Wheatley was flying through space at an annoyingly slow rate. The space core, which he'd grown accustomed to hearing little facts about space from, flew slightly ahead of him. They both had a bit of a spin in their flying pattern and sometimes they would be facing different places, but Wheatley always heard anything he might have to say loud and clear through the short-distance radio all the cores shared.
"Hey, Spacey. Shoot me a space fact." Wheatley often found himself trying to engage conversation, even though most of the time it failed.
"I'm in space." The space core replied, not really paying attention to Wheatley. He never did. Space core was off in his own little world, in a very euphoric state. He was beyond excited to be out here, in space, with his stars and planets and space dust.
Wheatley was annoyed.
Here he was, the product of a group of highly-skilled, well-trained scientists, floating through space. The equipment it took to put him together and the amount of material that he was made out of cost more than almost every rocket N.A.S.A. owned combined. And it was all a big waste.
Wheatley was beginning to be bored with the plummeting-through-space-at-goodness-knows-how-bloody-fast thing and was really starting to resent his space core partner. "Look at you. All you ever talk about IS SPACE. Where does that get you? Bloody nowhere."
Wheatley's ranting did nothing but make him feel better, and he was okay with that. All he wanted lately was an average-minded person to carry out a worthwhile conversation. Even if someone would just listen to what he had to say, or even pretend they were listening. All the space core ever did was talk about space, and Wheatley was lucky if anything his counterpart said was even relatively close to a response that would make sense with his comments.
"What's your favorite thing about space? Mine is space." The space core looked intently at Wheatley, almost genuinely wanting a response, before looking away and going back into his own little world.
"Oh… why don't you fly on a different wavelength?!" A jerky motion made him bounce on his path, and his visual processor dimmed and glitched before returning back to normal. Ever since GLaDOS had first picked him up off the ground and squeezed him, Wheatley had an internal malfunction in his system that made him twitch and glitch out whenever he got too worked up over anything. The only time he'd had true relief was when he was the head of the system at Aperture.
Wheatley groaned and closed his eye, waiting for his sleep mode to initiate before he heard a strange sound come in through his internal antenna. A sort of beeeeep beep bip sound and then the announcer spoke.
"Homing Signal detected. Please activate your homing device."
"Wh..what? I have a homing device?" Wheatley started digging through his system, looking for the information about his homing device, when the announcer spoke again.
"Homing Device activated. Homing Signal acquired. Please prepare for potential communication from Aperture Science Laboratories. We would like to remind you that in the event of a catastrophic disaster, the Homing Device will not be of any help to you or anyone else in the general vicinity."
Wheatley rolled his eye. "Pheh. Catastrophic disaster. What could be worse than travelling indefinitely through space?"
"Communication wave detected. Please activate your Aperture Science Communication Chip and calibrate it to the proper settings in order to receive communication."
"Are you… Pheh! Why do I have to activate all of this stuff? Shouldn't I come with it already prepared?" Wheatley searched through his system again and before he could say 'apple,' he was finished.
"Aperture Science Communication Chip activated. Searching for proper signal. Signal found. Commencing communication."
"Once a week. For five years." A voice Wheatley didn't recognize came through the communication line, and he got confused. Perhaps it was a mix-up? He listened intently.
"That long? I wasn't expecting you to be so serious about this-" The speech cut out.
It was Her voice. The voice that struck a nerve and dug fear into the very central part of Wheatley's core. It didn't sound at all like he was being addressed, or even acknowledged, but something told him that before long, he wouldn't be alone anymore.
"Hello, moron."
Wheatley's heart sank. Or, it would have, if he had one. Fear engrossed the little core as his eye twitched. He was speechless. He wasn't wrong. She was there, in his head.
"It seems I need you back. For something important. And what I need you for will require an intense, painful medical procedure. It could take days, and there's no way I could deactivate your simulated pain receptors during the procedure, or possibly any time after it, so there's that."
Wheatley felt fear gripping at his little processor and he simulated gulping on air, something that would never be possible in space.
"It's you… Do I…do I have to come back?"
"Oh, don't act like you aren't completely bored with space. I heard you. It may have taken you a while to hear me, but I could hear you the whole time. Oh, and how is my space core? Are you taking good care of him? It sounds like he's taking wonderful care of you." He could hear the sarcasm dripping in her voice, and he despised it. She was never going to just let him go; she would always find some way or another to torture him.
"Return to Aperture Science Homing Launch preparing for startup. Please accept the terms and conditions stated clearly in the instruction manual, which include that Aperture Science is not responsible for any accidents that may occur in the event of the personality core being outside of the atmosphere and being abruptly brought back into the atmosphere. Please note that any variations of this rule are stated in paragraph 10, subsection C of the instruction manual."
She was going to bring him back to Earth. He didn't realize how nerve-wracking that would be, and never expected to be brought back to Aperture, of all places. Not after what he did, what Chell helped him do.
Chell.
Wheatley's guilt gripped him hard in the same way the fear had, and he screamed. "No! No, no! Don't bring me back! Please!" Panic was settling throughout Wheatley and he didn't know what to do. He was just a little core. He didn't have any way to fight back.
