The Long Apology
Chapter 1: Maladjusted.
Summary: Wheatley is taken aboard a mysterious ship, can he redeem himself? Will he carve out a new career in 'Human Resources'? Find out! Wheatley/Chell-centric...eventually. Kinda. Sorta.
A/N: I don't own Wheatley. And I'm somewhat glad of that fact. He's all Valve's making. As is Portal, Chell, GLaDOS and so on. It's just a fun sandbox to play in. Tons of thanks to my fountain of all Valve knowledge for listening to me pitch increasingly silly Wheatley dialogue and thoughts.
It was cold.
How long had he been out here? He had run out of conversations to have. There were only so many times you could say 'what an interesting swirly thing' before you wanted to shut up just to give yourself some peace. He kept talking though, he wasn't good with silences and he tried not to annoy himself too much by doing so.
Banality. That was a good word. A good word he knew. Banality was what he did best. The engineers had said so. He rather liked words he could stretch out, lovingly, to fill up the empty space. Every single syllable became a beacon to someone, something, somewhere to come find him, come get him.
Failure was something Wheatley had intimate experience with, ever since his assembly, failure had been his partner in crime, his calling card, his almost-lover that nagged at him relentlessly. How he felt now didn't approach failure but he didn't know a better word, just he was a bad core. Rotten to the core, that must have been about him. He sighed. Wheatley, personality core, always led by reputation.
The other feeling, the eating everything up good in his head one (he needed to remember the word for that word) munched on every happy moment he had had with...her. She had never told him to shut up but she hadn't caught him either. Not that he deserved it. Somehow, Wheatley was beginning to feel he didn't deserve this either.
Oh, Chell! he called out. He had long stopped feeling disappointed about the answering silence and the lack of Chell popping into existence beside him. She wasn't exactly going to stroll out from behind an asteroid and greet him with open arms, was she? She might like space though. It was a bit like going into a portal and never coming out the other side. A bit.
He struggled to remember her clearly but dreaded accessing his recordings. Temptation gave in but he knew he didn't deserve even that and the visual shut down with a beep. File corrupted. The audio played on, eerily amplified through his own audio system.
"Let's begin the games-"
Wheatley wished he could do something, anything to dissolve those feelings. Smash himself against a planet or throw himself into a star but he was in dead space. Empty. So bloody empty. Just him and his lab smarts. Which had gotten him here in the first place.
As the hours wandered on, Wheatley was so absorbed in his wounded psyche (the straggly, ragtag emotional basket he had constructed to represent one, anyway) he didn't notice the ship until he smashed into it. Then he promptly powered down.
He had been intrigued to find an AI unit in the debris from the collision. Although it accounted for the damage on his vessel and he needed no more than to note the measurements, velocity, weight and manufacture of the model (presumably so the company could claim compensation back at planet of origin) he brought it aboard anyway. It had been a strange morning, waking up from twenty years deep sleep and being sent straight outside for repair work. It was unusual. It did not follow typical regulations.
He put the unit into a sterilizing chamber and stood outside, waiting, while chewing a tasteless, stringy substance which the console informed him was breakfast. There had been no communication from planet of origin apart from a brief missive imploring him to stay on track. He was not worried. He had six months of data collection here, then he could sleep again.
Clicking his helmet back on, he rolled the sphere out and carried it to the repair station. The casing was damaged, though the optical functions were in working order, and apparently it was still working. Obviously went into power-down mode as protection, a strange tactic for any AI. He rolled it along the table, rewarded with the rattling of loose components.
On the access hatch was a logo he had never seen before, though something stirred within him, an almost primal reaction. He pushed it aside, promising himself he'd take some pills after he'd finished this task. The ship shuddered around him, as if impatient.
Aperture Science. The words were meaningless and neutral to him. Sliding it open, a tumble of circuit boards and wiring flopped out. Messy. The auto-repair program was obviously offline.
But what if he could fit the unit with a propulsion device? That could be useful in collecting data. More data meant better science would happen. He remembered that very clearly.
