Author's Note: apparently this is Portal Fanfiction Spring Cleaning Week for me. Meaning, I am cleaning out the "DOCUMENTS" folder of my hard drive, and going through it all, deciding what to keep and what to throw away. I think it's safe to say that this one's a keeper—you'll see why, it's actually pretty cute—meaning that I'm going to actually make an attempt to finish it.

An attempt.

This'll be the second writing project I've re-opened so far this week (the second project being Mechanophilia). I've got a pretty good head start on that one (I think there's roughly one more part left, two more if I feel up to plottin' it up) and this one's probably about 2/3 finished. We'll see how it goes.

Cheers, and as always, remember to take care of your cuddly mechanical friends! They have feelings too uvu

Digital Influenza

Part 1 - Friday

The weekends always went by relatively fast. On Friday evenings, they went grocery shopping—an activity that Chell normally did not look forward to, much less after a hard weeks' worth of work, but scheduling it for Friday evenings allowed her to go an entire week without worrying. She might have lived for two, but Wheatley didn't eat. Perhaps this was why he found the rather miserable task of grocery shopping (in his words) absolutely tremendous.

His favorite part was when, every second trip or so, Chell would steer the cart into the electronics section and allow Wheatley to choose a film he wanted to watch with her. This time, however, she had her own reason for visiting the aforementioned section—Chell was looking for some sort of chip or card that would provide her with extra room on her computer's hard drive and allow her to connect wirelessly to the panel-and-management-rail system she'd had installed in her house.

That was her landlord's doing, Fred—he lived upstairs, and the few times Chell had ever seen inside of his place she'd found herself wondering silently, how does he have room to move around in here? It appeared to be half workshop, half living space, and the scent of machine oil and grease wafted down into the basement where Chell lived effortlessly, not that she minded. These scents, after spending so much time around them, were almost homely to her.

Chell had the strangest suspicion (which was partially proven to be correct, given the amount of free time he had dedicated to helping her) that Fred had allowed her living space mainly because of Wheatley. Outside of Aperture, that was how it went—after spending what seemed like endless months with their 'relationship' on the rocks, in which nightmares were a constant and oftentimes she'd sent Wheatley sailing across the room during one of her more manic phases, she'd finally found a space where the landlord didn't seem to mind that she was mute, and the 'person' put in charge of communications was no more than a round, all-eye robot.

Slowly, the manic phases had slowed to become few-and-far between, and she no longer worried about waking up in the middle of the night to see him and the following racket of tumbling, shouted apologies, yells, and slams as Chell tried to get him as far away from her as possible.

~\\~\\~\\~\\~\\~\\~\\~

With time, she forgave him. With time, all wounds healed, although the scars remained—she would never forget what he did to her. He had, however, proved himself to be sorry, and what was more, he had also proved trustworthy and deserving of her forgiveness, if she should ever bring herself to fully forgive him. For now, they set a weekly schedule, which suited them both well—that was something they had in common. They both liked order, and hated chaos; the only problem was, Wheatley seemed to be a master of chaos.

And so, on that fateful Friday evening, Chell had unstrapped Wheatley from the children's seat she'd installed in the back of her car and heaved him bodily into the front of the shopping cart, where he could sit up high and see everything.

"Oh, thank you, great," he'd said without looking at her, so accustomed to the procedure he'd hardly even noticed the change in distance from the ground. At least that was another thing Fred's management rails had helped with—Wheatley was less afraid of disengaging from them (provided there was a comfy space to land) and, therefore, he also became braver around heights.

His blue eye bobbed, its color ever more vibrant under the evening sky, flashing to and fro as he glanced around. "'Ave you got the list? All set? All ready to gather all of the usual materials you need, then, for cooking, and the like?"

Chell nodded, grinning a little in spite of herself. She pushed lightly against the cart to face the entrance of the supermarket.

"Supermarket…" Wheatley read for the umpteenth time. He always did this—he had to read everything, just to prove that he could do it, and then, he'd have to comment on the 'human names', and give her a million-and-one reasons why such names made zero sense. She let out a sharp breath of amusement, barely able to conceal a small laugh. "Supermarket. I mean, fair enough I've said it once already before, or maybe a dozen times, but why does it have to be called a supermarket? Shouldn't it… I don't know… be called something a little bit more descriptive to its purpose, like a… a food… or grocery… depot? But then again, don't you think grocery is a little strange, too? I mean y'know, fair enough, I 'ave no idea what else you would call them—an assortment of goods stacked nicely away inside of plastic bags—but it's just not very practical, innit? Not very fun either, groceries. Not a nice word. At least supermarket sounds fun. Very amusing. Very… super."

