Title: Wheatley's Tale (or: How to Argue with Yourself and Lose)
Status:Complete
Fandom:Portal (2)
Rating: T
Genre: Tame horror by my standards.
Warnings: swearing and gore.
Pairings: None
Giving his rumpled bed hair and morning stubble a once-over in the bathroom mirror, Wheatley shed his pajama pants and braced himself for the onslaught of inevitable freezing cold water that awaited him in the shower.
What was wrong with North Americans anyway? Did they have their water pressure pumped in from those bloody great Niagara Falls or something? Every morning he not only had to endure not only chilly showers but a veritable deluge of icy spray.
He received the expected torrent of water but miraculously it was hot. Actually, it was a little -too- hot. He yelped and wrenched on the cold tap, sighing as the temperature evened out to something nice and comfortable. He remained in as long as he dared not wanting to waste the rare opportunity, then cleared his face of the stubble and tried to work his hair into something professional looking. He needed a trim.
He pulled on his suit and tie with only the barest glance into the mirror and headed into the sitting room. There, splayed on the couch was the reason for his luck this morning: his worthless git of a flatmate Chuck, snoring loudly and deep in a drunken sleep. Wheatley was pleased to discover that Chuck's lack of consciousness also meant that he had not eaten any of Wheatley's carefully labelled food, drank the last of the milk, or 'misplaced' the remainder of the bread or the leftover Chinese takeaway from the previous night.
So, Wheatley had a perfectly leisurely breakfast of toast, a nice cup of tea with milk and wouldn't have to buy one of the awful packet sandwiches from the break room at lunch time. They always seemed to have nothing left but egg salad when he got there. He hated egg salad…and cold showers…and hopeless flatmates…but he didn't have to worry about any of those things today.
Today was going to be a good day.
Scratch that. Today was going to be great.
Even the back hallways of Aperture were bustling hubs when he arrived but Wheatley didn't mind. All the higher ups were for once in their posh, cushy lives going out on missions and projects. Which just simply added to how perfect (the situation had officially graduated to 'perfect') this day was going to be. Wheatley was middle-management and so that only sometimes meant the testing tracks, but that was tempered by an awful lot of scrutiny. With all the higher-ups buzzing around like bees however, no one would have time to criticize him from everything from his illegible hand-writing to that tiny little mistake he'd made in the addition column on some totally useless ledger.
That was the way Wheatley liked it.
He sat down at his desk, pulled out a notepad and by ten o clock he'd covered the top page in geometric doodles, by eleven he'd had about two more cups of tea, at eleven thirty he'd started madly scribbling numbers in a fit of caffeinated adrenaline. By noon he'd eaten lunch and at one an announcement crackled over the loudspeaker asking for him personally to come to Cave Johnson's office.
No one as important as Cave Johnson ever asked to see him. He wondered what he could have done to garner the man's attention.
Maybe, he was getting a promotion.
More likely, doodling geometric shapes was a mortal sin.
A few of his coworkers patted him on the back as he started walking towards the lifts that would take him to the upper offices. He tried to give them a wave or a confident rejoinder but instead he was totally fixated on his destination, trying to mentally prepare himself for whatever was awaiting him at journey's end.
"Wheatley! Just the man we wanted to see!" Instead of being greeted by the secretary, it was Cave's personal assistant Greg who was there and ready to meet him at the entry way to the office. Greg was a whole lot less intimidating than Cave but Wheatley didn't really want to see him either. Usually Greg was deployed to tell people in a polite and pleasant manner that they were off to work on a horrible and crazy experiment that would likely end their lives. Either that, or they were getting fired but hadn't quite done something stupid enough for a humiliating company-wide announcement from Cave himself.
He swallowed. "Hello, Greg." What else could he say? Frankly, with Chuck the deadbeat flatmate just barely paying rent and being late with it at least half the time, Wheatley needed his job very badly.
Greg put a companionable hand on his shoulder and steered him away from the inner sanctum of Cave Johnson.
"I'm not getting fired, am I?"
"Oh no! No, not at all! Quite the opposite, actually! Wheatley my good man, we are giving you the opportunity of a lifetime here!"
Here it came...
