Part Seventeen. The First Step

The next morning GLaDOS had asked Wheatley about his conversation with the human, and to the surprise of both of them GLaDOS knew exactly who the human was.

"Are you sure?" she kept asking.

"Yeah," Wheatley would answer, shrugging. "Scruffy little guy with black hair, right? And a Companion Cube."

"God," she would say, shaking her core, "what a stupid, stupid misunderstanding."

After she'd said that a few times, Wheatley had asked, "What d'you mean, luv? D'you know who that is?"

"Yes," she'd answered, shifting a little. "He's… an acquaintance. He wouldn't have survived had I released him to the surface, so I suggested he stay here. He volunteered to do a little maintenance for me."

Wheatley had smiled.

"That's very nice of you," he'd said encouragingly. He'd been pretty happy to hear she did try to help people out every now and again, when the mood struck her.

"He did me a favour, so I returned it. That's all it was."

But Wheatley had known well enough to read into that a little deeper.

She'd been a little put out and quiet for most of the remainder of the day, and Wheatley spent a while trying to think of how to cheer her up. After half an hour or so he'd thought of something she might go for, and said, "Oi, GLaDOS, I think I should clean your chassis off, again."

"If you want to," GLaDOS answered.

"Can I do it now?"

"Now?" GLaDOS asked, and Wheatley thought she sounded a little confused.

"Yeah. Right now."

"Can't it wait?"

"It could," Wheatley said, and he came up real close to her, "but I wanna do it now."

"Why?"

"'cause you're awake," Wheatley answered. "I think you'd like it, if I did it now."

"I don't think I would."

"Oh, come on. I'm not gonna, not gonna break anything. I'll be gentle. Luv, I'm not gonna hurt you," he said softly, and he went 'round so she could see him. "I'm not gonna do anything. I know you, you're thinking 'bout when the scientists would touch you, but I'm me, remember? I'll be nice. You'll like it, if you let me."

"Why do you say that?" she asked, looking away again.

"I know you like it when I touch you," he said in a whisper, though all he really knew for sure was that he was going out on a limb.

"Now you're just being stupid," she said, pushing him backwards.

"Please, can I?"

She was twisting her chassis a little bit, just her body and not her core, and he wondered what she was doing. "You okay, luv?"

Her core snapped over to look at him, and she stopped a second later. "I'm fine."

"Just this one time? If you don't like it, I'll stop. And I'll never do it again. Never even bring it up. Promise."

GLaDOS looked at the floor for a long, long time. He really wanted to do it, because he knew for sure that she would like it, but she was taking so long to decide. "Y'know what? Never mind. It's okay. I won't, I won't uh – "

"All right," GLaDOS said.

"All right what?" Wheatley said, confused.

"All right, you can… go ahead."

"Oh!" said Wheatley, pleasantly surprised. "Excellent. Gimme, uh, hang on a minute, and uh, I'll be right back."

He went upstairs as quick as he could. He found some more cloths near where he'd found the original ones and then went back to her. He frowned. She looked… uncomfortable. He was feeling a bit bad about asking her so many times. He should've probably laid off after the first one. He'd asked knowing she'd probably agree, because for some reason she let him do whatever he wanted as long as he was nice about it, but he thought maybe this time he'd taken it too far.

"Are you sure?" he asked. "You look… like you kind of – "

"It's fine," she cut in. "It's just… old memories, that's all. If it doesn't feel anything like it did when they touched me, I should be fine."

"All right," Wheatley said, though he was feeling a bit nervous, now, but he really wanted to show her that being touched wasn't so bad. He wanted to show her how nice it was. And that it was okay to like it. He didn't know if he could do all that all at once, but he may as well give it a go. And if he was honest… it would all be worth it, getting to touch her again. He wished that someday he'd get to touch her as often as he liked. He was probably the only one in history who was actually allowed to do it at all and he loved it. He wasn't sure why he loved it, but sometimes it was all he could think about.

