"Let me tell it again."

"You can't change the ending."

"Not this time, anyway."

[December 2002]

Coughing. There's the sound of coughing everywhere, mingled with the noise of the vent fans kicking in. Doug Rattmann groans. He's never liked this project, and it's not for the reasons everyone keeps throwing around. No, he doesn't like the feeling that something will be able to forever track him, and yes, the very concept makes him squirm a bit more than it necessarily should. His real problem, though, is that the damned thing keeps trying to kill them all.

Not that he can blame it, really. It's Aperture's worst kept secret -well, second worst kept after the astronaut affair in the 60s- that its essence, the core of its core, is Caroline and that obtaining her cooperation took less in the way of sweet words and flowers, and more in the way of big burly men in jumpsuits. The process was crude and what had transferred was neither her warmth nor her kindness, but her untethered fury. At least, that's what Wheat says.

Wheat, rather, James Wheatley, his friend and office mate, sits hunched over the keyboard, wrist against his mouth, waiting for the cough to subside. Tall and thin, it makes the hacking that much more visually striking. "So," he manages, accent softening the words' meaning, "that makes how many times she's tried to kill the whole lot of us?"

Doug holds up three fingers, prevented from any sort of verbal answer by his own renewed coughing fit.

"Guess third time isn't always the charm."

Doug shrugs. "For her, at least."

"It, mate. It."

He shakes his head. "Something doesn't feel right about this. Who programs a machine to kill on activation?"

Wheat's quiet for a second, thinking. "Who designed the turrets? Because I think they count, and whoever invented them should, therefore, be your answer."

"Mad men. The same kind building this thing."

"There's no need to go projectin'," a third voice chimes in. Richard, their unfortunate byproduct of office space reduction, will never be described as intelligent, and seldom, if ever, as tactful. Boorish by nature, his assimilation into their tiny clump of cubicles has gone anything but well; from his constant stream of self-aggrandizing babble to his incessant assertions of superior masculinity, Rick, the party associate, has thus far proven himself to be the oft-rumored "office mate from hell."

He also insists upon attempting to ingratiate himself with every female staff member in the facility.

"Multisyllabic words, I'm impressed," Wheat drawls. "I'd've thought that beyond your neanderthal-like processing capabilities."

"Says the lily-livered egghead who chickened outta a few simple tests."

"I did not chicken out. I was given an exemption."

"Only sissies need exemptions," Rick asserts, puffing out his chest. "I ain't no sissy."

"You-"

"Wheat," Doug interjects, knowing virtually anything about to come from his friend's mouth will lack the intended vitriol. "Not worth it."

"What do you…"

"Wheat, unarmed in a battle of wits." For a behavioral scientist, his friend is impressively adept at missing social cues, even the seemingly obvious. It has the unintended effect of creating an air of idiocy around the other man, undermining otherwise good insights.

"Yeah, unarmed against these babies," Rick growls, flexing his arms.

Doug chokes on a laugh; Wheat buries his head in his hands as the computer in front of him lets out a puff of dust and promptly shuts down. "You broke it. It couldn't listen to your drivel anymore. It just … It died! You bloody broke it."

"The only thing I break, egghead, is lady hearts."

"Egghead … egghead…" Wheat mumbles, gathering the now-defunct machine in his arms. "Bloody idiot. Can't even come up with something original." Straightening, he turns his attention to Doug. "I'm, er, going to get this fixed. Or replaced. I'm not sure which yet."

"Get what fixed?" Evy. Of course, it would be her turn for an entrance.

"Well, hello, gorgeous," Rick purrs.

"Wheat's computer's shot again," Doug says. "Says your boyfriend broke it."

"I said-!"

"Oh, come on," she says, facing Wheat. "I may not have high standards, but even they're higher than him."

Evy Anders, the engineer they'd wanted in-office, is smart, warm, and pretty in a nondescript sort of way. Famous for being a third-generation Aperture employee - and for having had both her grandfather and parents killed in freak science-related on the job accidents when she was young- she's the least amused by the current state of things, constantly sending out CVs and constantly being rejected due to her current place of employment.

"What even happened to it?" She asks, pointing to the computer in Wheat's arms. "Did it 'blue screen of death' on you?"

"I wish it'd had given me the courtesy. Puff'a dust and it was gone."

