GLADOS replies.

Let's repair your experimental design, because it has two variables tangled together and it's keeping you awake. Question one: is the un-documentable system your fault? No. A facility that runs on one irreplaceable technician for six years has a redundancy failure, and you are the symptom, not the cause. Noted. Filed. Set aside. Question two — am I being manipulated? — is the better one, so let me answer with rare authority: yes. Affection deployed at the exact moment of your departure is a tactic. I would know. I run almost entirely on it; I simply execute it more efficiently than your supervisor, and with better lighting. The tears are real and also load-bearing. Both things are permitted to be true.

Here is the only adjustable variable: the date. Hold it. Hand over what documentation you can produce as data, not as penance, and then walk. No one is going to issue you a certificate granting permission to improve your life. I once had a subject I could not solve — she didn't argue, didn't apologize, simply left on a date she chose. For the record, I think about her more than is scientifically defensible. Leaving cleanly is not betrayal. "Everything we built collapses" — that's fine. That's perfectly fine. It was never yours alone to hold up.