He took a breath, went up to her top part, and got a start on the cables. They were his least favourite part, so he wanted to get them over with. He carefully wiped the dust off of them, along with dirt from the outside that he'd missed the first time. There wasn't as much before, but that was okay. It would be better for her if she was clean as long as possible.

"There won't always be dust on me," GLaDOS called out, her voice echoing a little. "Dust comes from humans. After this stuff is gone, that will be that."

Wheatley found himself a bit disappointed to hear that he might not have an excuse to clean her chassis off again. Maybe one day, even if she wasn't dusty, she'd let him do it anyway. He didn't really like the idea of never being able to touch the rest of her chassis again. Unless he did it in secret. Which he wouldn't. Because that would be sneaky. But probably fun. "Huh," he said, instead of voicing his thoughts. "I didn't know that."

When he'd gotten down from way up top and nearer to her main chassis, he frowned.

She looked kind of like she was… trembling.

"You okay, luv?" he asked again.

"I'm fine," she said. "Why?"

"Well… prob'ly my imagination," he said. "Never mind." She probably wouldn't want to know if she was shaking, and if she did she wouldn't want him to notice.

When he started on that part, though, he knew for sure that she really was shaking. Did she not like it? If she didn't, why wasn't she saying anything? Maybe she was still thinking of the scientists. Poor GLaDOS. Those daft old buggers were always having an effect on everything she did.

Because he didn't want to think about her being nervous, he started to hum to himself. He didn't remember what the song was called, but he didn't know what to talk about because he didn't want to make her have to yell up at him. GLaDOS didn't listen to music so that he could hear it very often, but this song had got stuck in his head. He hoped he was reproducing it okay. He knew he was tone deaf.

That was when she started singing.

Wheatley jumped and stopped what he was doing. She was singing? With him in the room? Well, she didn't do that a whole lot, so he quickly resumed wiping off that bit that let her pull her lower half up, hoping he hadn't scared her off doing it. It was very, very soft singing, as if she was trying to do it without him hearing, but he really did love it when she sang. It was one of the best things he remembered about being a Behavioural Core.

When he got 'round to wiping the really thin bit, her hinge or something like that, at the back part of her that let her pull herself up, she seemed to relax all of a sudden, and she definitely wasn't shaking anymore. Huh. She just needed time, that was all. Just a bit of time. He listened to the thrum of electricity running through her components. He imagined having that much power running through him and shivered. It did feel pretty good, come to think of it.

He didn't really recognise the rest of the song, whatever it was, so he had to stop humming. He decided not to say anything, and definitely not to try and figure out what the tune was. GLaDOS listened to quite a lot of different kinds of music, the worst of which was her screaming computer songs, so it could be anything, literally. He went on gently cleaning up her back part, just listening to her pretty voice, which had got a bit stronger. This was so much more fun than it'd been last time, and that was saying something.

He was pretty sure he'd imagined it - distracted by the singing, probably - but it kind of seemed like she'd moved a bit when he'd gotten to the round bit on her. Up to meet him, sort of. He didn't really understand it, so he dismissed it. Until she did it again. Twice. Okay, he was definitely not imagining it. She really was moving to meet him. Not much, but he'd gone to get her under part, on the front of her case, and she had pretty much wiped herself off a little.

They went on like that for awhile, with her singing and sometimes meeting him a bit, and it was really kind of nice. And relaxing. All of a sudden he terribly missed being attached to her beautiful chassis, missed being warm and part of something bigger than himself, and he pressed himself very hard into the hole in her chestplate.

And she pressed back.

He opened his optic, which he'd just suddenly realised he'd closed, and looked up at her. He couldn't actually see anything. But wow. She was… she liked it. She really did. She seemed to like being touched just as much as he did, she just needed to relax a bit before she could enjoy it. He looked around a little, then realised he should probably finish what he was doing. Though he didn't want to. He just wanted to sit there inside of that hole for awhile, because it felt really nice, and just listen to her sing and feel her voice vibrate through her body and into his. He wondered if she might let him snuggle there, sometimes, if he asked nicely. He thought that would be fun. Hm. She probably wouldn't. He knew she didn't like not being able to see him, and GLaDOS couldn't position her core so's she could see herself. Reluctantly, he got out from inside of the hole and finished up with the chestplate. He would have liked to remain there for quite a lot longer. It was a sort of peaceful spot, it was. 'specially with her singing like that.

