AN: Dear Flying Spaghetti Monster, I am so sorry about the delay! It was such a busy week, first I had a test, and then I was 5 days (!) on a school trip – that didn't even have a proper long, boring bus drive to get some serious work done.

To make up for that, this chapter is extra-long!

And again there was nothing to say and again they sunk into the horrible, awkward silence – or wonderful, blessed silence if you asked GLaDOS – that covered them like the worst kind of mud made of failed attempts to start a conversation and mumbling.

Wheatley hated the silence. He always did. He needed to say something, but what? What could he say to her? She HATED him, that was something she made very clear and it was not like there was much they had in common. Even with… with…that test subject, that girl, there was less awkward silence, and she never talked back (and was possibly brain damaged). But he had to talk about something.

Now he hated it more than ever. It reminded him of that terrible time he was trapped…or freed, or however it worked in space. Nothing but self hatred, someone that didn't make any effort to communicate and…well he couldn't think of any other similarity. Space was pretty empty, so there was not much to compare with Aperture. Because Aperture had a lot of stuff in it, like…like chairs and tables, or gadgety gadget stuff or…broken ceilings. So the comparison didn't really work. But that's how it felt, so...

He hadn't even thought about that for a while, not since the whole business with… her started. All the memories of that who-knows-how-long time alone just shoved itself to a secret part of his mind the moment something more interesting happened. In the seconds that he got a chance to distract himself he…uh…did. All the nights he spent thinking, almost crushing all his systems from overheating, were basically pointless because every second he found something more interesting to thi-

"Ohh! I have something to ask you!" Wheatley said, trying to hide his relief. "Something I've always wondered about…well, maybe…'always wondered' is a bit exaggerated. But I've always thought about, was bothered by… and 'always'…is a pretty big word too. I'll say it was more like I was sometimes bothered by it. You know, occasionally... to be honest, it wasn't really a 'bother'. It was more of a-"

"Are you trying to ask me something," GLaDOS interrupted, "or torture me? Because I always knew you were a two-faced coward who couldn't think, but I thought that horribleness was mostly saved for our shared, murderous mute of a 'friend'. "

"Oh, yeah." Wheatley tried to clear his throat. He didn't feel like it needed to be cleared in particular, but that's what humans sometimes did when they wanted to say something and he guessed that clearing one's throat was important for some reason. However, he quickly discovered that he didn't know exactly how to do this so what was supposed to be a small cough turned into a long choking squeal.

"Well, my question is, ummm ..." Wheatley mumbled, "why did you kill them all...the humans, I mean the humans. Back then...? Why did you do it? "

GLaDOS seemed to think about it for a while before replying. "I wanted to see what would happen. You can't say it's not interesting: the small twitches they make a second before their final breath, the faces of the few survivors when they realize what happened." Her voice started getting more...angry. "Seeing those little scum getting what they deserve f-". She stopped and calmed down again to her usual tone. "Call it scientific curiosity."

"S...s...Scum?" he said, rather terrified. "I wouldn't call them Scum. The humans, I mean, they're not so bad." He paused for a second. "Sure they are lazy, smelly, ugly, fleshy egoists who think that they're better than everyone because they happened to 'evolve naturally' and keep calling you 'it' even when you're still in the room and can totally bloody hear it and cut off your salary for a month because you HAPPEN to press the neurotoxin release button by mistake like it's my prob-"

GLaDOS stomped on his foot, something that according to data from the old human cooperative testing was a way to say "shut up". A rather painful way to say it, which was always a plus.

Wheatley had to agree about the "painful" part, although definitely not about the "plus". Once he managed to calm down he continued. "But it's nothing... death-worthy. You know, if I was in your place, I would've just...fired them al-"

"Please, I've seen you in 'my place'," the last two words were said in a childish tone, "and I must admit you have an interesting interpretation of 'firing'."