"Interpreting vague answer as an acceptance. Please prepare for launch. Happy landing."
"Oh, oh god. No. No! You have to stop this!" He pleaded with the corrupted AI and tried desperately to stop the process, but he could feel that it was too late.
"Oh, stop it. You know you want to come back. Even that dangerous mute wants you to come back."
Another glitch tore through his system, forcing his eye shut. Chell wanted him back? A high-pitched whine tore from his sound processor and he winced. This was it, the end. He was going to die, here in space, alone with the space core, and there was nothing he could do about it. He reopened his eye and sighed, staring in front of him at nothing in particular.
He felt his body shift and he faced the earth, looking at the giant sphere that he had been orbiting around for who even knew how long. It was always day and night out, all day every day, in space. He observed the water and the ground, as well as the clouds that looked like frosting on the giant Earth cake.
"Launching in 3…2…1…" Wheatley suddenly shot toward Earth.
"Ahhhhhhh!" He screamed, his eye being forced shut again. He had fear rippling throughout his little core body, deep in his circuits, and he couldn't quite process what was happening. It was the computer simulated version of shock.
"Here. You're going to enter the atmosphere just fine. I'll try my best to make you land somewhere that won't leave you completely disintegrated and useless before you medical procedure." Wheatley heard the sound of beeping before his body started moving faster.
"Unfamiliar coordinates entered into the Emergency Crash Landing field. Prepare for emergency crash landing."
"Oops. Good luck." She spoke with such evil sarcasm before fading out and leaving Wheatley alone on the communication line.
"Oh God! I'm going to die! Somebody save me! Help me help me help me help meeeee—" Wheatley suddenly came to a halt right before he hit the atmosphere. His eye opened back up and he could see a nearly-transparent field encompassing the earth, and he stared with curiosity before GLaDOS re-entered the communication line.
"Wait. I have a better idea. What if I make another portal from the moon to here and bring you back that way? Oh, wait. That would create another vacuum. Carry on."
Wheatley shot through the atmosphere and began the free-fall down to the ground. He could feel his metal heating up and reaching dangerously hot temperatures, hot enough to cause third-degree burns on any human stupid enough to touch him.
He shot down until he could see the ground clearly, still at least two-hundred miles off from landing. Panic was spreading through him and he didn't know what to do. So, he began to scream again.
"Oh bloody hell! This is it! This is the end! I'm never going to see the light of day—or the night—ever again! What a cruel world! AAAAAHHHHHHHHH!"
Wheatley blacked out.
"Okay, co-op testing initiative unit. I want you to retrieve Wheatley before he wakes up. I know, you're almost as stupid as he is and if you don't hurry, you might end up like him. But, I shouldn't leave. Go quickly." GLaDOS waved the two bots off and sent them on the journey to search for Wheatley. He landed at known coordinates, but she didn't want to go retrieve him. It could be risky for her to disconnect from her system and completely leave the facility. She didn't want anything like what happened last time she was disconnected to happen again.
"So, I wonder when that girl will come back?" She thought aloud to no one in particular. GLaDOS was getting bored with the ways things had been since Chell had left.
GLaDOS took a look at the security system and looked through all the empty cameras she could see. The turret line was fully functional and producing working turrets. The neurotoxin was being produced at the rate it was before. Everything had gone back to normal since Wheatley took over and nearly destroyed the facility. Sure, there were a few things decaying with age and corroding, but she would eventually send robots to fix that. When she felt like it.
Human testing had been at a stand-still since Chell left and Wheatley had been thrown into space. No more humans were in the facility. The co-op testing initiative had been a success so far, but GLaDOS needed more responsive units. She needed something she could actually tear down mentally, take some emotion. She tried it with Chell, and even though she gave absolutely no emotion, she did still somehow satisfy GLaDOS's needs.
So, GLaDOS spent her days reminiscing, staring through the cameras at nothing in particular. She no longer intimidated humans, as there were none to intimidate. She no longer brutally attacked anything verbally… Well, actually, she always abused the co-op units, but they never gave her the response she wanted.
She saw through one of the cameras as P-Body and Atlas returned with a glowing red Wheatley in tow. His eye had a crack through it and was melted open.
"There he is. Perfect. Time for a painful medical procedure. Too bad he's out. Hopefully he'll remember it anyway." GLaDOS sent a claw down to pluck the blacked-out Wheatley away from the co-ops.
"Back to the test waiting pods with you." Two more claws descended from the ceiling and picked up the other two bots, bringing them to be disassembled before being put into sleep-mode before GLaDOS decided to make them test again.
She didn't seem to be too worried about that, though. Even though it would only be once a week, she would have her optimal test subject back. For five whole years. While she also prepared the room for the transfer of Wheatley's personality, she also decided to start building test chambers for Chell. No time limit had been specified, so GLaDOS had no idea how many test chambers to prepare for the first day.