"…it's really exciting…"
Read: Deadly…
"…all wish we could be first…"
Read: Because it's untested and we want to see if it will kill people on contact…
"…revolutionary…"
Read: Bloody dangerous AND deadly…
"…so we are giving you this rare opportunity to test…"
Read: I'm expendable….
"…the Aperture Science Handheld…"
Oh NO, it WAS the testing tracks!
"….Multiverse Portal Device."
Wheatley startled at that last. "The Multiverse project? I thought that was for high-ranking, people like yourself and what not. Not you know, people like me who are really not cut out for that sort of a thing and I honestly think you might have got the wrong person here."
Greg nodded enthusiastically. "That just means you're getting a raise as well as the opportunity to do some fine work for the progression of science. How does that sound, Mr. Wheatley?"
There had to be a catch. There just had to be. Wheatley didn't do anything of note. He could think of at least fifteen people in his department of sixteen people who were more qualified for a raise than him. Other people didn't make mistakes with a calculator adding up numbers. Other people didn't spend half the day wasting their time on doodles and trying to read cheap drug store novels under their desk. Other people didn't drink up to six cups of very carefully prepared tea a day just to make the clock go a bit faster towards five.
He could think of only one thing to say in response. "Please don't make me go!"
Greg looked at him, an expression of over-exaggerated surprise pasted on his face. "You don't want to go?" he asked mildly. "You mean to tell me that you don't want more money and a bigger office? Now, sure a little danger's involved but there always is on a good science project! You'll get to go to other worlds even before Cave Johnson!"
"Uh, yep. That's me. I'm a complete and total moron. Don't want a raise at all, perfectly happy where I am, I'm just not an 'advancement' kind of guy." He shrugged off Greg's friendly guiding hand and started to back away.
The other man's mouth turned down. Wheatley wondered if he had had special training in overly exaggerated facial expressions. "That is really too bad because here at Aperture we really frown heavily on the kind of people who don't want to advance in their careers. I guess I'll have to go note this unfortunate turn of events on your records, Mr. Wheatley."
Greg really was emphasizing the 'frowning heavily', Wheatley decided. The man was actually really creepy. On the other hand, he did need this job that bad.
"Wait! Um, no. No I've changed my mind. I think I want to go and advance in my work. A nice big raise is really, really starting to sound like something I think would benefit me greatly now that I've had a chance to think about it. That um…nice big Science payoff you were talking about is all I want out of my…remaining few moments on this planet." His voice petered out as he remembered the reason why he had tried to change Greg's mind in the first place.
The assistant didn't appear to hear his last and clasped his hands. "Well no time like the present! Let's get started, shall we?"
"Right now!"
"Like you said: A nice big science payoff!"
"Um I sort of wanted to um…" he raced after Greg down the hall to find himself in a testing chamber prep-area. "…go to the loo, but wouldn't you know I don't have to after all. My mistake."
He stood there while they handed him the portal gun, barely listened while they reminded him not to look into the end of it and stood him in front of a nice big expanse of conversion-gel washed wall to fire at.
He prayed it just would just be total crap and not work. Here was hoping for the crap gun. Slowly he squeezed the trigger, closing his eyes and opening his mouth.
"I'm not sure I want to do this anymore, maybe I'll just take that black mark on my record!"
His rejoinder was drowned out by an eruption of cheers from the surrounding scientists and he dejectedly opened his eyes to see a glowing blue entrance portal on the wall. It didn't look too much different than any other portal he'd seen in the past. The only real minor difference, just a very minor thing, really was that THIS one was going to plunge him into a mad, crazy world of who knew what.
"Now just try to be back in a couple of hours, give or take."
"Give or take? Aren't you people supposed to know your science down to the tiniest detail?"
"It's called a hypothesis, Slick." The man in the labcoat kept marching him towards the portal and what was probably his doom. "Good luck."
Swallowing hard, Wheatley had about two seconds to try to think up something else to say before he received a sharp poke in the small of his back. The next second he was falling hard onto his knees on the other side of the portal, his hands digging into the cold hard corrugated metal of a catwalk. There were several flights of stairs and a large metal door at the bottom. There was a sign tacked to it that he couldn't make out from his present position, so with nothing else to do he began the trek downward with the suspended footbridge swinging dizzily beneath him.