...he woke up on a stranger's lap. There was something very wrong about this. Searching memory for identity. None found, memory partially lost, memory restore in progress. Oh, he would have to lose the bit with his name in it! He had a good view of the floor though, polished metal, and he had a horrible feeling that the rest of the room was white. Much like the Testing Chambers.
He rolled his optic sensor around to get a look at his captor/carer. It was a spacesuit. Could be anything in that. Even monkeys. They blew up stuff, monkeys. The glassy dome reflected a distorted metal ball at him which after a few seconds, he realised was him. With a sigh, he hoped his memory would restore some sort of sense to him. He was all discombobulated. He remembered floating in space. A song.
"Floating in space, when you've done something wrong, feels like I'm saying sorry for ever so long"
The song didn't cheer him up. Maybe songs didn't. Maybe he liked dirty jokes. He remembered some engineers telling one about a woman with rather large...no, that didn't cheer him up. Maybe he didn't like boobies either. What did he like? He definitely did not like floating in space. He did like...something. So hard to grasp right now...everything was jumbled up inside. More than usual.
He had totally forgotten about the spacesuit, being startled by him when he looked up again, then rolled his optic around as far as possible to take in his surroundings. Testing Chamber white. Still, definitely a vast improvement over floating in space until the heat death of the universe. As days went, this was a good one.
"You collided with my ship"
Was it his destiny to be hounded by disaster at every turn?
"I'm sorry!" he burst out. He was fairly certain he wasn't some sort of a rogue criminal personality core. "I can fix it though, dead good with my hands, I am...well, figuratively speaking..."
The spacesuit somehow radiated an air of skepticism that crushed the burgeoning idea that he - Wheatley, at last, his name! - could have some part to play on this ship. "Actually, mate, if I recall...you crashed into me. You're at fault here, now I'm happy not to get anyone involved if you are-"
"I have transmitted details of the collison to planet of origin" said the spacesuit.
"Ah. Righty then. Suppose there isn't much I can do about it now..."
"No" said the spacesuit, fiddling with a valve on his cuff. A few seconds later, a crunching sound told Wheatley his new best friend had his mouth occupied.
"You sure? I could pull some strings-"
"There's nothing you could do, unit"
Wasn't much he could say to that. Wheatley felt awkwardly ill-equipped for conversation, only knowing his name and his core nature but not his core calling. Perhaps he was an Spy Core. He swiveled around to look in the nearest reflective surface only to be disappointed by the lack of go faster stripes. Spy Cores had those.
"My name's Wheatley" he said, determined to carry a conversation even if it blew his circuitry. "Like the food...or cereal."
"I eat a synthesized blend of essential carbohydrates, proteins and fats. It is optimally designed to satisfy my nutritional requirements. I have no experience of your food or cereal, unit"
"Wheatley, my name is Wheatley"
"We're going to the lab, unit."
It was so long since he had spoken to anything approaching AI, the ship had an auto-pilot function but nothing that encouraged familiarity and dependence. This unit seemed to have extensive memories (even if they were a little jumbled), he had to make plans to use them at some point, pulling down a screen to tap in a request. The ship squawked in disapproval, so he punched in a over-ride code. He didn't use it often and he hoped it would pass. It did.
The sphere was obviously close to being space garbage but something about the patheticness of it made him reluctant to jettison it right back out. There was something about the design, about the AI that had stirred his curiousity.
"I had to remove some of your damaged componants though I should be able to salvage the recordings you may have made. You should have some interesting recordings and observations of space phenomena"
Wheatley didn't know at this moment but there was no way he had the capacity to describe and record scientifically useful data, if he had, surely the definitive mysteries of the universe would have been solved but all he had was the robotic attitude of 'I went to space and all I got was this lousy t-shirt' and a picture of a piece of debris that had reminded of Chell. If she didn't have arms. Not knowing this possibly saved his electronic life as he couldn't blab himself into being discarded.
The man on the other hand was developing a rapidly disquieting opinion of the unit as he walked to the lab. The unit displayed a full range of reactions, due to the clever manipulation of its mechanical workings but something wasn't right with this AI or its design, the humanity of it was rather awkward and uncomfortable to deal with. He checked his bio-reader and saw he was due more pills in an hour. It couldn't come soon enough.
