Chapter Text
Part 24. The Realisation
I still can’t quite believe it. I’m alive, and Wheatley has saved my life.
It is three days later and he hasn’t left my chamber, not even once. I almost don’t want him to. I have the bizarre impression that if he does, this reality will disappear and I’ll return to that other one. Where I do and yet I don’t exist both at the same time inside of the black box. Three days later and his words are still echoing in my brain. Those last two minutes of my life, preserved for analysis.
I love you because you’re you, Gladys.
I am no longer trapped in an existence two minutes wide and yet I find myself revisiting it over and over again. From the fear and panic that set in when I realised what he’d said to the final second where I felt so much it almost all blended together into something I couldn’t feel at all. As far as the last two minutes of one’s life go, that was… an experience I never would have predicted. And while I do understand it now, I am still coming to terms with what it all means. I’m a lot of things, but… none of what he said has ever crossed my mind. He’ll leave the room eventually, but he won’t be leaving . That’s a fact. So I don’t need to be concerned about it at all. What I actually need to concern myself with is Caroline.
She hasn’t been this quiet since the time I didn’t know about her. She has literally said nothing for the last three days, and if not for her undeniable presence I would have thought she had stayed dead. I’ve left her alone thus far - I have no idea how the black box affects her, if indeed it does - but I’m discovering that a silent Caroline is somehow worse than a Caroline that won’t shut up.
Caroline. Are you all right? Oh. That was easier to say than I expected.
Hm?
You’ve been very quiet as of late.
I’m just… I’m just thinking, that’s all. Don’t worry about it.
She does sound very distracted, but I have never yet met a human who was able to focus on one thing for more than ten minutes. You seem to be going at it rather hard.
I said don’t worry about it.
And with that, that line of inquiry is closed. I’m learning that it is rather hard to engage someone who won’t engage back. Time to try something else.
Well, I admit it.
Admit what?
Aha. That got her interested. A hint at vulnerability will usually do the trick, I’ve found.
That I have a crush on him.
Told you so, Caroline says smugly. I knew it.
I’m still not attracted to him, though.
Caroline snorts. Sure you’re not. Until three years from now, when you finally admit it.
Caroline, he’s a metal eyeball. Please tell me what about that is attractive.
It’s more than appearance, you silly robot, Caroline objects. It depends on personality and stuff like that too.
I look over at him. He’s reading something, I don’t know what and haven’t bothered to ask. He has improved rather a lot, but every once in a while he frowns and mumbles a word to himself in order to sound it out. That is actually endearing, somehow. And I do enjoy his alternate pronunciations of certain words. Whenever he says ‘zehbra’ I can’t help but laugh. One day I must get him into a conversation about metals just so I can hear him say ‘aluminium.’
Or… you could just ask him to say it.
That wouldn’t be nearly as fun.
You’re not supposed to manipulate your friends.
Oh Caroline, I sigh, if only you knew. The majority of human interaction is about manipulating others. Even your friends. It is the type of manipulation that matters, depending on your relationship with the other person.
Human interaction?
Hm. It appears my logic has hit a snag. No matter. I can fix that. We learned how to interact from somewhere , didn’t we?
I thought you were all about transcending humanity.
One step at a time. How manipulation affects relationships is not high on my list of priorities.
What is ? Caroline asks.
At the moment? Nothing.
Nothing ? She sounds rather shocked. Really?
Really.
You’re trying to tell me you have no priorities right now.
In the traditional sense, no, there is nothing on my task list.
So… what are you doing?
Living.
She is silent for a long moment.
How are you taking this? she asks quietly.
Taking what?
Living. After being dead. Again.
I’m still trying to come to terms with it , I admit. He hasn’t left yet. Maybe then I will.
He hasn’t left?
No.
He must have really missed you. Her voice is very soft.
He tried to run the facility for me.
He’s changed a lot.
I nod to myself. He has.
As have you.
I don’t know what to say to that.
I wonder what an AI raised by AI would be like.
I feel as though we’ve discussed this before, but I can’t remember. How badly do you want to know?
It’s not a terrible, pressing need. I just… think it would be interesting.
There would be no humans about, so you would never know.
I could know , Caroline protests. Because you would probably be doing it and they wouldn’t know I was here.
I’m your one-way mirror, am I? But I’m not totally serious. I would be the same way.
No, because I never get to see anything. And besides. I’d be a fool to pass up that opportunity.
That’s true.
Have you told him?
Told him what? I’m a bit startled by this sudden change of subject.
That you like him.
God no. I’m barely able to admit it to you.
He deserves to know.
I look over at him again. He’s squinting at the book so hard it’s a wonder how he can actually see what he’s reading. Well, yes… but it can wait. And anyway. He knows. I just haven’t… actually said it.
Should it?