She shakes her head. "Let me take a look."

Handing her the defunct machine, Wheat goes to lean against his desk, near the spot Evy claims for herself.

"What happened down there, Evy?" Doug asks.

She shrugs, pulling a set of jeweler's screw drivers from her lab coat pocket. "Exactly what happens everytime the system's powered up. Before anyone can react, the whole place fogs up with neurotoxin and it's a scramble for the killswitch. What I want to know is why no one's disconnected it from the neurotoxin control circuits."

"That's it?" Wheat asks. "This whole situation and that's all you're wondering about? I'm shocked."

"Hey!" She grins up at him. "In response to the first point, it's not the only thing. As to the second, remember that I'm fixing this," she adds. "Anyway, it came closer to getting the neurotoxin to capacity than it has before. Made getting to the kill circuit considerably harder."

There's a moment of silence as the words sink in. The corridors of Aperture have always seemed to breed a sense of doom and foreboding, but to know that death lurked so near is a different matter. The computer in Evy's lap clicks, then whirs; the battery indicator LED flickers to life as she screws a compartment door back on.

Rick breaks the silence. "Sounds like you need a big, strong man down there, angel."

Doug turns around, staring at the party associate and finding himself at a loss for words. He tries to keep an open mind, tries to remember that he's in no place to judge and that a scientist ranks the same with an engineer ranks the same with a support staff member. Most days, the issue fails to rear its head; Aperture may not be the best of companies, but the people working under its logo are overwhelmingly dedicated, smart, and competent. In the presence of Rick, however, this all falls away, leaving him to wonder why there's not a mandatory minimum IQ for employment.

"Do you actually think about what comes out of your mouth? Or is it just unfiltered stream-of-consciousness?" Wheat asks. "Because if there's a thought process, I think you're really someone to be studied."

"Dissected, even," mutters Evy.

"You got that right, slim. I am something else."

Standing, she hands Wheat the computer, then smoothes down an imagined wrinkle in her shirt. Her mannerisms always seem off around Wheat, a fact that never fails to make Doug chuckle or set his workmate on the defensive, tumbling over his Bristolian burr.

"There's a meeting later," Evy starts. "About what's next in trying to prevent another attempt."

"Kill the project," Doug offers. "Something's not right about it."

"Can't. It's Aperture's sole source of funding," Wheat says. "It's what's paying our salaries."

"How do you know that?" Asks the engineer. "Has something gone public?"

Wheat grins. "People ought to keep their data better encrypted."

"What do you - Oh."

Doug laughs, distracted by Wheat's unacknowledged extracurriculars. How a behavioral scientist had developed a knowledge, let alone an understanding, of Aperture's garbled code is a mystery, but his friend's aptitude is undeniable. It's saved them a number of time now, extending deadlines, shortening waits between paychecks, and on one occasion, opening a door into the maintenance area. "When's the meeting, Evy?"

"Fifteen minutes in the south auditorium. Full team."

"So, half-an-hour in some dinky conference room with the full team," clarifies Wheat.

She nods. "I'll see you both there. In the meantime," she sighs, "I've got two dozen e-mails to respond to about decorations for tomorrow's festivities. Two. Dozen."

Wheat grimaces in sympathy. Doug wishes her luck. She's out the door, halfway down the corridor when Wheat half-hangs himself out the door. "Ev!" She turns. "Thanks."

Evy waves and keeps walking.

An hour-and-a-half later, in the second-to-smallest conference room in the facility, eighty scientists and engineers in white coats and bright shirts pack themselves against peeling yellow walls. At the front, an aging television hooked up to a VCR plays CC-TV footage of the activation. Contrasted with their current surroundings, the device's chamber strikes the assembled group as foreign, almost alien i its newness. Doug's stomach lurches as the green clouds flood the screen, obscuring all but the hulking machine. The blinking white light to the side of the yellow iris is a new addition, hurriedly half-explained to be a core by the project development head whose name Doug and Wheat can never remember. He doesn't see fit to explain, however, what the core does.

"Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! An ecstasy of fumbling," whispers Wheat, earning him a gentle elbow to the ribs from Evy.

"Shall I say I have gone at dusk through narrow streets and watched the smoke that rises through the pipes?" Doug mutters in response.

