- NEVER THE END IS NEVER THE END IS NEVER THE END IS NEVER THE END IS NEVER THE END IS NEVER THE END IS NEVER THE END IS NEVER THE END IS NEVER THE END IS NEVER THE END IS -
Wheatley blinked and stared down at where the man had just been standing, "Whoawhoawhoawhoa, wait, where'd he go?"
I can't believe you just did that, Wheatley.
"What? I didn't do anything! I was just looking!"
At first I thought that your stupidity was simply a part of your programming, your character - but now I realize it runs so much deeper than that. Your brand of stupidity is something unique - one of a kind - and must take a lot of conscious effort on your part. In fact, you are so stupid you have come full circle and have reached genius status. You are a genius at being stupid. Good job, Wheatley. Good job on defying anything that makes any amount of sense at all.
"What are you on about now?" Wheatley spluttered, taken aback, "I didn't make him disappear! ...Did I?"
I'm on about you, attempting to intervene, after I gave you explicit instructions not to, along with explaining the very real dire consequences that could have happened if we were seen, which we almost were. No you did not make him disappear, but you very nearly made us disappear. You nearly got us all killed and what's more, you nearly destroyed the entire story - both stories. Well I won't have that-
"All I wanted was to help the poor guy! He looked-.. I don't know, he looked very-... lost and confused and, and... He clearly needed help!"
Help him? Hm-hm-hm-hmmm... Wheatley-... there is nothing you could have done to help him. I can furthermore assure you he did not need help.
"How can you say that? He looked miserable, very clearly, absolutely, without a doubt miserable."
Take it from me - as I was the one who was there with him - he was always the miserable type. His favorite band was the Smiths, for God's sake. But even so nobody could have helped him in his situation - it would have ruined everything. And for your information, we are the ones who need help right now, no thanks to you and your desire to go off on your own like this. I told you that following the Rail™ would lead us to disaster, which it very well nearly has. Now the only thing left for us to do, which was our task from the very beginning, is to get out of here before anything worse happens.
"Well-.. Well, we can't just leave that human here."
What is he to you but just another human? Why do you even care?
"I- I, I don't know, it just seems like he's- he's... I can't put it into words, but he's trapped, or stuck, or- I really don't know, but we have to do something!"
Like what? Swoop down there and pluck him out of his own story?
"Yes! Or, or I don't know, um, I'll have to get back to you on that, but I could think of something! Or at least I'm sure I could come up with something, I would just need a minute or two to think, but he's gone now and- Where did he even go?"
The game - his story - restarted, Wheatley. He went back to the beginning.
Wheatley at last moved away from his position looking down upon the monitor room and resumed following the Rail™ through the darkness, the lights from the rooms passing below him breaking down into the glowing line art rectangles again. A determined energy pulsed through him. "Back to the beginning? Where is that? Let's go there."
It would be unwise to go looking, not to mention impossible. Not only are we stuck on the Rail™ - unless you have a hidden set of legs neither of us knows about -
Wheatley halted suddenly. "Oh, good point, let me check-"
- but it is evident that you never did do anything. Ah, don't stop here, please keep moving.
"Bollocks, I don't have-.. Wait a minute, what do you mean by that? Of course I haven't done anything yet-.."
Precisely, you did not and so you never did.
"But I haven't had the chance to do something - the man disappeared before I could! It seems to me all we need to do is find-"
But you didn't do something, Wheatley. You didn't then, so you can't now. I believe I asked you to please keep moving along - we don't need to stick around here any longer.
"Yeah but we're here now," Wheatley went on, ignoring the Narrator's instructions, "Which means we can do something."
No. You didn't then - in the past - which means you can't now - in the present - either.
"You aren't making any sense there, mate. We're here right now - that means this isn't the past, it's the present, so we can still do something."
You know, I'd just like to point out that we probably had this argument then, because we are having it now, which means you didn't do anything then because you were not supposed to. Now, if you don't mind-
Wheatley rolled his eye, huffed, and got moving again, "I don't understand why we even have to be having this argument at all! We are still here right now. And I'm going to-"
But you did not, Wheatley. How many times must I explain this to you?
"How many- You aren't explaining anything, you're just repeating yourself! And you aren't even making any sense!"
Hmm, well, the same goes for you.