All around him, machines hummed. It was like being near the engine of a car, although it didn't sound like a very healthy car. The motors were loud and every so often they whined a little. It was a bit too high of a hum for Wheatley's tastes.
Still, this place was definitely physically recognizable as Aperture. Wheatley had never had much cause to go into the power stations but he'd had the standard tour when he started working there and been down in the testing chambers enough times to recognize the layout.
What was bizarre was the fact that there wasn't a single human in sight, a notion that did worry him slightly. He was wandering around, unprotected, in a machine-powered back room. Normally, there would be engineers in hazmat suits. Normally, there might at least be someone watching security. Wheatley was taller than average but making sure that you sat in the back row at the cinema so you weren't that annoying fellow who no one could see over didn't exactly make you 'memorable' (particularly with women). He knew from experience that work security cameras did not share the trait of selective blindness.
The air smelled very strange back here as well. It took him a moment or two to try and figure out why, but the more he thought about it, the more he could taste metal in the air. He took a deeper breath and sneezed violently twice. So, that was metal, overlaid with attic levels of dust. It was an acrid sort of tang that reminded him of pennies but fortunately not blood and the mess of it stuck in his lungs and clung to his clothing.
If he had to take a guess, he would have said that the place was probably empty, even with the strange sort of shaky electronic activity. Maybe he'd arrived just as it was shutting down.
Jeez.
He knew he was expendable but couldn't they have sent someone who knew a little bit about computers? It wasn't as though it read 'Wheatley: Computer Genius" at the top of his resume…although maybe he shouldn't make that assumption. It actually might read that. Rick had 'spruced it up.', so for that matter the thing might say 'Wheatley: Space Cowboy' and that he spoke Swahili.
As he reached the lowest tier, a film of filthy water washed over the lip of the metal catwalk, It might as well have confirmed his earlier assessment. There was no one here. His grasp of machinery might be low but even he recognized that a flood would eventually short out any machines that were still working. He began to step more carefully. Even a moron was mindful of how powerfully water could conduct electricity.
He was forced to stop as he reached the door and as he looked up to examine the sign he did a double take. It started out with something quite normal for a factory: a cautionary triangle with an exclamation point inside, the corresponding word 'CAUTION' printed in red beneath it. The mechanical whine was loudest here and he put his ear as close to the door as he dared, intensifying the sound. Whatever was beyond was struggling to remain working.
That would have made sense however beneath that the notice continued further to say: "Control Room and Cake Dispensary".
Wheatley read the sign again twice, then took a pair of reading glasses out of his pocket, polished them, put them on, read the sign again, took off the reading glasses and dropped them over the edge of the catwalk where they fell into the water with a splash and disappeared below the surface.
The sign still read 'cake dispensary' and he never wore the stupid things anyway.
He began to sit down, realized that getting the crotch of his pants wet would do nothing for his credibility and finally straightened, leaning against the railing. Some rust came away on the side of his shirt but that he barely noticed. Should he try to enter through the door? Or should he turn around now with a report that the facility was deserted and flooded and at death's proverbial door.
The second option would have been the smart plan but just as he made his mind up to turn around and head back up the scary swaying catwalk, the door in front of him clicked open and inwards.
Curiosity compelled him to push it open the rest of the way.
If he had been expecting something spooky, he was sorely disappointed. The room was tiny but expansively tall, lined with rows after rows of breaker switches. A light flickered on. He removed one of his shoes and wedged into the space of the doorframe before stepping forward.
Each switch was labelled in a little plastic sleeve. They seemed quite generic with titles like 'Lights: Office Floor 1" or "Facility Toilets, D-Block". The shoe had prevented the swinging door from closing behind him, leaving him with an escape route. H stepped onto the dumbwaiter lift with little concern and held down the 'up' button to make it rise to the topmost rows.
The motors whined in protest and halfway up a few sparks flew into his face. He covered his eyes as the lift continued to bear him up…and up…and up before shuddering to a stop.
"Oh hello there mate!"
For a moment, Wheatley thought he'd said something himself before he realized his eyes were still squinched shut and he was holding both his arms in front of his eyes.
