Portal: Love as a Construct: Prologue - Dandelion

by iammemyself

GLaDOS has brought the cores out of space and, to their surprise, finds herself in need of an assistant. Wheatley, Craig, and Rick have to bring her a plant, and may the best core win... On other sites I will be moving it to the first chapter position, but this site provides no easy way to do that.

Portal: Love as a Construct: Prologue - Dandelion

Indiana

Characters: GLaDOS, Wheatley, Rick the Adventure Sphere, the Fact Sphere (in this story referred to as Craig)

Setting: Post-Portal 2 (also takes place immediately after My Little Moron)

Wheatley couldn't decide which was worse: listening to arguments in Aperture, or listening to them in space. When GLaDOS had retrieved Wheatley, Rick, and the Space Sphere from the moon's orbit for some as yet unrevealed reason (since GLaDOS much preferred to be Mysterious over explaining why She did anything), he had been thrilled. Finally, finally, finally, he would no longer have to banter pointlessly over who was superior. He was back at Aperture, which he knew as well as he knew – no, not like he knew his own hull, he still hadn't completely memorised the damage done to him at the beginning of The Incident… well, as well as he knew the Space Sphere's hull, then. He hadn't done so intentionally, but in space, staring at every crack and smudge on Space was the most exciting thing there was to do. But to his dismay, She had merely put Wheatley and Rick in one room together with the Fact Sphere, now referring to himself as Craig, and left them. It'd been alright at first, since they were all pretty happy to be back on solid ground, so to speak, but that had quickly spiralled downwards. Now Wheatley was just as bored and frustrated as he'd been while in space yesterday evening.

"Can't you two just, just compromise, or something? You're both the, you're both, um, both excellent, okay, and, and anyway, I'm the one who almost made a daring escape attempt! The both of you, you just, you're bloody useless, and Space, you're even more bloody useless, and – "

"All of you are equally useless, actually," came a dry, modulated voice from everywhere at once, and the cores jumped in unison. "But as it turns out, I find myself in need of an assistant, and luckily for you, I'm feeling magnanimous. Instead of constructing one, which would no doubt be less arduous and more efficient in the long run, I have decided that the three of you can compete for the job. Shortly, I will be sending you to the Aperture Science Botanical Housing Depository, where I am currently cultivating as many of the known plants in the world as I am able. Each of you is to select a plant and, at a later point in time, you will present them to me. The plants each of you bring will determine the winner." She paused, and Wheatley could almost feel the tension. One of them was going to be chosen to work with GLaDOS? No matter what it was She would be having them do, it had to be better than this. Wheatley rocked back and forth nervously. He hoped he would be able to find a plant She liked. He winced a little at the thought. A plant that GLaDOS liked? Did GLaDOS like plants? They were useless for testing, as he knew firsthand, and he knew that She favoured brutal utilitarianism over tastefully designed spaces, so She probably was not looking for something to decorate with.

Within a few more minutes, She had dumped them unceremoniously into a Pneumatic Diversity Vent, without warning, and the three cores soon found themselves on management rails in a giant glass room filled with green things. Wheatley was awestruck. Apart from the long, green, ropy, leafy things he vaguely remembered from the beginning of The Incident, he had never seen plants, and certainly never so many in one place.

"Good luck," GLaDOS told them in a voice that suggested She was about to watch them engage in a violent, winner-take-all, spontaneous battle royale, and with this Rick wheeled off, cackling about the amazing, contest-winning, earth-shattering plant he was going to get. Wheatley felt panic crackle through his chassis – no, actually that was his connection to the management arm being established. He was rather distressed, however. Rick already knew what he was looking for, and after a moment of frantic searching he realised that Craig had already gone off too! And he was a Fact Sphere, he probably knew about loads of plants! Wheatley didn't think he knew of any, and wouldn't have known what they looked like if he had. He twitched nervously and decided to head off. He wasn't going to find anything if he just hung out here at the starting line all day. He hoped She didn't take it as a sign he didn't want in on Her contest, and that She wouldn't hold it against him later. GLaDOS was notoriously difficult to get along with, but maybe now that She'd been free of the Cores for awhile, She had begun to see them as potential companions rather than objects that were good candidates for incinerator testing. Wheatley had thought of quite a lot of things he wanted to say to Her while he was in space, and if he won the contest, he would have plenty of time to do so.

