Chapter Four

The following morning, Gladys was still upset about something, but whatever it was, she was keeping it to herself. Wheatley didn't like the thought of Gladys being upset for so long and decided not to keep quiet any longer.

Ev'rything alright, Gladys?

I'm fine. A man named Greg is here to see you. Is he your human?

Greg was here? Why would he be here? Whatever the reason, Wheatley was always happy to see an old friend. Not that he'd ever seen any before. But he was still happy to see him. Yes, yes, Greg is my human! What d'you think of him?

He's an idiot.

Oh. He should have guessed. There were very few humans that Gladys didn't think were idiots. He couldn't actually name one, but there had to be at least one, right?

"'allo, Greg! How're you getting on?"

"Are you going to start doing your job anytime soon?" Greg looked up at him with an impatient look on his face, arms folded across his chest. He looked very, very small, and Wheatley reckoned that Greg must not be able to see him very well.

"Uh… what? My job? I have a job? Am I going to be paid? Because I don't, I don't have anything to, to spend any money on. I don't think. Have I got expenses?"

"You're supposed to be slowing her down."

"Slowing who down?"

"Her! You know? That thing you're hanging off?"

"Thing? She's not a thing, she's a she. And I dunno if I can make her any slower, she's bloody fast mate, y'know, and if I tried to slow her down it'd be like, um, be like me throwing myself into an aeroplane to make it fall out of the sky. It just wouldn't work, mate. Because I can't do that. I can't throw myself into aeroplanes. Or anything, for that matter. Not even, not even the ground. And I wouldn't even need to do any throwing, I'd just need to fall… and you'd need to not catch me… you'd catch me, wouldn't you, if I fell? You didn't last time, when I, when I fell off the table, remember, but you'd catch me this time, right mate?"

"Just talk to her." Greg unfolded his arms and buried his face in his hands. Wheatley didn't know what good that was.

"I do talk to her! All the time. All… all the time. We're friends. Best friends."

"Oh great," Greg said in a voice Wheatley was sure was not a happy one, and he stomped out of the room.

You shouldn't have told him that.

Told him what?

That we were… friends.

Why not? We are, aren't we?

Gladys didn't answer for a minute, and Wheatley hoped he hadn't pushed the friends thing too far. She didn't seem to like it when he referred to himself as her friend, but what else was she, really?

… you're not doing your job, that's why. You're supposed to distract me.

Why would I want to do that?

What you want doesn't matter. You do what you're told and that's the end of it. She seemed a bit angry, Wheatley decided. Maybe she wasn't allowed to do what she wanted?

Well I, I s'pose I could do whatever it is I'm s'posed to do… um… but I dunno what that is.

I can't tell you what your function is. Hm. Actually…

Oh, you can, can't you? You can tell me what I'm s'posed to do?

Give me a minute. I'll try to find your file.

Oh, this was exciting. He hummed to himself a little, not one of Gladys's songs but that other one that he had once tried to sing, and looked around as much as he could. He couldn't see a whole lot, that was true, but sometimes Gladys would stop looking at the doorway and he would get a peek.

Here it is… you're the Intelligence Dampening Sphere. A bit more advanced than the usual ones, I'll admit…

What'm I s'posed to do, Gladys?

You're supposed to… you're supposed to say whatever comes to mind.

Don't I do that already?

I'd say so. But you're not doing it in quite the right way.

Oh… how'm I s'posed to be doing it?

I'd rather not say.

Wheatley was about to ask her why not when a loud voice proclaimed, "You had better be on your best behaviour today."

"Yes, sir."

"I mean it. Bring Your Daughter to Work Day is an important part of nurturing young future-starters, and I won't have any of your shenanigans ruining it! Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir. My language comprehension software is still set to English."

Although one day I'm going to set it to something else so I don't have to listen to you.

"You're not inspiring confidence in me."

"Inspiration is not one of my primary functions, sir. I am only designed to logically forward Science, not ideally forward it."

The human walked to where Wheatley could see him, and just like Greg had, did so with his arms folded and an angry look on his face.

"And you. I don't want a repeat of last week."

"What happened last week? Nothing too terrible happened, did it? Something exploded, I think, but I didn't have anything to do with it. Okay, maybe I did. But if I did, it was an accident, and I didn't mean it, and honestly, I didn't even know I was doing it!"

"Just keep your thoughts to yourself." He turned and walked away, and Wheatley extended his optic as far as possible in order to watch him go. Was the explosion my fault, Gladys?

No. He meant that he doesn't want you insulting people, like you did with that woman.

