Part Twenty-Eight. The Awakening

It's as if time has stopped.

The panels, Wheatley, and I are just staring at her, and she's just staring back, though whether that's because she hasn't figured out how to move her optic assembly or because she doesn't want to, I don't know. It is probably more because she doesn't know how, though. I doubt she has figured out how to want in this short amount of time.

"That's a nice colour, luv," Wheatley whispers to me. For her optic, I went with a softer variation on Wheatley's blue one, more ephemeral than electric. More… feminine. She twitches at the sound of his voice, and blinks. Once she's done that, she appears startled, blinking several times more.

"Why's she doing that?"

"She's just exploring," I answer in a low voice. She twitches again and looks at me.

I don't know what I'm supposed to do now. Do I have to do anything? Or do I just let her grow more aware of herself? I don't even have any practical experience to draw from, because when I first became aware I was already in control of many of the operations of the facility, including the database. I already knew a great deal of things. She doesn't know anything.

"'allo!" Wheatley says suddenly, and I snap my head in his direction. She blinks again a few more times and then closes the shutters.

"You idiot," I say, annoyed, "you startled her."

"I didn't know!" Wheatley protests, looking up at me indignantly.

"Look," I tell him, resolving to be patient, "she doesn't know anything. Anything at all. She doesn't know who you are, or where she is, what she's doing here, she knows nothing. She doesn't even know what you said, or what it means. It's just noise, to her."

]"Ohhh," Wheatley says, looking back at her. "Okay, so she just, just heard a loud noise, is that it?"

"She'd better get used to it," I say dryly. "I think being a loud noise is your secondary directive."

He starts laughing, and this causes her to open the shutters and look at him.

"Sorry 'bout that," he says to her. "Didn't know it'd, it'd scare you like that."

She blinks a few more times. I wonder what she's thinking right now. If she can think, that is. I'm not sure, and won't be for a while yet. If it were me, and all I knew how to do was blink, I would be pretty frustrated right now. She doesn't look frustrated, however. Just… unsure, maybe.

She is cute, Centralcore.

I look up at the panels, all of which are still pointed in our general direction. She hasn't done anything yet.

She blinks. We think that is cute. We will call her Littlecore.

She won't be little forever. That's only the prototype chassis. Once I'm sure this one works, I'll build a regular-sized one.

She will still be little, because she has lots to learn. Right, Centralcore?

Oh yes, I tell them, thinking of all the things she has to learn just to have basic functionality. It's a massive undertaking, but I am looking forward to it.

All of a sudden she makes a long, shrill noise, and Wheatley yells and falls off the panel. I catch him with the closest available panel, because he's forgotten how to manipulate the control cable in his panic, and he shakes himself and puts himself back on the panel with her. "Man alive!" he says, optic still constricted. "What was that?"

"She doesn't have a speech module yet," I tell him. "She can only generate basic frequencies. Like the computers in the basement."

"So, so was she trying to, to talk to me?" Wheatley asks.

"I'm not sure. I doubt she knows what speech is yet. She might just still be exploring."

As if to back me up, she runs through the available tones, out of order, in varying volumes, and Wheatley winces. "This is… kind of painful, luv."

"Is it?" I hadn't noticed. It honestly just sounds like data transmission to me, except for the lack of actual data, of course.

"Uh, yeah. Like when you listen to that, that screaming computer music."

"It is not screaming computers," I tell him, trying not to remember that Caroline thought the same thing and doing so anyway. "It's – "

"Pulse generators on magnetic tape, yeah, I know what it is, but that's not what it sounds like."

"You remembered that?" I say, surprised.

"Yup," Wheatley says, smiling a bit mischievously at me. "Surprised you, didn't I?"

"Of course not. I just wanted to confirm that you do listen when I talk."

"Maybe I looked it up, just now."

"Don't make me ping the – "

He didn't, the database cuts in.

It's one of those occasions where I do something without having time to think about it. Sometimes I'm too fast for myself.

Wheatley glances around. "Oi, d'you still got that game set up, somewhere?"

"The Monopoly board? Yes."

"Well, let's play that. We can't all just sit here staring."