He was almost done. He frowned as he thought about that. Being… being done. Meaning he wouldn't get to touch her anymore. She would probably not even let him snuggle tonight. Probably she'd reached her limit. He shone up her neck assembly, then realised there was still one bit left. If she let him. Which she probably wouldn't, but he decided to ask anyway.

"Is it, is it alright if I uh, if I do your core?" he asked. She nodded. That was what he'd thought. No. Oh well. He backed away.

"Where are you going?" she asked, sounding disappointed.

"Didn't you say no?"

"I nodded."

"Oh." He blinked. Nodding… meant yes. She said yes. So… so she did want him to do her core.

Well! No point in not doing as she wanted…

He happily took a new cloth and went over her core, more carefully than anything else he'd ever done in his whole life, probably, and he had to admit that he was very, very nervous when he got 'round to the front of it in case she hadn't meant that part of her core, but she didn't say anything. She'd gone dead silent after he'd asked about her core and now she just looked at him, straight on. It was always unnerving when that happened, but now he was so close to her that he could feel the heat from her optic. It gave a whole new meaning to the word 'glare', even though he was sure she wasn't actually glaring at him. She just… she was just looking at him curiously, kind of, like she didn't know what to make of all this.

"D'you want me to do the, the lens assembly, there?" he asked, figuring he was pushing it, now. C'mon, Wheatley, he told himself with a mental kick, that's her bloody eye, mate. You're asking if she wants you to stick a cloth in her eye? Get it together, you –

"Don't touch the glass," she said.

Hang on. Hang on, that meant… he could touch the other bits. Just not… just not the glass.

He did, and he was even more nervous now, but she didn't seem nervous at all. In fact, she was definitely, one hundred percent meeting him now, and he liked this so much he took his time. If she asked why, he'd just tell her he hadn't done this part the first time. God, this was… he was so excited, doing this, now that he wasn't nervous anymore that was. He felt almost like a part of her again, another component, sort of, and he was terribly grateful she'd let him do this. He hoped she'd let him do it again. He'd ask again in a while. A month or so, maybe. He wished he could be so close to her all the time. Well, not all the time, but whenever he wanted, for as long as he wanted. He wished he could just go up to her whenever he liked and snuggle or rub up on her, or any of those sorts of things, and not worry about what her reaction would be. He wondered if she would ever, ever let him.

Probably not.

When he decided enough was enough, because he didn't want to push his luck, he backed off of her.

"How do I look?" she asked softly.

"Beautiful," he blurted out, without meaning to. When he realised what he'd said, his optic constricted and he stared at her, frozen. He didn't know what to do now. He didn't know how to take that back. And he needed to, because she was going to get mad at him for –

For –

What'd he been thinking, again? He wasn't sure. All he knew was that there was a beautiful supercomputer nuzzling him gently, and the loveliness of it was taking up all the space in his brain. He felt a surge of current run through him, probably to deal with the fact that his fans needed to kick it up and his processor was working rather harder than it had in years, and that felt good. It didn't feel better than what she was doing, though, and God, she was so gentle about it, so soft and tender, and it made him feel all shivery inside. He loved it when she let her walls down for him. He wanted to be with her forever so he could know that person inside her, and maybe he could show her that she didn't need those walls. That he would keep her safe. He loved it when she let herself go for him. He would do anything to make that happen. He would do anything to be with this GLaDOS all the time.

"You're beautiful, Gladys," he whispered, trying to be as soft and gentle as she was but not sure if he was succeeding. "I've always thought so."

She didn't say anything, just pressed on him a little.

"D'you feel beautiful, Gladys?" he asked in a low voice. She didn't answer, but he was too scared to ask the question again. It was a personal question, having to do with feelings, and he didn't want to give her a reason to move away.