Other shoppers pointed and stared at the core lodged into the bench where a child should normally have sat, but Chell paid no attention to them. She was too used to people gawking, if not at Wheatley, then at her—it was well-known that she was mute and, in their opinion, unfriendly to all except her small round robot companion and maybe Fred. Chell knew sign language, but it was rare that she should find another who could sign as well—Fred was learning (he said that he didn't mind giving it a try, as generally he enjoyed any activities that were 'hands-on') and Wheatley had downloaded some sort of software from their wireless network that allowed him to interpret her hand gestures.

"Right," said Wheatley confidently, trying to twist and lean himself forward, better to view the looming shelves, "What's the first thing on the list, then? Is it carrots? It was carrots last time, wasn't it? Big orange things, kind of flimsy, bit weird-looking, if I could be honest. No, it's not carrots… umm… no, no, don't tell me, don't tell me yet! I want to have a guess…"

While Wheatley was trying to predict what sort of item she'd first grab, Chell wheeled the cart around and into the vegetable section.

"Okay, I already guessed carrots…" mused Wheatley quietly so that none but she could hear as she wheeled on by the carrot display. Wheatley's eye followed the orange, stick-like vegetables with a strangely smug expression. "Not your turn today, mates. Gonna have to wait for another Friday for us to, um… buy you. To eat. Or… for her to eat. Maybe try that bloke, though… he looks like a carrot sort of guy, doesn't he?"

Chell only glanced away in the direction Wheatley was looking in for long enough to catch sight of a man making his way over to the carrots, before her eyes locked back onto a nicely-arranged mountain of what she'd really been craving.

"Oh!" gasped Wheatley as a dark skinned hand stretched out to pluck the reddest of the lot off of the top of the pyramid, "Apples! Yes, I know what those are!"

She grabbed three in total, smiling all the while, and then signed to him, Ay-double-pee-ell-ee. Apple.

Wheatley's eye aperture widened to its upmost extent as he looked at her, the color inside darkening to deep ocean blue. "Ooooh, well done, luv! Yes, apple. This apple's crunchy, you might say… although, um, although… I don't exactly know for sure… are they crunchy?"

Chell shrugged. Honestly, she'd never had an apple before, so she couldn't say for sure. I think so, she signed.

"Wonderful. Know what else is interesting about apples?" Wheatley asked her, his plates shifting to give him a rather cheeky, know-it-all expression as she deposited the apples into the cart. "Know what else? Oh, you're not gonna believe this, luv. You're gonna think old Wheatley's gone around the bend, gone absolutely crazy, but I haven't! Apples have cores."

The way he'd said this, whispered it to her while leaning close to her all the while, glancing around as if afraid that someone might be listening in, was ridiculous and Chell had to exercise all of her willpower not to burst out laughing right then and there.

"I know!" he continued on, not even paying attention as Chell pulled assorted cans of food off of the closest shelf and stacked them neatly in the cart. "I wouldn't have believed it either! Cores, in fruit, of all things. Well, we know for sure who the more primitive cores are, though. Definitely not yours truly. Definitely not me."

Chell shook her head, and continued down the long aisles, listening to his ever-present babble without really paying attention. Once in a while, something would stick out to her and she'd turn around, eyeing him curiously until he explained himself. One such occasion was when she'd reached for a package of toilet paper.

"What is that?" Wheatley asked, and by this point he'd worked himself up enough that he could no longer keep quiet. With each item Chell chose, Wheatley's voice rose in excitement as he rounded off all of the possible things every object could be used for, whether it be food, household, you name it. "What is that?" he asked again, his optic plate sliding out to better read the colorful plastic label spread across the package's front.

Chell moved closer to him and allowed him a moment to look, blowing a loose strand of hair from her eyes as she waited.

