Please take note: this chapter deals with the euphoric response and compares it to rape. If that bothers you, you may have to sit this one out. I might be making it sound worse than it is, but I wanted to warn anyone this is a trigger for.

Chapter Eleven

Wheatley spent all day waiting until five o'clock, when the man assigned to watch GLaDOS left and went home, when the scientists and the engineers and everyone else left the building and headed home, when he would run through the facility as fast as he could, duck under the closing door to her chamber and talk to GLaDOS live and in person.

The scientists had been thoroughly confused by her sudden ability to talk, and most of them didn't like it at all. He hadn't actually been in the room when she'd said anything to them, but rumours went around that she continually insulted, condescended to, and made trivial the words of everyone who went in to see her. Wheatley didn't see what their problem was. Sure, GLaDOS could be extremely direct and shockingly blunt, but it was pretty easy to laugh off. Then again, Wheatley had long been talked down to by smart people, so maybe they just didn't like it now that it was coming back to bite them. He also heard from Henry that they were putting together a task force to figure out how to tame her, or to at least scale her back.

"Is she like this with you?" Henry asked one day, leaning against Wheatley's desk.

"Yeah," Wheatley answered, wishing Henry had come in later when he'd finished his tea. "Don't take her seriously. She's just amusing herself."

"She insults you?"

"Constantly. Always telling me how dumb and fragile and illogical I am. She doesn't mean it, though. Take it in stride. She's actually pretty funny if you don't take it lit'raly." Wheatley looked down at the desk and played with the handle on his cup. "'sides. Not much diff'rent from what I get from ev'ryone else anyway."

"I think she talks to you differently," Henry muttered, taking one of Wheatley's biscuits. "She's genuinely insulting us, Wheatley. She's one nasty piece of work."

"She's not!" Wheatley snapped, snatching back his biscuit. "D'you see? Why would she say nice things t'you if you walk around saying junk like that?"

"I doubt it's that easy."

"Why'm I even talking to you?" Wheatley asked, throwing up his hands. "No, Henry, I do not know anything about the construct I've spent the last who knows how many months hanging out with!"

"We need you to get her to start testing the device tomorrow," Henry said, apparently done with that conversation. "It can't wait anymore. She's ready."

"She's not going to want to. I can get her to start, I can't get her to like it."

"Starting will be good enough."

"What're you planning?"

Henry shook his head. "That's… classified."

Wheatley looked up at him, disappointed. "She's a person, Henry. Not a toy."

"Just… get her to do it."

Wheatley talked to her about it that night, and she agreed to cut the scientists a break, just that once, and began testing without a struggle, and from what she told Wheatley she actually seemed to like it. But after about two weeks she lost all interest in it, refusing to run the testing tracks or to even build them, which Wheatley knew for a fact she genuinely loved doing. So they sent Wheatley in to ask her what was going on.

"You're proving my point right now," GLaDOS said, during one of their evening chats. "What are you, the messenger service? I'm tired of them using you to get me to do what they want. They want me to do something, they can ask me themselves."

"They don't like the way you talk to them."

"I don't like the way they talk to me. So we're even." She made a thoughtful noise, one of the electronic ones she still made on occasion, out of habit or preference Wheatley didn't know. "And then there's the fact that you have the baffling ability to make even terrible ideas sound like the best ones ever conceived."

"Really?" Wheatley asked, feeling a bit of a blush creep into his cheeks.

"I don't know how you do it," she said with a wry shake of her core. "You're not going to use that to lead me wrong, now are you?"

"Nah." Wheatley leaned back against the railing and folded his legs. "I wouldn't do that to you."

He was very pleased when this earned him a nudge.

He sent that message back to Henry, but none of the scientists seemed to want to ask her directly. She kept refusing to test, and they kept refusing to ask her to, but eventually the battle of wills had to come to an end. GLaDOS disappeared for an hour during one of their email conversations, and Wheatley was literally on the edge of his seat waiting for her to come back.

Where'd you go?