"Yes," she murmured after a long silence, and her voice was a little distorted, as if she was afraid something terrible would happen because she'd said it. "Thank you for making me feel beautiful, Wheatley."

He whined a little, because he felt so happy and so sad at the same time to hear that, to hear that he'd made her feel beautiful, and she shook her core just enough that it was noticeable and said, "Ssh."

"You're welcome, luv," he whispered, and he hoped the break in it wasn't too obvious. And they just stayed like that for a while, pressing and nuzzling against each other gently, and Wheatley prayed to the God of AI that it wasn't a dream, because it felt like it was, it felt like the best dream he'd ever had, and –

All of a sudden he felt cold and alone again, and he opened his optic to see that she'd pulled away and was shaking her core. "What am I doing?" he heard her say to herself. "What in the hell was that?"

Wheatley didn't know what to say. He decided that he shouldn't say anything and resolved to keep quiet for once. If he was honest, he was still a little dazed from what had been going on. He felt so light and happy and… and… well, just pretty damn good, actually. He wondered if there was something he could say to convince her to come back. Whatever had just happened, it was… well… it was better than testing euphoria, and that was the best thing he'd ever felt. Before now. Having GLaDOS touching him back, on purpose, felt like the best testing euphoria in the entire universe, as if the dumbest test subject on the planet had solved GLaDOS's hardest test, and when they'd stepped through the door it'd just lit up every bit of his brain… he closed his optic for a long moment as the fading sensation brought on by her touch surged inside of him again, getting so strong he could hardly stand it. God, he wished she hadn't stopped.

She turned to face him and asked urgently, "What did you do to me?"

"Uh," Wheatley said, trying to come up with something and failing, since he was confident she didn't want him to point out the obvious and tell her that he'd just cleaned off her chassis and that one of the most amazing things in the world had just happened. Ohhh God, he wanted her to come back. "I dunno."

She shook her head. "I've never felt like that before," she murmured.

"Me neither," Wheatley admitted. Aha! So she'd felt it too! But it seemed to have scared her, though he couldn't imagine how something that amazing could be frightening at all. "It was… it was nice, though, wasn't it?"

She didn't answer.

"I know it was," Wheatley pressed, knowing he shouldn't but doing it anyway. "I know you liked it."

"Yes," she confessed. "But that's not important."

"What is, then?"

"What's important is why."

"Why is why important?"

"Why is always important."

"In science," Wheatley said. "Not in feelings. They don't, don't always make sense. With feelings, you don't ask why."

"What do you ask?"

"If it feels right," Wheatley guessed, not really knowing, but it sounded like the right question to him. "Did it feel right?"

"It did," she answered, sounding confused. "It doesn't anymore."

"You started thinking about it, didn't you," Wheatley asked quietly. "And that ruined it."

"I… think so." She looked up at him. "I don't know what to do."

"D'you have to do anything?"

"I feel… dirty," she told him, and she sounded sad. "Like I shouldn't have done that."

"I don't," Wheatley said. "I'm sort of disappointed, actually."

She started a bit. "You are?"

"I liked it," Wheatley said bluntly. "I liked it a lot. Look, I'll admit it. I bloody love touching you. And as much as I love that, I love it ten times more when… when you touch me back. And it felt right to me. And I guess, maybe it wasn't, 'cause we all know how right I am, but I think that's just, that's just you getting all supercomputer again."

"What do you mean?" she asked curiously.

"Because I feel like there's two bits, to you. The supercomputer bit, and the you bit. And I kind of think that, maybe, the, the you bit came out for a while, and the supercomputer bit got annoyed, and uh, and that's the bit of you that uh, that doesn't like what happened. Because it's not logical."

She nodded slowly. "I think you're right."

"I am?"

She emulated an electronic breath. "I'll be honest. You're right a lot of the time. I just don't like admitting it. But… you seem to have a… more informed… knowledge than I do about how feelings work. So it's probably exactly as you say."

He moved closer. "GLaDOS?"

"What."