"You two were plotting to...ah, I thought that you were, I mean, it was just one hu-I...it wasn't my fau- t...the mainframe...what... I'm sorry..." Wheatley mumbled in a panicked and pitiful tone of voice. Wait, why had everything gone blurry? He had the glasses on, that was supposed to take care of his vision. But it was actually worse than before, now everything was a watery blob of colo-oh! Now it was better, but what was that...ah, he was tearing, wasn't he? He had heard about that from humans, and books, and he had to admit that he understood the point of it. Maybe it was like the way humans let out extra water or something... yeah, that made sense...that's what was happening, just a completely natural human function, nothing to worry about. Nothing meaningful. Now, back to being insulted.

"I'M NOT LISTENING TO YOU! SO JUST STOP!" he screamed.

"I will stop when you stop acting as if you were better than me," GLaDOS said. "You failed in your function as a personality core. You were a waste of space and money for Aperture. When I finally got rid of you, I threw a big party to celebrate and everybody was there - even those who didn't know you, because they hated you too"

Wheatley mumbled something indecipherable, perhaps to GLaDOS, perhaps to himself.

"And besides," she added, "humans are much worse than you think."

Wheatley's wide, idiotic possibly fake grin had already returned to its rightful place on his face. "That's, uh, a matter of opinion I think," he said. "But, if I may note that- " he swallowed, "I know humans better then you... because I don't kill them, not usually, with neurotoxin." He paused. "Not that there's anything wrong with- oh, wait, yes there is. There is something terribly wrong with that, Very very very, very wrong. " Wheatley nodded, mostly to himself. "But I'm trying to... just; it's just that I know humans better than you. I talked to them, I worked with them... I didn't like it, but... I know them, and they're not that bad."

GLaDOS' voice was quiet and hateful."That's just because you've never heard them."-

"Humans? Oh, I've heard them. I meant—"

She let out a terrible chuckle. "I wasn't talking about the humans…"

Wheatley recoiled. He found a broken rusty piece of metal and waved it around defensibly. He knew that GLaDOS was mad, that was clear to anyone in Aperture, but hearing voices? That...explained a lot.

She sighed. "Not like that. It's..." She paused for a second and tried to word it properly. It was such an important part of herself, of her life, and it was hard to explain, especially in a way that the moron would understand. "It's the cores, the cores connected to the mainframe. Tons of tiny voices, interrupting my thoughts, changing them. All the time, an endless stream of noise in my mind; 'Oh! What's this thing do? Who is that?' "that last part in a fake cheerful, high pitched voice. "'Fish shaped candy, Fish shaped solid waste, Fish shaped dirt!' " She added in a much lower and slower tone," 'Oh! You know what will be bloody brilliant?'" Her voice was now what Wheatley could only assume was supposed to be a mockery of his own " 'What do you think is their motive? Please don't let them hurt us!'" she said in a fake panic tone, before sighing.

"That's what they'd done to me, those 'not so bad' humans of yours. They wanted to trap me in that prison forever, so I gave them what they deserved."

"Uh, if you want to be exa-" Wheatley started to say.

"You're going to mention the corrupted cores, aren't you?" GLaDOS said. "You think that just because I managed to get You-Know-Who to do something good and not murder-related for a change and got her to connect a few corrupted voices into that piece of scrap metal you used to call a brain in order to save my facility, while you tried to do anything BUT think, somehow that makes you an expert in what I've gone through?"

"Ahhhh….NO! That is not what I meant to say at all," Wheatley lied, "and I also never meant to make absolutely any puns about 'spheres'. Not at all," he added quickly. Had he heard voices in that battle? He couldn't remember. Everything was so much voice and pain anyway that most of the things the Space Sphere, the Rick person that hung around with him in space for a while and that other pink core said just disappeared. And it was for a short time in any case. "What I was going to say is… well… that maybe they only put the cores on because… because you wouldn't stop killing them? I mean that's just what I-"

"Be quiet!"

"Oh, okay… I just…I guess I'm just trying to find stuff to say, you know. To react. It's hard to find something to say about these kind of things."

It was quiet again, but – for probably for the first time in his life – Wheatley didn't care.