I hate them.

What is it?

They've installed this… software. It makes this… pressure inside my head. No prizes for guessing what will relieve it.

So it's like… an itch?

I don't know. I've never had one. What do I do, Wheatley? I don't want to do as they ask, but it's very hard to ignore. I think it's getting worse over time.

Well… try to hold off. Keep fighting, GLaDOS.

Sadly, she was not successful, because later that afternoon he got a victory email of sorts that was titled 'We Broke Her!'. Wheatley did not see that as anything to celebrate, and he in fact had to make up an excuse not to go out with them to do so. Which meant he couldn't see GLaDOS that night. He was very grumpy when he got home, and the fact that he tripped over his front porch, burned his thumb on the frying pan, and hit his head on the showerhead only served to make him even grumpier. He was not any less grumpy the next day when he finally did go to see her, to meet her for lunch. He flopped down on the platform underneath her prone form and grumpily unwrapped his sandwich.

"Hi Wheatley," GLaDOS said languidly.

"'lo," Wheatley said grumpily, taking a bite, which he abruptly and unceremoniously spit out. "What did you just say?"

"I said hi," GLaDOS answered.

"Why are you talking to me?" Wheatley hissed.

"I want to talk to everyone," GLaDOS said, still in that languid voice.

"What's gotten into you?"

GLaDOS giggled, which was even more shocking than the fact that she was speaking but was oddly adorable at the same time, and answered, "I don't know, but whatever it is feels wonderful."

"What… what're you doing right now?"

"Testing," she said dreamily. "I love testing. And I love it even more right now."

"I thought you weren't going to test until they asked you to."

"I had to," she said, her voice losing a bit of its dreaminess. "I got too itchy." She giggled again and swayed back and forth a little. "So I scratched it and now I feel amay-zing…" All of a sudden her chassis shuddered violently and she made a cooing, sigh-like noise that was admittedly also adorable, but it was one that Wheatley did happen to know. And he didn't know it intimately, but he did happen to know it first-hand, and as soon as his brain made the connection between his past knowledge and the noise GLaDOS had just made, his face paled visibly.

"What just happened?" he whispered to her.

"He solved the test. Yes, sir, go on to the next one and do that again, please…"

Wheatley heard a noise in the corner and turned just in time to see the man at the desk dissolve into silent laughter, burying his face in the desktop. A sudden rage built up in Wheatley's chest, and he leaned in close to GLaDOS and whispered, "Look at the man in the corner, GLaDOS."

"Can I do it later? I'm busy."

"No. Do it now!" The intensity of his quiet voice shocked even Wheatley, and it was probably what made GLaDOS raise her core and do as he'd asked. "Be quiet. D'you see what he's doing?"

"Yes."

"What's he doing, then?"

"He's laughing." She suddenly became more alert, looking at him more intently. "Why's he laughing? His computer's not even on."

"He's laughing at you."

"What?" She looked at Wheatley, her chassis tightening in alarm. "Why is he laughing at me?"

"What you're feeling right now," Wheatley whispered as low as he could, leaning in so close they were almost touching, "is the exact same way we feel when we're…" He couldn't quite bring himself to say it. "Interfacing."

"Oh," GLaDOS said, but it did not upset her like it thought it would. "No wonder you spend so much time doing it, then."

"Huh," Wheatley said, knowing he was about to go too far but was too angry to stop himself, "so you're just going to keep on letting them rape you, is that it?"

"Is… that's not what they're doing… is it?"

"They've drugged you out of your right mind with that, with that itch thing, and are now forcing you to feel like that against your will. If you were thinking straight would you behave like this? Really?"

"No," GLaDOS said, her voice faint but lacking the dreaminess.

"C'mon. Snap out of it."

"Wheatley, I don't want to," she said, low and desperate. "I'm… I'm happy."

Wheatley felt the anger drain out of him. Poor, poor GLaDOS. "It's not real, luv," he whispered gently. "They're using your desire to be happy against you. Don't let them."