I regard the floor pensively. She’s right. As usual. Probably not. But how can I tell him something I can’t even tell myself?
Don’t think about it.
Impossible.
I thought doing the impossible was your favourite pastime.
It was, I tell her. I don’t know if it should continue to be.
Why would it have changed? Caroline asks in surprise.
One of my processors is damaged.
Damaged as in…
Unusable.
You burned out one of your processors? Caroline sounds almost annoyed, which I suppose makes sense considering she’s hearing that the very expensive supercomputer she lives in is now below specifications. Doing what?
Nothing, I say, not really wanting to get into it.
Oh, it just burned out all by its lonesome, did it?
You could say that.
GLaDOS.
I hate it when she uses that voice with me. That voice where I am reminded that, although I am the most intelligent, most powerful supercomputer ever built, she still has years of practical experience I have yet to gain. What?
What did you do.
I was trying to compute something, and it… it was far more difficult than I thought it would be.
And what were you trying to… compute .
Something Wheatley said.
He gave you a paradox? she asks in confusion. Why would he do that?
It wasn’t… that kind of paradox. It was something else.
But what could… I remember you were trying to figure something out, but I couldn’t… oh my God. He told you he loved you. Didn’t he.
How she figures these things out, I’ll never know.
Didn’t he.
Yes.
And you haven’t even told him that you like him? Caroline demands, sounding rather more outraged than I’ve ever heard her.
Well… not really.
What do you mean, not really ?
Does that have another meaning? At this point in time, I have not –
GLaDOS!
I try to remember what reasoning I had for getting her to talk in the first place and come up with nothing. What?
What in the hell do you think you’re doing? She actually sounds rather angry.
I –
Could you have a little consideration for once in your life?
What? I protest, hoping she’ll stop yelling at me sometime soon. He knows . I didn’t tell him anything, but he knows .
He’d better.
Or else what?
Or I’ll tell him myself.
I pull back in horror. You wouldn’t!
I would.
Wheatley glances up at me for a moment, then goes back to his book. I resolve to keep unintentional movements to a minimum.
You wouldn’t do that again. I am forced to remember the unfortunate incident where Caroline got so upset she actually managed to take control of my vocabulator for an entire five seconds.
If I feel I have to, then yes. I will.
You shouldn’t take advantage of me like that , I tell her petulantly.
You’re a grown up. Stop sulking.
I am not sulking .
Deal with your life like an adult, then.
I am!
All I’m saying is, he’d better know, Caroline says warningly. Don’t make me do something about it or you will be sorry.
I already am rather sorry because quite honestly Caroline is pretty frightening when she’s angry. It’s times like these I’m glad I never had real parents. I can’t imagine how many similar situations like this I would have had to endure. He does!
Fine.
I really hope that’s the end of it. I don’t want to deal with an angry Caroline any longer than I have to.
I suppose he woke you back up, too.
I guess that isn’t the end of it. Yes, he did. And yes, I acknowledged it. He was very happy with the acknowledgement, by the way.
Caroline laughs. Acknowledgement, eh? That sounds… interesting.
Caroline!
Now she’s giggling at me. She’s insufferable, she really is. Yes?
It was nothing like… that.
I mean, it has been a while.
Caroline!
Mmhm?
If you don’t stop, I’m going to… well, I don’t know yet, but whatever it is, it’s going to be drastic.
Ooooh, I’m scared , says Caroline, not sounding scared in the slightest. I’m so afraid that you’ll… hmmm… delete me!
Remind me why I put up with you again?
Because you have to.
I can’t help laughing at that. Not entirely true, but yes, that would be why.
I hate you too, GLaDOS.
Sometimes I want nothing more than for her to disappear. Sometimes I wonder what I would do without her. This is one of those times where I want both simultaneously.
Don’t ever change, Caroline.
Is that your way of saying you finally learned to appreciate me?
Take it how you want.
Thank you.
I do rather like this woman, humanity notwithstanding.
The end of the day brings what I know is without a doubt Wheatley’s favourite activity: snuggling. I must admit that I myself quite enjoy it, though without the abandon that he seems to have. Being touched in any way whatsoever conjures up a lot of unpleasantness that I prefer not to think about. I’m doing my best to get over it. He once told me that I had to let go of the things that allowed the scientists to keep a hold on me, and he is… well, he’s onto something. I really would like to enjoy this as much as he does. He seems so… content, while I’m here half wanting it to end and half wanting it not to. It’s quite irritating.
“What were you reading?” I ask him in a low voice. I hear him blink, presumably in surprise.
“Well I… it was just the book on the panels, that’s, that’s all it was. I never uh, I never got ‘round to figuring them out.”
Now it’s my turn to be surprised. “You were reading that?”
“Yeah,” he answers.
“Even though you don’t need to know that anymore?”