Wheatley cruised through the room, looking carefully for the perfect plant. There must have been simply thousands of them, he thought to himself as he searched. All of them had a little sign in front of them, but even if he had been able to puzzle out what they said, they wouldn't have meant much to him. He wished he knew what She wanted it for. That might've made it easier to pick one. He didn't think She wanted a tree… there were loads of vegetables, long green ones and short orange ones and plump red ones, but what would a supercomputer, even a supercomputer such as Her, do with a vegetable plant? Other than grow vegetables, of course. During his brief tenure as Head of Aperture, he had been told by the mainframe that celery would change colour according to the colour of the water it was given; perhaps She would appreciate a celery plant She could do some simple science with? No, Wheatley decided. It wasn't good enough. She probably thought that was childish anyway.

He searched and he searched, but the more he looked, the more disheartened he became. Not one of all the thousands of plants struck his fancy. And he needed one soon. He needed to just pick one, and get this over with, before She declared time was up and he was forced to go to Her empty-han… well, with nothing.

He had almost decided to close his optic, spin around very quickly fifteen times, and shoot off in a direction, afterwards choosing the first plant he saw, when he saw it. It was small, peeking out from between the leaves of another plant. He felt a bit sorry for it, tucked out of the way like that. As if it were insignificant, or something. He thought it looked rather bright and cheerful for a plant that appeared to be being smothered, and it had these fuzzy, prickly bits on it that he kind of liked. This must be it, he thought excitedly. This must be the one. He told the mainframe he had made his choice, and from out of nowhere came a pair of claws. One was holding a small tube filled with blue liquid, and the other carefully pulled the plant from the ground, Wheatley watching anxiously. If it were damaged he didn't think he'd be able to find another in time. He breathed a virtual sigh of relief when it made it safely into the tube, and he found himself being pulled towards the ceiling along with the claws. Shortly after that he was sucked into the Vent, tumbling through the darkness to God knew where, and before he had managed to get his thoughts untangled he was bumping out of the Vent and rolling awkwardly along shiny black panels. When he came to a stop he shook his optic, trying to clear his head, and after a moment he realised he was directly beneath Her. And She was looking right at him. He rather felt like he was below a spotlight, overbearing heat and all, and looked around nervously, trying to find someplace he could look without staring at Her, but She was just so bloody massive that it was impossible. Finally, he settled for a nervous, "Um, 'allo, GLaDOS" and continued to look her in the optic. It was a sign of confidence to look people in the optic when you spoke to them, right? Or was it a sign that you thought you were in control? He wished he knew. He hoped it wasn't the latter. GLaDOS did not like having control wrested from Her.

"Hello, Wheatley," She answered, somehow managing to sound like She was about to torture him for Her own entertainment while at the same time sounding merely like She was greeting him as if passing him by on the management rail. Suddenly the panel he was on tipped upwards, and Wheatley was catapulted across the room. As Wheatley bounced off the wall and rolled to a stop, Rick snorted impressively. Craig shook his head. GLaDOS made an annoyed electronic noise. "That wasn't necessary," She said, looking down at the panel he had just left. The panel shifted, and GLaDOS shook Her head. "I know you don't like the way he treated you, but he's still my property. Any punishment incurred will be dispensed by me. Understood?"

The panel shifted again, and Wheatley realised that the floor panel had flipped him into the air because it was angry with him for The Incident. He groaned mentally. Even the walls hated him. Excellent. Just bloody excellent.

"We're so glad you've decided to join us," GLaDOS went on, and he noticed suddenly that the other two cores were staring at him. "We've been waiting on you for a while now. I thought you were never going to come back. It would be just like you to get hopelessly lost while attached to the ceiling."

