That's What I'm Counting On – 14 – Rewritten
I just wanted to thank all the new followers for this story. It's you guys who have inspired me to keep working on it. Who knows, maybe I'll go back and finish all my other stories as well.
…okay, that's a little optimistic. Let's see how things go.
I completely revamped everything from the first time I wrote this. This version is much more cohesive.
If there is anything I wished I could forget, I would wish I could forget this "Itch" that Wheatley says he has when he tests. By the way he described it, and the noises he made after I finished the test…yes, I would definitely like to forget this Itch thing and get Wheatley out of that chassis before everything falls apart. The elevator drifted to a stop and the doors slid open to the start of another test.
"It shouldn't be hard to stay alive long enough to find him." GLaDOS said quietly. Whether it was to reassure me or herself, I didn't know, but it was nice to have some vote of confidence on my side. Passing through the door separating the elevator chamber from the test chamber, the test screen flickered to life. Test 01…well, at least it wasn't quite the same as the other "Test 01" chambers.
"It's alright, everything's good. I just invented some more tests." Wheatley said, watching us from his huge monitor in a corner of the room.
"This is one of MY tests!" GLaDOS said angrily. I took the time to study the mostly white test chamber as the two AIs exchanged.
"Not entirely. Not entirely." Said Wheatley as I looked up, spotting a button on the ceiling in this room and a hole to an above chamber. "Look at the word 'test' there, on the wall. That's brand new." As he spoke some of the smaller panels flipped from black to white, assembled to show the word 'test' as Wheatley had described. I let out a huff of air and stepped forward to study the swirling blue column of light in the middle of the room; I took a cautious step into the beam and found myself immediately floating upward. Startled, I moved to escape the beam and landed on the floor outside of the beam to gather my bearings.
"What's wrong with you?" GLaDOS asked mockingly.
"Never seen th-these…b-beam things before." I answered, looking angrily at the talking tuber.
"Ah, that's right. I never had the chance to introduce you to these…before you killed me and put that little moron in charge of everything that is." It was irritating how casual and how much of a jackass GLaDOS could be in such a life-or-death, the-facility-is-about-to-explode-so-we-need-to-test-like-crazy-to-stay-alive situation. "These are Excursion Tunnels. It works a lot like when you pick up a Weighted Storage Cube with the Handheld Portal Device, except it pushes whatever is in it in a specific direction." Well, that could be incredibly handy. I stepped back into the beam and floated awkwardly in the tunnel as I was carried into the upper half of the test chamber. I looked around and spotted a franken-turret on a ledge, a white portal surface on the opposite wall. I turned clumsily in the beam (it was like moving in water, only thicker) and placed an orange portal on the wall opposite the turret and a blue portal on the ceiling above me. Just like everything else, the beam carried on through the portals and now carried me horizontally towards the ledge.
"Oh, look at you!" Wheatley started, "You're about as graceful as a bird in syrup!" If that was supposed to be a cute comment, it wasn't any comment I would care to hear. He was right though, I considered as I stumbled out of the beam, collected the mutant turret with the portal gun and carried it to the floor of the upper half of the chamber. I was not at all comfortable with the excursion tunnel. When I put the turret on the ground, its legs sprang out and it started to hop away, not quick enough to escape and keep me from flipping the cube onto its back, the spindly legs flailing helplessly in the air. I aimed and placed the orange portal on the checker-patterned panel beneath the big red button and then placed the turret-cube into the excursion tunnel. I watched as it sailed upward in the beam and through the blue portal before looking downward to watch the turret continue to rise and press into the red button.
"Ahhhohohhhh…wow…well done, seriously, both of you." Oh my word, this is so embarrassing, "Why don't I-why don't you two go on ahead? Yeah? And I'll just-I'll just catch up with you." If only I had the ability to forget what just happened. My face was flushed red and I screwed my eyes shut as I quickly moved out of the test chamber and into the next elevator. I sat myself on the ground and groaned in embarrassment, oh if only I could make myself forget, and proceeded to repeatedly bang the back of my head against the wall of the elevator.
"Okay," GLaDOS said, thankfully distracting me, "so the bad news is that the tests are MY tests now. So they can kill us. The god news is…well, none so far, to be honest." Now isn't that a comforting thought? "I'll get back to you on that." I nodded as the elevator took an unusually long trip upward and then seemed to suddenly ease to a stop outside another test. I suppose if I ever get out of here, I can look forward to never mindlessly solving these kinds of tests again. When the doors slid open, I stood up again and walked towards the test chamber. "You know, I'd love to help you solve the tests. But I can't."
"Why n-not?" I asked as the door unsealed and opened.