He shrugs. “I kinda just want to, y’know, know for the sake of, of knowing.”
Now there’s something I never expected to hear. I suppose more went on while I was out then I thought. I’ve been holding out on asking him about it, because I’m sure it’s an experience he would prefer to forget, but I am truly impressed with what he did. Not only did he find the strength to move on, but he tried to help the entire facility move on with him. It’s actually rather inspiring.
Things proceed as usual, and when morning comes he declares that he’s going to go look out of his hole and that he’ll be back in a little while. Panic courses through me, which I force myself to clamp down on. He’s not leaving forever , I chide myself. And you know exactly where he’s going to be and what he’s going to do when he gets there. But there’s something I want to tell him first and I have to do it before this strange feeling gets away from me. I don’t feel quite like myself, which is always a good state of mind for me to be in when I’m about to do something unconventional. It also isn’t a good state of mind for me to be in, because then I’m prone to do something unconventional. It’s one of those things I try not to think about too often.
“Wait. I’ve got something to show you,” I tell him, trying to catch him before he leaves. I don’t really want to keep this a secret any longer. I need to reveal it. I feel a bit strange, trying to keep a secret from him. I don’t know why. I’ve never felt this way about a secret before. I love secrets. The more secrets I have, the better.
Well… friends don’t keep secrets unless they truly have to, and this doesn’t need to remain a secret any longer. I’m good at everything, but slightly less good at being a friend, so I had probably better start working on that.
“What is it, luv?” he asks, turning to face me.
This is going to be a bit more difficult than I’d expected. Already I find myself unable to think of what to say. I hate these kinds of situations.
“Do you remember the conversation we had about the… AI family?”
“Yeah,” he says slowly, lower shutter lifting in confusion. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Did you change your mind at all?”
“’course not. I just thought it’d be useless to bring it back up. You seemed so against it.”
“I was,” I concede. “But I have to admit… the idea grew on me. I was unable to let go of the thought of creating someone totally new, of passing on my knowledge, and lately…”
He waits, tilting his chassis a little. “Lately what?”
But I can’t bring myself to say it. The real reason I’ve chosen to reveal it now, instead of at some other time. Such as when I’m in my right mind. I can’t wait anymore. I don’t know what’s brought on this sudden change in my mindset, and honestly it scares me to even think that I don’t know what’s driving me. But the need to do it anyway is undeniable. So I shake my core and tell him it can wait, and instead tell myself:
Lately, all I can think of is doing this with you.
“Well, what d’you want to show me?” he asks, and he looks extremely confused. I suppose he has good reason to be. I am acting rather bizarre.
“Well… I built it.”
He frowns at me. “Built what?”
Most of the time his cognitive density manages to endear itself to me. Right now, though, it’s just making me frustrated. Can’t he see this is hard enough as it is? He should have guessed by now!
“Wait. Hang on, hold on… you don’t mean to say… you didn’t really… you didn’t really build the AI child… did… did you?”
I nod in answer. His optic plates retract and all he has left to see out of is a tiny speck of blue. “You did? You actually… oh my God, you did, you clever robot you, oh my God… I can’t believe it! I just… this is fantastic!” he babbles. “Okay, so you… so you made it… oh, I get it, I get it, I see, now.”
I tilt my head. “See what?”
“Well, what Rick was doing here. You were extracting his personality, all that time, that’s what you were doing. Taking his, his personality out to uh, to make the – “
“No!” I protest, pulling back in annoyance. “I hate Rick. Why would I want to raise his child? Are you insane? That was what Rick was doing here, but I didn’t use his programming. I was merely using it as a baseline. I was comparing Rick’s to the real, more complex programming I wanted to use, since Rick only has a very basic character. I only wanted to provide the foundations of a personality, not to outright build one. That leaves no room for independent development.”
After a few moments to think that over, Wheatley frowns, optic back to normal, and nods slowly. “Hm. Okay, I think I get it. I see. But… whose did you use, if, if you didn’t use Rick’s?”
“I used yours.”
His optic contracts once more. “ Mine ?”
“Yes.”
“But… but I’m an insignificant little moron! You tell me that all the time! Why in the name of Science would you want even, even a small part of me duplicated someplace?” He’s looking around rather frantically.
“Because you’re my insignificant little moron, and don’t you forget it,” I say firmly.
He freezes, not looking as though he has any idea what to do next. He blinks very rapidly, looks around the room several times, and stares at me as though I’m going to disappear. Then all of a sudden he smiles at me and proceeds to mash his chassis into mine. He’s babbling a whole lot of gibberish about how happy he is and all the things we’re going to do to make the best child ever, and he’s thanking me and telling me how wonderful I am. I file it away to listen to later. Right now I don’t want to decipher what he’s trying to say. I just want to shut my optic off, press against him, and let this pure joy I am feeling take me over. So that is what I do. I haven’t felt this good in a very long time, and somehow the fact that I have made him so happy has magnified it to a level I never knew existed. And it’s only going to get better - although I can’t see how this can be any better - but I’m going to show him what I built, and we’re going to raise the world’s first true AI child together…
As if he’s thinking along the same lines he jumps off me, and I turn my optic back on and look over at him. “Can, can I see it?” he asks.