Wheatley froze, staring for so long Chell wondered if maybe the core was having some sort of technical issue. The thought worried her more than she would have liked to admit, and before she could stop herself, she signed to him, are you all right, Wheatley?

"What? Oh! Yes," he looped his face once and as he came back to rest, Chell saw his eye aperture constrict and dilate repeatedly, as if he were trying to focus. "Was just remembering the last time I had a look at the old toilet."

His face retracted back into his core, as if he were trying to hide, the blue of his optic deepening as he blushed. Chell chuckled—she had a certain feeling she knew exactly what he was on about.

He was referring to a night three weeks prior when she had awoken to use the bathroom. She'd been having nightmares again that night, although they were not of the usual sort—generally, her nightmares consisted of being forced through the testing chambers by one of the two omnipotent AI's Aperture had known during her time—GLaDOS or Wheatley. That night, however, the dream had been different. She'd been running along with Wheatley, escaping from GLaDOS when she'd fallen—the catwalk beneath her feet had suddenly collapsed, and Chell was falling. Wheatley was screaming, trying to help her, calling for her, Lady! Lady can you hear me! Lady please come back, I need help, I can't get out by myself!

Chell wondered, in retrospection, exactly how much of that had been a dream, for when she'd woken up she'd stumbled in a half-asleep haze into the bathroom to find the most unexpected sight she'd ever seen in her entire life—Wheatley, lodged inside of the toilet bowl.

At first, she hadn't believed it was real. It must have been a dream! But no, she found out it was really happening, and had stood there, clutching the doorframe for support as Wheatley recounted how exactly he'd ended up inside of the toilet bowl.

Basically, Wheatley had gotten bored while she'd been asleep. It was not that unprecedented, and not the first time he'd made a mess at such an hour in the morning—two A.M., judging by her clock—and every single time it was because he was bored and had gotten so confident at disengaging from the management rail that he'd misjudged either distance and/or the surface below him he intended to land on.

This time, he'd jumped because he'd 'heard the whoosh sound the toilet apparatus made before and wondered how the lady had gotten it to do that, and where that sound was actually coming from because it sounded semi-dangerous and anything dangerous inside of their home he had a right to know about. So he'd gone in there, and saw that little button, or lever, on the side of the thing and couldn't resist giving it a try, just once, for science.' And had misjudged the distance. His handle had clipped the side of the thing and sent him in it, screaming for dear bloody life, optic-first into the water and he'd been so convinced he was dead that he'd sat there for half an hour in disbelief.

Back in the store, Chell held the packet of toilet paper in the crook of her arm to sign to him, grinning, Well at least we found out you're water proof…

"Very funny," grumbled Wheatley, looking away from the toilet paper. "Just put it in the cart, willya? Let's get a move on."

She did as he asked with a straight face, but cracked up again when he requested she buy more hand sanitizer, complaining that he still felt a bit itchy from the experience, even three weeks later.

Nonsense, she signed. I cleaned the toilet myself!

"Yeah, well…" he rolled his eye again, pointedly not looking at her, "I do know what you do in that thing. I'm not, you know, completely naïve when it comes to, er… um, on second thought, let's just forget that ever happened, yeah? And make sure you don't…" he was whispering again, glancing around nervously, "tell anyone you found me jammed in the old loo, okay? Noooooot strictly something I want our mates to know about. You understand."

She nodded, and continued rolling on down the aisle.

~\\~\\~\\~\\~\\~\\~\\~

Wheatley cheered up a bit when they reached the electronic section. Chell quickly found the device she'd needed, and held it out for Wheatley to examine before placing it into the cart. Then, he'd wanted to go and have a look at the audio section, for whatever godforsaken reason Chell could not fathom.

She didn't mind, though, as she was ahead of schedule and had been so amused at the recollection of finding Wheatley in the toilet that she felt a bit more awake, so she wheeled the cart over to the wall covered with different kinds of speakers and LED displays meant for car radios and the like, and stopped, staring at him.

Well? she signed.

Wheatley's eye was wide. "I had an idea…" he said slowly, distractedly. "I want to try something."

Chell let out her breath slowly, a crease forming between her eyebrows. She knew from experience—Wheatley's ideas were never good ideas.

"Oh, don't give me that look!" he protested. "Just hear me out? Just this once. Annnnd—stealth pun, there. Hear me out. Get it? We're in the speakers section." His upper handle rose as he chuckled before resuming his expectant, bright-eyed stare.