He nervously licked his lips, licked the sleeve of his blazer instead and forced out a muffled and very nervous "Hello?" through a mouthful of cotton-poly blend.
"Listen mate, you can take your hands down now. It's not that bad."
That time, he knew he hadn't spoken aloud, but it had sounded like hearing his own voice back on a telephone answering service or a tape recorder.
"Seriously mate, come on now."
Very slowly, Wheatley brought his arms down but kept his eyes screwed shut.
"Open your eyes. Come on. You humans do this all the ti—"
"Talking about humans like you are NOT one is not doing wonders for ol' Wheatley's self-confidence here mate."
"You'll find some. Self confidence, that is. Now, open your eyes!"
Presently the voice, his voice, sounded extremely irritated. Considering that whoever it was might actually hurt him if he forced them to wait, Wheatley opened one eye and promptly closed it immediately. Not because he'd seen something terrible but because now he couldn't see at all. Spots danced in front of his vision from the harsh light the action had assaulted his naked eyeball with. "Ow!" he yelped, bringing his fists up to scrub at his eyelids.
"Sorry! Oh listen, I was just a little close there, I'll back off a bit."
Mentally, Wheatley counted to three and finally blinked his eyes open. He looked around at eye-level and then a little lower, searching for the person who had spoken. Three-hundred and sixty degrees and he came across no other person with any kind of bright torch with which to blind him.
"Look up." The voice advised and indeed it had originated from somewhere just above his head.
Quickly he craned his head as far back as it would go on his neck without his overbalancing and toppling ass over teakettle. Something enormous was erupting from the ceiling. It was attached to the ceiling at the top with a plant-like tangle of wires, ranging from coils as thick as a man's wrist to birds-nest like tangles of copper wire overlaid with rubber. A large metal piece extended from the point where the wires converged and he followed the 'arm' downward to where it ended in a large metal ball. The very tip of the ball had a large light at the end and Wheatley's first thought was of a penis.
He didn't even have time to rationalize why he had decided the thing looked like a penis, let alone reassure himself of continued heterosexuality before the whole thing moved. He stumbled back as the arm-structure zoomed towards his face, stopping just short of his nose. Two shutters came down briefly to obscure the eye.
It had blinked. The large, dangling penis robot had blinked at him.
"Hello."
It also had his voice. Excellent. On the plus side the fact that no one believed he was a computer genius would also probably mean that they would not believe he was compensating for something if he ever made it back to tell anyone about this.
"Hello." He replied, raising one hand in a weak attempt at a friendly wave. Probably best that this behemoth not think of him as a total idiot. "So, where are all the humans? Employees, you know?"
"Huma—oh, right. They've been dead for a pretty long time now." The giant robot seemed to droop in its hangings like a wilting plant. "Kind of the problem with you lot, isn't it? All sort of squishy and mortal?"
Wheatley closed his mouth that he suddenly realized had been hanging open and swallowed the large glob of saliva that had been building up. "Right. That's um. Us." He gave his head a little shake.
The chassis cocked its head to the side. "It's rather nice to have a visitor, mate. I have been waiting for a bloody repairman for years!" The ball pulled away and shifted into a position that really did resemble someone cocking their head in the body language of the curious. "You don't look like a repairman though. Why are you here?"
"Actually, you're right. I'm not a repairman. I'm um. Actually from a parallel universe, if you can believe it. I kind of got…suckered into doing a project because I'm…expendable and they figured if I got myself killed then…well, it'd spare them."
The chassis spun above him, for the present not saying a word.
"Yeah. This actually sounds really more pathetic aloud. I don't even really know why I'm still talking here, mate."
A few more seconds of silence ticked by before the robot gave a human sounding cough that sounded remarkably like someone who had just been caught dead staring. "Listen, uh, your name…wouldn't happen to be Wheatley, would it?"
Wheatley could feel his eyebrows actually graze the fringe of his hair. He really needed that haircut. He mentally awarded himself a round of sarcastic applause on his priorities and turned his face, complete with surprised expression towards the robot which twisted into a grimace as he decided a bit too late that he might have tried subtlety or denial. Who knew what this thing was capable of? That said, it was too late now.
"Yes." He managed. "My name. It's Wheatley."