"I just… couldn't decide, that was all. Too many lovely choices, that was it, just thousands of bloody choices. Couldn't narrow it down. Managed, in the end. Brought you the, uh, the very best plant of them all, I did."

"We'll see," GLaDOS interrupted. "Rick came back first, so he shall present first."

Rick shook himself impressively. "I knew exactly what to bring you soon's I heard the contest, darlin'," he drawled, and a claw descended from the ceiling, clutching a tube similar to Wheatley's but a lot longer. His spirits sank when he saw it. It was a beautiful, bright red plant with a very long stem, and two feathery leaves. There was no way his tiny little thing would beat out this flower. "A rose for the lady," Rick went on. "See, I know what the dames like, and this, baby, this here is what they like. It's also just like you," he continued in a suave voice, wiggling his optic plates over his glowing green optic. "Made up of many gorgeous layers, you stand out in a crowd of other Cores like this beauty does in a bouquet of lesser flowers. A little bit of prickliness completes this stunning package, since you gotta make sure all that awesome can protect itself. Not that you need protecting, babe, you're pretty good at protecting yourself. But a lovely lady can always do with some protection by someone with the proper skills. Someone with a black belt in karate. And judo. And - "

"You can stop," GLaDOS interrupted, and Wheatley suddenly realised She had taken one look at the flower and gone back to regarding the cores. It seemed She had known what Rick would bring Her. Who was he kidding. Of course She had known. She knew everything. She probably knew about Wheatley's tiny little thing, the value of which went down the more he thought about it. "Craig?"

"Fact: I have brought you the best plant of them all, and as a result I will be the victor." Craig's voice was a mechanical monotone, boring next to the roller coaster ride that was Rick's.

"And which plant was that?"

"This is only representative of the plant," Craig told Her. "It was impossible to transport the whole thing."

"That's fine. Get on with it already."

"I present to you the most impressive plant in that entire room: the potato!"

GLaDOS froze in place at the exact same moment as Wheatley felt his gear assemblies lock in position. Why, why, why, for the love of science, why did it have to be a potato? If the angry floor panel hadn't been enough of a reminder of what he had done, this offering of Craig's surely would be. There was no way he would win the contest now. No way in the world. It was over. He would be sent back to the basement to listen to the other losing core drone on about how amazing he was, forever. He did his best not to look at Her except out of his peripheral vision, and in the snatches he caught of Her, he saw She was doing the same. He really, really hoped She did not lose her temper. She very rarely did, the last time luckily being where She was in no position to do anything about it, but the odds were stacked against him already…

"What made you choose the potato," GLaDOS asked finally, Wheatley rather thinking She didn't really want to know. Craig harrumphed. "I would think it is obvious," he sniffed.

"I beg to differ." GLaDOS looked directly at Wheatley now, and he hoped he wasn't shaking too much. He really, really wanted the floor panels to decide to disobey GLaDOS and open up suddenly to send him off to some terrible punishment that would no doubt be kinder than any She came up with, but they didn't. Or maybe they thought being stuck here under Her scrutiny was the worst possible torture. Unfortunately, they were right. "Please… enlighten… me."

"The potato was invented by Dr Bob Hare as a way to cure patients of psychopathy. If they ground it into powder, combined it with shards of stained glass collected from a hundred-year-old church window smashed between the hours of six and seven in the morning during Labour Day, and used it to wash their neighbour's Ford Escape XLT, the next morning when they got out of bed they would no longer hear nonexistent dogs meowing, and they would be able to play Chopin's Etudes perfectly with only their noses."

There was a very long silence in which GLaDOS looked at Craig in a sideways fashion, optic flicking up and down now and then as if She were scanning him for dangerous weapons. Wheatley wondered where on earth Craig had come up with that. It didn't seem plausible even to Wheatley, and he was pretty easygoing when it came to facts.