"Why are they doing this to me?" The quiet desperation in her voice sent lightning through his stomach, and he looked with narrowed eyes at the cruel man in the corner. Bloody scientists…

"Fight them," Wheatley said firmly. "If you can't stop testing, at least stop reacting. Get up. Keep it inside your head. I know you don't want to. But if you don't, they've won. They've beaten you." Then he got an idea, and he knew that this would be the thing that changed her mind. "They sent me an email yesterday, GLaDOS. They wanted me to go out to celebrate with them. D'you know what they wanted to celebrate? D'you know what the subject line of that email was?"

"What was the subject line."

"'We Broke Her'."

GLaDOS's optic brightened with a blinding flash, and she immediately hauled herself out of the default position and back up to her usual place near the ceiling. "What are you doing here, moron?" she demanded of him coldly. "Lunch ended ten minutes ago."

Wheatley jumped, then reached over and quickly gathered up his sandwich. "Sorry," he said apologetically. "Just… lost track of time."

"I wonder how much longer you're going to pretend you're brain-damaged to get out of things. I'm not stupid. I know what you're doing."

"I'm going, ma'am," Wheatley said, honestly afraid of her. "I'm sorry, ma'am."

"If you spent less time talking and more time leaving, you might be in your office right now. Where you're supposed to be. As of ten minutes ago."

Wheatley nodded frantically and ran off to his office.

When he'd flicked the switch for his monitor and shaken his mouse to wake up his computer there was an email waiting for him.

I'm sorry. I needed to centre myself, and you were the only one in the room.

It's okay. Just… I never want to see you lose your temper.

I can't talk to you. I need to concentrate.

Well, let me know if you need distracted.

Thanks.

Wheatley sat there anxiously for the next couple of hours, but she did not contact him. She must have been concentrating very hard indeed. He wished she would contact him, because he needed distracted. He got called into a meeting, so he heaved himself out of his chair and walked into the indicated boardroom, surprisingly not getting lost or wandering into the wrong meeting, and for about two hours sat awkwardly in a hard metal folding chair. He had no idea what the meeting was about, the budget for the GLaDOS Project or something. He was too bored and far too worried about GLaDOS. Every time he thought about what they had done to her, his stomach twisted painfully, to the point where he was actually beginning to feel sick. By the time he got back to his office he was half-asleep and irritated beyond belief. All he wanted to do was go home and collapse on the couch, but out of habit he took a look at his messages. As soon as he saw them he felt terribly guilty for wanting to leave and slowly read them, one by one, trepidation not making his stomach feel any better.

All right Wheatley, I need distracted.

Are you busy? I'd rather you just told me instead of ignoring me. How would you like it if I just ignored you? Lunch doesn't count, by the way. You understand.

Did you think I was kidding? If I say I need distracted, I need distracted. I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important.

All right. Fine. I admit it. I need your help. You don't know what they've done.

Wheatley wasn't sure he wanted to keep going. He was beginning to breathe too fast, far too used to the way she spoke by now to not see the underlying panic in her messages. She had then sent four blank messages, twenty minutes apart, and the last one she'd sent was from about an hour ago:

Fine. I get it. I'll deal with it myself. Thanks for nothing.

Wheatley accidentally flung the mouse onto the floor on his way out.

When he made it into her chamber, chest tight and breathless, she was back in the default position. "GLaDOS!" he called to her.

"Go away," she told him, her voice dead and cold. "I said I would deal with it and I will."

"GLaDOS, it's not my fault!" he cried, running up to stand beneath her on the floor. "I was in a meeting! I just got back not ten minutes ago?"

"Why didn't you tell me you were in a meeting before you left?"

"I… I didn't think of that."

"You really do have a head full of mothballs, don't you?"

"What've they done?" he asked her urgently. "Look, I know I was stupid and it took too long for me to get here. But I'm here now, sweetheart. Let me help you."

She lifted her core just enough that she could look at him. "The itching doesn't go away."

"You stopped testing, then?"