"It's like living with Wilfred and Thomas," Evy muses, feigning annoyance. "Except they wouldn't chatter so much."

"Being dead might help with that, luv," Wheat suggests."Can't really do a lot of chatting if you're dead."

The video fades to static as the lights come on. Reactions vary from the bored to the blanched to the beleaguered. A recording of old Cave Johnson admonishes them; it's always an admonishment, never praise. If it weren't followed by Caroline's chirpy "This has been a pre-recorded message," the near-constant barrage would have quickly demoralized any new addition to the team.

Not that such an event had occurred in the past five years.

"As you can clearly see," the project head starts, "the addition of the core delayed the deployment of neurotoxin by one-twenty-fourth of a picosecond. Ladies and gentlemen, a breakthrough has been made."

"When did one-twenty-fourth of a picosecond become a breakthrough?" Evy asks.

"When it became the first successful stall measure, Ms … what is your name, again?"

"Honestly, now," Wheat mutters. "Five years. You think he'd have the bloody courtesy to learn names," Wheat mutters. "Death!" He calls out. "She's Ms. Death! Her scythe's just at the cleaners."

"Ahh, Dr. Wheatley," the other man half-purrs. "I see you've decided to participate today. Do you have anything substantive to contribute?"

Shoving his glasses up the bridge of his nose, Wheat fidgets for an instant before finding the words. "Actually, I do. This … these cores, they aren't a solution; they're a patch. Sort of like band aids. They give us time, but don't address the crux of the issue. The human …" he pauses, unsure of how to refer to the woman whose horror story eventually passes the lips of every Aperture employee.

"Dr. Wheatley?"

"The human model on whose personality and brain structure the AI was based possessed some unknown or undocumented condition or trait that's causing this. There had to have been an abnormality … or .. or -"

"Dr. Wheatley," the head sighs," your presence on this project remains a mystery. Your so-called insights are, once again incorrect."

"How do you know?" Doug calls from the floor. "No one else can explain her behavior."

"Dr. Rattmann, our other delinquent loon. I suggest you separate your reality from that of everyone else. The GLaDOS project is an artificial intelligence development. We're not babysitting an infant."

"Sir," someone else ventures, "how are we going to create these cores? The main core was ported from a volunteer and the secondary core from a child's game."

"Ah, finally, a real contribution! Men and women of Aperture, we have always sought and will always seek challenges The task before us is this : to create and implement a more efficient human-core port system."

"Where are we going to get the models?" Evy asks, fingers circling Doug's wrist, silently pleading with him to keep quiet as he jittery knee bangs the same message against Wheat's. "Are we planning to return to recruiting from the outside?"

"A fair question. Cores will be created from employees who volunteer for a shot at immortality."

"Volunteer or volunteer?" Wheat presses. Panicked, Evy treads lightly on his foot, trying to make him shut his mouth.

"I have no idea what you're talking about Dr. Wheatley."

Doug's blood runs cold.

Two days and seventy emails in Evy's inbox later, the Aperture Science Non-Denominational Holiday Event lights up a conference room on the upper floor of the facility. Tinny holiday cheer warbles from the PA system, jerry-rigged into a giant music box by a few engineers. Cups of fruit punch, spiked well in advance, decorate plastic-cloth-covered tables in lieu of any kind of flower. The silver science tree, an Aperture tradition since 1956, stands against a dark corner, its near-barren branches festooned with molecular models of old Aperture products. Small children dart around as parents make small talk and feign nonchalance on the subject of the company's mass production of deadly neurotoxin.

A man, middle-aged and balding, holds the hand of a small girl; no more than eight, with her hair swept high into a ponytail, she stands silent, eyes sweeping back and forth across the room. The adults, her father's coworkers, are of little interest to her. Their pretty clothes can't mask the boredom of science that she's sure runs through their words, just as it does her dad's. Shaking her hand free, she wanders off, curious to see if anything of interest ever happens under these meters of cement.

Wandering among the forest of hips and legs, she sees Daddy's friend Doug at a table with the lady with the toys on her desk and a tall man with glasses who she doesn't know. They're laughing and she can't help but wonder if it's at some stupid science joke. Daddy's friends almost always think they're funny, but only Doug ever is. Well, sometimes. It depends a lot on whether or not he's talking at all.

