Chapter One

The Courtesy Call

August 7th, the year 3000015

"Good morning! You have been in suspension for [999999999999…." Chell awoke once again to the sound of the Announcer. She heard him say how long she'd been under – it made her uneasy because she didn't know if it was the truth or just a malfunction. The spokesperson began to speak again, but was interrupted by a knock at the door and a British voice. "Hello? Anyone in there?" The voice said.

Tentatively, Chell opened the door. Standing (or rather, hanging) in front of her was a sphere, about the size of her head, who was made entirely out of metal. It was made up of layers, so to speak, of metal that allowed it to look around. It had a blue optic and was strangely good at making expressions on its face for a robot with nothing but an eye and some lids to go with it.

"AHH!" the robot said in its masculine British dialect. "You look TERRIB –" he stopped himself from going any further and changed tact. "Good, actually, looking pretty good!" Chell sighed – she knew what the robot was going to say – and looked at herself. It was true - the top half of her orange jumpsuit had sagged off of her and the sleeves had wrapped themselves around her waist, the tank top she had under the suit (not to mention her whole body) was covered in dirt and grime, and she could actually feel her hair sticking out in all directions.

"Who are you? My name's Wheatley, so you know. Before we – ah – get too far could you introduce yourself?" Chell remained silent, and tried to convey that she was unable to speak with hand movements. Wheatley didn't understand, though, and stared at her concernedly. He moved himself over Chell's bed (the young woman noticed that Wheatley moved around using a rail connected to the ceiling) and cleared his metaphorical throat before speaking.

"It is true that most test subjects do experience some, er, cognitive deterioration after a few months in stasis. Now, you've been under QUITE a bit longer, so, you may have, a VERY minor case, of serious brain damage," Wheatley said carefully. "Now, don't be alarmed, but, but if you ARE alarmed, try to hold on to that feeling, as that is the proper response, to being told, you have brain damage."

Chell stared at him, slightly alarmed, but she nodded her head slightly to indicate for him to go on. Continuing with gusto, the robot said, "Do you understand? Do you know what I'm saying? Just – just say 'yes' if you understand."

Annoyed that this metal ball refused to understand that she was mute, she jumped in the air in frustration. Wheatley interpreted this as a response. "Well, erm, that wasn't really talking, so to speak, so, just, just say 'apple'. Come on. Simple word. Apple." He rolled the word around in his mouth. Chell was so annoyed with him she refused to speak. Before Wheatley could speak again, however, the sound of the Announcer, still amazingly cheerful, broke in. "Please prepare for emergency evacuation," the happy recording said as an alarm broke out.

"Umm, okay, y'know what, that's close enough," the panicked robot said, and he rose up into a hole in the ceiling. Suddenly, everything started shaking. With a start, Chell realised the entire room was moving.

She felt one of the walls, already unstable from spending 9999999 days degrading, buckle under the pressure as the room, apparently being steered by Wheatley, crashed into something. The wall panels fell off, revealing that they were in an enormous labyrinth of storage boxes, each one filled with the corpse of a long-dead test subject.

"Alright, I wasn't supposed to tell you this," Chell's talkative driver shouted, "But I'm in pretty hot water right now!" Chell briefly wondered whether or not the room would survive the trip to wherever they were heading.

"Of course when the power went out, they stopped waking up the bloody test subjects! How am I supposed to do my job when She isn't?" Wheatley shouted in frustration. "And who do you think the management's going to blame, huh, when they come in here and find ten thousand flippin' vegetables!?"

"I was trying to do what I'm supposed to, but, oooh, nooo, they had to -" Wheatley's jabbering was cut off by the sound of creaking metal as he knocked a storage room off the top of a towering stack of the things, causing the whole pile to tumble into the abyss below. "See, there, I hit that one," He said, sounding slightly guilty. "I've just gotta concentrate," he grunted, focusing on steering the cheap motel room safely through the maze. Meanwhile, Chell was focusing on not falling through the by now completely destroyed walls as the room, held together only by a few mangled metal beams, lurched haphazardly from side to side.

After what seemed like a lifetime, the room slowed down. Chell stopped to take a breath, but hardly got a chance to inhale before the room made a sharp turn sideways, turning to face a gap in the wall of rooms that may or may not have fit the wreck Chell was trying to balance on now. "Do you think I'll make it through?" Wheatley shouted, but he didn't wait for the response that wouldn't have come anyway. The room sped forward, and, it turned out, did not fit in the gap. That wasn't a problem, though, because Wheatley had so much acceleration that the wall split apart on impact, allowing them through.

They continued onward through the never-ending maze, and shortly arrived at a wall, with the words "DOCKING STATION 005" clearly painted in large yellow letters on it. "Good news!" Wheatley yelled. "I think this is a docking station! You may want to hold on to something!" He proceeded to "dock" the room. However, it was obvious that the blue-eyed robot had no idea how to dock. He rammed into the wall as hard as he could, causing a large crack to run throughout the barrier. "Okay, more news: that was NOT a docking station!" Wheatley said, paying no attention to the "DOCKING STATION 005" sign. "I'm going to have to attempt a manual override on this wall! Just a suggestion; this time you probably should hold on to something!" Chell obeyed as fast as she could, but it wasn't fast enough to avoid all of the impact. It sent chunks of docking station and storage wall flying off their owners.

"Alright, one more hit should do it!" Wheatley yelled. "Seriously, do hold on to something this time!" And with that, he smashed into the wall with enough force to send an elephant to space. Chell flew backwards onto, in a moment of extreme luck, the only wall that was still any degree of intact. Afterward, the wall could no longer be called 'intact'. Actually, none of the motel room could be called intact: the entire thing had basically disintegrated. Chell climbed onto one of the safer piles of rubble and waited for the smoke to clear.