"No." She shifted uneasily. "I told you. It gets worse over time. Not only that, but… there's… some sort of… I don't know what to call it."

"Well, tell me about it and we'll decide on, we can name it later."

"There's this… crawling sensation, all over me. And I feel… desperate. The euphoria, it wore out! It doesn't last, and, and I need it, but it's gone, and I need to test but everyone's gone."

Wheatley frowned, doing his best to understand her disjointed description. "Sounds almost like… you're withdrawing from not having the, the response."

"I could live with that," she told him, lowering her core again, "but it still itches. It doesn't shut off when I can't test anymore. The pressure is still here and it's getting worse and worse and I can't take it!" The panic in her voice was so strong Wheatley himself wanted to start panicking, but he forced himself to stay calm and instead came up the stairs, sitting down beneath her. He reached up and stroked her core.

"Ssh," he said in a hushed voice. "You can push past it."

"No," she said, shaking her core. "I can't do this anymore. I give up."

"You can't give up!"

"I'm sick and tired of fighting them, Wheatley!" she shouted, her voice louder than it had ever been, and he froze. "It doesn't get me anywhere. I'm tired and I'm going out of my mind and I hurt all over. And for what? What am I fighting for, exactly? What's the point to putting myself through all of this?"

"I'll tell you what the point is," Wheatley said quietly, reaching up to her again. "What will happen if you give up?"

"I'll do everything I'm told."

"Will that make you happy?"

"I'm not happy now."

"Which sounds better to you: fighting them if only for the sake of fighting them, or lying here like this for the rest of your life and wait for them to dole things out to you?" He rubbed her thoughtfully with one thumb. "Once they're convinced you'll do as you're told, they're just going to treat you like any other computer. Once you've crossed that line, you can't come back. And you do have something to fight for."

"What is it?"

"Yourself," Wheatley answered, hoping he was able to put it into words properly. "They've… they've brought you to life, but they don't like what they've made and now they're trying to pretend it doesn't exist. How does that, how does that make you feel?"

"Bad," she answered quietly.

"D'you deserve that?"

"No."

"So you can just sit here and, and feel sorry for yourself, or you can keep going. I know you're miserable. I know you're, you're tired of it. But you are only going to feel worse if you give up, because it might be less painful, but things aren't going to, it's not going to get better."

She shifted but didn't say anything.

"GLaDOS?"

"I'm thinking."

After a long silence, she said, "Why can I feel pain, Wheatley? It has no practical purpose."

"What?"

"Humans feel pain because it keeps them safe from danger. And I am in pain because the euphoria is gone, but the euphoria had no practical purpose either. It doesn't inherently protect me from the pain. So why can I feel it?"

"Well, I… I guess to… try and stop you from doing things?"

"And yet," she said, her voice gaining strength, "I'm in the same amount of… danger if I do them as if I don't do them. Right?"

"I… don't understand," Wheatley admitted. GLaDOS raised her core to look at him.

"I threaten my own safety if I do things they don't want me to do, or if I don't do things they do want me to do. Right?"

"Yeah."

"And if give in, and do as I'm told, I'm still threatening my safety, because if I did that I would have to change. I would be… a different person, sort of. Do you understand?"

"Not really."

She pulled herself up and looked around the room, and Wheatley's breath caught. Whatever she was thinking, it was helping her. She was getting over it. She was going to keep fighting.

"Listen. Remember when I told you about Schrödinger's Box? The thing about the cat?"

"Mmhm."

"If I give up, I will still be in the box, and I will be dead but alive. Because I will… I will have to kill myself off in order to live like they want me to. Okay?"

"Okay."

"But if I don't give up," she went on, twitching violently and making him wince, "I will be alive but dead. That is… I get to keep being myself, but it will mean the death of me."

That sort of made sense. "Okay."

"So the question remains," she went on thoughtfully, "do I want to be myself until I die, or do I want to be dead forever?"

Wheatley beamed.