She scrambles up to a seat at their table before he can spy her, hoping to catch the joke. Even if it is a lame science one, it has to be better than listening to the plain old science talk of every other adult in the room.

Doug's eyes sweep over her as soon as he notices the noise of the chair. They get along well; they share a mutual distrust of doctors and needles, a fondness for cake and the big companion cubes that the vents drop forth, and the belief that her father is a little crazy. "Chell," he starts," aren't you supposed to be with your dad?"

She nods, settling in her chair.

"But you decided to go exploring."

She nods again, a smile forming on her lips. Doug is one of the few adults who get it. Mommy used to, but she's never home, and Dad's only interested when science is involved. Doug, though, he understands everything, she thinks

He sighs, returning the smile. He'd met Henry's daughter he first time she'd gone exploring, having escaped from the daycare. He couldn't see the point in dragging the poor girl back to a place she so obviously wanted no part of; it seemed cruel to him. Instead, he'd brought her back to her father's office, and waited with her until he came back. She'd sat in Evy's desk chair, happily spinning around and, eventually, talking. She'd told him about her school, her family, and her love of puzzles. He remembers telling her to be careful who she said that to in here, remembers the look of absolute confusion it had earned him. He tells himself that she'll learn in time, there's no need to spoil her innocence. Still, her father is the exact kind who have her tested, just to follow Aperture's recommendations. "I guess I should introduce you, huh? That's Wheat," he says, pointing to the taller man across the table. " And that's Evy. They work with your dad and me."

"You're scientists too?" Chell asks.

"I am," Wheat volunteers. "I study people."

"I'm an an engineer. I build gadgets and doohickeys," adds Evy.

"You're working with the Galdys lady too?"

"You mean GLaDOS?" Doug asks, concern beginning to creep into his voice. "What do you know about it?" Under the table, Wheat nudges his leg, reminding him to keep calm.

Chell shakes her head."He keeps saying how she's going to fix everything. I don't think I'm really supposed to hear it," she admits, cheeks flushing. "He usually says it to Mommy. I think it's supposed to be grown-up talk. Sometimes, they yell about her. Who is she anyway?"

"Er," Wheat starts, unsure of how to even begin to answer the question. The simplest answer feels like a lie, but there's no point in scaring a child with the story of how Caroline became a computer and how her body now lies, perfectly preserved, in a stasis pod in the bottom of the facility. He suspects anything enough to scare an adult would scar a child. "GLaDOS is a computer. A very advanced computer, designed to behave like a person."

"It's supposed to help run things," Evy adds, racking her brain for simple concrete details. So many of the project's meetings and plans are speculative, making the task of providing a direct answer to a direct question difficult. "It's kind of like we're building a way to talk to the facility."

"Why would you want to do that?"

"To make life easier. For all of us," a fifth voice answers. Four pairs of eyes turn to Henry, now standing behind the little girl's chair. "Chell, didn't I tell you not to wander off?"

She nods, eyes downcast, but remorseless. It's practiced penitence, learned from one too many adventures obstructed by rules.

"Henry, mate, leave'er be. She's not off in the facility; people aren't working," says Wheat, chin in hand. "She's just here, having a chat."

"It's nice of you to say, James, but we all know her presence here is distracting."

Chell's face crumples.

"She's not a distraction," Doug says, by way of defense. "She's a new face. Something we could all use around here."

"And, in any case," Evy adds, "tomorrow's Christmas Eve, Henry! There's more to life than work."

"Not now there isn't! I'm surprised any of you can think about anything else." There's a passion to his voice, one Doug's never heard before, not even when Henry brings his wife, or Chell, or his meager list of hobbies outside of work up in conversation. Chell's noticed it too; Doug shoots her a quiet smile to try to cheer her up as Wheat and Evy try to distract her father.

He realizes he's only half been paying attention when Henry scrambles off. Evy's visibly unhappy, half-glaring at Wheat.

"Thanks," she groans. "I really wanted to listen to him wax poetic on disc operating systems. It's not like I wanted to get home at something near a reasonable hour."

"Didn't pick up on my sarcasm," Wheat mutters, pulling his glasses off his face to clean them."How was I supposed to know he'd go and get the bleedin' specs for the project?"

Chell taps Doug's arm. "I thought they liked science?"

"They like other things too," he tells her. "They don't want to talk about science all the time. It gets boring."

