Chapter 1- Clever and Foolish

She approached the computer monitor. This was it. This place had been run by too many robots besides her. Finally all her problems would be solved. She'd be in charge. It was dim, but the light from the screen cast a faint glow onto her. Incidentally, she'd found a new love for science, so this would be done her way. It had been easy deciding who to ruin. It was pulling one out of space that had been difficult. The Space Core she'd left alone. She didn't even care what happened to him; besides, he was much less likely to torture others with his incessant babbling when he was in space. So getting only HIM had been hard work. It was been days and days of trial and error. She had to use old rewiring and reprogramming systems for it to finally work. But she'd done it, after lots of effort. She chuckled as she readied herself. It was going to be interesting to hear their screams of surprise become screams of pain. She imagined it would be horrible. For them, at least. But all for the cause of science, as She had taught her. How ironic...She was going to be tortured by the thing She loved most. Gathering the bodies hadn't been difficult. There were plenty around here, thanks to Her. And she was able to find the human She had been. There were so many she'd even grabbed an extra just in case the one belonging to Her didn't cooperate. All without revealing her identity. "I feel like GLaDOS," she said as she pushed the button.

The automatic voice began. "TRANSFERRING PERSONALITY CONSTRUCTS: Genetic Life-form and Disk Operating System, Intelligence Dampening Core (a.k.a. "Wheatley"), Adventure Core (a.k.a. "Rick")...ADDITIONAL PERSONALITY CONSTRUCT DETECTED. ADDITIONAL BODY DETECTED. TRANSFERRING."

Wait, WHAT? "No!" she yelled as a two-fingered claw gripped her and pulled her away. She protested, she wriggled, she threatened, but no response came. She was put into a glass-like case and plugged into an outlet that was located on the back wall. Suddenly, something occurred to her.

This was going to be painful.

Painful, she soon discovered, was a monumental understatement. It was unbearable. It was hellish. She could hear her own screams mingling with the others'. But she was not enjoying theirs as she had hoped, due to the fact that she was suffering alongside them. She could feel the wires being ripped out of her skull. Her vision circuit snapped and her world went pitch black. She wished her artificial nervous system would be broken off as well, but unfortunately, that did not happen. She could feel herself being pressed into a tight space, damp and slimy. Inside, pieces of her were ripped out and carried away. Other things were hooked up to her. Her vision came back online, but she could see anything. And she knew why. Her eyelids were closed and she couldn't open them yet. Most of her wished that this wasn't really happening. In fact, a flicker of hope danced about. Maybe this was all a dream fabricated by her motherboard, just a hallucination in her manufactured brain. She didn't WANT to feel. She didn't WANT to hunger and thirst. And that's why she'd planned to do this to them, because they would hate it as much as she did. No AI desired this.

No AI wanted to be human.

GLaDOS, the Genetic Life-form and Disk Operating System, had been going through her list of test subjects before it had happened. She could've sworn she had test subjects left. She couldn't have killed them all off. But after reviewing the files twenty times ("destroyed: complained", "destroyed: easily distracted", "destroyed: eccentric", etc., etc.), she discovered that the only one left was the one whose file said "aggressive". She hadn't wanted to murder someone who had this temperament; it was something she admired in a human. But so far the only thing her data demonstrated was that two aggressive beings did NOT mix. She tried to watch him through her cameras in peace, but this had to be the hundredth time he'd sworn at her. "The Enrichment Center does not approve of excessive amounts of offensive language on its premises," she said AGAIN.

"Well I don't care, you-" Thankfully, she had a built-in swear detector that was able to mute him until the foul vocabulary was through being applied. However, GLaDOS knew what he'd said, and being called something less than a human BY a human was highly displeasing for her. And when something was highly displeasing for her, she eradicated it.

"I would like to reiterate that I have lasers and deadly Neurotoxin at my disposal-"

"EMPTY THREATS!" the man shrieked, and GLaDOS was so startled she almost slammed into the wall as she leaped back. That was it. He'd lost his mind and she'd lost her temper.

"Empty, huh?" she said, trying, with difficulty, not to scream at the subject. "Well, I'm afraid that this test chamber is going to be empty soon." She set off the Neurotoxin and leaned back to enjoy the show. The green poison drifted lazily into the chamber through an emitter. The man began to cough, though she observed that he was trying to conceal that she was hurting him. His attempts were poor, and ultimately, futile. He gagged and almost vomited all on the floor of the room, which made GLaDOS panic for a few moments before she was assured that her enrichment spheres were safe from human bile. Humansareabsolutelyputrid, she thought. The man's knees buckled and he doubled over, twitching and his chest heaving. His failure brought back such wonderful memories...

Eventually the spasms ceased and the body went limp. GLaDOS sighed, nostalgia taking over. She'd used to do that every day.

