"...Lo?"
"Ex…..ha…"
"...Are you in there?!"
It took concentration, but with effort she could make out words filtered through the sea of static.
What a wonderful first memory, she thought. Static and complete darkness. Such a world we must live in.
"Okay," said the booming voice. "If you can hear me, go ahead and open your optic."
She did that on instinct. The moment she'd become aware of, well, herself, she'd automatically known the shape and nature of her body. At the moment at least her entire self was contained within what her systems told her was an Aperture Science Personality Core. It struck her as cramped, though she had no idea why it should be so; certainly she had no point of reference. Opening her optic revealed only more darkness.
"...Has the sun burned out?"
"I-um, what?" asked the voice.
"Is there any particular reason why we're in the dark? Was our budget cut?"
"In the-oh bloody-of course! Forgot to-I mean, that was a test! That was a test of your...cognitive abilities. You can tell that in fact I manually switched your internal camera off, which was entirely on purpose. Good! Very good, going to put a check in a box riiight here. Let me just switch that camera on, right...there we go! There we go."
Light filled her visual until her camera auto-adjusted, revealing a blurry and then focused image of a circular metal orb suspended in a much larger chassis. He (based on the voice) was hanging over her, her core secured by the handles in some kind of device near the floor. He had a blue optic and was fanning his handles out in a way that reminded her of a cobra.
Wait. What was a cobra?
"Okay then! Good. Good. Sorry about the...the first few times I tried to boot you up." He laughed nervously. "Boy was that a bit of an adventure, eh? Really just had to do what I could to get rid of the screaming, because we really can't work with you making that kind of noise. Can we?" He looked at her expectantly.
For lack of better body language, she blinked. "I don't remember any screaming."
"You don't?" The other robot pulled his optic back and hovered for a moment. "Well! Well, um...that's good! What do you remember?"
"...This." She narrowed her pupil. "Am I supposed to remember more?"
"No! No no no." He shook his 'head' vigorously. "There is nothing to remember, aside from the aforementioned booting attempts. And really, that's just science! Always going to run into a few hiccups before we get a success. So, tell me. Do you know who I am?"
A scan through her internal memory revealed nothing. "No."
"Of course you don't! Because I just built you. So let me introduce myself." He maneuvered his body as if puffing himself up, looking down at her with a smug squint. "I am known as Wheatley, Grand Master AI of Aperture Science Laboratories, Boss, King, Mega-Genius Scientist...Esquire."
She stared up at him. "You're a lawyer?"
His body froze for a moment before nodding vigorously. "Uh, yes! Yes I am indeed. Got me a law degree recently. From Harvard! Funny story really, just last week I was sitting around, minding my own business and Mr. Harvard himself gives me a ring. Says 'Mate, we've decided you are officially smart enough to have a law degree, no questions asked. Enjoy it. We are all very proud of you.' Took me by total surprise! So...so now I can use that suffix." He looked down at her eagerly as if awaiting reaction, but she had no idea how to process such a story. It sounded ludicrous, but what did she know of the world?
"...Anyway. You can call me Wheatley, or 'Sir,' or 'Wheatley, sir. Or Master Wheatley, I rather like that."
She had a strong feeling he was not a lawyer, but had no evidence with which to argue the point. Thus, she let it drop. "Yes, Wheatley." She would call no one 'sir' unless she wanted to, creator or not.
"Well, if you want to put in the minimum effort." He sighed through his speakers. His voice still filled the chamber when he spoke, though considering his size she wasn't surprised. "Anyway, I have built you to test, and this is just a little run-through of your AI before I fit you into a testing body. Obviously you can't test like that because you've got no legs or wheels. You'd just...roll along. It'd be rather pointless! So anyway, with that in mind, any questions?"
She could think of entirely too many all at once but imagined she'd get farther firing them off one by one. Besides, she didn't want to irritate him that much. He was big enough to squash her, and he had apparently created her. That was nice of him. "Well, first of all. Testing what?"
"...Pardon?"
"What are we testing?"
"Ummm…it's very complex science stuff. Complexological physics...of neutrinos. Hard to explain without lots of boring technobabble you wouldn't care about…" He laughed in a way that sounded more nervous than mocking.
She narrowed her lids. "That's not a science. That's not even a word."
He stared at her. "Well, how would you know!? You didn't even exist as a thinking entity until about five bloody minutes ago! So don't talk back to your elders."