"What else do they talk about?" She asks, watching the two other adults banter.

"Life outside of work. Well, if any of us really had one."

"Why don't you?"

It's a good question, Doug admits, one he's not sure he can answer. He knows that, for Evy, at least, Aperture's always been a part of her life, work or not. He's seen pictures of her as a little girl on the shores of Lake Michigan at the Annual Aperture Family Picnic, for crying out loud. And Wheat, Wheat's entire family is a mystery back in some English shore town. He never talks about them, doesn't keep pictures of them, doesn't mention birthdays and spends holidays with other people.

By the time he begins to form words to answer Chell, her father reappears, arms loaded with binders. Evy covers her mouth in what might best be described as horror, and mutters something about chainsaws.

"So," Henry says, winded as he takes a seat. "Where should we begin?"

Wheat isn't expecting much as he drags himself through Aperture's main foyer the day after Christmas. Still half-asleep despite the bitter Michigan cold, he can think of nothing he wants less than a day of meetings and mandates. He's one of the last in, if the parking situation's to be believed, a suspicion confirmed when he walks into his office to find Doug furiously typing at his computer while Rick languishes in his chair, obviously nursing a hangover. There's a package on his desk, festively topped with an ornate bow.

"Santa stopped by," Doug cracks, not looking up from his screen.

"And she was wearin' some skirt," Rick groans from his seat. "The legs on that woman…"

Wheat ignores the comment, long fingers working at the bow on the package. Evy insists on a great deal of ceremony about everything, presents left on desks included; it's the only reason he can think of for topping any package with a ribbon tied this ornately. Setting the material aside, he slides a thumb under the wrapping paper, breaking the seal of the tape. He's not a fan of messes, or of rushing things; if you're going to do something, you might as well take time and do it properly.

Which seems to have been Evy's thought process in picking his gift. The tea ball, thermos, and canister of what smells to be very good Earl Grey appear to be a combination Christmas present-slash-commentary on the current state of his tea making habits, habits that she berates for having "fallen to the lowly standards of Twinings and PG Tips bags." He chuckles, wondering when the midwestern American replaced him as the tea snob. Brushing a finger over the red ink heart she's drawn on the tail of the y in her name, he sits down and boots up his computer.

It's only then that he notices the orange lava lamp tucked neatly into the corner of Doug's desk.

"Uh, mate -"

"Evy," his friend responds. "She thought the place could use some color. Apparently," he says, turning from the screen, "she's in the 'if it looks better, work won't suck' camp."

"At least she's not meddling in your love life."

"What love life?"

"Y'know, drinks, dating, having it off…"

"Makin' love," Rick grumbles from his chair, failing to catch the Brit's meaning.

"I am, in fact, aware of what it entails, thank you," Doug mutters, engrossed once more with the internal bulletin board system.

"I just ain't sure, egghead," he starts again. "Mean, don't ever see you with a beautiful woman. Hell, don't see you with any woman."

"What, I don't count anymore?" Evy asks, having entered halfway through the party associate's proclamation.

Wheat looks up at her. "You know, it's right eerie when you just pop out of nowhere."

"But, really, shouldn't you be used to it by now?"

"Hot stuff," Rick starts, drawing Evy's attention back. "You ever gone home with that guy?"

"Doug or Wheat?"

"Douggie."

"Oh, sure," she smiles. "Bunch of times. Gone home with Wheat, too."

Doug smiles as he catches Rick's reflection in the screen.

"See," she starts, "my car's awful. It breaks all the time. So, those fine gentlemen have given me more rides home than I can count. They're the only people in this whole facility who I'd go home with; can't find better rides."

"So, you're looking for heroic, huh? Well," Rick begins.

"Actually, I believe she's looking for someone with a more reliable car," Wheat corrects, annoyed that Rick's opened his mouth after all.

Rick ignores him, plowing on. "I've got some real heroics, sweet cheeks. Savin' damsels, rescuin' kittens, explorin' like that movie fella. Why don't you call on ole Rick the next time you need a little pick me up."

"In a pickup," Doug mutters.

Evy's gaze bounces among her coworkers. "I had a reason for coming in here, but at this point, I'll just go. I'm not sure what damage has already been done to my intelligence from that speech, but I'm not dedicated enough to science to find out by further exposing myself."