"Sorry, I honestly can't. You're on your own." Oh well, it's not like I hadn't been on my own the entire time I've been here. On entering the chamber, I walked to the edge of the cliff of an entrance and looked around.
"Yeah…made this test myself." Wheatley said proudly, "Out of smaller tests. That I found. Lying around. Jammed 'em all together. Buttons, got funnels, bottomless pits are involved. It's got it all, it's got it all, absolutely dynamite." About the only thing I didn't like was that there was no floor, the whole 'bottomless pit' thing lost my favor when he plunged GLaDOS and myself into that elevator shaft. With a heavy sigh, I took a tentative jump into the excursion tunnel beneath me, fired a blue portal at the top of the white panel to my right and an orange portal at the wall that was originally behind me. I drifted, almost serenely, through the portals and shot the blue portal at a white wall to the right, a little below my position. I dropped for a fraction of a second, but it was more than enough to spike my adrenaline. The tunnel then carried me to the opposite wall, where there was a checkered panel beneath me, and fired the blue portal at the small space of floor. "Alright, okay, this is taking too long. Okay?" Excuse me Wheatley, but these tunnels aren't the fastest way to solving a test. "I'll just-I'll just tell you how to solve this test, okay? You see that button over there? Alright?" I looked to my right as I floated up and stepped onto the next ledge that held, as Wheatley described, a small red button on its traditional white stand. "Anyway, all you have to do is pu-AAAAUURRGHH." I jumped as Wheatley was horridly shocked when he tried telling me how to solve the test.
"And that's why I can't help you solve these tests." GLaDOS added as Wheatley, for some reason or another, started 'panting' to catch his 'breath.'
"Nevermind. Nevermind. Solve it yourself. You're on your own." Why on earth are robotic creations programmed to simulate exhaustion, pain…ugh…pleasure…and fear? According to the awards and news clippings from the old underground Aperture, this place was once built for making shower…I don't know, was it curtains? Curtains to robots. I don't see the connection between the two. Shaking my head to refocus, I pressed the button and a franken-turret was released from a tube and dropped into the abyss. Oops. I placed the blue portal on the wall beneath where the turret would appear and pressed the button again, this time catching the turret-cube in the excursion tunnel. When the cretin was above the checkered panel, I fired the blue portal beneath it again and it drifted upward. I caught the turret with the portal gun and pulled it free of the tunnel and looked around for the next part: a big red button that would open the door. On the ceiling, again. I put the turret-cube under the button, face down this time, and put a blue portal under it, making it float up to the button and- "Ohhh yes! Well done…" LA LA LA WHEATLEY. I CAN'T HEAR YOU.
"Thanks. All we had to do was pull that lever." GLaDOS said, confusing me. I traipsed along the walkway to the exit as she spoke.
"What? Well, no you pushed the buAAAGGGHHHH!" Wheatley was shocked again and I looked back at him worriedly, my little potato companion laughing evilly all the while.
"I know we're in a lot of trouble and probably about to die, but that was worth it." What an evil, evil little spud! For a moment, I completely forgot why I was helping her, only to be reminded a second later by a harsh shudder that the facility was probably one to two hours from completely combusting. I considered my options as I stepped into the elevator and was lifted towards the next test. One: I let Wheatley stay in charge and we all die in a fiery explosion, my almost-forgotten ally Doug included. Two: I put GLaDOS in charge and run the risk of immediately dying, being forced to test until I died, or, in the slimmest possibility of all, being set free into the world. And then there was my last option: decapitate myself and attempt to take charge of the facility…how that was supposed to happen, I wasn't sure. Why was my nice, simple, supposedly easy plan of escape such a complex endeavor?
Well, this was not looking good. Wheatley was not getting his uh…whatever he was getting after his tests get solved and he was becoming progressively more frustrated by not getting his 'fix.' It also doesn't help that GLaDOS keeps ticking him off by calling him a moron.
"I might have pushed that 'moron' thing a little too far this time." GLaDOS admitted as the elevator brought us higher and higher, closer to the surface and hopefully closer to Wheatley and escape.
"Gee, you th-think?" I asked sarcastically, not at all pleased with GLaDOS's smarmy attitude. If she weren't so important to my freedom and my general pride of being the only member of the 'Staying Alive Club,' I would have made a meal of her or tossed her as far away as I could into one of these several bottomless pits. Most likely I'd do the latter before considering the former.
"Hey! Don't look at me like that." Considering she was no threat to me here, I proceeded to shake the portal gun quickly and erratically. "GAH! Stop it! Please! You'll knock these plugs loose! I'll short out! Or completely shut down!" I obliged the panicked spud and huffed down at her as the elevator slowed and came to a stop at yet another test chamber…but, there was something different this time. "Ohhhh, now he's playing classical music." Indeed, the sounds of the tinny, elegant notes of the harpsichord poured out from the test chamber into the elevator chamber. When I entered, the test chamber screen came to life and revealed how little progress I'd actually made: we were at test chamber 05 out of who knows how many. At the very loud sound of a page being turned, I whirled to the right and stared out at the spacious chamber, Wheatley's white hull and blue optic glaring brightly on the black monitor on the right side of the chamber.