She hated that expression… not because it was rude, or mean, or made her angry, but because of exactly the opposite reason. It gave her a swooping feeling in her stomach, like she'd missed a step going downstairs, pooling in her belly in a fluttery-but-gnawing sort of way and it was terrible because, as tenacious as she was, Wheatley was learning much too quickly that he could get anything he wanted out of her with that stare.

Chiding herself inwardly, she signed, Okay, fine. Just as long as it's not illegal.

Wheatley chuckled again. "'Course it's not, luv! Umm… or… at least… noooo, I don't think it is. I think we're fine." He glanced around again for good measure. "Okay. Ready? All set to hear my idea?"

She nodded.

"You see that plug, over there? The one attached to that fancy-looking bit of technology, with the speakers?"

She nodded again, wincing a little because she pretty well knew what was coming, by now, and something inside of her told her it was a really bad idea.

"Well, what are you waiting for?!" he cheered loudly, making her jump. "Let's give it a go—plug me in!"

She wheeled right beside the machine, rolling her eyes once she felt certain that Wheatley's full attention was on the plug in question. "Come on!" he urged her, excitement evident in every syllable of his voice. "Come on, come on!"

Be quiet, she signed, and then grabbed the plug.

Curiously, the first thing she noticed was that (unfortunately) this plug looked to be completely compatible with the one on Wheatley's back. It did nothing for the feeling of foreboding in her gut, but she prized the core partially out of the bench anyhow, reaching around to make the connection. It slid in snugly with a small, satisfying click.

What happened next caught her completely by surprise, although, judging by the fact that she was in the speaker section she should have known—Wheatley's response was to let out a triumphant cheer, "Waaa-heeeeyyy! Check me out, eh!" although the thing that really got her (and everyone else within about a hundred-meter radius) was that his voice was being broadcasted through the display speaker system, and the volume was on full blast! The second he noticed this, his eye completed another loop-the-loop and he cheered again, narrating his adventure in what was probably a world of code undistinguishable to any normal human (aside from, perhaps, Fred. Chell grinned in spite of herself at the thought of what he'd say if he could see this).

Frantically she tried to ignore the sheer volume of Wheatley's voice and the rather nasty memories that were resurfacing of the last time she'd heard his voice being broadcasted like that as she searched for the volume control. Wheatley prattled on in paramount amusement.

"Would you look at this?" he asked the electronic section at large. "Little old me, my voice, broadcasted over all of these! All of them, all at once. Brilliant. Hahahaha!" he laughed as he caught sight of Chell, who was trying to turn as many dials as she could to 'zero', "Not gonna work, luv. You see, I can override that. I can override everything! I'm in charge—listen to this! Listen to what I can do!"

Chell plastered her hands to her face in embarrassment as she noticed the crowd of onlookers beginning to grow around her cart (still containing the little, overly-excited robot).

"Testing, testing…" Chell looked around so fast she cricked her neck. Wheatley's voice—well, it wasn't his voice at all! What did you DO? she signed to him violently. Did you break yourself? Did you—

"No, no it's all fine!" the normal west-country drawl had vanished to be replaced with a slower, deeper sound that resonated against her chest, full of bass. "And, uhh… should clarify. Should clarify—not testing as in you-know-what. Not real science. Just… just having a bit of fun with these speakers, here. All right… let's see what this thing can do…"

Wheatley's optic constricted as he focused, and his voice changed from the deep, masculine tones she had just heard to a girly, high-pitched tone. Several of the people listening in were laughing, leaning on their shopping carts for support as Wheatley's high-pitched helium voice suddenly dissolved into a rather hoarse-sounding coughing fit.

Deciding they'd both had quite enough, Chell pulled the plug unceremoniously from his back, resulting in the ear-popping sound of feedback from the speaker system. Wheatley groaned in disappointment. "Wh… what was that for?" he coughed again. "Why did you unplug me? Why did you…" cough, cough, "Why…" cough, "I don't underst—"

Later, she signed to him, catching sight of the store manager, trying to make his way toward them through the crowd of people. Chell steered the cart out of the electronics center, gazing down at Wheatley with worry all the while. He was still coughing.