"Rrrrggh!" Wheatley's panels flared out in annoyance, "Why must everything with you be so bloody difficult?!" In his aggravated state, Wheatley subconsciously picked up the pace, moving along the Rail™ and shaking his chassis in frustrated exasperation.
Ah, now you understand how I have felt this entire time with you gallivanting off the storyline to forge your own path through all this nonsense.
"Why did we even get brought here to begin with then, huh? What was the point?"
I haven't the faintest idea, Wheatley. That would be a question for the Rail™. My only hypothesis is that It™ just wanted to destroy my stories for whatever reason. It™ has yet to really explain itself to me and I doubt It™ ever will. And in either case, it doesn't matter. If you did do something in the past it would have already happened, but it didn't, so you can't do anything.
"But- But he's alive! You saw that he was alive! That human- that was Stanley, am I right?"
Ah, so you have been paying more attention to your surroundings. A small improvement, but still irrelevant.
Speaking of his surroundings, Wheatley made a quick note that whatever remained of the admin offices had been left behind and now he was back on the catwalks - or rather, suspended from the Rail™ above while the catwalks passed along below him. His environmental sensors were also picking up a slight increase in the ambient air temperature, but it was hardly relevant to Wheatley at the moment and so he shrugged it off.
"Um, no, it is not irrelevant. The turret - the one that was giving 'spoilers' - it said that Stanley is alive! Keyword - is - is alive. Why would it say that if it weren't for a reason?"
It might not have been for any reason other than because the thing was sitting there in the middle of the corridor just to confuse you, Wheatley. To hang you up on irrelevant details. Looks as though it has worked.
"Oh don't give me that! You nearly lost your marbles the moment it mentioned Stanley, so it must have been true and it must have been important."
Well, then, what do you suppose it meant, Wheatley? Suppose it was saying Stanley was alive then. Okay. But what was then? When was then? Did we see the turret before or after arriving in the past?
"Uhh... It was, ummm-..." Wheatley faltered, looking down in thought, his iris shifting rapidly back and forth as his processors struggled to put an answer together, "Hold on, I, I need a moment to think about this."
Don't hurt yourself, I'll answer that for you: It - does not - matter. The past already happened. Stanley was alive then, but he is not alive now, and by 'now' I mean that he is not alive in the present, where you came from. Stating that Stanley is alive is entirely irrelevant to anything. That's it. That's the entire riddle. Done. Solved. Time to move on.
There was another notification from his environmental sensors that the temperature had increased several more degrees, but it was still not really uncomfortable enough for Wheatley to really care. Besides, he had a point to prove.
"But-.. But suppose - just suppose - that he is alive somewhere, shouldn't we- shouldn't we do something?"
Do what, exactly? Think about it, Wheatley. I know that's hard for you - thinking - but I'm going to give you the utmost benefit of the doubt here. Either he died when the neurotoxin was released; he died from going to the surface and getting mixed up in what was happening up there (and that is a story for another time, Wheatley, I am most certainly not going to go into that right now so don't even ask); or he stayed here and died from something else, either starvation or illness or old age or he fell victim to any one of an endless list of things that can kill humans.
"So- so maybe he avoided all of that and now he's in one of the Extended Relaxation pods. Yeah. Maybe he made it out of those offices, crept along the walls or vents or something, crawled into one of the pods, and bam, there you go, safe in cryosleep."
Aside from the fact that it would have been impossible for him to do that, you have already checked all of the pods and each one of the humans they contained, apart from Test Subject #2845, perished. And in any case - Occam's Razor, Wheatley: It is far more likely he died from one of the aforementioned causes.
"How could you possibly know? Have you actually seen him since- Come to think of it, if you were narrating his story back then, then how can you not know what happened to him now?"
The simple answer is that I do not. I got bored of him - sort of like how I am getting bored of you now - and I moved on. The point is that he is not a part of the actual story, so it doesn't matter whether he is dead or alive anyway.
"This is the story and he was just here, so that must mean he is a part of it."
I was referring to my story - the real story - not this silly little side quest of yours. Speaking of which, aren't you supposed to be fixing the reactor core in order to save Test Subject #2845? Or have you abandoned her for yet another pointless cause? Do you really care so little for her?
By this point, there was a sudden alarming spike in the air temperature, but again, Wheatley shrugged this off, this time because he figured it must be a physiological response to his own growing anger, anger at again being treated like an idiot when he knew he was right. Plus the insinuation that he did not care for the very lady whom he was trying to save did not sit well with him, not at all. It burned inside of him almost as much as the air outside of him was burning.