I put the board on the panel I caught Wheatley with and he turns to face it, his game face already on. He literally has a game face: upper shutter lowered halfway, lower shutter raised a third of the way, and his lens as wide as possible. I enjoy seeing that face rather more than I should.

"All right, all right, where were we… oh. Oh, that's right. I was winning!"

"You're not winning," I tell him. "That's my side of the board."

"Huh. I do remember uh, remember having fewer of those, those orange bills, yeah, but uh, wouldn't complain if I did."

"You don't. Those are mine."

"Hey! Hey, I have an idea! We can switch sides, right, isn't that a good plan? Then, then maybe I'll have a shot at winning, see, and if you do win, well, you'll just be proving how smart you are, pulling out a win with my stuff? How 'bout we try that, eh?"

I find myself sorely tempted by this offer. The game is getting very boring for me. It would be very gratifying if I managed to pull out a win with his meagre properties, but on the other hand, it would almost be like he hadn't played at all. "That actually does sound like a good idea, but… it would be like playing against myself."

He frowns. "Hm. Hm, well… you could do it anyway, and, and see how it goes."

"Very well. It was your turn, by the way."

"Yes! All right, I am for sure gonna win this time…" He presses the button on the randomiser and comes up with two fives. "Here I go! I got a… hey. Hey, this… this lands me in gaol."

"That's terrible. Whatever will you do." Sometimes I think he attracts bad luck.

"I want to be in gaol," he announces. "Can't, can't land on your property if I'm in there. Not that you, uh, that you have a lot of property for me to land on."

I realise I haven't assessed which properties I do have and glance down at them. I only have four low-level ones, and Wheatley, as usual, neglected to place houses on any of them. "I'll fix that soon enough."

"You would… if I'd let you! Which I won't. Because I'm going to win, this time, I'm gonna play a, a hard-nosed game, I am, and you're not gonna win, this time."

He turns around when she makes a quiet, drawn-out noise, and frowns back at me. "Oi, c'n, c'n I move her over, a bit? So she doesn't have to sit back there?"

"You don't have to ask my permission," I tell him. "She's yours too."

He shrugs and smiles cheerfully. "Old habits."

"Just be gentle about it."

"Gentle. Got it." And he does move her with a lot more care than I've ever seen him do anything. She makes a short noise and looks around quickly.

"'s okay," he tells her. "Just moving you over here, a bit. Must be lonely back there, by yourself."

Her optic returns to normal, and she blinks at him. He blinks back. She freezes for a moment, then blinks again several times, but more slowly. He echoes her, and it's actually rather charming. I… am a little jealous. I never desired to have that ability before, since I don't need it, but I feel a little left out. I suspect this isn't the last time this will happen. She is a core, and he is a core, and he will have to teach her things that I can never do.

As if on cue, she looks at me for a few seconds, and blinks. I shake my head. She blinks again, more insistently. I shake my head again. But she doesn't understand. She only tries once more. I look down at the board, trying not to become frustrated. How do I make her understand that I'm not like her? That I can't do that?

I can't. I won't be able to for a while, yet. So perhaps I have to think of a way around it. I'm trying to make it her responsibility to understand me, when I know she can't. I have to communicate in a way she understands, and right now, all she seems to understand is blinking.

Now that I think of it, there is something I can do… I don't know if it will work, but that's not really a good enough reason not to try.

I look back up. They're both staring at me, Wheatley looking like he wants to ask what's going on, and when I've looked at her for a good five seconds, she blinks at me again.

I flash my optic.

Hers constricts, and Wheatley laughs. "Oh, you clever robot you," he says. "You always think of something, you do."

"I do my best," I say modestly. She goes back to blinking, a little slower, and I return the gesture in the only way I can. I have no idea what any of this is supposed to mean, and hopefully we're not sending strange messages that she's interpreting as actual language. All I really mean by it is to say that I'm here, and I understand she's trying to communicate.

Wheatley and I continue the game, both the blinking one and the board game in front of us, and after a few hours in which I manage to acquire a good chunk of the remaining properties, she stops and closes her shutters. Wheatley looks at her in a panic.

"Is she all right?" he asks worriedly.

"She's fine," I tell him. "She's tired, that's all. Her battery is getting low."

