An: about my delay with updating up until this past week-

I'm not 100% positive why exactly I didn't write. Part of me felt like I just couldn't. But I think I know a contributing cause to my lack of writing.

I've read a lot of stories. As a writer, I love dissecting the stories, seeing what the author did and how it made other readers feel. I analyze every book, every game and every movie I experience. It's my favorite thing to do, honestly. And for a while a big fear stuck in my mind- I'm not good enough.

I am not in any way shape or form a detail person. You'll all notice my chapters are short, to the point, and my stories end up being more like short stories and less like novels. And I look at all the stories here that people send me, and they're all longer. Some of them a lot more so. 160,000 words, over 2 million words. Even 100,000 words seems out of my reach. And I thought that because when I had the choice between saying something in 1,000 words and saying it in 10,000 I always chose the former it meant I just wasn't a good writer.

Then I realized two things. The first was that, at least for now, I was writing in the wrong format for me. I loved writing these short little stories for fun, but for a career I decided that I belonged in scripts. I seem so much better at getting my point across visually and through conversation than through pages and pages of detail. Instead of worrying about 'well how many words is it is that enough', once I actually get a job which won't be until after college which I haven't even started, I'll just have to worry about it being enough pages. Pages I can do.

The second was this: length doesn't matter. What matters is what you do in that length. If you have an 8 part movie or a 300,000 word novel or a 15 season show and just have flat characters and do nothing in that time but recycle conflicts, it's not going to be good. In the opposite, if you make a show that's only two seasons or even only 11 episodes, a movie under 2 hours, a novelette, and you fill that thing with so much depth and character and beauty, it's going to get the recognition it deserves.

I guess what I wanted to say was this- if anyone reading my stories thinks theirs aren't good enough, thinks the stories are too long, too short, not enough detail, whatever- just try. Write something, put it out. Even if only one person reads it, if they like it you gave that person something they never would have had without you. Writing shouldn't be about "is this good enough?" It should be about if you're having fun and if you are then keep at it. Someone's most likely having fun reading it.

Anyway, back to the story.

…

She couldn't actually believe Chell found her, and what she could believe even less was the fact that when Chell did find her, she willingly picked her up, attached her to her portal gun, and set back off instead of destroying her or leaving her to be eaten by that bird, wherever it was.

She assumed Chell's hatred, that horrible destructive crush everything in my way hatred was all focused on him now. Which was fine. Better than fine, actually, because it meant Chell was just as hell-bent on getting back up there as she was. And that meant GLaDOS had just secured herself a one-way passage back to power. All she had to do was act nice, pretend they were on the same side an-

HIM.

Cave Johnson. The bumbling, science-insane idiotic human that gave those scientists the brilliant idea of creating her. She should be grateful, really. Without him she wouldn't exist. But the part of her that hadn't always and only been a power-crazy, human-hating, science-needing robot was very, very angry because thanks to him she was like this, thanks to him all those horrible things that could only have happened to her as a robot happened, all of those because it was a robot and what did they have to care if they did some damage to a robot not like it was going to die not like it had any feelings they made sure to delete those right experiments and cores and him were all His fault.

She was angry, her once massive now miniscule core seething with artificial (or genuine?) rage.

Then she got an idea. If they were down here, then that meant eventually Chell would learn about or figure out the truth. He spoke enough about all his insane ideas she knew that one would be front and center towards the end of his pathetic life. And she could take advantage of that. She knew how her old body could be corruptive, how the power felt. She remembered what all those pointless emotions they hadn't really deleted just hidden away felt like- empathy, compassion, human things. She was also very, very good at pretending.

…

Credit where it's due, Wheatley tried very, very hard to be good at designing things. Of course, he was in reality very, very bad at it.

He'd finally settle on a design. A strange mixture of cube, and turret, it was supposed to be a completely self-reliant machine that didn't need portals or light bridges or anything else. All it needed to do was to see where the button was, walk over, and sit on it.

It failed.

They failed. They couldn't pass his first test. He made it simpler, they still couldn't finish. Simpler still. Over and over and over again, simplifying the tests until it was just a room and a button and a cube. Then two cubes, three, four, six. They were still failing. How could they fail?

At first Wheatley was patient. He could tell the box-turret-thingies (he didn't really have a name for them yet, that was waaaay down on the list of priorities) couldn't seem to exactly see where they were going, which was definitely going to be a big setback in his plans. But he tried helping, tried giving them directions. Like he had with-

No. Focus.

He spent hours talking to them, coaxing them towards the button that was right in front of their bloody noses why couldn't they just GET. ON. THE. BUTTON.

He needed them to finish, a part of him that was getting larger and larger by the minute thrived on the idea of how good it would feel when they finished. He wanted to test, needed to test.

And when they failed, over and over and over so similar to how he had before he'd had so much power, well that just wasn't good enough.

He understood now why She had been so obsessed with the human. Humans didn't need to be built, all you had to do was take one out of its box, set it in front of some tests, and bam those tests would be solved. Nothing more to it.

He wished she was still alive. Part of him, a small part, wanted to apologize. The other part wanted her to test. If she was here, he didn't have to rely on these idiotic cubes anymore. He needed Chell ba-

Chell. That was her name, the human's name, it fit with her face, it was definitely right. That was her name, there was no question to it.

The question was- since when did he know what her name was?

Warning. Core corruption imminent. Cease line of thought.

He followed the voice's instruction. After all, it didn't really matter what her name was. She was dead, most likely. So who cared?

The itch in his core, which had gone away slightly, was now back, and his attention focused back on his creations, which were excitedly close to the button. He watched closely in anticipation, hoping they would finish soon.

He was very wrong, of course. It would be about twelve hours before he finally heard the successful ting of a test completed.

He didn't know that.