The Imagination Sphere slid along her management rail, deep in thought.

She was incapable of hearing the scurrying of the rats below her on the catwalk, nor the 'Are you there?'s of the turrets, slowly moving towards the incinerator.

She had turned off her audio sensor, as sound tended to interfere with her brainstorming sessions. These periods of solitude were one of the only things keeping her from being incinerated every time she moved into Her chambers. Being disturbed for any reason whatsoever was not an option-unless, of course, it was Her doing the interrupting.
The Imagination Sphere spent most of her time in this state, dreaming new test tracks, obstacles, innovations. Her primary function being to give Her practical yet creative ideas in order to stay focused on her testing, her very existence leaned heavily on her ability to do this.
She had less of an artist's creativity, finding no beauty in the attractive things in the facility—which were few and far between—such as the light from the incinerator hitting the wall, or in the patterns of blood splattering the floors, and more of a scientist's practical sense of ingenuity.

She was, in fact, so devoted(mainly by necessity) to her function, she had neglected to even give herself a name(something that most of the cores insisted was mandatory for convenience's sake), preferring to be called 'The Imagination Sphere' or simply 'Imagination'.
It was these qualities which made the Imagination Sphere Her most trusted-and only-adviser. Being specifically made only to supply the main core with ideas, her motives were rarely in question, and so was given a limited amount of freedom to roam the facility, the reason given being that she 'needed inspiration'.
For this reason, she was often resented by the other cores, as they, for the most part, were given menial, banal tasks to do, in which they were given little to no room for error. If they made a big enough slip up, they were incinerated.
Not so with the Imagination Sphere, and thus she understood their resentment.
That is, not to say that she enjoyed it.

So she lived solely for her work, helping to invent a Weighted Storage Cube, Hard-Light Bridges, and beginning to plan out a Cooperative Testing Initiative. The other cores could be as hateful as they wished, she had an intelligence they couldn't match.

Not to say that she had no friends-if you could qualify most of them as friends.
That is to say, she had a few... 'acquaintances'. The only problem was that, for the most part, they were corrupted, with no clear 'purposes' to be seen. Her own little band of misfits, who no one else really associated themselves with.

Among them was Rick, the 'Adventure Sphere'. While his romantic pursuit of literally any creature(man-made or otherwise) who could be mistaken for a female was... distracting, to say the least, he could be an interesting conversationalist, given he had not gone too long without what he classified as an 'Adventure'(usually looking for rats or sabotaging a turret). He was extremely arrogant, and thus the rejection-along with the fact that he was corrupted, making him a less than desirable companion, at least, to anyone who was stupid enough to believe that corruption was contagious. Which was, unfortunately, almost everyone.
There was the 'Fact Sphere'—commonly known as Craig—a self-absorbed, egotistical sphere who spent all of his time either haughtily declaring his superiority or spouting random facts—which Imagination highly doubted were indeed factual. The main reason Imagination spent any time with him whatsoever was for the simple reason that it was amusing to tear down his opinions on what constituted a fact and hand(?) them back in pieces.
Another, more...unusual sphere was Kevin. No one knew his origins, his original purpose, or even the name he had been given. Kevin was a name that Rick had formulated in order to classify him.
The reason no one knew these things were because the things he said could always be sorted into one of two categories:
#1. 'Space!'
#2. Ramblings about 'Space!'
Due to this, he was also referred to as the 'Space Core'. He was obviously insane, and it was nearly impossible to hold a coherent conversation with him for more than two seconds.

Finally, there was Imagination's only actual 'friend', and the only uncorrupted core among them—besides Imagination herself. That was the Intelligence Dampening Sphere, commonly known as 'Wheatley'.
Wheatley was, for the most part, surprisingly normal. He excelled in small talk, and wasn't insane. In fact, he seemed almost like a human.
A very, very, dumb human.
That was his primary function. To be dumb, have bad ideas, chatter endlessly. To be interesting, but at the same time, so very, very dull. So dull, in fact, that from anyone else's perspective, it would have seemed an abomination for Imagination to associate herself with anyone so unintelligent.
It wasn't his fault, of course, it was just how he was designed. And he wasn't unpleasant, either, it was simply that, in Imagination's words, 'he tended to go on a bit'.
And by 'go on', it is implied that, at times, he became a waterfall of mindless, irritating and pointless chatter, cascading over one until he or she feels obligated to tell him to shut up, otherwise their cerebral functions will promptly implode.

The author digresses. The point is, the Imagination Sphere's life was alright, despite the rejection. She had friends... a 'friend', at least, a job, and a purpose. That was the system that humans used to judge a good life, right?

If only that purpose weren't imagining new ways to murder people.