In the lab, the bench held the scattered remains of the unit's surgery. Hopefully the unit's self-repairing program would recognise them.
"Bloody hell, there's all my private bits! My training protocol processor!" the unit exclaimed. It seemed that everything surprised the unit, perhaps his - no, its short-term memory was permanently damaged. "Just hanging out on that bench, would you look at that?"
The man waited for the unit's fascination to fade. There was no need to hurry, he had all the time in the universe. Ten minutes later, the unit had gone silent, it sounded troubled by this development, of having its insides outside, that the man felt that feeling again. Nagging away. The pills did nothing to dull it and a prickle of fear? concern? dragged down his spine.
"Mate, would you mind giving me a hand here?" the unit asked, cajolingly as the man set him on the bench. "I understand if you don't want to put your hand in there, neither would I to be perfectly honest - what was that! Be gentle in there! I'm not a pinball machine!"
It seemed now the unit was aware, the auto-repair system was online, if a little sluggish. It clicked things into place, flipping out tiny soldering irons to seal them in snugly. Old this unit was, there was certainly flair in the interior design and surely much information to be gained about this Aperture Science.
He would have to ask for permission to study the unit. Permission might not be granted for several months. It seemed unlikely it would be granted unless he removed the oral abilities of the unit and that seeming to be missing the point as this unit's data was primarily recalled through oral testimony. Maybe if the memories were successful extracted, he could power down the unit afterwards.
He decided he could let the unit continue in its business for now, clicking the access panel shut and tossing it lightly into the air. It crashed hopelessly to the floor, its optic flickering hopelessly as it tried to roll around.
"Another hand, mate, if you don't mind not dropping me this time?"
"Aperture Science?" repeated Wheatley. "Never heard of it...APE-PER-TURE...they blew it up! Manics, those monkeys..."
"It said Aperture Science on your casing" the spacesuit said. "I have never heard of an organisation by that name but you don't remember?"
"My memory is still rebooting" said Wheatley hotly. "If it says Aperture Science then I must have worked there, obviously, as a snappy go-getter personality core"
"With your...unique calibrations-"
"You need to forget that tumble from before, mate, I didn't know you'd put a jet-pack on me-"
"A propulsion device, no combustible materials are required-"
Wheatley tuned the Spacesuit out. There wasn't much you could say to him really. Sure, the Spacesuit was plenty strange and odd and possibly brain damaged with his robotic gait and flat, emotionless voice but he seemed alright. A chap you could depend on. And gosh, how he, Wheatley, needed someone to depend on.
But how did he, Wheatley, end up in space? That was a mighty riddle wrapped in bacon wrapped in mystery. He wasn't a Spy Core (just my luck...) and he seemed to be quite comfortable, scarily comfortable in fact, rolling along the ceiling, taking everything in. Felt right, that did. No idea how it fitted with anything else. He remembered dully being shown humans, test subjects, and being told...MORON! IDIOT!
He was just plain frightened now. Must have been the wrong track...what if he was a Space Core? That would make sense. A defective Space Core. What did he know about space? What did he know about anything for that matter? He floated over to a corner to think some more, it seemed hard to do this, hard to grasp anything.
That voice was familiar though. Soft but scary. Like a stuffed crocodile. Wheatley didn't want to know anymore about that. Maybe it was just a glitch, crossed wires, a trick of electronics. That was possible...
Then he felt that munching everything good feeling again. And the crushing realisation of his essential Wheatleyness smashed into his sensors like a shock from a faulty socket. ChellChellChellI'msosorry. The Itch. Those spiked metal plates! What had he been thinking? The Itch and the satisfaction and that feeling of just scratching it-
He couldn't let the Spacesuit know.
Not this.
He'd have to lie.
He'd just tell the Spacesuit he was in Human Resources. It wasn't like he could check anyway.
A/N: Where will our plucky personality core end up? I can say he'll tell his exclusive side of the story next, learns that everything isn't what it seems and he has more in common with Spacesuit than previously realised...next time!