Central AI Chamber

The Central AI Chamber is a large bay housing the central core machine, which GLaDOS is in place of. This chamber serves as the setting for many major events in Portal and the single-player campaign of Portal 2.

Throughout the series, GLaDOS controls many aspects of the Aperture Science computer-aided Enrichment Center with her position as the facility's central core. The chamber is destroyed after the events of Portal.

Portal
The room was a large octagonal chamber set in the center of the Enrichment Center, presumably near the surface. At the climax of Portal, after Chell had escaped from the testing tracks, she had made her way through the entire facility in hopes of escape, instead she is led to the Central AI Chamber via a catwalk, where she is to confront GLaDOS once inside.

It would appear that GLaDOS did not intend to bring Chell to her chamber, but to make the most out of it, she allows Chell to destroy her Morality Core - which in turn breaks the restriction of her need to kill anyone directly. GLaDOS then begins pumping neurotoxin through the vents surrounding the walls of her chamber, and deploys a Rocket Turret through a hatch beside her. GLaDOS is also surrounded by a circular bridge platform with a staircase that leads up to it, which was used by technicians as seen in the Portal 2: Lab Rat comic. Behind the chamber spots an Emergency Intelligence Incinerator, and as its name suggests, is used to incinerate any form of artificial intelligences such as GLaDOS' personality core attachments. On the left side of the chamber spots a bunker on a platform, housing a button that would open the hatch to the aforementioned incinerator. Surrounding the walls of the chamber on each sides are large horizontally placed monitor screens that displays random images that depends on GLaDOS' thought process. Eventually, these screens were used to handle the neurotoxin countdown for when the gasses can become deadly.

Eventually, Chell manages to destroy all of GLaDOS' core attachments - which somehow kills GLaDOS and destroys the entire Enrichment Center in the process. Despite that most of GLaDOS' components were scattered around the parking lot, she seems to have been scattered around in the chamber again during the beginning of the single-player campaign in Portal 2. This may have likely been the work of the Party Escort Bot dragging her parts back into the chamber.

Portal 2


Since Portal 2 is set thousands of years after the events of Portal, the entire Enrichment Center has been degrading and overgrown. And most personality cores that were awakened after the destruction of GLaDOS has long since been corrupted or destroyed in the surroundings. In turn, no personality cores have tried to reactivate GLaDOS or to replace her position as the central core with themselves since the chamber is out of their reach. The Central AI Chamber is evidently untouched for centuries.

When Chell and Wheatley journey across the Central AI Chamber during the beginning of the single-player campaign, they are forced to enter the main breaker room beneath the chamber in an attempt to access an elevator to the surface. As they enter the breaker room, Wheatley accidentally triggers all the wrong buttons and ends up lifting each other back to the main chamber and reactivating GLaDOS in the process.