Wheatley followed Chell down the long hallway toward the core transfer center, whatever that was. It sounded important. Out windows he could get slight glimpses of what appeared to be testing rooms: white and gray walls, machinery of various sorts protruding from the sides and floors, the occasional pit of murky water. And there were also-this sent chills down Wheatley's spine-turrets, the kind that had been advertised on television for home defense, placed in various strategic spots. "Is that legal?" he asked Chell. Though he didn't know her name was Chell. He thought her name was Gertrude, because that's what the little pin on her jacket said.

"Is what legal?" she asked, not even bothering to turn around.

"Poking your test subjects full of bullets."

She laughed, in a bitter way. "It's okay. They signed a paper."

There was a sinking feeling in Wheatley's stomach. "I signed a paper."

"Don't stress about it; you didn't have much to lose," she reassured him. "You would have died if you stayed back there. Here, there's only a ninety-nine point nine percent chance that you'll end up as a bloody carcass, a mantis hybrid, a smear on the wall, or a defunct robot."

"A defunct robot?" he inquired. Maybe if he hadn't let flow the full force of his intellectual capacities at the prison, she would have more respect for his humanity right now; what he had needed, he decided, was regular, boring old charm to coax more cooperation of this...this...person. God, he was glad he wasn't speaking aloud. Anyway, all he was to her, after he had blown it yesterday, was some guy who jaywalked and didn't know what Babylon was. And probably hadn't read Hamlet. But she was wrong. He had read Hamlet, and he was convinced that his evolutionary masterpiece of a brain was just seeing hidden subtext that nobody else even cared enough to look for. And that's why people didn't want to talk to him about Hamlet: they didn't comprehend it on the level that he did.

"What?" he asked when he realized she'd been speaking.

"I was talking for like two minutes straight. Don't ask me to repeat that."

Wheatley couldn't let himself look like any more of an idiot than he already did. "No, I was listening. I swear. It's just a habit of mine, to say, 'What?' after anything anyone says."

She finally turned around and stabbed him darkly with those sharp hazel eyes of hers. "Then why aren't you sweating? Or shaking? One of those would be the proper human reaction to what I just told you, if you've got some serious nerve. If you're weak of heart, then maybe you should be crying and assuming the fetal position. I suppose this transformation won't be much of a change for you, since you already qualify as something other than human."

"Transformation?"

"Ah, so you weren't listening," she concluded. "Good. I won't have to play the role of therapist until we get into the core transfer center."

He sort of got the idea where this was going. He was being turned into a robot. And, from the callous in her voice, it was likely that there were many who had gone before him and failed to complete the process. He tried to imagine his human body lying still, cold on a table, as his faceless mechanical self looked on. He had washed his hair this morning for the last time, shaved for nothing. But hey, at least he wouldn't need glasses anymore-that is, if the process was successful. Which it probably wasn't going to be. As they neared an elevator, Wheatley caught a glimpse of some spherical machines with lights of various colors, all heaped on top of each other in a glass case. He could hear voices murmuring from within, ever so faintly. He couldn't quite catch what they were saying, but he was pretty sure one was going on ceaselessly about space. Was it just his imagination, or did he see something about a week ago on the news about an astronaut who had gone missing? He shivered.

The elevator was rather small. He squeezed in alongside Chell, or rather, Gertrude, as he knew her. "Since I'm one of the last human beings you're ever going to talk to-I mean, you could survive, but it's highly unlikely-you might as well know my actual name. It's Chell. Please don't tell anyone."

He was a bit surprised by this heartfelt confession. "Okay," he said. What else does one say when someone unexpectedly tells one their name?

"Any secrets you'd like to tell me before you meet your doom? At least this doom is for science, whereas your other doom was for jaywalking."

"Actually yes, I do have some secrets I'd like to tell," he started. "You see, you know I was arrested for jaywalking. But-and my dad doesn't know about this, so don't tell him-that wasn't the only crime I committed. Honestly, I jaywalked twice. I got away with it the first time. But yes. That's my secret. I jaywalked, not once, but twice."

Her face got suddenly serious. "Your father. How does he feel about all this?"

"Well, he doesn't seem to approve of me jaywalking-"

"No, I mean, about your sentence."

Wheatley gulped. His heart was beating eight times as fast as it would have under normal circumstances. Twice because he was about to die; another twice because he was standing within a two inch radius of, he had to admit, the most attractive woman he had ever met; and yet another twice because she was asking him about his secrets. He realized he shouldn't really care about this and should be focusing his energies toward escaping, but what was a life on the run compared to a moment of bliss? He felt a little surge of joy at this. He had actually come up with something that sounded poetic and made sense.

"Your father?" she reminded him softly.

"Right. You know, he doesn't really seem to care. He just...sort of...he cares more about his job than he does about me." The pain of this fact suddenly struck him, and he began to weep. "He never did. No mercy. Never."

"You're probably wrong. He probably cares about you more than you know, and just wants to show you equal treatment. Maybe he'll learn from this and change his mind. If he has any sense at all, he'll see the repercussions of what he does."

"Problem is, uh, he doesn't see the repercussions of what he does. He is, really, just as moronic as I am, I think."

She smiled at him. "You're not a moron. You're just blatantly pretentious."

Wheatley was silent for a moment. This was a really long elevator ride. He wondered if the elevator was programmed to keep going until everyone inside stopped talking. However, if they didn't stop soon, the elevator was going to run out of shaft. He scolded himself for not making sense. "Thanks," he said. "You know, do you have this talk with everyone you take down here?"

"I like to give people a clear conscience before they lose it altogether." Resentment boiled in her voice, and her eyes flashed with hate. Hate for the atrocity for which she worked. Hate for herself. His face lost its luster, not because of the expression on hers, but rather because, for a brief moment, for once in his life, he had felt special. But nope. Not Wheatley. He was doomed to be the most unspecial person in this unspecial world, which was, after all, about to dissolve around him. "You look disappointed," Chell commented.

"Well, honestly, I am," he replied.

She sighed. "Yeah, I'll have to admit I give pretty much everyone the end-of-your-life talk. It gets rather heavy after a while. But I do it anyway, because I think they deserve it. And you especially. You know, you might not give the most desirable first impression, but-"

"But what?" Wheatley interrupted. He was looking forward to this next part.

"I'm not going to tell you if you interrupt me like that."

The elevator reached its destination.