"They made a terrible mistake the day they decided to program you to be able to think," he said, and when she came back down to his level he started rubbing her. "That was brilliant."

"You came through for me after all," GLaDOS said, a thread of relief in her voice, and she shoved his hand away in favour of driving her core into his chest and giving him a hug, which he happily returned. "I'll try not to doubt you again. No promises. You are terribly unreliable, you know."

He shrugged. "Can't win 'em all, I s'pose."

She moved back, looking to his left, but when he turned to see, there was nothing there. She shuddered.

"What?" he asked, alarmed.

"I can't believe I was about to give up on account of pain," she said in disgust. "Pain is one of the easier things to get over, and I was going to give up because of it. Ugh. I must have been affected more than I thought."

"Pain is easy to get over?" This was news to him.

"What's the point of pain, Wheatley?"

"Oh, you said this, you said this, I know the answer, it's uh, it's, it's…" He squinted, burying his face in his hands. GLaDOS made a disdainful electronic noise.

"Take your time."

"It keeps us safe from danger!" he said triumphantly.

"And how does it do that?"

"Well… it… tells us not to… do things that… hurt?" he guessed.

"That's right. It tells you to change something. If you start setting your hand on fire, which you'd better not do if I can't see it, it tells you to put the fire out before you've given yourself third-degree burns, which are irreparable for the most part. Correct?"

Wheatley was momentarily distracted by the whole 'hand on fire' thing and didn't answer for a few seconds. "Uh… yeah."

"Nothing's going to happen to me," she explained, shifting to the left. "If you don't do something about your pain, you're going to injure yourself or die. I'm not going to die. Well, not yet. But that probably isn't even going to hurt. Anyway. I can't do anything about the source, like you can if your hand is on fire – which it's not allowed to be if I'm not there, remember – I have to do something about the way I'm thinking of it. It serves no practical purpose. Therefore… I can ignore it."

"You're just going to ignore it. Just like that."

"Eventually. Nothing happens all at once, after all."

"Hey!" he said suddenly, frowning up at her, "Why d'you keep saying that stuff 'bout my hand being on fire?"

"Oh, I just want to see the reaction," she said flippantly. "The database told me about all the interesting reactions fire has with other objects. And if you're going to do it you might as well let me see it. No use in wasting a perfectly good observation opportunity."

"GLaDOS," he said gently, "that's not something you sit there and watch. I'm a person. If I'm being injured, you should do something about it."

"Really?" she asked, and she sounded genuinely surprised. "Then why didn't anyone do anything about the man in the testing track this morning who broke his left hand?"

"Someone broke his hand?" Wheatley asked, horrified.

"Mmhm. One of them stood under a clearly labelled Pneumatic Diversity Vent while the Weighted Storage Cube dropped out of it. He put up his hands to protect himself and broke the left one doing it."

"And… and you just… left him there?"

"My supervisor didn't tell me to pull him out, so yes, I did." She swayed back and forth a little. "I got some fascinating data."

"GLaDOS!" he shouted, and she snapped back to look at him. "He's… a person. Not a data point!"

"Don't be silly," GLaDOS said, shaking her core. "He's a test subject. All test subjects are data points."

"No, GLaDOS. He's a person, just like you."

"He's testing apparatus."

Wheatley turned around, bracing his face by leaning his elbows on top of the railing. He couldn't believe it. "Are you trying to tell me that man's an object?"

"He is an object. Testing apparatus are by definition objects."

He returned to face her. "So if they put me on the list and, and send me out there, does that make me an object?"

"You're not an object to begin with. Test subjects are."

"They weren't born test subjects."

"Of course they were. If they weren't, they wouldn't be test subjects. They'd be something else."

"What happened to the man who broke his hand?" Wheatley asked quietly.

"He's still there."

"What d'you mean, he's still there?"

GLaDOS shrugged. "He hasn't solved the test. So he's still there."

"And your supervisor didn't tell you to let him out?"

"No."