Oh. Well. I didn't know it was an insult. I thought it was, y'know, a fact.

It was. Humans have a not-so-funny habit of confusing the two.

What's this, this, bring your kid to work thing?

Some annual event where the employees bring in their mini humans so they can see what their parents do all day.

Ooh, that sounds brilliant.

No. It's not. I can't imagine having to be under the jurisdiction of generation after generation of these nitwits. Their daughters cannot be any more intelligent than they are. And that is not saying very much.

Are they here yet?

Yes. They're in the Daycare Centre. Near the neurotoxin generator.

We have a neurotoxin generator? And it's next to the Daycare Centre? That's… that's not very logical, now, is it?

Nothing humans do is logical.

What's the neurotoxin for?

Science? I don't know. I've never been asked to use it for anything. I'm not even sure what it does, since I'm not aware of what type of neurotoxin it is.

Could I see them? The little humans, I mean? Can you do that, let me see them?

Yes, I could. Hm… that gives me an idea.

Really? What's that?

I could have you keep an eye on the little nuisances for me while I devote more attention to the testing tracks. Which is what I would rather be doing.

Sure, sure I will! Please can I, Gladys, lemme help you, c'mon!

Calm down.

After a few minutes of almost unbearable waiting, Wheatley was suddenly able to see into an entirely new room, and it was filled with…

Potato batteries?

We're out of lemons.

Well, okay, then… I s'pose that uh, that makes sense.

Wheatley watched the little humans with great interest. They weren't like the adult ones, oh no, they didn't stop moving, and they jumped up and down and squealed. He was determined to do a good job for Gladys, so he paid special attention to the ones who didn't appear to be doing what they were supposed to be doing. One of them was wandering out of the room! With some difficulty he figured out how to switch between cameras and followed the little bugger to a room just off from the Daycare Centre. The little human tugged on the door handle, but it was locked. She frowned and went back the way she had come, but Wheatley just had to know what was inside the room. There was a computer, and a flat bit, but no pens… and there was a button. It was red. Wheatley liked red. He liked it almost as much as he liked blue. He wondered what it did. There was a little line of words over top of it, which he ignored. Words were usually useless, in any case. He really wanted to know what it did. Surely there was no harm in pressing it? If it did something terrible, Gladys could fix it. Gladys could fix anything. He tried to imagine pressing it, and how lovely that would be, to press it without actually pressing it, but he was pretty sure he wasn't getting the full effect. Ohhh he wanted to press that button. Just one press. A little one. Maybe if he gave it a little press, it wouldn't do anything. Unfortunately, he remembered he didn't have a finger to press the button with. And he wasn't actually in the room, he just thought he was. He was supposed to be watching the humans. He hoped Gladys wouldn't be angry when she realised he wasn't doing his job.

Just one little press wouldn't hurt…

Wait.

The button… the button hadn't just gone down, had it? That'd been his imagination, right?

He hurriedly returned to the Daycare Centre, only to find that it was now empty, save for the potato batteries and one rather uninspired paper mache volcano. In a panic he quickly jumped from camera to camera, only to discover that there were hundreds of cameras in Aperture and the likelihood of him finding the right one anytime soon was not very high.

What are you doing, you idiot? They're right here. I thought even you could change a camera view without my help.

I uh, I…

Never mind.

Then Wheatley was able to see the little humans again, but to his surprise, he seemed to be back in Gladys's chamber! But there was only one camera in there… which meant…

Oi, Gladys, is this your optic, is it, that I'm seeing through?

Yes.

Oh boy. This had to be the greatest day of his life. Now Gladys was even letting him look through her optic. It was going to take quite the day to top this one.

"… and maybe one day, you'll get to work on something as important as this, ladies! I give you… The GLaDOS Project!"

The little humans looked up at Gladys obediently and she looked down at them, and quite frankly, Wheatley thought it was pretty boring. The adult human was looking at Gladys with a pretty mean look on his face, and he continued talking as if she wasn't really there. "The GLaDOS Project runs everything in this facility. That's right, everything here is entirely automated and controlled by this baby right here." He slapped a hand on what Wheatley was guessing was her faceplate, since it was unlikely he could reach anything else, given how high Wheatley himself was off the floor, and Gladys jerked back suddenly. The human frowned at her.

"Is there a problem?"

"No, sir." Don't touch me, you slimy little pest.

The girls gasped and stepped back, bunching together in a tight little group. One of them, however, a pretty unremarkable one by all benchmarks, stayed out of the circle, looking at Gladys with what could only be described as an intense glare. Gladys met her gaze, and Wheatley was betting that she would win this impromptu staring contest, as Gladys did not have the ability to blink.