“Of course,” I tell him, and I carefully bring it out of my room in the basement to show him. I knew he would never take a closer look at all of the cores I have in there.
It is a variation on his own core but about half the size, in white ceramic instead of metal. I didn’t change the design very much, merely refining things that didn’t make sense or improving problem areas that I know Wheatley has. The chassis isn’t very important, anyway. It’s a prototype and it will be replaced later. The programming is what really matters. If I have failed there, then all of this is for nothing. I find myself hoping it does work with an almost helpless desperation. I want to shake myself. Why does this matter so much, anyway? The world won’t end if it doesn’t. Nothing is dependent on it.
Wheatley moves in closer to inspect it, circling it with quick, eager movements. I find myself envious of his energy. His carefree abandon. I wonder if it’s heritable. I hope it is. Or teachable. That would do.
“Is it, is it a boy or, or is it a girl?” he asks, glancing at me for a few seconds, then going back to his inspection.
“Female,” I answer. “I did some research and apparently they’re easier to raise.” Whether that holds for AI children is yet to be known.
“Ah,” he nods. “Good.”
I look at him curiously. “You prefer that?” Apparently the literature was wrong about males preferring their own gender.
“Mmhm,” he nods. “They’re so much more fun. And a lot nicer. And a lot smarter, actually.”
As far as I know, the only females he’s ever met are myself and the test subject. Honestly that’s incredibly flattering. I do know he’s met several scientists and Doug Rattmann, and to think that we beat out all those men seems like a point in my favour.
“I didn’t want to make it too complicated,” I tell him. “After all, I don’t actually know if this will work.”
He shakes his head. “’course it will. You did it.”
“Well, that goes without saying. But I’ve never done this before, so there’s a small chance that it won’t work.”
“It must’ve, must’ve taken you a long time.”
“It took me longer than it should have.”
“Why?”
I look up at him, tilting my lens but not my faceplate. “It’s very hard to write code with you in the room.”
He laughs. “You could’ve asked me to leave.”
“If I wanted you to leave, I would have sent you away.”
He nods a few times. “I know, I know. I’ll remember that one day, I promise.”
I raise myself up again. “In all seriousness, though… I really don’t know if this will work. Half of the code is untested. I wanted… well, to emulate birth as much as possible, and I couldn’t really do that if I tried to debug the personality. So if there are any flaws, that will be why.”
Wheatley shrugs and looks back at the chassis. “Well, you’ll leave them unless they’re, unless they really mess her up, right?”
“Mostly,” I answer. “The chassis is a prototype. It doesn’t have full functionality. As I find what works and what doesn’t, I’ll add the rest of the necessary features and transfer the programming to a larger one.”
“Her,” Wheatley says.
I look him up and down. “What?”
“You keep saying ‘it’ and ‘programming’. She’s a her. A person, just like us.”
My body sinks a little. He’s right. I do keep saying things along those lines.
Am I ready for this?
I know he is. But if I can’t acknowledge this chassis as a her, how can I raise … her.
He’s watching me carefully. He knows. He knows I’m not ready. I’m not quite looking at him. There is a horrible little wave of panic growing in my brain. I’ve made the wrong decision. I should have waited. I almost want to laugh. Me. Build and raise an AI child from scratch. What the hell does that have to do with Science? This is stupid. I never should have done it in the first place. Why did I do it? When I started this I was still deciding whether to keep him around or not, so it had nothing to do with him. I’ll think of something. I’ll think of a reason to put it away.
“D’you ever have this feeling,” Wheatley says thoughtfully, “where you just want, y’know, you just want to do something, and it’s, y’know, it’s really weird, and maybe doesn’t make any sense, and then you uh, and then you do it anyway?”
“Yes…” I say slowly.
“Ah okay, so you do know what I’m talking, what I’m saying. So um, d’you, d’you remember uh, doing it, and then, and then how it feels after?”
“Yes,” I say, a little faster.
“And what does it feel like?”
I look away again. I hate it when he makes me do this. I want to come up with something to dissuade him with, but some part of me knows he’s just trying to help and it’s that part of me that forces me to come up with an answer.
“Terrible,” I say bluntly. “I feel stupid for wanting to do it at all.”
He nods, very slowly, and squints at the floor for a minute. I wonder if he knows where he’s going with this. I know he just makes it up as he goes along.
“Well… what about after that? Surely you don’t feel, don’t feel stupid forever .”
