From the Rails
Humans, Wheatley decides, are complicated.
Just four hours ago, his was the easiest directive in the facility. They may make fun of him, yes, but even he cannot fail at thinking. He believes he is pretty good at it, actually — no clue as to why they would remove him from the mainframe.
Now that he is free to roam the offices, watching them bend on small desks, he settles on the idea that they may be lazier than he thought. Having him do all the hard work fits them, oh yeah. They are not nice, and they never were.
Even so, it turns out they are even more complicated than she is.
Suggestion were all it took. His was an easy enough job. He would babble on, explaining in fine detail whatever idea was passing by, and she would follow — in a bad mood, yes, but she would. He never failed at breaking her train of thought. After all, they had told him, that was the goal.
It was confidential, of course. He took pride in his professionality. She insulted him anyway — if not the reason why, there was nothing obscure about that.
They, on the other hand, were never easy to deal with. Wheatley had never cared much about investigating things to the end; as long as what he did worked just fine, he never bothered. He knew she always ended up listening to him. Apparently, that had been enough until now.
He has to adapt, as his new occupation involves too many kinds of people for his taste. He begins studying them — from afar, on their request. He must follow the rails, trying not to disturb their busy minds, and watch.
For one, he never knew humans had a second language. He observes it carefully, in the long breaks in which nobody tells him what to do; whenever they discuss, their arms and eyes dart around the scene, in gestures he follows with confused interest.
They use it even more when they talk about him. He eventually links it with anger and frustration. He tries not to listen, as he wonders what it would be like to have limbs and answer them like they deserve.
When he can associate most of them to a meaning, he shoots secretive glances at their faces. He watches them a little longer than he used to. He knows, by know, that things like these are called expressions, and they are linked to other things called emotions; still, the concepts are diagrams in his mind, untied from their immense universe.
He never gets to link them to his own reality, and he never learns the names — envy and rage, sadness, need to be listened to. They stay in a jumble of something, in his words and mostly in his silence.
Humans are a mystery. Maybe he is, too, a little bit.
It takes him a long time, and yet he learns. Wheatley finds other parts of them to relate to. Simple gestures, like the rolling of their eyes, like saying yes or no. He slowly picks them up, and the passing years make them natural.
It feels like sharing a part of them. He still does not like humans, but it helps.
He finds the most peace in the act of sleeping. To him, sleep mode is a rare occurence, and nothing like theirs. For them, it is a time of silence — sleep is when they forget whatever goes wrong, bitterness and anger, to lie in a long silence. They cannot shout at him, turn him off, nor forget about him for hours in that hurtful way.
He definitely likes them the most when they are sleeping.
When he tells them, he is assigned to the last of his jobs, which he keeps until the end. As he takes care of the subjects, bored and slightly unsettled by their glassy eyes, he loses sight of what is going on at the core of the facility.
He is put to rest for his inefficiency. Shortly after, they get what they deserve.
It is a long time after that, when he is awakened to replace her in her slumber of years, that he goes back to the vaults again, and he understands what happens when they sleep a little too much.
He likes it, in a way. They may be better like this, caught in sleep mode, cold and inactive like the most perfect of robots. Even so, he is not used to their stillness — humans have a thousand faces and lights, in good and bad fate. This is not what humans are like.
He starts being scared.
My Portal Secret Santa gift for firiami.