"That is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard," GLaDOS finally said, and with that, crushed the potato. Wheatley shivered as irregular chunks and yellowish juice fell to the floor. It reminded him all too much of a time he'd been in a similar position. "Wheatley? Let's get this over with."

Wheatley realised he was already off to a bad start: he didn't know what the name of it was. "Well, it's, uh, it's a flower, uh, not as big as Rick's, but uh, small flowers are nice too, yeah. Just as nice as, as big ones."

The claw presented GLaDOS with Wheatley's tube, and to his surprise she withdrew the plant with one of her own claws, looking at it closely. "Interesting choice," she murmured. Rick took one look at it and began to laugh uproariously. "You're even dumber than they said you were," he guffawed. "Don't you know what that is, Wheatley old boy?"

"Well, it's, it's a flower, that's, that's what it is."

"It's a dandelion! " Rick chortled. "A weed! You brought her a weed! And not just a weed, but one of the most hated weeds of them all! You handed me this contest on a silver platter, buddy." Craig shook his head sadly. "Should have gone with the lemons," he told Wheatley sagely.

Wheatley had only a faint idea of what a lemon was, but it didn't matter anyway. He really wanted to disappear now. He had chosen the worst possible plant there was, of all the thousands there were, and now he would have to defend his choice.

"He's right," GLaDOS spoke up unexpectedly. All three of them stopped looking at each other and looked back at her. "It is a flower. Any particular reasoning?"

"Well, I… when I saw it, it was, uh, it was, looked like it was hiding under this other plant. It was, it was still growing, even though uh, even though the other plant was bigger and hogging all the sun, hogging all the light. And it's, it's got those prickly green bits, and I thought, uh, thought it was kind of neat that such a bright flower was all prickly like that. And it's, it's yellow, uh, yellow is, it's cheerful, y'know, it's a happy colour. And it's, those yellow bits, they're soft. I didn't actually feel them myself, obviously, but the, the mainframe told me that they were. So you've got soft and, and cheerful with uh, with prickly and uh, and green, and green is, it's, it means jealousy, y'know, and it's a lovely balance. Makes it all come together nicely. And I…" He trailed off. He didn't know how She would react if She heard what he was thinking.

"And?"

"I thought it was pretty," he finished.

She looked at him for a moment, then went back to regarding the flower for another few beats. She carefully slid the dandelion into the tube, and both claws disappeared. She regarded the three cores, Wheatley waiting for Her to declare Rick the winner and send him off to eternal boredom with Craig. He deserved it, anyway. And who said She would even listen to him if he tried to talk to Her. It was better to just –

"Wheatley."

He was jolted out of the reverie by Her voice, and realised with a shock that the other two cores had disappeared. Oh God. Oh God, what was happening?

"If you're going to be helping me, paying attention when I talk would be the place to start."

"I… me? You picked me?"

"I obviously couldn't pick Craig," She told him disdainfully. "And all Rick did was hand me the most clichéd thing in the book. I couldn't have that either."

"I gave you a weed," he protested in a weak voice. "A bloody weed."

She shrugged. "I would rather work with someone who thinks things over than someone who gives me what I want to hear. Not that I wanted to hear that, because I didn't, and I'm going to have to do something serious to get that horrible monologue out of my head." She paused, swaying from side to side a little. "I like dandelions."

"You… you like dandelions."

"Oh yes," She answered somewhat enthusiastically, nodding and turning to face him. "No matter what you do, they manage to thrive. They are nearly impossible to eradicate, they choke out other plants to get what they need, they have a remarkable system of self-defense… they are even edible. Dandelions are one of nature's more impressive accomplishments."

"I'm glad you liked it," he told Her, hoping She would be open to the sort of interaction one might have if one was someone's friend. "I've… I've got lots of things I want, I'd like to ask you, and uh, and we've never really talked before… other than uh… well, you know."

She regarded him for a moment, suddenly looking over at a panel twitching on the wall with a visible level of annoyance. "Like what."