"Well, this is a parallel universe, is it not? I'm the Wheatley of this universe." The chassis dipped down quickly, and Wheatley was reminded of a human pointing a finger at the floor to express the phrase 'right here'. It was bizarre how this robot could approximate human expression so thoroughly.
"You mean…you're an expendable test subject too? Or is it that that's your name? Either way it's a bit unfortunate. Wheatley? What was my mum thinking? Still, I suppose it's better than 'Pendleton'." He chuckled nervously.
"Both. I was human once, just like you. They figured a robot would be more efficient…but they needed a human brain to make human decisions. I got the job of trying the transfer system out. Human to robot, you see?" He gave a little spin around like a model turning on the fashion runway.
Wheatley couldn't see his eyebrows but he figured that since he could now blow his bangs out of his eyes, they may have made first contact with his hairline.
"Oh I know what you're thinking. Probably had a little of the itch yourself. Nice juicy promotion, some extra cash?"
Wheatley felt himself nodding along. He was sure that he must look absolutely gormless by this point as he wasn't sure what his jaw was doing but judging by how he felt personally, it was probably as far south from his eyebrows as it could get.
"What they didn't count on was me being bloody brilliant! Didn't want to take me out once they got me in. Just wanted me to run the whole place all on my own! Bit of a problem there though, they all eventually died. Well. You know how humans are, being one yourself and well, I can run the facility but I don't have anyone to help fix me."
"That's…" Wheatley struggled to organize his thoughts. "…terrible. Simply um. Terrible. I…" He trailed off, not simply because of the science fiction levels of implausibility of the story but also because of the fact that he did know what it was like to be lonely, ignored and generally used.
The robot seemed not to share his woe for very long and the optic flared more bright blue, the lids lifting. "Wait. I am having a brilliant idea here. I bet you're having the same one! Of course you are! You're me. Just…a different me! What if you were to stay and be my human functioning body! Just think: Wheatley Science Solut-…no: Wheatley Laboratories! It's got quite a ring to it, doesn't it?"
Wheatley stumbled backwards a touch, pacing around the edges of the overgrown chamber. "Me? And you? Run this place?"
"Of course you! No one appreciates you in your universe…and who better to appreciate you than…you, right? I mean come on, they say two heads are better than one!"
"I'm not very good with computers." Wheatley started again, his mind reeling at the implications. "I mean, I'm just middle management and I make mistakes with calculators."
"Did you know if you type it eight-zero-zero-eight-five-one-three-five and turn it upside down it reads boobies?"
"Yeah. Girls don't find it funny."
The chassis gave a shrug. "No girls around here to impress anyway."
Wheatley smirked at that. "Guess there aren't." He sat down crosslegged on a small patch of weeds that were protruding from an upended floorboard. "Alright, say, just say, that I were to consider staying. What would you like me to do?"
"Well, first you'd have to fix me up. I know what you're thinking but I know how to fix me and I could give you instructions! Instructions you could follow! Then, just think! CEO of Wheatley Laboratories: You! And Running the place? Me! Who is also: you!"
"You mean I'd be the boss?"
"We'd be the boss. Which means mate, that Wheatley would be the boss." There was a terrible creaking noise and what seemed to be pink and purple paper confetti and a handful of rust rained down on Wheatley's head from above. To top it off, the sound of a party-favour being blown echoed through the chamber.
"Sorry. I've got a TON of that stuff lying around. I really need to get rid of it."
The man picked a strand of purple crepe paper out of his hair and stared at it a moment. Why shouldn't he stay here? Own his own company. Besides if the suits thought he'd died going through the portal, they might scrap the project. No one else would get hurt and he'd get the respect he'd always wanted. "Why not! In fact, let's celebrate! Do more of that confetti junk!"
Wheatley stood with his arms akimbo as another deluge of party favours and significantly less rust emptied itself over his head. He did a little spin and put his portal gun down to let it fall into his cupped hands and through his fingers. Screw Cave Johnson and his silly project. He was doing the right thing. He knew he was.
"Glad to have you aboard, mate." The chassis drew itself inward, its panels flaring out in a parody of excitement. "Just beyond here is a little doorway. You'll want to let yourself out through that."