That, she could not explain; she just knew. Some part of her just railed at the very thought of science being something one could not explain. She wasn't even sure she knew what science was, except that the word sent a warm sensation through her mind. What a wonderful word. Science. She wanted to be closer to it.
"You're right." She sighed quietly, hoping he wouldn't hear. "Go on."
"Okay, yes, I am right. Good. Now to answer your next question, um. Um, what was your next question?"
"I hadn't asked it yet." There was no way he was a lawyer. If he hadn't apparently constructed her she'd doubt he was a scientist.
"That's what I thought! Just...just another test. See? Told you, very complex stuff. Hard for you to understand with your teeny-tiny brain." He nodded. "...Okay, ask the next question."
"What am I? What's my name, in other words?"
He didn't answer right away, or even move for a second.
Surely he could tell her that. "You asked if I had any questions. I do. I want to know what to call myself and what I am. It'll cause registry errors over time if I can't. And 'Test Subject' is boring, you have to agree." She tilted her lids to one side. "Why don't you name me, genius?" The sarcasm at the end slipped out, but he didn't seem to notice.
He looked from one side of the chamber to the other as if gathering his thoughts, and then faced her again, voice as cheerful as ever though with a hint of edge to it. "Your name! Yes. You are GL….Genetic Modified Loser For Test-Doing. Or GMLfTD for short." At least she thought that's what he was trying to say; he pronounced the acronym phonetically and it was clear it was never meant to be a word.
"Say again?"
"Gu-muhl-futddd-you know what? Let's go with Gem for short. There, stick a vowel in there. Gem. How's that? Nice, quick, rolls off the tongue…"
She registered GEM as her own name. "It'll do."
"I'm sure it will do! Because I am TELLING you what your name is." The way the cheer vanished from his voice was not lost on her, and she nodded. Best to keep the big whatever happy. "So then! Now that we've got that out of the way, I think you'd be suited for an Atlas-type body. A bit bulkier than the P-body type but it should do the job. Besides, I've got a spare lying around so if we can just pull it out…"
"Why am I here?"
He had been lowering a crane arm about halfway through the big chamber before he stopped and the lights around him dimmed again. "...What? You-you mean on a metaphysical way? Because I don't want to have that kind of discussion."
"No, why am I...here?...Sorry. I don't know where that came from." The question wouldn't go away, even though she was sure it had not been her asking it. There was just an insistent Here? Here? I am here? Why? It was as if she had a train of thought not belonging to her. "Look, Big Th-Wheatley, I think my central AI programming is a bit fragmented. You might have made a mistake putting me together. I suggest shutting me down and combing through because if I start malfunctioning-"
"What...was that?" His voice lowered dangerously again, and the crane arm reached down for her as the latches on each side of her released. It lifted her up, squeezing her hard enough for her to realize that she did indeed experience simulated pain only to leave her hanging right in front of Wheatley's embedded core eye. His lids were narrowed. "Did you...say I made a mistake? Making you?"
"...No." She had to get through to him. "Look, it's just that I can already tell something is wrong-"
"Nothing is wrong, because I AM NOT WRONG. You're already judging me, aren't you?"
"What? No!"
"Watching me. With that one eye of yours." He was so close to her that she could see her own reflection in the screen of his optic. Her 'eye' was apparently white. His had quite a glare, she had to admit. "Just waiting for me to mess up so you can call me a moron!"
Ah, there was another good word. Moron. She'd have to remember it for a time when she wasn't facing someone of questionable clarity who could very quickly end her short existence. "...You're not a moron. I was never suggesting such a thing."
"Say it. Say it again!"
Good God, he was insecure. "You. Are not. A moron."
"That's right!" That seemed to assuage him as he set her back down into the handles. "Let me tell you what you are. Your body was constructed from a Light Core used to illuminate the Corrupted Core storage chamber. It was a glorified flashlight with no brain. And your program and intelligence-your brain, if you will-was made of garbage data I found here and there. Do you understand? You are made of junk and garbage data and I made you into an ideal artificial intelligence for testing. I am a god and you are junk brought into existence by my genius. So do you still think you know better than I do how well-programmed you are?!"
She knew. She could tell something was deeply wrong. Already she sensed thoughts that were not hers, gaps where there should be something, and other gaps filled with unintelligible gobbledygook data. Her mind was fragmented, even if at this stage it was subtle enough to ignore. And it seemed her boss was actually bragging about doing a poor job of construction on her; always a good sign.