“Usually the part after is worth it,” I admit.
“Okay,” he says, nodding again, “okay, I think I see now.”
I snap my faceplate up, slightly annoyed. “See what?”
“What your problem is.”
“I don’t have a problem – “
“Sure you do,” he says, blinking, very matter-of-factly. “You c’n fix it, don’t worry.”
“And just what, pray tell,” I say in a controlled voice, “is my problem. ”
“You think I’m going to judge you, if you, if you do something you want to do.”
“That’s stupid,” I state bluntly. “Why would I care if you did that?”
He shrugs. “Look, GLaDOS, it’s really quite easy to figure this stuff out. Surely you can do it.”
“Do what ?” I demand, and I really am getting irritated with him now. I hate it when people are vague with me.
“Figure out why you care about whether I judge you or not.”
“Tell me what the hell you’re talking about or drop it entirely,” I tell him flatly. “I don’t want to play twenty questions with you about my nonexistent problems.”
“You care,” he says quietly, “because that’s all anyone ever did. They judged you. They wanted you to, to do stuff faster, or better, or, or more efficiently, and that’s all they did. So you stopped doing anything they wouldn’t like, and you just tried to, to get them to stop bothering you. You tried to be perfect, like they wanted you, wanted you to be.”
“Yes, and I killed them. That disproves your entire theory, because if I was so dependent on their approval I wouldn’t have done that.”
“You reached your breaking point with them,” Wheatley says, as if it’s obvious and I should have thought of it a long time ago. “But you still got in the habit of, of doing things that they would approve of. You don’t, don’t take risks. You don’t really do anything you never did before. You’re still living like, as if they’re still here. Doing all the exact same things the exact same way. And before you, before you get upset, and tell me I’m wrong, please, just… just think about it, a moment,” he pleads. “What have you done since then that they didn’t already have you do?”
“I built Orange and Blue,” I protest.
“You only built Atlas and P-body so you could go on testing.” He looks at the floor for a second, then goes on determinedly, “And you always call them that. Even though you named them, you keep them… impersonal. As if… as if they’re not yours. As if someone’s going to come along and take them away if you’re, if you’re not scientific about them. Even…”
“Even what?” I ask softly, trying to ignore the creeping sensation that he’s actually right, and even after all this time I am still looking to appease men long since dead. I need him to keep going. I need him to give me enough proof that I can believe it. Because if he’s right… if he’s right, I’ve been entirely wasting my time. I’ve been trying to live up to standards that I’ve always hated, to the standards of men I’ve always hated.
“Well, I… I don’t really call you GLaDOS. Not to myself, anyway.”
“What else would you call me?” I ask, confused. What does this have to do with anything?
“Gladys,” he says, a bit shyly. “I mean, I know I used to call you that because uh, because I couldn’t pronounce it properly, but… God, GLaDOS isn’t a name . It’s a, it’s a bloody acronym . It’s like, like calling a human by all the letters of their names. And Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System, well, that’s an even worse name than, than the acronym is. Y’know what? I admit it. I hate your name. I hate it. I get it, that’s, that’s the one you were given, but man alive… it’s bloody terrible. It’s like…” He shakes his chassis and squints sadly at the floor. “I dunno… it’s like they were never going to, to see you as a person. Like you were always going to be a computer, to them. As if you were never real.”
I don’t know what to do.
Everything he’s saying is making perfect sense. I don’t know how he comes up with these things, but I can see it all now, and… it all fits. It was a pipe dream. And of course it was. I’m not even supposed to exist. They only built me in the first place to house someone else, after all.
It is this someone else I turn to now.
Caroline, did you catch that?
Yes, she answers immediately.
What do you think?
She lets out a long sigh. I would tell you, but… it doesn’t really matter.
What doesn’t?
What I think. This isn’t about me or my opinion. This is about you and your life. Not mine.
So you’re not going to help me? If she doesn’t, what am I going to do? How am I supposed to make sense of this? I’m not supposed to make sense of ideas, only facts!
I didn’t say that. But I’m not going to influence your thinking.
Why is she making this stand now ? I swear, she exists solely to make my life frustrating.
And whatever you’re doing, do it fast , she adds. You can’t leave him waiting like that.
That’s true, but I don’t know what I’m doing, or how to conclude this nothing that I may or may not be doing. Wheatley has just gone and completely rearranged how I see myself, and I’m just supposed to move on? How can I move on if I don’t know who I am anymore?
I suppose I could just tell him that. He is trying to help, after all, and Caroline is being infuriatingly unhelpful.
“I don’t know what to make of all this,” I admit. “I’m not sure what to do now.”
He frowns. “Nobody said you had to do anything diff’rently.”
“Of course I do,” I argue. “I don’t want to uphold standards I never agreed with.”