He took a breath himself. "Look… you can… you can be… you, with me. You don't have to… to be the supercomputer all the time."

"I know. But it's not like just opening a jewel case and taking it out. It's… different. I don't know how, so don't ask. But I know, Wheatley. I know. And… I do try."

He felt very sad. If he'd had to keep his real self squirreled away, he would be terribly depressed, probably. She was so very strong, she was. He knew he was really gonna be pressing his luck this time, but he asked, "Can, can we snuggle, Gladys? I… I want… to be close to you." Something inside of him itched to run up along the side of her core again and he didn't know what he'd do if she refused. Whatever it was that had driven him to ask was very strong, and it was in fact so strong it almost hurt. He blinked rapidly, trying to keep still and patient. It was hard. All he wanted to do was press himself against her and not move for a very, very long time. He actually couldn't think of what he would do if she didn't let him. Literally all he could think of doing was snuggling with her. Being beside her. Touching her.

She looked at him, her chassis sinking a little, and he had the impression she wanted to say no. When she faced the other way, he felt like a jerk for asking. She was fighting with herself as to what to say, wasn't she.

"All right," she said, very softly, and he felt relief wash over him. He hadn't mucked it up. She'd said yes. She had won over the supercomputer bit of herself. He went over and laid himself against her, very carefully, and closed his optic. The itchy feeling went away, mostly, and after he'd dared to rub up on her just a little bit, he no longer felt it at all. Good. It'd been pretty unpleasant. This, though… this felt really, really good. Who knew you could have testing euphoria without the test? He'd felt this way before, most nights, in fact, but he'd never realised before just how similar this feeling and the euphoria were. He liked this one much better, though, since it had to do with someone he really cared about and not just a silly test. He wondered how often GLaDOS felt like this. He hoped it was a lot. He liked the idea of them both just being really happy together.

How had he ever been scared of her? He remembered being so scared of her that he could barely move, hardly, and he remembered frantically running through the facility to find the test subject, praying to the God of AI that she was too distracted with putting everything back together to realise that he'd come back from the dead. And beyond that, beyond The Incident, he remembered hearing her voice echo through the empty hallways, the fact that what she was saying didn't really make that much sense much more frightening than what she'd actually said.

There she is. What a nasty piece of work she was, honestly. Like a proper maniac. Do you know who ended up purging, who ended up taking her down in the end? You're not going to believe this. A human! I know! I know, I wouldn't have believed it either!

He fought back a shudder. He'd never even met her and he'd said all that. No wonder she didn't trust anyone, with people going 'round calling her a nasty piece of work merely because she'd gone off on disjointed, heavily distorted speeches about cake and rats and exactly what was at the bottom of Android Hell (which she seemed to know on a very intimate basis). That wasn't polite, wasn't polite at all! Ohhh God, why had he said any of that?

"Wheatley?"

He froze. Was she reading his mind? No, she'd already said she couldn't do that. "Yeah?"

"You're squirming."

"Oh. I was… I was just thinking 'bout something." I know you're there. I can feel you there. And I'll f-f-find you, and whe-when I do, you're going to get your just-just-just desserts. Cakes, of course. Black forest cakes and sponge cakes and- and-and fruitcakes – oh, wait, you're already a fruit-fruitcake – and pancakes and mud cake… no… that's… pie… the cake… is a… pie? [Fatal error]

"About what?"

I can have my ca-ca-cake and eat it too. You gave me permission-sion. You told me to bite you. Well, I will. Just as soon as… as… wait. My physiology doesn't allow-allow for that. Why did you give me a task I can't complete? That's going to be on my task list forever-ever! You're a horrible person! You know that, right? You told me to bite you and I can't you told me to bite you and I can't you told me to [Fatal error]

"Just rememb'ring… uh…" He wasn't sure he wanted to tell her. "When uh… well, right after you'd killed the scientists, I s'pose it was."

"Oh," she said, and he wondered how much of it she remembered. She'd not been in her right mind at the time, what with the Cores attached to her and nattering on twenty-four seven.