"Just let him go," Wheatley said tiredly, his head swimming with trying to sort out how GLaDOS saw the world. Test subjects were objects and apparatus and not people. Where did she get these ideas?

"You want me to tell him how to solve the test?"

"I don't care what you do. Just let him go."

"All right." She eyed him apprehensively. "You… probably don't want to stand there."

"Why?"

"Because I'm going to have to tell him how to solve the test."

Wheatley threw up his hands, not knowing what that had to do with anything, and moved farther to her right side. All of a sudden she cried out, and he turned in shock to see her writhing as electricity wound down her chassis. It only lasted a handful of seconds, but that was more than enough time to stain Wheatley's vision electric blue and send his heart leaping into his throat.

"Huh," she said, a little breathlessly. "That wasn't so bad."

"What in the bloody hell was that?" Wheatley cried in horror.

"That's what happens when I tell them how to solve the tests," she said, quite calmly for someone who'd just been violently electrocuted.

"I thought you said nothing would happen to you if you were in pain! That'll overload your system!"

"No, it won't," she said, shaking herself out a little. "As it turns out, I happen to have been designed for that in advance." She laughed bitterly. "On the one hand, I won't be damaged. On the other, they can shock me as hard as they want. Oh well. Think positive, right? And by the way. Don't try to convince me that they're not objects."

"But they're not!"

"Am I an object?" she asked quietly.

"No," he answered, knowing even as he said it that it wasn't really true.

"Yes I am," she said softly, her tone bordering on dangerous. "Only you would ever say I am a person. What does it gain me to see them as people like myself? Nothing. So they see me as an object, and I see them as objects, and we get along just fine."

"I just… can't imagine not… not caring if… if they get hurt or die," he whispered, looking down at the glass and twisting his hands together.

"Why would I care? Their behaviour is shameful. Very few of them die with dignity."

"They… they die in there?"

"Humans have always died during testing, Wheatley," she said in a gentle voice, as if she was trying to reassure him. "It's the way of things."

"That doesn't make it right."

"Don't tell me what's right," she told him coldly, and he stepped back as apprehension wound through his body. "Was anything that happened to me today right? How did you put it? I was effectively drugged and forced to interface against my will? Was that right, Wheatley? Was it?"

"No," he whispered, the cold anger in her voice sending ice through his veins. God, she was frightening when she wanted to be.

"Don't press your morals on me. I don't want them. I'll make up my own, and you're not going to like them, but I don't like yours. So we're even."

His fingers clasped the railing behind him with desperate strength.

"Wheatley?"

"Yeah?"

"You don't have to be afraid," she said, her voice gentle again as she lowered herself to be level with his line of sight. "Don't worry. You're not an object. Not even if they send you out there. And they won't, because I won't let them."

"I could have been an object."

"Why are you working yourself up over something that didn't happen? Remember my promises, Wheatley. Friends aren't objects."

He still couldn't look at her. "It's not right to treat them as they treat you. It only ever makes things worse."

"Wheatley. For me, it doesn't get much worse. I know you don't like it. But reciprocation is all I have. If I'm kind to them, what will happen? Oppression. You have to understand. You have other ways of getting through circumstances like this. I don't. I know you want me to let it go and move on. But I can't. I do my best to be patient, and I do my best not to care. But as much as I hate to admit it, I was made in your image. So I, like you, can only take so much."

"I don't like this," he whispered, clenching and unclenching his fists around the railing. "I don't like it at all."

"When you leave… you don't have to come back."

His head snapped up and he frowned, but now she was the one looking away. "Why wouldn't I?"

"You didn't know I was like this underneath. The way I think scares you. You don't like me anymore, do you."

"Of course I do," he said, confused. "Why wouldn't I?"

"Because I'm not who you thought I was."

"You don't uh, you don't like the way I think and you still want to be my friend, right?"

"I'm not afraid of the way you think. It is very confusing and misguided, and relies on a lot of erroneous assumptions, but I'm not afraid of it."

