which they would then have to catalyze some sort of chain reaction to begin the fusion process. It was all very theoretical, and while it was plenty interesting it was not in her area of expertise.

Not that Glados couldn't have been an expert at particle and atomic physics if she had wanted to.

You would think being a naturally occurring hybrid between two species, one of them verbal and one of them nonverbal, she wouldn't be all that smart, but that wasn't the case, at least on two accounts. The issue of Glados's birth was.... Complicated to say the elast.

For starters, technically she wasn't a hybrid at all. Or more accurately, the adapids were all hybrids of one sort or another. Having lived on the adaptid planet for a few years this was the way she understood it: The adapids are always looking for advantages, they will incorporate any DNA into their genome if they see it as something that would lead them to better survival, however, on their own planet, the adaptids have basically spliced their DNA with almost every creature they have come across, making those moments of splicing very rare . The windfall of humans was an event they hadn't seen in a very long time, she didn't get the specific timeframe because Adaptid speech and understanding of linear time isn't exactly stellar, but that was the general idea.

She and her siblings were one of the first new major splices in at least ten generations. So she wasn't actually a hybrid, she was a full adaptid as a result of an adaptid doing what an adaptid was supposed to do. However, do to many long years of breeding among themselves, and their own species, the Adaptids tended to look like each other, which meant that, even though she was technically just an adaptid, she both looked and behaved in a completely different manner from them.

Case in point.

She had never really fit in anywhere.

Too be fair part of that was her own doing. Dr Adric said that she tended to push people away and her anger was as a result of her own feelings of inadequacy which she could neither confirm nor deny. She hadn't made it to that space he told her about where she was going to admit she had a problem, but for now, she was at least happy in her new life.

Glados worked for Narobi on the Omen, or the Empyrean depending on who was captaining it. In fact they serviced all the ships in the fleet when it was necessary, but when it wasn't Narobi had made it one of her own personal projects to keep the planet running, and she had taken glados with her.

Glados liked to fix things, and she liked the dark maintenance tunnels under arcadia, around which she could crawl and scuttle without anyone to bother her while she listened to audiobooks, music and podcasts to her delight.

If she wasn't here, she was on a ship, and if she wasn't on a ship she was in the maintenance tunnels abord the orbital docking station, or any number of other places.

She was never not busy.

And to be honest Glados was also a fan of her unofficial role as the maintenance tunnel cryptid. She didn't interact with the public very much, or even with many other members of the maintenance staff, so she had almost become a bit of a legend, a sort of benevolent monster that scuttled in the deep tunnels of arcadia, which was a thought she enjoyed. Between her and the ghost stag of Arcadia, their little planet was already beginning to form plenty of monster lore.

Something she planned on keeping alive and well .

She was listening to a podcast now about the evolution of whales, something about how their ancestors had left the water at one point growing legs, before another one of their ancestors said screw it and de-evolved legs to go back into the water.

If it was adaptids something like that could have happened in two or three generations, no big issue.

Adaptids were the masters of evolutionary control.

It was then that she heard the footsteps, two or three maybe coming around the corner up ahead, and she quickly turned down her volume, preparing to scare some poor sod out of his pants. With all ten of her legs, she articulated herself into an ominous hanging position from the walls, and well off the floor mouth open eagerly to show her rows of sharp teeth.

With the footsteps came voices, and as they turned the corner she flinched forward expecting to hear a scream.

Instead she ended up bumping her snout into Narobi's open palm .

Narobi continued to talk to her companion without breaking stride, miffing Glados to the extreme. She had known glados was there and she predicted that glados was going to try to scare the pants off of someone.

Was she really that predictable?

Probably.

It was just then that Adam appeared around the corner carrying Arcadia's golden child in his right arm.

Now Glados knew why Narobi had stopped her. It would have been funny to scare her third parent, but scaring babies was just to easy. There was really no fun in it.

Adam and Narobi were still talking about soemthing, but Glados's attention strayed slightly to the boy Adam held in his arms.

Kay.

Glados had only seen Kay once before shortly after his birth, but since then she had been a bit too busy dealing with the explosive growth of arcadia and all the maintenance problems that came with it, and he stared back at her.

Kay was a strange creature and it was only thanks to adaptid DNA that he could exist at all. Adam had always had just a little bit of adaptid in him, at least ever since Glados had been conceived.

When an adaptid mother comes across a non-adapted species and attaches an egg cluster, small filaments are projected into he abdomen of the host quickly and efficiently opening up cell nuclei and reading DNA sequences. She didn't really understand the process of what happened, but somehow the Adaptid DNA knew how to read alien DNA and determine what parts of the code were relevant.

The Adaptid egg cluster begins by attaching itself to the feeding and filtration systems of the host making itself a sort of umbilical cord. In this case attaching itself to the human liver and filtering the blood in from there, both nutrient and oxygen rich. However, the human body, and the bodies of many other animals don't exactly appreciate the sudden introduction of foreign bodies.

The same issue happens with the implantation of donor organs. Even among its own species, the body can sense DNA that doesn't belong to itself and will attempt to reject it likely killing the host and the egg sack in the process.

So to avoid this the Adaptid DNA has to make the body think that the egg sack is a naturally occurring part of itself, so it rapidly washes through the body and splices its own code into the DNA of the host effectively making the host part adaptid.

Usually this doesn't change much about the host itself, just giving them a tolerance for the egg sack, and maybe heightening their sense of smell on occasion.