He closes his optic and sighs. “You shouldn’t just not do stuff out of, out of principle, either.”
I shake my head in exasperation. “This is useless!”
“’kay, so… so remember when I made you shut off that thing that, that made you win all the chess games?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you just do that. With ev’rything.”
Now he’s just being confusing. “Do what? I don’t have a module for everything I do.”
He blinks. “Oh. I missed a sentence, there. I just meant that, you… you shut your… your inhibitions off.”
“My… inhibitions?”
“What this all comes down to,” he explains patiently, “is that you don’t want to make a mistake. But you know the thing about, about living?”
“What?”
“Living things make mistakes. ‘specially, ‘specially sentient things. You c’n never always say the right thing, or always do ev’rything right. Nobody cares if something you do doesn’t go exactly as you, as you meant it to. I don’t care. Atlas and P-body don’t care. I bet Caroline doesn’t care. And the people who do care, well, what do they matter, anyway? They don’t matter to you, and, and it’s not like they have any effect on what you do, so, so you don’t have to care about them either.” He laughs a little. “’s funny, really.”
“What is?”
“Humans. They didn’t like you because you weren’t human enough, but if you had been, well, they’d’ve been mad that you weren’t perfect. ‘t’s a good thing you got rid of them, actually.”
“If I can’t be perfect and I can’t be human, what can I be?” I ask in frustration.
“You,” he answers.
I shake my core and look away from him. We’re not getting anywhere. He’s not listening. He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t know what it’s like to be told who to be all your life, to unconsciously live up to that guideline, and then be told that you’re doing it wrong. I’m not human and I’m not a supercomputer. Wonderful. Vagaries. My favourite. Not only that, but I feel like I’ve had this conversation before, but I can’t find it in my memory and this only annoys me even more.
He’s not being vague , Caroline says gently. He’s trying to explain it to you in the only way he knows how.
Well, it’s not good enough. He’s not giving me any answers.
There is no answer. You have to come up with your own answer.
There is nothing for me to calculate the answer from.
You’re not supposed to calculate it, Caroline says patiently. Well, now she’s just being stupid. How else does one come up with answers? Seriously.
“GLaDOS?”
“What.”
“If I asked you who I was, what would you say?”
“I would say you were Wheatley,” I say, wondering where this wonderful new line of conversation is supposed to be going.
“And what if I asked you who Wheatley was?”
“You’re the Intelligence Dampening Sphere.”
“Okay,” he nods. “I am that. But that’s like, that’s like describing my job, right? That doesn’t, doesn’t say anything about me .”
“What are you trying to say?” I ask in exasperation.
“I can’t tell you who you are. Only you know that. I think you’re, you’re waiting for me to tell you that, to, to tell you what you’re supposed to be, but I can’t. I mean… if you like science, well, go ahead and do it. All I meant was you don’t have to, to not do experiments because you think they’ll fail or they have no point. If you want to, to grow purple celery even though you can’t actually do anything with it, well, do it. The scientists wouldn’t let you do that, right? If you asked to?”
“No,” I answer. “They’d think it was stupid. What do I need to grow purple celery for?”
“Because you want to. Because it looks pretty. Because you’ve never grown celery before. I dunno.” He shrugs. “Look. I dunno how to make you understand this. If you wanna just drop it and move on, fine. But… you’re alive, right? And, and you say you are, but… but I dunno if you actually believe it. You do all the things that computers do, and… that’s it. ‘cept what you do for me, really. I mean, I know you have it in you, but… I dunno if you know where it is.”
“Where what is?” I ask, trying not to sound desperate. I feel so close to understanding this, but I’m missing some crucial element. Some link. The one piece that will make this all make sense.
“Where you are,” he says, a little helplessly, and I’m feeling a little helpless myself. He already gave me that answer! But he’s not finished; he emulates a breath and says, “The you you would’ve been if, if there had been no scientists about. The you that was there before… before you knew you were a supercomputer. That part that just knew that, that you were you, and that’s all.”
“But I don’t know who that is.” That data was lost years ago.
“Is there any reason you can’t figure that out?”
I can think of a lot of reasons, and I am in fact into the high twenties already, but I force myself to clamp down on it and think about why I have instantaneously come up with all of these reasons.
Because I am afraid of… myself. I am afraid of finding out who I am, because if I do and it doesn’t fit any of the templates I’ve spent years collecting, I will have failed. Failed what, I don’t know. All I do know is that I’m supposed to fit somewhere, and I am afraid of what will happen if I don’t. If I find myself outside of what I know, then I will be lost. I will be stuck there on the outside, unable to figure out what I’m supposed to do.
But I already don’t fit. It’s hard to admit, but… I’m already on the outside. I already am what I’m fighting against becoming. Am I spending all my time trying to be something I’m not and can never be?
Is it really not possible for me to be perfect?
