"Prometheus was punished by the gods for giving the gift of knowledge to man. He was cast into the bowels of the Earth and pecked by birds." -Oracle Turret
Wheatley adjusted the monitors in front of him, showing a live feed of the test chamber below him. The subject hadn't moved for a few minutes. She looked younger than most of the ones they'd given him before; she couldn't have been more than twenty. He could see her frowning even with the terrible quality of the test feed. He looked back at the scientists standing behind him, taking notes on their clip boards. On what he had no idea. He knew what he was supposed to do, but it was getting harder and harder to do it the longer she just stood there. The subject looked around and her eyes froze hopefully on the frosted glass of the observation chamber. Her eyes trailed over to the camera mounted on the wall, looking directly into the monitor.
"Mngh..." Wheatley gave up and leaned forward to press the comm button on the desk in front of him. "Hello there, and, um...welcome to the test! Sorry I was late, but you seem to have gotten on just fine without me. That being said, I can't help but notice you seem to be slightly stuck there, and I wanted to let you know, you've done excellent so far, absolutely superb. So don't feel bad, but if you are stuck, why don't you just, um, just raise your hand."
The girl below him slowly raised her hand in the air, looking around herself.
"Thought so. See, just like in school. Well, that's fine. Don't worry, Professor Wheatley is in. Alright. See that button over there? That little red one? If you press it, it drops something for you. That's all I'm going to say. That's it. It drops something reeeally useful. No more help. Starting...now. Do be careful though. Don't trip on that ledge there. Safety first. Really though, red button, extremely useful that. Just give it a push." Wheatley could feel the eyes of the two scientists behind him boring into the back of his skull. He sighed and spun his chair around to face them. He cringed at their grimaces.
"You can't interfere like that. It will ruin the credibility of the test results," one of the scientists said. Wheatley tried to see if they were wearing name badges or any type of identification. Neither of them were, and he had never even seen either of them before. He mentally labelled them the tall one and the short one.
"We're testing usability of the device and the accessibility of the chambers. We're not testing how long someone can stand in a cold room looking frightened. That's a crap experiment, if there ever was one. And there has been, now that I think about it. Many, in fact. Just look in a science book, endless amounts of crap experiments where people felt very foolish about themselves afterward. Anyway, we have plenty of control groups of people working on the same chambers without any sort of positive reinforcement. This is just another element to the experiment. A little extra science bang for your proverbial buck." He turned back to the screens and started typing furiously, bringing up screens and closing them again. He let his fingers go on their own and tried to relax after the brief moment of confrontation. He knew he had to get a thicker skin if he was going to make it anywhere in his field, but confrontation was painful and absolutely exhausting. One of the scientists, the short one leaned over to his coworker.
"What is he doing there? I can't tell when the screen's moving that fast. You know we'll get in trouble if the data is affected." The tall scientist raised his eyebrows. "He'll get in trouble, we wont." He cast a sideways glance at the other scientist. "That could be good, right?" The short scientist smirked.
"Whatever. They're your tests."
Wheatley turned. He straightened up a little and adjusted his tie, taken aback at what sounded remarkably similar to respect. "Yes, well, thank you." He adjusted the monitor and pressed the comm button, smiling, "Well, let's keep going then, love".