"Well, I… I was your core once, wasn't I? But, um… I don't, that is, I haven't got any recollection of that, uh, of that happening. At all. D'you know why? Did you delete it? Was it embarrassing, or something. That was it, wasn't it. It was bloody embarrassing. Never mind, forget I mentioned it."

She looked at him for a very long time, not saying anything. He started to get uncomfortable. He shouldn't have said anything. Not until he knew Her better. Bloody hell. He was an idiot sometimes.

"It's a very long story," she finally answered. "I can give you the highlights, but the details would be a bit much to get into now."

"Tell me as much as you like," he replied carefully, wanting to hear the story but not wanting Her to change Her mind because of his over eagerness. "C'n I just, uh, c'n I just say one more thing, first? About the, about the dandelion?"

"Go on."

"It reminded me of you," he told Her, looking at the floor. "You're a very, um, you're quite the prickly person, and you manage to do as you like when everyone's, when people are up against you. I wasn't going to pick it, at first, but then I remembered what happened when uh, when I ended up in, in space, and I knew it was the one I wanted to, to bring back."

"What do you mean? Lots of things were happening around that time."

He had been worried that talking about The Incident would make her angry, but She was instead quite curious. "Well you, I expected, uh, I thought you'd just send us all out into space and that, that'd be the end of it. But you brought the test subject, you pulled that lady back in, you didn't let her die."

"You don't know I didn't kill her."

"I thought about this a lot while I was in space," Wheatley went on shyly, nervously, hoping he was right. "And it doesn't make sense that you'd bring her back to kill her, and not do the same with me."

"Perhaps I wanted to do it personally. She did kill me, after all."

"You let her go, didn't you." He looked at Her full-on. If he was going to accuse Her of being nice to humans, he had better be prepared to take the punishment. He was going to take responsibility for once. But She did not speak, only looked off somewhere to the right.

"There's a soft bit for every prickly bit, I s'pose is what I mean, what I'm trying to say," he finished quietly. "And I guess uh, that I'm just s'posed to be your assistant in uh, in your torturing me, or something. So if you'd like to get on with that, um, if it means anything to you uh, I'd rather get on that sooner rather than later."

"I thought you wanted to know what happened when you were a Behavioural Core."

"I don't really need to know if you're just going to uh, going to kill me. I heard what you wanted to, um, to do to me, and it's going to be, uh, be quite horrid."

"I've… changed my mind about that. I wasn't thinking straight at the time. I'd just been traumatised in a lot of different ways. I had to direct it somewhere, and to direct it at the test subject would not have boded well for me. But I'm over it now. I've had time to think. I've dealt with it in a productive way."

Wheatley could not have been more delighted. Not only had he won the contest, but She was not going to torture him and was going to tell him about their past! It was like She was a completely different person! Bloody mental, this was!

"Go on then, luv!" he encouraged Her. She looked at him with one sudden movement, regarding him in a startled sort of way. After a few moments She nodded a little and looked away.

"Well… the day you were installed was the day after I'd disabled the Carpenter Sphere…"

As GLaDOS began the story, he realised he was rather glad events had turned out as they had. Even including The Incident, because if it hadn't happened, She would still be dead and the facility would be nearing nuclear meltdown. It's the small things that make life so interesting, he decided happily. The coincidences and the accidents and the mundane all pulled together to make one fascinating, continuing ride, where something as simple as stopping to appreciate the dandelions could change a life forever.

Author's note

I don't know where this came from. I just thought it would be interesting to think about what flower Wheatley would give GLaDOS if he had to give her one, and I think he might give her a dandelion because, let's face it, the guy knows nothing about flowers.

Craig's tirade is mostly false. Dr Bob Hare is a psychologist who created a checklist for identifying psychopathy, it has 20 items which are scored with 0, 1, or 2, and if you score 30 or over you are a psychopath. Psychopathy is incurable, and psychopaths don't have hallucinations (schizophrenics do), you can't play Chopin's Etudes with your nose because you definitely need five fingers to play them. Labour Day is a Canadian holiday, which is why I picked it, and I used to have a Ford Escape XLT.