Abruptly, Wheatley stopped his joyful spinning, stumbled a bit as the world tilted and eventually followed the trajectory of where the chassis now faced, eventually spotting a door with a glowing green sign above it which depicted a stick man, an arrow pointing down and a crudely drawn set of conjoined ninety-degree angles meant to resemble stairs. He crossed the chamber. The door was a simple push-bar, pull handle system. Something compelled him to remove his other shoe and wedge it between this door and the machine's chamber.
"Look." He said apologetically. "I'm not so good with this kind of thing and I want to get back up here if I mess things up."
"Damn decent of you." His robot counterpart's voice echoed down the steps after him.
Wheatley smiled a little. Suddenly the dark and narrow concrete corridor did not seem so foreboding after all.
"I'll turn on a light for you."
True to his word, the stairwell suddenly hummed with florescent lighting, allowing him to see to the bottom of the staircase. Now that the hall was devoid of the darkness, the stairwell seemed short, ending in large white doors that were easily recognizable as an entryway to the lab portions of his own version of the facility. He cheerfully clutched the railing to navigate the steep concrete stairs, his heart singing with every step down.
Wheatley Laboratories. His own place. His own robot self. CEO Wheatley.
He would be lying if he said he didn't love the idea and he burst through the doors and promptly crashed to his knees, holding his stomach while he dry-heaved and spit a thin film of bile that was even now attempting to eat its way through his oesophagus onto the floor.
"Terribly sorry about that, mate. Haven't had a human down here for years and years. I've just got to irrigate it out a bit."
Wheatley coiled up on the cool tile, massaging his throat and wrenching the collar of his suit jacket up and around his nose to filter out the foul stench of the air. As he lay there, trying to convince his g.i tract that it was not an excursion funnel and that he had not in fact stepped on a button that made it run in the opposite direction, a strong breeze blew through every vent in the place, ruffling the sleeves and collar and blowing his tie over his shoulder to land with a wet smack in the rippling puddle of sick on the floor.
"Sorry!" the voice of his robot self was carried away on the wind.
Abruptly the rush of air stopped, leaving Wheatley to scream "IT'S OKAY!" at top volume to a totally silent room. His cheeks flushed even if he was sure his robot doppelganger was not lying about the lack of any other presence to bear witness to his own personal brand of embarrassing idiocy.
He had to admit that the irrigation had had the desired effect. Only small traces of the horrible smell remained and perhaps some of that probably had something to do with the vomit the tip of his tie had soaked up.
Now that he was able to properly concentrate on his surroundings Wheatley took a look around. This was a far more advanced lab than anything that his own incarnation of Aperture had to offer.
"What year is this?" he asked, trying to ignore the lingering rotten smell by purposefully crossing over to where a row of lab coats hung. He pulled one off the rack, gave it a good shake so its layer of dust fell to the floor. A slightly grey white lab coat was still a lab coat.
"Oh no!" the computer wailed. "Don't ask me that!" The voice dropped. "Nine nine nine nine…"
There was a whirring mechanical hum that strongly resembled a dog shaking water from its' fur above.
"Sorry." Wheatley apologized. "Pretty long."
"Yeah."
Now decked out in his lab attire, Wheatley wandered into the middle of the room, gazing around at the long disused equipment blankly. Several machines seemed to be permanently offline but finally his gaze fell on the one thing he believed he could manage. A half-open cabinet boasted a jumble of computer parts, screws, metal joints, cables which he couldn't begin to discern what their true purpose was.
He turned away and that's when he saw it. Perhaps had he not been so preoccupied upon arrival it would have been the first thing he noticed.
The shiny chrome drill hovered in the middle of the room, it's tip shining like a polished diamond. Surrounding it were four long surgical tables. Each was covered by long white drop clothes. A film of the omnipresent dust both clung to the sheets themselves and pooled at the bases of the table along with clusters of dust bunnies that the computer powered windstorm had dislodged.
The large drill drew Wheatley's attention immediately. "What's this?" he asked, squeezing his narrow hips between two of the beds to stand underneath it. "Looks a bit messy."
"Oh that. Just some project that never got finished."
Wheatley moved toward the first table to his right, giving the sheet a shake which rippled along whatever was beneath it.
"You really don't want to look at that, mate." The AI from above him sounded upset. Maybe even a little angry.