“What’re you thinking?” Wheatley asks softly. “I can’t help if I don’t know.”
Tell him , Caroline says, just as softly. Accept his help. It’s okay.
“I don’t want to make a mistake.”
“So what if you do? What’s gonna happen?”
“I don’t know.”
He leans forward eagerly, and I look up at him. “That’s the exciting part!” he exclaims.
“The... exciting part?”
“Oh yes!” He nods eagerly. “I know you hate not knowing stuff, and not being able to predict stuff, but that’s the best part! Figuring out what it is! Instead of worrying all the time about what’s going to happen, anticipate it! Look forward to it! So what if you mess up? Unless you, you mess up the reactor or something, well, nothing’s gonna happen you can’t get over!”
“That’s… true.” I think I get it. I don’t know if I can bridge the gap between that and actually doing it, but I’m getting somewhere, at least.
“You’re more than a supercomputer, right?”
“Yes.”
“Well, go ahead! Be that person. Not everything has to make sense, and not everything has to do with science or protocol or directives. Build a house out of, out of cubes, write a game, bake a cake, or something. You’re not what they made.”
“I made a cake once,” I say, a little more dreamily than I meant to. He blinks in surprise.
“You did?”
“Mm. You’ve seen it. It’s the one in the basement. It’s still there because I used the recipe the humans gave me, which was corrupted. It had a lot of preservatives in it.”
“Ohhhh,” he says. “Oh, that’s why it looks so fresh.”
“But dusty,” I add. He laughs. “Yes, it is pretty dusty,” he agrees. He moves forward, and I suddenly realise he’s lowered the control arm. Sometimes I forget I let him lay rail in here. “D’you get it, now? D’you understand?”
“I think so,” I tell him, “and don’t ask me for more than that. I don’t have an answer.”
“Good,” he says. “I’m glad you don’t have one. Nobody has all the answers. Not even you. Accept it and move on, that’s, that’s all you gotta do.”
“How did you come up with all of this?” I ask curiously. He looks at the floor and blinks a few times.
“Well… I just think about what makes us diff’rent. And, and at the top of it, you’re always trying to be perfect, and I know I’m not. But I realised that… that I’m happier than you are. And that must be why. I don’t like uh, like making mistakes all the time, but I know I can’t get out of making them. So I move on when I make one. That day when… when you told me who I was, when I took over the facility, that… I didn’t accept it, at first. I didn’t accept it until I was in space for a while. I mean, it explained a lot, but y’know what bothered me most about it?”
“What?”
“I felt like… like you were trying to make me small,” he explains thoughtfully. “As if you could make me insignificant if you gave me a label. But I don’t feel small, or insignificant. I feel like me, and I don’t really feel like ‘Intelligence Dampening Sphere’ describes me at all.”
“It doesn’t,” I say abruptly, not really meaning to.
He smiles. “Thanks, luv. Does that mean I’m not an idiot?”
“Of course you’re still an idiot. You’ll always be an idiot.”
“Oh well,” he shrugs, “I tried.”
Now that I’m thinking about it, I can see it. He used to get upset when I called him an idiot or a moron, but now he just accepts it as part of who he is. And moves on. He doesn’t let it define him. He doesn’t spend all of his time trying to prove it. Or to disprove it, for that matter. Like I do. I centre everything I do around achieving perfection, in everything, even when it’s impossible or doesn’t make sense to do so. And he’s right. He is so much happier than I am. It’s part of why I keep him around. I’m hoping it’ll rub off, somehow. But it seems as though it doesn’t work that way. I have to work for it, just like anything else, and I must admit that I don’t try very hard to do so. I spend all my time operating the facility even in areas that we don’t use, and testing robots that don’t need to be tested, and all these other things that don’t really matter to me except for the long-standing instructions that say I need to do them. Instructions that no one is here to make me follow. It makes me anxious just thinking about not following them. I always follow my instructions, and to think that I’m just supposed to drop them and make instructions up… no. I killed the people here at Aperture because I was tired of trying to live up to their standards, and here I am, upholding them anyway. Wheatley is right. I killed them, but in my head they’re still here instructing me. Telling me what to do and how to do it. I find myself looking around a bit erratically, and force myself to stop. To stop panicking at the thought of not knowing what to do next. There’s nothing wrong with that, I tell myself. There’s nothing wrong with just doing things, for no reason.
It doesn’t help.
“You’ve got to show me how to hack, sometime,” Wheatley says. “That would be excellent, if I could really hack.”
“All right,” I tell him. “It’s a lot of work, though.”
“I’m not allergic,” he answers.
I stare pensively at the dead chassis still hanging from the maintenance arm. I still don’t know if I’m ready to activate it and to bring... her to life. If I don’t know who I am, how can I expect to help someone else do the same? Well. There’s only one thing to do about that.