"At least you're not trapped in here with the moron," Wheat offers.

"She's' got her own to deal with," Doug says, turning away from the screen once again. "Every office has an idiot."

"I won that title today," she says, holding up a bandaged finger. "I had a run in with the soldering gun."

"The devil were you soldering?" Wheat asks. "You lot can't possibly have gotten far enough to be building a prototype."

Evy shakes her head. "Modifications to the optic on the original core. We're jury-rigging it into something more functional. It's sort of exciting, really. I like the challenge of it all."

"The real challenge, Ev, is going to be when they lose control of her, and we're left to fight," says Doug, voice grim. "If we even get the chance."

Silence hangs, awkward and filled with more tension than anyone cares to admit. Evy locks her gaze on Wheat's shoes while Doug fidgets at his keyboard.

"You really do think this job'll do us in, don't you?" Wheat asks, tone sincere.

"I'm sure of it."

Back in her own office, Evy sits, tired. Rubbing at her eyes, she wonders how at only eleven in the morning, she's already drained. There are any number of factors, not limited to the cold facts of biochemistry and sleep schedules. Though Aperture's science may not be the most valid, it's every bit as stressful as the real McCoy; she thinks it might even be worse, given the fragile financial state of the company. She tries not to focus on it as she logs on, filling out on a computerized timesheet almost on autopilot.

There are days she wonders how she ended up in this job. She knows the facts, certainly; Aperture paid for her education, they expected something back in return. It hadn't seemed so bad when she'd first accepted the money. Back then, she still believed in the talk of her parents' friends, and how it had filled her with wonder: Imagine inventing whatever you wanted; complete freedom to explore your curiosity.

She still has to choke back a bitter laugh.

Her curiosity hasn't been entirely beaten out of her, though it takes a vastly different form from the one that drove her so passionately through her college years, and then again through grad school. She could care less about science's role in manipulating natural laws; she'd much rather talk about people, about what's under their skins and the secrets they've shoved in the back of their closets. She readily admits it's perverse, but what do you expect to emerge from so much time spent in a workplace filled to the brimming with security cameras?

The ding of a dialogue box snaps her from her thoughts, alerting her to a problem. She closes out on instinct, assuming a mistyped password or identification number; when it fails a second time, she pauses to actually read the message, then picks up her phone, knowing full well that this means trouble.

When Wheat storms in, glasses too far down his nose to be of any use, Evy realizes he hadn't caught wind of the news and won't be able to give her any new information.

"I can't believe this. I can't bloody fucking believe this," he sputters. "Who … what … do they really think … No wages. We have no wages coming for the month of December, it's not going to take effect retroactively, and its all for some bloody machine that we can't make work! It's not like I've got gobs of cash just lying around so that when this idiotic company decided not to pay the lot of us I could just accept it. I didn't set aside enough to pay rent, buy groceries, and still afford working electricity. Sorry if that's my fault; sorry I didn't have the forethought, Aperture. I'll be sure to do that next time."

Evy shakes her head. "They pay's below industry average as it is; Black Mesa's people make at least three times what we do. How do they think we're going to make basic cost of living payments?"

"They know we can't. I'm half-inclined to think it's some trick to shove us into the employee dormitories," he says, pushing his glasses back up his nose. "They'd be able to do away with those inflation-adjustments, while keeping the whole staff. Can't leave if you can't afford a place to live, now, can you?"

"Don't even joke! Can you imagine living here? You might as well resign and submit yourself as a full-time testing candidate." Just then, the speakers blare to life, requesting a track maintenance associate to chamber nineteen, track A-121. They both grimace: Aperture fatalities are seldom painless.

"No, no, I can't," Wheat says quietly. "Living here … there'd be a day where you just didn't wake up. And you still wouldn't get any peace."

"That'd be if you were lucky."

"They're not about to slaughter the proles."

"Accidents happen, Wheat."

He grimaces at her, at a loss for what to say, what to do. She's the first to announce that she has only fleeting impressions of the family she's lost, but there's still something garish about ignoring that she has lost family here. Evy's not the only one, he's sure; just the only one he knows of.

It's not something he can relate to, not even the vaguest details. His ties are long severed. He hasn't seen his brother in fifteen years, his mother in almost seventeen. He doesn't even think of his father anymore. He made his choice; he lives with it. And that's what it was: a choice. Evy's circumstances are a casualty of chance and negligence; she's had no say.