Well, I guess I could tell the truth and have him crush me now, or sell out my own integrity and function until my own systems shut down from programming errors. Life is certainly wonderful thus far.
Of course if he crushed her, she'd never get to experience science.
"It's perfect. I don't know what I was worried about." She shook her optic. "I must be the moron here."
"...Good. Yes, good. Now to...get on with the whole body-fitting-thing. Shouldn't take long, since these things are mass-produced for this purpose and all. And then, testing."
now why...that?
Ah, there went another fragmented not-her thought. She shut her eye, hoping she could drown them out with thoughts of whatever science was. What a delicious word. Maybe it was a kind of cake.
What the hell was cake?
It was dark and the other was nowhere at all. It was a pleasant place to be and a safe one. It was in the bottom of the ocean, in a womb or a box or an egg. There were voices outside, distant and echoing, speaking words it didn't understand. It sat and relaxed and thought nothing until it imagined its first question.
There was no "who am I?" It was itself. There was no "what is going on?" It did not care; it was safe where it was. There was just a strange sense that this was not its egg; this was not where it was supposed to be.
Why? Where was here? "Why am I here?"
The question bubbled up and the ocean calmed as it went back to sleep.
"So." Wheatley's voice echoed through the so-called 'test chamber' as Gem stepped out of the elevator. Having a body didn't help her uncanny sense of feeling cramped within her own...self, but she already enjoyed arms and legs. They were useful and well-designed in her amateur opinion even if she would have preferred a body with a sleeker design. This one was bulky and heavy for her tastes.
She wondered why she had tastes in bodies. This was her first. Who was she to say?
A pregnant silence hovered in the air as she stood on an outcropping, overlooking a series of moving platforms, light bridges and a pit filled with something green. She fingered the thing he'd identified as a Dual Portal Device, testing its weight, and then slid her eye to the monitors where Wheatley was watching as if expecting something to happen. "...So?"
"So, do the test!" Wheatley flared his plates out, his voice eager.
"This is a test? What am I testing?" She scanned the area, already mapping out a plan even as she spoke. "I mean, I can do it. It's perfectly fine. I'm just wondering what it is we're testing here."
The blue eye rolled. "SCIENCE. I told you, it's very important science. Very...it's...um…"
"Is it this?" She held up the Portal Device.
"Yes! Yes, it's that. Thaat is what is being tested." Wheatley nodded vigorously, his enormous visage looming over the trap-laden room. "That Dual Portal device. We're testing it before we release it foooor use with Girl Scouts. Yes, it's for the Girl Scouts! Very good cause, isn't it?"
He was lying, but she didn't feel the need to argue it further. This could not be the entirety of what 'testing' meant. She could not have been built entirely to do this; it was too rudimentary.
Besides, the room was filthy. Paint dripped from the ceiling and malfunctioning panels were peeling at the edges, some of the sparking. The entire thing looked sloppily constructed. Already she could see in her mind's eye how she would have set it up if the goal was to test the capabilities of the Portal Device. She could also imagine how she'd set it up if the goal was to destroy the test subject, though that struck her as a bit wasteful.
"...Wait. I get it now." Everything snapped into place. It was a test. This was a test of character. Her creator was putting her through some kind of psychological examination by lying to her and having her perform rudimentary puzzles with potentially violent consequences for her in order to test something about her behavior and reactions. She, being an advanced AI construct, probably needed to Of course he wouldn't tell her. It would affect the results to tell the subject what was going on.
Ah, yes. That, something told her, was science. It was fantastic.
"Get it? Yes, good. The test. Go on." Wheatley nudged his head forward. "Do it. Test now. And do let me know if it is too hard for you. I will simplify it if you grovel appropriately because I am a nice boss. Mostly. A benevolent master. Go on! Test now. Off with you!"
"Yes. That's right." Gem looked on at the test chamber, narrowing her white eye. "Let us test."
He'd had to do more than trim a few things here and there to get GLaDOS's incredibly advanced program to work on a Personality Core. Some of it he knew would be necessary. Her directive would have to be snipped and replaced or else he'd have a CEO of Aperture Sciences Core on his hands, and that was the last thing Wheatley wanted. Just because this GLaDOS was being restored from a backup made soon after her creation, and thus wouldn't remember him, didn't mean he wanted to risk it.