"Oh! Sorry, sorry, sorry. Hope that didn't-ha-hope that didn't disturb you too much then. That was the sound of books, pages being turned." Wheatley explained nonchalantly. "So that's just what I was doing. I was just reading ah…books. So I'm not a moron." The last part he said almost under his breath, which was quickly covered by "Anyway, just-just finished the last one. The hardest one. Machiavelli." Oh Wheatley, pretending to be smart by listening to classical music and reading a bunch of books won't change anything. At least not right away. Given a year or two, a whole lot of reading can really help; not sure about the music though. "Do not know what all the fuss was about. Understood it perfectly. Have you read that one?"
"Yes." GLaDOS muttered, I hadn't so…I decided to keep quiet as usual.
"Yeah, doubt it." Wheatley said, speaking over the potato AI. "Well, on with the test." I sighed and shook my head, stepping further into the chamber, blasting a blue portal at the end of the excursion tunnel to the left, an orange portal on the white floor panel between the two Aerial Faith Plates, and then confidently stepped into the faith plate in front of me. I sailed through the air for a moment, but was then caught in the excursion tunnel and lifted up until my back hit the ceiling. I aimed carefully and then shot an orange portal onto the angled plate to my right, dropping a considerable distance, though the portals, and then through the air to land on the ledge with the big red button.
'I'm surprised how easy this test is.' I thought as I placed the orange portal back in the path of the excursion tunnel, placing a column of blue in between the faith plates again. 'Usually things get quite a bit harder as I go along, but this only seems to be getting easier…if a little risky.' I pushed the small red button and released a turret-cube that bounced from the faith plate into the blue tunnel. I aimed the orange portal in the same place as I did to launch myself to this ledge and the cube dropped through the portals and…smack into Wheatley's monitor.
"Aww…bless your little primate brain." Primate? "I'm not actually in the room with you. Am I? Technology, it's complicated. Uh, you can't hurt the big ol' God face." I fixed myself a sour face, glared up at the big-headed AI and flipped him off before picking up the turret-cube and dropping it unceremoniously onto the button. "Augh! Now what was that about? Did-did you mess with the test somehow? That was nothing! That was nothing!"
"The body he's squatting in – MY body – has a built in euphoric response to testing. Eventually you build up a resistance to it, and it can get a little…unbearable." Well GLaDOS, thanks for filling me in, but I already kinda figured that the first time he made those noises. "Unless you have the mental capacity to push past it, of course. It didn't matter to me, I was in it for the science. Him, though…" Oh dear…it's like an addiction for him. Not only is he too…well…too stupid to push past it like GLaDOS, but I'm willing to bet it's the most positive experience Wheatley had ever had in the facility. It makes sense why he would try again and again to get at the euphoric response. It seems I've gotten so used to this process, I mindlessly walked to the elevator and entered, letting the door slide shut behind me and the lift carry me up and up again.
"How do we st-stop him?" I asked, more to myself than GLaDOS. I couldn't think past the obvious options, it would be impossible at this point to do the more detailed work of shutting down programs. I'm not well versed in computer processes and…wait a minute. I have GLaDOS. She could walk me through what I need to do. "G-GLaDOS…is there a c-contr-rol room?"
"What are you-? Oh, I see." The AI said, figuring I had some sort of plan. "Unfortunately no, I uh…smashed that room while you and that moron ruined the turrets and destroyed the neurotoxin generator. It was a failsafe, just in case you and that idiot managed to find it." Well crap, now what do we do? "The thing is, If he's not getting his solution euphoria, we could be in a lot of trouble." I sighed and nodded, the elevator once again coasting to a stop. I paused outside the elevator shaft and stared at the ominous blue screens surrounding the lift. There was an error with the nuclear emissions system, it was probably shut. So Wheatley was going to have us all killed because he didn't understand that he needed to press a key to make this process resume proper operation. Any key. Any key at all. And he didn't understand that all his problems would be fixed by pressing one measly key.
'I…how…how did Aperture build such a moron?' It just doesn't seem possible.
I'll also say that replaying Portal and Portal 2 helped kick my butt back into writing. I got new ideas and remembered old ones and tossed out the worst of them all, keeping a few ideas for the future.
Ah, the methods of inspiration and enacting on that inspiration.
Anyway, please leave a review. I welcome any constructive criticism.