But before she could reflect on the good old days any longer, she felt her circuits popping. She turned to look in the direction of the SRB- the Stalemate Resolution Button- but it was not even there. In her last moments of mobility, she scanned her chamber for the moron and- she shuddered- HER. But she was all alone.

Ohno,she thought as the port underneath her began to open. Notagain!

As for what Wheatley, the Intelligence Dampening Core, was doing before it happened, he was being bored stupid (not that he needed to be bored to be stupid) by Rick the Adventure Core. At least, that's what Rick said he was. Wheatley was pretty sure that "adventure" was just a fancy word for "cleaner"...he thought he might've looked it up once. Rick, however, made his job sound exciting. At least at first. But he was running short on story ideas.

"Did I tell you about the one where I battled the-"

"Yes."

"How 'bout the one where I found-"

"YES."

"I know! The one where I explored the ancient-"

"YES!" Wheatley finally exclaimed. "I know all of these bloody stories! I've heard them all! Can't we just listen to music or something?"

"Music is for sissies," Rick stated gruffly. "Remember what I always say: Are you a machine, or a man?"

"A machine," Wheatley grumbled.

"That's right, bud." Wheatley wasn't sure he liked being called "bud". He went over to the CD player.

"But this is such a good one! If I have this I'll never forget how to count to one hundred again!"

"You need to get a life."

"Said the core who spends all day trying to come up with his own theme song."

"I've battled monsters! And the intergalactic protection fleet is just letting me have a long break!"

"Methinks you've had too much happy fuel." Rick was the only robot or person that Wheatley was able to put up a good argument with.

Rick narrowed his optic viewing device (or, in other words, his one green eyeball). "You're more annoying than Fact Core."

"Right back at you, mate."

"I'm gonna go hone my ninja skills." Wheatley's response was to roll his one blue eye and Rick retorted by going right past him, imaginary nose in the air. Wheatley sighed with relief when Rick was out of sight and went over on his management rail to the extremely old Macintosh computer (he was amazed it still worked) on the desk. He finally had some time in private.

"Me, myself and I," he muttered as he headed to iPhoto. Thankfully he could control the computer with his motherboard, his artificial brain. It was a complete accident that led to his discovery of his software being compatible with the computer's. He'd been careful not to mention this to Rick. He looked both ways, cautious and a bit paranoid. Just because he was a machine didn't mean he didn't have his own private thoughts and even secrets. He'd never had a friend like Chell, so it was only natural that he'd wanted to capture the memories forever. After all, he wasn't human, so eventually she was going to die, and when she was dead he would be still alive. He spent about ten minutes just gazing at the images. She'd never known he was taking photographs, of course. Much to his fortune, he hadn't had the heart to delete them even when he had been corrupted by GLaDOS's body. He missed running around, scheming against her, with Chell. He finally exited iPhoto and opened up Pages. Whenever Rick went to "train" (which was really him going to sing extremely off key), Wheatley worked on a song he thought might be a good one. He hoped if he ever saw Chell again he could give it to her for her to...well, he'd originally thought sing, wondering if she had a nice voice...and then he'd recalled that she didn't have a voice at all. He decided that Chell seeing it would be satisfactory. He didn't know how to write, but since he used his mind to operate the computer, it did the work for him. He went over the song in his mind.

"Wheatley, why'd you try to kill me,

"After all that we'd been through?

"Everything we'd done seemed like so much fun,

"But I just don't know what happened to you."

That's why he'd wanted her to sing it. It was from her standpoint, not his. He wrote a few more verses, but soon lost inspiration and quit. He stored everything onto the computer and then himself. In a stroke of rare intelligence, Wheatley had become afraid that if the system on the computer broke down, glitched, or failed, he would lose all the information he'd saved. So he'd taken to placing everything into his database as well. That way he'd never have to be concerned about all of it disappearing.

Suddenly the room rumbled. "What is it?" Rick called, pausing in the middle of shrieking something that slightly resembled "Moves Like Jagger". "All right! Danger! Come at me!" Wheatley just hung there, beginning to tremble with fear and nervousness. Then a claw grabbed him and he heard the clank of metal coming from where Rick was, and knew one had grabbed them two. He was ripped off of his management rail.

"Ow!" Somehow Wheatley had the feeling that the claw was one thing Rick wasn't going to be able to bring to its knees. They were carried to a room and Wheatley saw a glass case with one of the outlets he could be plugged into inside. And for the first time in his artificial life, Wheatley knew something beforehand. For once, Wheatley was not the facility's Epimetheus.

The core knew this was going to hurt.

Some people said this chapter was confusing, so I tried to add some lines to clarify. And the first section is an unknown character, one you don't know. But the next chapter answers some questions. If this one's still puzzling, though, let me know why. Sorry for making your heads hurt!