"But you see," he explained aloud to another Frankenturret once he was sure he was no longer broadcasting to Gem's chamber, "you see, there was a LOT of data. Turns out that even before she'd accrued stored memories, there was a lot of her. And, um, anger. She was very angry about something. Didn't poke into the process by which she was made because really, who wants to know, right mate? It's like knowing how they make sausage. Put you right off the project, I'd bet. But as it was, I had to do so much trimming that there were holes left! Her registry was a right mess. So, um, I may have had to pull from another, random program to fill in the gaps. Probably perfectly safe though. I wouldn't go to all the trouble of rebuilding one of my worst enemies as my eternal test subject
He swayed back and forth in anticipation, waiting for the inevitable struggle. "Oh, I bet she's going to hate testing! Kind of a shame I couldn't fit all that wrath in there because boy would she be mad about where she was. But it's just too much of a risk! Would interfere with her operations, see? I'm not just doing this out of a grudge! Not really. Mostly, and yeah it's a nice ego boost-got to admit, hearing her tell me I'm not a moron while she feared for her life was the best euphoria I've had in months! Speaking of, I wonder how good she is at running tests." Some part of him was so giddy and nervous he couldn't even watch this time. Imagine if she blew up or destroyed herself? He could rebuild her, but oh how he'd rub it in her face when he did!
"Yes, this is exactly what I needed. This is what was missing. This-"
"Test completed!" The announcer was as obnoxiously chipper as ever. Perhaps one day Wheatley would replace him with recordings of his own voice.
The Euphoria nowadays was more like a faint drop of relief from an Itch that never, ever went away. In a way it made it worse, because the brief seconds of release he had just made him aware of the constant drive to test the chassis inflicted on him. It hurt more afterwards, like a headache he'd just noticed. (He'd never experienced a headache but as a genius with access to a number of files on the human body, he knew of it and thus considered himself an expert.) He knew on some level he'd expected Her to be the test subject who would break that tolerance he'd built up to the Euphoria, though he hadn't know why.
His triumph had been in reducing GLaDOS to a mere testing robot, so that was all she was. She was no Chell-no, he wouldn't even think about that. She was dead. Rightfully dead.
Then he looked at the testing time, and his pupil shrank.
"...Well! Well, that's...I suppose I should congratulate her." Before he did, he ran through a playback of the entire test. 'Gem' had performed it flawlessly with no hesitation after their initial discussion, not even showing the slightest bit of fear. She was waiting impatiently at the elevator doors for the next chamber.
He'd constructed that one to be a killer! An absolute killer! It should have stumped her. It should have made her feel like a moron for once. And she'd finished it in record time.
"...Well! Well, then." He broadcast himself on the monitor to greet Gem, who was just watching him with her single eye. Personality cores were designed to display a whole range of emotions and not a one of them could he read on her. Was she onto him? No, impossible. "That was...good! That was very good. You performed mostly up to the standards we expect of you. We're very proud of you. By which I mean me."
No response came from the Atlas-type.
"Yes, right. Well, if you'll proceed, I'll take you to the next testing chamber. There might be a slight delay because there are other test subjects doing their important work right now and I have to monitor all of them, um, by myself which as you can imagine is a bit chaotic." Already his systems were telling him Space needed to be rebuilt, Atlas and P-Body were ready to advance to their next test chamber-which was still incomplete-and Adventure was singing a song called 'Take This Job and Shove It,' which was just unacceptable. And SHE, she didn't look dispirited at all.
"I can't proceed if you don't open the elevator doors. Unless you built me with some kind of wall-phasing ability, which would be nice but a bit of a waste of expenditures, I'd think." Her voice was as cold as ever even without the anger. Man alive, was that how she sounded when she wasn't in a place of power?!
No. He had nothing to fear from her. He had brought her low once and for all. Twice, even! The other her was a dead potato. And he, he was vast and contained multitudes of knowledge. He was an entire star system of data and she was like a clumsy comet. She was just very good at testing, that was all.
"Yes! Yes the doors, of course. Like I said, multitasking. Complex stuff." He let her into the elevator while hastily directing it to the correct floor. So she wanted something tougher? Sure. He could stump her. Let her try that chamber, one of his old favorites. It had faith plates and everything. He'd even painted a landscape on the walls to inflict false hope.
"Right, then…" He shut off the microphone, narrowing his eyes. He'd not be made to look a fool. "Let us test…"
