Well, first someone accidentally dropped something down a shaft. Then the scientists got interested in the debris, and wrote it up all fancy in a report and a research proposal. Then the mad scientists decided they could do even better. Then the robots.

But why.

This isn't just science, it's Aperture Science!

Great.

Unhinged and thoroughly unclear rant written about something called "the Combine" by some core or other.

Status report from the Panel production line. All's well.

The latest publication of results from the Free Will Experiment Station (very dense jargon).

Photographs of cakes.

Status report from the waste processing plant. It estimates that the current human occupancy has increased by ∞%.

...so the cake was real.

And what on Earth is a Free Will Experiment Station?

This paper is densely theoretical, self-absorbed, and sheds little light on that question. It seems like it might be about psychology. Might.

She sends that to Teytis.

“I only learned English yesterday and I understand this even less than you do.

“But let's see. The Free Will Experiment Station does exist as a section of the facility. It's semi-isolated, the only things going in are electricity and — robot parts. And that there is a sample of its output.

“Original research proposal. From shortly before GLaDOS happened. ‘Determine whether AIs can have free will.’ What's free will?”

Hoo boy. "Difficult to explain. Philosophy stuff."

“Well, we don't need to understand what they're saying, we just need to figure out whether they're, say, likely to invent new kinds of AI inside that box that are actually competent at taking over and killing us all.”

“When I put it that way, we do need to take a look at what's actually going on, don't we?”

She sighs, closes her eyes, and nods.

“—You don't have to go anywhere near it.”

She purses her lips and looks at Teytis.

“I could use help — interpreting. But you don't have to, and if you do there's no reason at all you need to be in any danger or anywhere closer to it than this room.”

Nod.

Electronic modules and blocks of glass lift out of the gear arrayed around them. The glass deforms, flows, curls around the sensors and other parts; white and black flows in and colors the surfaces.

After several minutes of tweaking the construction (“This is not what I trained for!”): six floating spheres, two armored-looking humanoids, and a crate of additional gear march off to the elevator.

Chell can have an array of camera views and controls to direct one of the humanoids, should it become useful. “They're still all me, but with this if you want to look around or talk you don't have to say what you want me to do.”

Another nod.

The elevator descends through the floor of that chamber and after some time in darkness, opens on empty misty dimly-lit space, and then they're flying across it.

Thanks to Teytis' efforts the way is significantly neater and less hectic than it was when she first arrived. They spend a while flying—the facility is huge—but eventually reach the experimental station: a very large metal cube hanging in the middle of empty space, with a little square hole near the top and a metal rail leading into it much like the ones the Neurotoxin Core and Wheatley used to move around.

It's off the network, so they have no information about what's in there until they actually look. How to approach?

That rail is there, and that must be how they're getting parts deliveries…

She finds herself in a little control chamber, and there is a personality core attached to a control panel. There are some screens where a lot of writing is passing through.

"—hello. I mean, uh, you're not supposed to be here."

Glance at the screens, capture, send to analysis (and Chell).

“Where is here? Who supposes? Who are you?”

"This is the Free Will Experimental Station and I'm the Free—I mean, the PHILOSOPHER KING. You wouldn't understand."

"Who are you king of? Why wouldn't I understand? What do you do here?"