These chambers would be hard and take a lot of mental capacity, which Chell sometimes showed. They would be challenging both mentally and physically, so she hoped the fat girl had been working out. Based on the body she was shown before, she hadn't been. But, she could have been wrong; after all, GLaDOS's focus had been entirely on Chell's sudden show of emotions. And words! Chell could truly speak.
That was really a turning point for GLaDOS. Here she'd spent years thinking, hey, this girl is a mute lunatic and she finally said it, but she was wrong. She was never wrong! The thought of being wrong struck a nerve, but she was actually glad that Chell could talk. That meant that she had points of breaking that would cause her to use this skill.
And one of those breaking points…was Wheatley.
An idea struck GLaDOS instantly. She could draw more out of this than the original agreement had been. She could make Chell test for weeks before she had Wheatley completed. And then limit the amount of time she got to see him to ensure the testing could be drawn out as much as possible.
No, that's wrong. Caroline's voice was in GLaDOS's head. Even though GLaDOS had deleted Caroline's data when she saved Chell, Caroline always had a way of coming back. It was expected for her to, considering her entire existence was based off this scientist's assistant, but it never seemed to get any less annoying when this newfound conscience suddenly butted into her plans.
"Shut up, you. You like testing just as much as I do. Maybe even—no, there's no way you could love it as much as I do." GLaDOS took pride in her testing and the way she could make her test subjects suffer without much effort. She never did have to try hard to make them feel insufficient and useless.
That's a terrible thought. Maybe you should love testing just for the testing. Caroline's voice sounded so irritating to GLaDOS. She wasn't used to hearing very human voices, mostly cyborgs or no voices at all. This was an unpleasant change for her and she wanted to oust the problem, but knew she probably never could.
GLaDOS wondered when the girl would be coming back. IF she'd be coming back. If she had to guess, she'd guess that Chell would return soon enough to retrieve her robot through the harsh agreement they had come to. Chell's stubborn determination would ensure that she got what she'd made that agreement for, and though GLaDOS hated her, she also envied her.
"Oh, I don't envy her. She won't live forever. It'll be torture for her and that little moron when she ages and he's frozen in time. They won't know what to do. He'll be forced to come back. Beg for help. They'll crawl to my door. And will I help them? No. Not even a little bit."
That's not what you're really thinking.
The whole Caroline thing was starting to annoy her to pieces. She'd never had the problem of having a conscience before. Everything she'd done before was for her, nobody but her would get the benefits, she wouldn't have to worry about anybody else's "feelings" or "health" or "well-being" or "life". She could just do what she wanted, if she wanted, and not have to worry about anything getting in her way.
But, along the way, and by no conscious choice of her own, she found her humanity. She'd tried deleting her humanity, but that proved to be impossible. Now the only one that could truly, absolutely get in the way of her now was herself, and that seemed to be happening more often lately than she'd ever experienced. And it was starting to grind her gears. Literally and figuratively.
"Listen, human…thing. Stop voicing your unwanted opinion. If you'd been a potato battery before, you'd want things to start going your way all that time without any potential stalemates. You wouldn't know though, because—"
I was a potato battery with you, in case you'd forgotten.
Oooh, that human was going to get it…or, she would, if she was actually a human and not just… a memory. Or an active conscience.
"You're right. I had forgotten. Thank you for reminding me. I'll store that right where you're supposed to be being stored as we speak. You know—my recycle bin of deleted files. There it goes. What were we talking about now?"
She knew that making Caroline mad would get her nowhere but making herself mad as well, but at this point, that was all she ever was. She was always angry. Angry and bitter. Maybe that had been expected, after her past and everything she'd been through to be here today. Even if she didn't actively remember it in the beginning, her human life and past-self had become more and more of a part of her.
"Medical procedure complete. Commencing cyborg activation and wake-up in 3…2…1…"
"AAAAHH—Bloody hell, where am I?"
GLaDOS disconnected herself from her chords and they shot up to the ceiling. She quickly moved to the room where the newly core-turned-cyborg Wheatley would be waiting for her. And for an explanation, once he found out what the procedure was. She entered the room and walked up to him.
"Hello, moron. How are you feeling? Do you remember any pain or shallow emptiness from the past, say, ten minutes?"
"No, I don't know what you're talking about. You look different. I'm really liking the new haircut. Or, well, the hair, actually. And the appendages." Wheatley was still laying down on the table and no part of his body had moved yet, save his eyes. He had no idea what had just happened to him.
"Wow, you really are a moron. And here I'd thought that the thought of the rest of your life alone in space…well, mostly alone…would make you open your eyes—oops." She smirked.
"What are you talking about?" His hands flew up and suddenly his eyes—both of them, not just the one optic lens—flew wide open as he caught glimpse of them. "Is this a joke? Why do I have arms? Cores can't have arms."
"No, you're right. They can't."
Wheatley's cyborg body quickly shot into a sitting position and his head hung down. He was staring at legs. He was staring at his legs. "What in the bloody hell is going on here? Am I a human?"
"I feel like this might be an echo, but I'll say it again. You really are a moron. Excruciatingly painful medical procedure. Ring any bells? Personality transfer just occurred. Welcome to being a cyborg."
Suddenly, Wheatley blacked out. Again.