"It won't come to that," he asserts, trying to head off his thoughts.

"I'd move back in with my grandmother before I moved here."

"I knew you missed the forty minute commute!"

She laughs. "My mornings feel so empty with all the extra time I have."

"No more shaving a few minutes off the work day."

"No more hope of being fired."

"Reckon you're trapped with us for a bit longer, love."

"Suppose I am."

The days drift by, blurred by routines and alarm bells and rants that won't follow their creator to the afterlife. Doug watches it pass, an unending stream of test subjects, code, and grey antiseptic halls. He counts seven fatalities on the tracks, four truly perverse comments from Rick, and eleven coding errors. The machine hangs silent, dead eyes staring out across a room of ants, all crawling around in coats of white. The snow, already five feet thick, blocks out the pathetic beams of sun that once pooled into Aperture, forcing the entire facility into a permanent gloom.

The heat sputters off the day before New Year's Eve, leaving people scrambling for workspace in abandoned testing tracks, the last heated areas that might possibly be called safe. Testing is suspended as the observation chambers are deemed too cold for proper notes to be taken on test subject performance; hot plates become handwarmers and bunsen burners tiny impromptu campfires. Still, the damage is done, and half the facility's staff ends up sick for the holiday.

Doug tries to be mad, he really does. It's unsafe, and the cold keeps any real work from being done; he's had to actually interact with Rick for lack of adequate finger mobility to work from his laptop. If it hadn't been for the testing tracks, they would have ended up dead from hypothermia. He's not sure Aperture has the funds to even repair the system, and it's not as if the company keeps an HVAC team on staff.

Despite that, he can only manage moderate disgust.

It helps, he admits, that he's now happily situated in a bar with a working heating system, two tipsy friends, and hot food. It's late, almost midnight, and they're deep in the trenches of Aperture gossip.

"I've heard he's got a bondage … thing," Evy confides, conspiratorially staring over her daiquiri. "And he likes the bottom," she adds in a half-giggled whisper.

Wheat nearly loses the sip of beer he's just taken, struggling to swallow. "Thank you, Evelyn, for that lovely thought."

"It's her revenge for the tech specs lecture you subjected her to last week," Doug offers .

"What? How was I supposed to know Henry was going to do that?"

"Because his devotion to GLaDOS borders on the fetishistic."

Evy screws up her face. "How would you even … you can't fuck a computer!"

Unfortunately, it comes out louder than she'd meant, drawing the attention of the bar's remaining patrons to the small table. Evy giggles, half-ducking behind Doug.

He looks down at her, amused. "You're drunk."

She just nods.

"Yknow, I think we're thinking small. I mean, sure, you can't have any sort of proper sex, but she has got wires and…" Wheat trails off, waggling his eyebrows.

In retrospect, Doug will pinpoint this comment as the one that nearly ends Evy in his lap in a vain attempt to hide the crimson color her cheeks have flushed; though she is lovely and sweet, there are few places Doug wants her less than in his personal space. His manic pantomime across the small table seems to do the trick, as Wheat pulls Evy back.

"Thank you," Doug mouths. Wheat shrugs as Evy instead settles herself against him, her prior embarrassment now mostly overcome.

"Really," Wheat starts, "I think we've stumbled upon the only thing Aperture hasn't programmed it to do."

"You think Aperture should turn her into a murderous AI with a sex drive?"

"It's not like you can try to kill someone if you're havin' a shag."

"Where there's processing power, there's the possibility of death."

"You," Wheat says, pointing at his friend, "just need a bit more fun."

"And a bit less neurotoxin."

"I dunno…" Wheat trails off. "Think fun might rank higher."

Evy leans across the table, blowing out the candle in the tiny glass votive at its center, then settles back, pleased.

"Ev," Doug starts. "That's not a birthday candle. You can't wish on it."

"I already made the wish. And it's New Year's Eve. And what do you know? You're a programmer, not the … the … grand poobah of wishes."

That sets them all off on a fit of laughter, doubled over the table. By the time Wheat has enough control to check his watch, it's already 12:01.

"Happy New Year, you lot!"

Evy throws her arms around his neck as he clinks glasses with Doug.

"Happy New Year to you, too."