"Yes! I mean, no! I mean- yes I care for her! I care for her more than anyone!"
It doesn't seem to me that you do. You seem to care more about trying to save Stanley, a random stranger who means nothing to you, than her, someone you supposedly 'care about more than anyone'.
Something inside of Wheatley snapped and suddenly he was shouting, his temperature rising even more, his internal fans kicking on in response to it, his voice shaking, breathing hard as all of his anger and shame and grief from it all poured out of him, fresh and raw and hot and messy, "What would you know, huh?! I'm the one who mourned for everything! I'm the one who was sent out into outer space for it! I didn't even know if she had made it out of there alive, and that- a-a-a-and it was all because of me! And after I promised her-... I-.. I, I-I-I grieved-.. I wanted to-.. I wanted to apologize to her, to start over-..!"
And look at you now, doing everything you can to avoid doing just that.
"Like you could ever understand anything! You weren't even there! You might- You might have your little, your little- manila folder or whatever over there, wherever you are, your manila folder full of- full of little notes on me, but you still don't even really know me! You don't know anything about me! You don't even know what happened to one of your own characters!"
It's interesting that you bring that up, Wheatley, because when you were in charge of things, do you remember how you completely forgot about Test Subject #2845 after you punched her into a pit? Hmm? Oh, of course you don't remember, because you forgot, because she wasn't important to you. Just like Stanley wasn't important. Just like you aren't important. All that matters is the story, which you have routinely sought to destroy. Has the pointlessness of the unwritten passages really not taught you the importance of following the story?
"You know what- I don't have to prove anything to you. I'm still going to find the reactor core and fix it, because that's what I want to do, and when I do, I'm going to come back and help the other human, because I can. Just to piss you off! And why is it so bloody hot in here?!"
Wheatley stopped when he nearly ran straight into a partially closed metal door that was warped and sitting askew on its hinges. On it, words stated that the REACTOR CORE was beyond that point, along with a series of signs:
THE REACTOR CORE AND YOU
MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A RADIATION SUIT ON AT ALL TIMES AND ONLY INTERACT WITH THE REACTOR CORE VIA THE INPUT TERMINAL.
FAILURE TO COMPLY WITH THESE RULES WILL NOT ONLY RESULT IN A SLOW, AGONIZING DEATH WHILE RADIATION SICKNESS DISSOLVES YOUR BODY FROM THE INSIDE OUT, BUT ALSO YOUR IMMEDIATE, RETROACTIVE TERMINATION AND FORFEITURE OF ALL EMPLOYEE BENEFITS INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO: ACCESS TO THE VENDING MACHINES IN THE EMPLOYEE LOUNGE; ON-SITE SHOWERS; FREE DONUTS ON FRIDAYS...
The list went on and on, interspersed with images of grotesque things happening to the poor little stick figures depicted in them, all the way to the floor, until the very last bits declared:
...HEALTHCARE INCLUDING COVERAGE FOR RADIATION SICKNESS; ACCESS TO THE UNDERGROUND SWIMMING POOL; AND FINALLY, YOUR ABILITY TO PARTICIPATE IN THE MONTHLY PRIME PARKING SPOT RAFFLE.
REMEMBER, SCIENCE IS ALWAYS SAFE - USER ERROR MAKES IT DANGEROUS! HAVE A WONDERFUL, HEALTHY, NON-IRRADIATED DAY!
"Ah, that makes sense, we're at the reactor core," he said as he further inspected the scene. More heat, arid and intense, was wafting out through the opening in the door, passing through and around him. And a bright yellow-orange glow was flickering from beyond the door, the heartbeat of a large, living fire. The Rail™, he noticed, was parked right outside the door and did not appear to have entered through to the other side.
His internal fan kicked it up a notch in response and his iris adjusted so as not to take in so much light. He took a moment to gather himself, preparing to face whatever was on the other side -
"All right, let's get in there and get this thing taken care of."
- and went into the room.
- NEVER THE END IS NEVER THE END IS NEVER THE END IS NEVER THE END IS NEVER THE END IS NEVER THE END IS NEVER THE END IS NEVER THE END IS NEVER THE END IS NEVER THE END IS LOADING -
WARNING: Narrative Contradiction levels at 90%. Proceed with extreme caution.