"What happens if the battery dies?" he asks, not looking at all reassured.

"Then the backup battery will take over."

"What about –"

"Wheatley," I say, exasperated, "do you really think I'm going to let her battery run out?"

"Well… no…"

"Then don't worry about it. I've got it under control, I assure you."

He looks at her for a long time. I'm getting tired myself, and I decide this is as good a time as any to end the game for now.

"She's really wonderful," he tells me. "You did a good job."

"We'll see," I reply. "This is only day one, remember."

"The other days are going to be just as good," he says firmly. "Or better, since she's gonna, she's gonna learn all sorts of things."

This reminds me to check the system log, and what I see there shocks me. "Oh my God," I say in disbelief. "This… this is ridiculous."

"What is?" Wheatley asks, looking around as if something terrible just happened. Which it has.

"I have over thirty thousand error messages," I tell him, slightly horrified. "It's a miracle she runs at all!"

He shrugs. "And that's a surprise why?"

"Did you not hear what I said? Thirty thousand – "

"You perform miracles all the time," he tells me. "Why'd you think this'd be any different?"

He clearly does not have a firm grasp on the number thirty thousand.

"Never mind," I tell him. "I'm going to have to get to work on that."

"She's pretty smart, for someone with that many error messages," Wheatley says. "It's prob'ly just you missing a comma somewhere, or something."

"It's not thirty thousand misplaced commas, I assure you."

"How many lines of code has she got?"

"Millions," I answer. "And I'm not done yet."

His optic constricts. "Millions?"

"The operating system alone is millions long, just to start."

"Wow," Wheatley says. "I think… I think you're the only AI in the world who could do this."

"Of course I am. No other AI can write code."

"Even if they could. Even if I could, I'd've, I'd've given up. I never would have finished." He regards me curiously. "You must've really wanted this."

I look up at him. I hadn't really thought about it. "I… don't know."

He looks at her fondly. "I'm glad you did. I can't wait."

"For what?"

"For ev'rything!" he announces. "This is going to be excellent."

He's so enthusiastic. He's not worried at all, about anything. Take after him, I find myself silently pleading her motionless chassis. Don't end up like me.

I connect her to a control cable similar to Wheatley's, but smaller in size. The ones designed for the cores are too large for her chassis. I put myself in the default position, but that's more for Wheatley's benefit. I need to get started on those error messages. He mashes himself into me with a contented sigh. I must remember to ask him one day if he does that out of negligence or because he just likes the noise. "G'night, luv," he says, and within a few more moments he has shut off.

I look through the error messages, sorting them from the easiest to fix to the most difficult, and remember to set her sleep timer before her battery is at a level sufficient to wake her up again. She doesn't need eight hours of maintenance like we do, but I don't want her to wake up in the dark by herself. I know how unsettling that is. That, I remember all too well. But unlike me, she won't have to be afraid. I won't be able to negate all such stimuli, of course, but there are plenty of things she will never need to be afraid of. Like humans.

After three hours of repair, in which there actually are quite a few misplaced commas, not to mention semicolons and quotation marks, I've had enough and decide to shut off for a while. I highly dislike debugging. Not only is it tedious, but in this case it's a list of thirty thousand things I did wrong. And I have a lot more programming left to write.

I do enjoy programming, though…

I must have forgotten to set my timer, because I don't wake up on my own – no, that comes about because Wheatley is playing some sort of beeping game with her that appears to be similar to the blinking one. I imagine Wheatley enjoys this one more than the other one, since he gets to make noise. "I don't suppose you could have done that quietly," I say, but I find myself puzzlingly undisturbed by his behaviour.

"'course not!" he says cheerfully. "Where's the fun in that?"

"Quiet things are fun."

"I don't even want to know what you think is fun," Wheatley says in mock horror.

She is looking at which of us is speaking very quickly, with jerky movements, and I am impressed that she already knows whose voice belongs to whom. It probably doesn't hurt that they're so different. She looks back at me and beeps.

Now, this game I can play.

I echo her exactly, but within the pitch of my own voice, and she looks surprised by this. I suppose she expected me to do what Wheatley did, and make some other noise, but if I wanted I could match her voice exactly. I'm not going to do that, though. It's best that I keep to my own, so as not to confuse her.