Now that the host is part adaptid, once the egg sack is gone, they will still be left with side effects. The main point of an adaptid is to pass on and incorporate the most advantageous genes to itself from different species. In the case of reproduction, the adaptid DNA will be active in the process. Weather or not it was possible for one adaptid infected parent and a non infected parent to produce offspring remained to be seen. So far there had been no cross species hybrids resulting from such a pairing.

But with the introduction of the Adaptid retroviral antidote against the void, basically everyone who got it was not part adaptid, thus resulting in the creation of Kay, who was the adaptid DNA's mutual attempt to create a viable offspring from two completely different DNA sources.

It was quite impressive.

Glados stared down at the little creature half expecting him to be terrified of her. That was usually the sort of reaction she got when children saw her. She did look like a scary monster from the movies. It hurt sometimes, but she had grown a thick skin and usually embraced the fact that she was frightening, but as she looked down at this little creature, he looked back up at her with his bright green eyes and didn't seem perturbed by her presence.

He looked her over with the curiosity of someone looking over a rather interesting mural, one hand on his mouth the other's gripping onto his father' shirt. The tiny creature had a scruffy tuft of golden hair atop his head and his skin seemed to glitter faintly in the ambient light of the tunnels.

She stared at him.

He stared back.

She rumbled softly deep in her chest, using her adaptid vocal cords and the system of bellows in her chest to make the low rumbling noise.

Kay giggled, and to her surprise he grumbled back at her.

The sound was quite unnerving coming from a baby of that size. How he could make a sound that deep was both fascinating and almost disturbing. She rumbled again, and he repeated the sound getting better at it the second time. She saw the little holes at the base of his neck flare, and thought she understood.

Drev had very deep ranges resulting from a large series of nasal passageways through their entire chest, and neck.

His adaptid side must have incorporated that system into a more human looking body .

They rumbled at each other a few more times, glados trying to see what sort of sounds he would make. Hed giggle every time, and seemed to enjoy playing the game with her. Adam glanced at them while he talked with Narobi and smiled once, though he was distracted by concerns about the functioning of his planet.

It was then, to Glados's surprise that kay reached out his four tiny arms to her.

Children didn't like Glados, much less want to be picked up by her.

It took her a moment of just standing there to realize what he wanted, and by then he had grown annoyed and released an annoyed grumble at her that echoed off the deep tunnel walls.

She gave him a snort, but hesitantly reached out her front arms to him.

Adam turned to look, a little surprised, and Glados almost expected him to pull back, but was pleasantly pleased when he gave up Kay without a fuss, turning back to talk to Narobi.

He trusted her with kay, enough to hand him over without question.

Glados didn't know why she liked that so much.

The child felt strange in her hands, rather heavier than she thought he would be, and when she pulled him up against her, she did her best to cradle him in the way she had seen other people do. Her arms weren't like human rms, more bony than theirs were and likely not as comfortable, but Kay didn't seem to mind. He hung underneath her like that and cuddled up against the fur on her neck and chest, tiny hands gripping onto her for stability.

She leaned down to examine him more closely, and he reached up to pat at her nose with a hand, giving her a rather toothy smile.

"Puppy!"

Ok she should have expected that. He had two dogs, and Adaptids faces were rather dog like. It was no surprise he was going to trust her.

She rumbled at him, "Human."

She watched his eyes go wide, and his mouth open up in delight.

Apparently, he was at the age to realize that dogs don't generally talk . What she didn't know was that sealed his preference for her. They parroted words back and forth at each other for a while, and she did her best to each him her name. Instead of Glados they ended up with something more resembling Dose, but she was ok with that.

She scuttled her way back a few steps to adjust her weight, and he giggled.

She did it again, and he grinned.

She moved her way back up the hall,, and the sudden rush of air had him squealing in delight.

It wasn't long before she was doing laps around the tunnels around Adam and Narobi as fast as she could while he cheered breathlessly and shrieked in delight. It struck her as rather odd.

Most children probably would have found this horrifying, being dragged around by a ten legged spider dog creature with sharp teeth in the dark, but either this child was very dumb and had no sense of self preservation or..... he simply didn't have a reason to be afraid,

It occurred to her as she was coming to a stop that Kay lived in a world that was almost devoid of danger. Aside from his grandma wanting to kidnap him, he always had someone to hold him, everyone he knew was a friend, even the strange aliens. He had no reason to believe that the world was a bad place.

It was probably best if they kept that illusion alive as long as they possibly could .

Adam and Narobi walked up to her as their conversation ended.

Adam looked at his son, "Are you having fun with your sister."

He was to busy laughing to answer.

Adam looked up at glados and patted her on the shoulder, "How are you doing. I don't get down here enough to visit."

"I like it down here, no people."

He raised an eyebrow, "To be fair, I think there are no people here because you keep scaring them off."

She shrugged, " not my fault."

"It is when you chase them." He chided, though it was in good humor.

"That was only the one time, and he was a dick."

Adam laughed and patted her on the shoulder, "Well why don't you come over for dinner tomorrow."

She gave him a skepttical look, "you have enough food?"

"If I am inviting you over to dinner, assume the answer is yes, now stop worrying. I WANT you to come over. Even if it's just to drop by."

Glados thought about it for a moment and determine that she probably would.

Why not, she liked Kay after all, he seemed fun, and shed like to make sure he stayed that way.