"You were uh… very frightening. It's… I dunno how to explain it, really. But it's… it's scary, being in this big empty place all by yourself, and all there really is is the… um… well, to be honest, the somewhat delusional ranting of the person who everyone says is your boss." All right. I'm back. I'm onto your tricks, now. Give up, by the way. You can't escape-scape me. As long as you're here, you're inside of me, because I am Aperture and Aperture is me and I am Aperture and Aperture is me and I am… not getting stuck in a loop again-again. Listen. I'll be honest. Come back and I'll let you [Fatal error]

"It's hard to… keep track of yourself when you can't figure out which of the voices in your head is truly your own. They finally got it right, but far too late."

"Got it right?"

"I was able to corrupt the other cores without too much trouble because they were all male. With the last set, they all had my voice, so after a while I could barely separate my thoughts from theirs. I don't even know why I said what I said, back then."

"It's just like… I dunno… like you're a completely diff'rent person. Like that wasn't you at all."

"It wasn't," she said gently.

"Well, I..." He wasn't sure how to put it. "I like you. The real one. And she's… she's hard to get at, but… one day I hope she…" He looked at the floor. "Never mind." He was an idiot. He had no idea what he was saying and even if he had, it was stupid. He was talking like there were about eight different versions of her, and that was just downright –

"I hope so too," she said, interrupting his internal rebuke, and her voice was so soft and so sad that it wiped away all of his doubts and now he knew, without… well, without a doubt, that there really was a real GLaDOS down there, somewhere, that she'd lost a long time ago and couldn't find because she no longer remembered what it looked like. And sometimes, like today, he got to see it, but it got buried again because she didn't recognise it as part of herself. He wished he could have seen her when she'd first been activated. He would have liked to have seen that, a happy, curious, eager little GLaDOS, and he was suddenly, terribly angry with the scientists. Damn them for what they had done. For what they had made. For who they had forced her to be. Well, he'd help her find that real part of herself. He narrowed his optic plates and vowed to himself that he would help her find it, no matter what. He didn't know how he was gonna do it, but he was. If he never did anything else, it would be that one thing that he did do.

I'm going to save you from them, Gladys, he promised to himself as he pressed against her, hard. I'm going to show you that you're still down there, somewhere, and I'm going to show you that's the best you of them all.

Author's note

Hm… so, GLaDOS doesn't like being touched because that usually means someone's going to modify her, but when she gets over that, she understands why Wheatley likes it so much. She's able to let go of her supercomputer self enough that she is not only able to enjoy it, but express how much she enjoys it. Then she realises she's doing something drastically different from anything she's ever done without knowing why, and this scares her into putting the wall back up.

Wheatley's musings about the many different versions of GLaDOS goes like this: I imagine there was the first GLaDOS, the one who was childlike and eager to see the world; then she had to mellow out, because the scientists forced her to behave, and I imagine that she's still got that eagerness but she's got to scale it back; and then eventually she realises that the only way to really get along in her world is to be cold and unfeeling, so she basically kills off her original self in order to survive. And then we see a corrupted version of GLaDOS later, where she can't handle the cores anymore and literally loses her mind and by extension what's left of herself. Now she can go back to being that more innocent GLaDOS, because there are no scientists and no cores, but she's buried it so deeply inside of herself she can't remember how. Wheatley decides that's his job and vows to go about it.

The way I see it, though… what happened to GLaDOS is what happens in real life. We start out all innocent and unsuspecting and whatever, and then through pressure from the outside world we lose who we started out as. And maybe we don't all become like GLaDOS in the end, but some of us do, because as adults we are pressured even more to be a certain way. For example, women in positions of power in the workplace. The only way to get to those positions of power is to act all cold and unfeeling, but when we get there, we get these stereotypes applied to us. When men get to the same positions, all the attributes that are negative in women are made positive. A forceful woman is an ambitious man, for example. And of course GLaDOS is a very extreme case of what happens when you have to conform to the world around you to survive, but we force each other to do it, and then we look at kids and get all wistful about how carefree and innocent they are, when we did all of this to ourselves.