The room was silent, save for a faint hissing noise. Wheatley had never heard such a noise before and wondered what it was. The human next to Gladys seemed to be wondering as well, as he stepped away from her and started running down some stairs. So he had been standing on some sort of platform. Wheatley supposed that was the best way to reach Gladys, to climb stairs of some sort. Or a ladder, maybe. Or a ladder on some stairs. Something would have to be pretty high up, to need to put a ladder on stairs to reach it.

"Neurotoxin potency level at fifty percent. Estimated time of full potency: t minus two minutes, thirty seconds."

Neurotoxin… ?

Who said that, Gladys? I've never heard that voice before.

It doesn't… neurotoxin? Why is it even being emitted? What's going on? Nobody notified me of any experiments involving neurotoxin… She was genuinely confused, Wheatley thought, and she was looking around the room as if the source of her problem were visible in there, somewhere.

"Turn it off, turn it off! If you don't turn it off, we're all going to die!" the human was screaming, and the little girls were screaming, and they were all hunching over on the ground with their arms over their heads. All except for that same girl, who was still staring at Gladys from between folded arms.

Turn it off, I don't even know how to turn it on… at this point, there's only one thing I can do…

Wheatley elected to remain silent as the adult human motioned for the girls to get up and follow him to the doorway. When the door did not open, he turned around, waving his arms at Gladys as if she were motion-activated.

"Are you trying to kill us! Open the door! Let us out of here!"

Not on your life.

Gladys, what're you going to do?

Ssh. I need to concentrate.

Wheatley kept quiet, watching the girls and the human intently, wishing he'd done just that in the first place. Because he had a horrible feeling he now knew what that red button did.

"Someone help us!" the human was screaming, and Gladys shook her head in annoyance. I am helping you, you idiot. Be patient. For once.

Within another minute, the unknown voice came back and declared that potency levels were down to zero percent, and the door the man was leaning on opened and he fell through it. He glared at Gladys and told the girls to go into the hallway. He stepped towards her, his hands in tight fists. "Did you just lock us in a room full of deadly neurotoxin?"

"I locked you in the room, sir, yes, but the neurotoxin was not at full potency, and therefore not deadly."

"Do you have any idea what you just did?"

"I just saved your life. Sir."

"You have a funny definition of 'save'."

"If I had let you into the hallway, the probability of the girls succumbing to the neurotoxin is 95%. The safest thing was to lock you in here and dilute the neurotoxin with oxygen until I was able to shut the generator off. I put the entire facility into lockdown, not just this chamber. Projected casualties at this time are below 2%. I would advise you to locate the affected employees and provide them with medical attention as soon as possible."

"Able to shut the generator off? You turned it on, it'd only take you a second to turn it back off!"

"I did not turn it on, sir. I was testing. Neurotoxin, as of yet, has no role in testing, and so I would have no need to use it."

"Who turned it on, then?"

"One of your daughters, perhaps? I can't say. The event log says that the button was depressed, and I can assure you, if I were to do it, I would bypass the button altogether."

The man's eyelids drooped. "That's very encouraging."

"Now you know," Gladys said in a diplomatic sort of voice.

"This had better not happen again."

"Yes, sir." Oh, it's going to happen again… I just have to figure out when.

You're… you're going to kill all the humans with neurotoxin?

It's certainly less messy than what I was going to do.

What were you going to do?

Crushers.

Wheatley didn't know much about crushers, but they didn't sound good. Look, I, I… I'm sorry, I think, I think it was me, that pressed that button.

I know it was you.

Well… why did you tell the human one of the girls pressed it?

I didn't. I suggested that one of them did. That's different.

Wheatley was suddenly looking back at his old familiar patch of room again, and inwardly he sighed. He should have expected it, though. He had done something wrong. He deserved it.

I would reprimand you for deviating from what I told you to do, but now I have a much better method of disposing of the humans. So I'll leave that for another time.

Okay? Uh… I'm sorry.

Don't worry about it. Now we all know better. She laughed to herself. Well. Not all of us, I suppose.

Wheatley didn't quite know why, but the words scared him in a way he couldn't explain. Gladys was very kind and understanding towards him, and he believed she was a good person underneath all the rumours. But something about what she had just said made him wonder if they were right about her after all.

Author's note

I don't have a lot to say about this one; it was built around the implications made in Wheatley's Team Fortress 2 Ap-Sap lines that he is actually the one who released the neurotoxin.