Wheatley felt a cold chill go up his spine and as he let the fabric slide through his fingers, the action gumming his fingers with a gritty film of dirt and dust. His whole body felt as though it were plunged into a vat of ice water. Spider fingers of chill crept down the length of his body, even though the room had seemed temperate before. Gooseflesh prickled out on his thin arms. His mouth held a dryness that had nothing to do with the rush of wind nor the aftermath of his illness. Everything that told him he did not want to find out what was under the sheet warred with his survival instincts.
He had to know.
He pulled the sheet away.
His computer self gave a loud wail as the sheet fell free.
The skeleton that lay beneath was vile. Wheatley, despite what some of his childhood bullies would have said was not terrified by the thing so much as he was disgusted by it. The bones had been exposed to air, the calcium leeched out of them.
Cave had been experimenting with adrenal vapours around the same time as the multiverse project. Who knew what this universe had tried. He was looking at a structure that looked like a human skeleton but resembled a mass of piss-yellow human gelatine.
He stared at the remnants of what had once been a person, trying to ignore the way it jiggled. A loud wet slopping sound caught his attention. Something had dripped off an aperture in the skull onto the floor.
"I told you not to LOOK!" His robotic self sounded angry and a panel opened in the ceiling to suck up the gelatinous remains with a hosepipe. Something resembling a hand vacuum came down afterwards to mop up what remained on the floor.
"I told you, it was VILE!"
Despite his obvious disgust, Wheatley was beyond caring by this point. He moved on to the next table and whipped off the cloth to reveal a pile of dust that was suspiciously shaped like a human form. The hand vaccumn moved to remove that too but not before Wheatley had noticed a depression in the 'head' part of the dust.
The third table revealed a female form. If Wheatley had actually been scientifically inclined he might have discerned that this was at least part of the foul smell that had earlier permeated the laboratories. The skull and shoulders were picked away and the bones were bleach white. In fact, it seemed as though they were preserved by laminate, but Wheatley dared not attempt to touch.
"What happened here?"
"This project was unsuccessful. Please stop?"
Wheatley barely heard him. A white maggot crawled out of the flattened mass that were once her breasts. The soft film of fatty tissue and decaying pockets of muscle on the upper thighs still clung to the useless form, but her feet were what interested Wheatley. The legs appeared to be sort of mummified, ensconced in white boots with a spring-heel on the end. He recognized them to be a sort of futuristic version of his own Universe's latest attempt on a design that would cut down on test subject mortality rates. Inside the boots, the flesh was preserved to the last detail, while the maggots and worms devoured what lay above. Stripped bones protruded from the tops of the untouched flesh that ended where the boots did and Wheatley covered this form back up.
"I'm sorry."
He wasn't really sure he'd said it at all, but as he pulled the sheet over her head, he could see an abrasion in her skull. Just the barest crack in the bleached bone and the crack ran jagged upwards in an uneven line as though something had deflected its trajectory.
"Listen, mate. I think you'd best to be stopping there."
"Why?" Wheatley was hysterical. "Why! What happened to them?"
"Nothing! Experiment gone wrong! I mean honestly, why would you want to see this! You haven't even…I mean, this is disgusting! You vomited just on smell alone, like a weak human! I mean really mate. Um wait. Now, let's just back up a tick, I did NOT mean to say humans were weak. Why you all are quite fetching…well not all of you, maybe just the female ones and all…and personally speaking why would you want to…oh. Oh! Stop looking at that. Come On now mate, stop looking at that! I mean, DON'T look at that!"
Wheatley was approaching the final table that comprised the square. As he approached he could see that a portal gun was dangling off the arm of the corpse. It wasn't the usual portal gun either. He could tell by the extended length of the claws at the end.
"I'm warning you mate, I really am not ready for—"
While not a brave man by any means, Wheatley had always had a very strong sense of self preservation. In one fluid motion he peeled the cloth away, revealing the monstrosity beneath the sheet.