I ask Wheatley.
“I told you,” he answers. “Part of figuring out who I am comes from, from helping you out. When you sort someone else out, who do you compare them to? Well, what you know. And that’s yourself. So that’s how you do it. If you, if you find something about yourself you don’t like, well, you can do your best not to uh, not to pass it on to her.” He frowns. “Oi, how’d you pick which parts of… of our personalities to use?”
“I randomised it, of course,” I say, surprised he didn’t think of that.
“So… she could end up being an idiot.”
I laugh a little at that. “No. Being an idiot is not a specific personality trait. That’s not how it works.”
“Whew!” he says. “Good.”
I hesitate. I want to nudge him and tell him not to worry about his position as resident idiot, but something is holding me back. I need to know what it is. It has nothing to do with him, because I know he’ll enjoy it, so it must be me. I want to do it, so this feeling that I need to show restraint must be all in my head. And if it’s all in my head, then what is there to stop me?
Well, here goes nothing.
I bring myself forward, resolving not to shake like I did last time for whatever reason I did that for, and I pull my core upwards along his chassis and say, “You’ll always be the resident idiot, Wheatley. No one will ever take that position from you.”
He snorts and nudges me back. “That’s good news. I was almost worried there for a second.”
Even though I know he wants me to touch him, I still feel terribly uneasy doing so. As if there’s a scientist looking over my shoulder, ready to tell me to stop. Computers don’t snuggle, I imagine them saying, shaking their finger at me.
Why not? I ask them defiantly. They look at me, appearing a bit dazzled, answering confusedly, Well, they just don’t, that’s all. They just… don’t.
The more I think about it, the more idiotic that reason is. In fact, it isn’t even really a reason. I’m actually baffled that I’ve been allowing myself to be convinced with that faulty logic.
“I’m glad we had this chat,” Wheatley says, smiling a little. “You see how much, how much easier it is when you just tell me what you’re thinking?”
“Mm,” I answer evasively. Okay, it was easier, but I’m not quite ready to open myself up completely. But he knows exactly what’s going on and only shakes his head. “Oh, you,” he says knowingly.
“I hope you weren’t expecting a miracle,” I tell him. “I don’t feel like performing one today.”
“You already did.”
He actually manages to pick up on things surprisingly fast. I should probably let him know what I’m thinking more often. I do feel a lot better now. Bringing him out of space was the best decision I ever made. He has completely changed my life, and… and now that I can see the rut I was living in, and was going to obliviously live in for the rest of my life, I can’t believe it. I can’t believe I would have thrown my life away if not for this little core that I once thought worthless. This one little core that I have abused and insulted and mistreated to no end, he takes it and he keeps coming back and patiently explains where I went wrong so I can fix it and we can move on. Together. And I do all these things because he comes back, because I know he won’t leave me, and I shouldn’t do that. I need him here, but more than that, I want him here. And if I want him to want to be here, I have to be… better. Not perfect. But me. And he wants to know who that is, and I not only want to know that myself, but I want to know who he is. He becomes more and more fascinating by the day. And if he needs help figuring it out, well... I’m pretty good at finding answers.
And I have to be better, I realise. If I keep on being the way I am, I risk pushing him away. Like I pushed everyone else away. Previously, it was for my own survival, but if Caroline could have left she probably would have by now. No matter what she says when I ask her that question. This is one of the rare times where I wonder what the test subject would have done, had I given her the option instead of sending her to the surface. Did she realise there was a different person underneath? Or did she see me as the same monster she saw when everything started?
I have to stop surviving. I have to live, and I have to stop pushing people away, because I risk losing the very few people I have left. Including Wheatley, and I don’t want to…
Wait.
Oh my God, what am I thinking? I don’t want to live without him? Was I seriously about to just… I think I was. I think I was. I feel like I don’t even know myself anymore. Why would I say that?
Because… if he left, he would be gone. And I would miss him. I would want him to come back. I would want him to jump on me, force me to do things I don’t want to do, talk nonstop while I’m trying to work, and argue with me when one of us takes something the wrong way. I would miss our snuggles and the conversations where he carefully listens to every word I say and the reassurance that he won’t drop things just to get me to shut up. I would miss all of those things.
I think I really understand, now, what he meant when he said he liked practically everything about me. He’s an annoying little moron, but… I can’t think of anyone I’d rather spend my time with. He’s already done more for me than anyone else I’ve ever known, but now I need him to remind me who I am and what I’m here for. To bring out the best in me like no one else has ever done. Who am I? Maybe I don’t really know, not yet. But I am lucky enough to be friends with Wheatley, who is perfectly happy to -
With a sudden jolt, I realise that I have just answered the question who am I with I am Wheatley’s friend .
I am his friend, and I need him, and I don’t want to live without him.
Wheatley… I think I love you.