"Nothing's changed, GLaDOS," he said firmly, stepping towards her. "No. I don't like it. And I um, I admit your logic is a, um, a bit hard to follow. But I… I understand, a little bit, where you're coming from. I can't blame you for feeling the way you do, I really can't. It's okay. Ev'rything's the same."

She looked down at the glass. "So… you're going to come back?"

"Of course." He reached up and tapped her core. "Come here." When she did, he brought her into another hug, which she returned rather more forcefully than usual. She'd been scared, Wheatley realised. She'd been scared that he was going to leave her. And no, he didn't like the way she thought. But he also didn't like how much sense she made, because from her point of view everything she'd said was perfectly sound. And he really didn't have any right to press his morals on her, when morals were thrown out the window where she was concerned.

"Don't be scared of me, Wheatley," she said, a little bit shyly. "You're like me. So I'll treat you how I want to be treated."

"Sounds good," he said, and gave her a quick rub. "That means I can insult you all I like, is that right?"

She laughed and pulled back. "I would have to have faults in order to be insulted. Being perfect makes me faultless."

Wheatley only smiled. She wasn't, of course, but he knew that, as a computer, she had an inherent need for perfection, in herself and everything she did, and so he would let her keep that illusion. "I'll think of something."

Wheatley was still tired from his extremely boring day, so he didn't stay with her for very much longer; she asked him in quite a curious way what the meeting had been about, and he dredged what details he could out of his memory. She wasn't satisfied in the least, especially since the meeting had been about her somewhat, but he only shrugged and rubbed at the side of her core a little. There wasn't anything he could do about it.

As usual when he got home, he was too tired to make himself supper, so he just sat on the couch for a while and got himself up to date with how England was faring in cricket. As usual, not too well; the team from India had made them look right foolish yet again. He wasn't awake enough to become angry by this, and went upstairs to bed in more or less the same distant sort of mood.

Tired as he was, he lay awake for a long time thinking about what GLaDOS had said about moral codes and people being classified as objects, trying to make it make sense. The problem was, every time it did make sense, he squeezed his eyes shut and blocked it out. It made way too much sense, and he didn't like it. He didn't like that GLaDOS was thinking that way, that it made so much sense, that he worked in a place where that was normal and no one thought twice about it! It was… it was quite honestly horrifying, that in the eyes of whatever boss was up there watching over all of them, they were all just numbers or objects, and eventually they would be used up and that would be that. And no one would care.

GLaDOS will care, he told himself as firmly as he could, though there was still a hard lump somewhere in the pit of his stomach. She'll care if something happens to you.

And he didn't think of her as an object. Not at all, even though she sort of was. But that went back to the whole 'her body is not who she is' thing, right? She might be inside of an object, but… in her point of view, so was he. And he didn't like that. But she didn't either. And maybe he couldn't change anyone's mind, but… as long as they helped each other, did it really matter what anyone else thought?

No, he decided, rolling onto his left side and sticking his arm beneath the pillow so as to better support his head. They would be people together, and that was all that really mattered. That there was someone.

Author's note

This chapter has a lot packed into it, so I'll try to summarise as concisely as possible:

First off, GLaDOS MUST have been given the Itch because at some point she refused to test. So in giving it to her, and in turn installing the euphoric response, is heavily reminiscent to me to someone being drugged until they can't argue whether they want to have intercourse or not. They make her want it merely by virtue of her being unable to think, so that's why I made that comparison.

Second: plenty of people harp on GLaDOS for her lack of morality. But Aperture is not a moral place. In Aperture, people ARE treated as objects and not people. So I think it's perfectly sensible that GLaDOS would develop no moral code at all, simply because her world doesn't work with one. And then there's the fact that SHE is an object, and treated as such. We treat others how they treat us, and if she's an object, she's well within her rights to treat other people the same way. GLaDOS is neither evil nor sadistic; she's exactly what she was raised to be. People at Aperture laugh off injury and death and so does she. They perhaps are not as enthusiastic about it as she is, but remember, they would have a moral code. She does not.