The rotting flesh clung to the bones, the last vestiges of the skin peeling slowly away like the browning edges of an apple that was too long exposed to oxygen. Wheatley stumbled back away from the grinning skull and the concave stomach and the preserved flesh stretched tight across rib bones. The hollows of the neck ran in rivulets deep and close to the bones. So close that when the head turned to him, neck veins stood out in some bizarre shade of indigo, a spill of caked red-to-black blood and something far more revolting leaking from the underside of its earlobe.
"Run." The thing rasped weakly.
Wheatley's eyes went wide.
"What?" He thought he might be dreaming.
"Run or you will be next."
Wheatley watched as the creature on the table opened its eyes. The action caused the skin-based lids to crumble into dust. The dust settled on the eyeballs, the parts of which Wheatley could not name now clearly and permanently visible. He winced in pain as the now lidless eyes struggled to blink debris from them and overcame his fear long enough to brush a tear from the mummy's cheek.
"Thanks m…m….m…aate. D…don't hav-e much tim…ti..time…bu…but…he…you…youre next. We…were a buncha bastards…"
The eyes rolled up into the back of the skull. He could see them through the decay. The pupils were dilated and Wheatley concentrated on the thin ring of blue through the twitching black.
"Wait! What!" He shook the corpse's shoulders, causing the skull to detach from the shoulders and clank across the floor to smack into the middle of the right-most table and the eyes to roll back, leaking a trail of reddened veins behind them.
Wheatley watched the head roll and moved forward. Not out of fear, but to grasp the portal gun from the dead body. It was a multiverse portal device.
A loud squeaking sound ground out above him.
"Your stupid shoes!" his own voice ground out around him.
"What? Wheatley peeled the gun off the dead man's arm and fit it across his own.
"It's just flimsy man-made products. I'll destroy them in a few minutes."
"What! Wheatley was tearing across the lab. The place seemed so much more expansive than it had a few moments ago. He burst through the doors and fell into the stairs, grazing his knees against the concrete. He barely felt it as he scrambled up the steps. His body knew it had to keep moving. He could hear tandem slams, one close with the other echoing immediately after in the distance. As he neared the top of the stairwell he could see the door moving apparently of its own accord, banging into his brown leather shoe, each rapid violent slam wearing at the stitching.
"Why do you want to keep me here! I would have stayed!" he pleaded.
"Because I want out."
The chassis was in his face. "How about a little neurotoxin. I think I still have vast reserves for YOU."
Wheatley ducked out of the way, edging along the walls of the chamber. He could see the Neruotoxin being released into the air. It was impossible to miss.
He clamped one hand over his nose. "Why." He begged, holding his breath and continuing his short edge around the perimeter of the room, taking deep breaths any time he could and holding them as the green gas seeped closer.
"I'm going to go home. You were supposed to be like the others. Like my predecessor. You would help me. Prep yourself to be transferred into my chassis. I would take over your body and go home. Bloody hell mate, I've been waiting an eternity!"
"What?" Wheatley gasped.
"Oh it doesn't hurt a bit. Just a little pinch in the head and you're done. I promise."
"NO!" Wheatley closed his eyes and started running in the general direction of the exit room. "I won't become you."
"It's really lovely being in charge of a whole facility." His own voice purred in his ear.
Wheatley kept running blindly until he smacked hard into a wall. With his eyes closed the impact was dizzying.
He remembered someone humming a snatch of Jerusalem and a needle coming towards his…
Wheatley tumbled out of an orange portal that manifested itself on the other side of the 14 hour dormant conversion gel-treated wall.
Suddenly there were arms all over him, holding him up, asking him a dozen questions at once.
"Ease off!" A man with a black scruffy beard and clutching a brown prescription pill bottle in one hand pushed his way through the throng, even though each action was timid. He put a kindly hand on Wheatley's shoulder.
"How are you mate? Okay?"
Numbly Wheatley nodded.
"Would you like to go to the infirmary before you give us a report?"
He nodded again but tried straightening and shook his head. "I have a great idea…idea…about the company. For the company…"
"You can tell Mr. Johnson all about it when you're stronger."
"An operating system to run the company…forever…"
"That is a good idea. I'll put it into Mr. Johnson and he'll look at it in the morrr…"
Wheatley heard no more, slumping into the bearded scientists' arms.
"I'll bring you up a companion cube."
That was the last thing that Wheatley remembered. Construction on GLaDOS began the next day.