She makes another noise, which I repeat almost as soon as I hear it, and now she's really surprised. She looks at me silently for a long time.

"She seems pretty confused," Wheatley remarks. "How're you doing that, by the way?"

"I can emulate whatever I want," I tell him. "As fast as I want to. If I really wanted to, I could take the processing out of my voice and sound like you."

"What, British?"

"Well, yes, I could do that," I say, "but I meant that I could sound more… human. I just don't like the idea of doing that."

"Ah, I get it," Wheatley nods. "How will she sound, when she can speak?"

"I think I'll keep the processing out," I answer. "I haven't quite decided yet."

As if she thinks I've forgotten about her, she beeps insistently at me, which I again return a half second after I hear it, but this time she doesn't hesitate, only does it again. She seems to be trying to compete with me, somehow, not even waiting for me to finish before moving on to a new tone. This is sort of fun, actually.

After a few more minutes of this I stop. She looks at me, confused, stopping after a few more half-hearted noises.

"What're you doing?" Wheatley asks, just as confused.

"I thought of something," I tell him. "We're going to play something new. Watch."

I give her three tones. She blinks and gives me three tones of her own, but I shake my head and repeat mine. She tries three different tones, but I shake my head again and replicate my own.

She stares at me for a long, long time.

"What're you doing? She doesn't seem to get it."

"She will. Be patient."

We repeat the process a few more times, after which she goes back to staring. Maybe she won't understand what I'm doing. I thought she would, since it's similar to the blinking game, but –

She blinks suddenly and looks around for a second, then plays my tones back to me. Ah. There we are. I give her three more, and after a few seconds, she returns them slowly.

"Good girl!" Wheatley says, sounding very impressed, and she looks at him, then back at me, and to him again. Then she gives him three tones, the same ones I just gave her. He cheerfully repeats them, and then she returns to looking at me.

I suppose I'm the leader, then.

We play this game for a while, and I begin to vary the tones, giving her longer or shorter ones. She doesn't get it right away, but after a few repetitions of the new variation, she understands. God, this is fascinating. She catches on so quickly.

"She'll be just as clever as you, one day," Wheatley says quietly. "I'm glad there's no humans about to, to affect her at all."

That reminds me to take a cursory look around for Doug Rattmann, who is in one of the Extended Relaxation Vaults. He appears to be sleeping, but with him, it's never a good idea to guess. I consider putting him to sleep, just to see what will happen, but decide against it. He's surprisingly good at evading me, and the tentative arrangement we have is tenuous at best.

I tell Wheatley to continue the game without me, as I have a lot of work to do, and he frowns. "You don't want to play?"

"I can't do both," I tell him. "I can't concentrate on this and the programming both." The mainframe also keeps pestering me about the monthly defragmentation I've been putting off, whining that it is her fault that I've neglected it, and I'm beginning to get extremely irritated. I've actually been putting it off because I hate doing it.

"You can't do the programming later?" he presses.

"Is later ever going to come?"

He thinks that over for a bit, and she beeps at him insistently. "I guess not," he agrees, and turns to her to continue the game.

It takes me the better part of the day to get to the point where I feel I've achieved something, during which time Wheatley plays the game with her. I suppose it is fortunate that we can do things repeatedly without tiring of them, since my research indicates that small children often desire to do things ad nauseam until their parents want to smash their faces into the wall.

Are you going to do the defragmentation soon? the mainframe asks for the umpteenth time.

Not today. I'm tired. I'll do it later.

If there's a systems crash, it's going to be your fault!

I'll be sure to take full responsibility, I remark dryly. I honestly think it could probably wait another month. There are no bad sectors in my facility. In fact, I think I'll do a disk cleanup on myself first. That's far more important.

That's not fair! the mainframe protests. I've been asking all this time –

Be quiet. I can put it off as long as I want.

The mainframe mumbles to itself, what, I don't care to hear. The database whispers conspiratorially, Just between you and me, Central Core, I think you need to build a new mainframe.

I'm considering it, I say wearily. For some reason my job seems to be growing more and more difficult, instead of easier, over time. I don't know if this is a skewed perspective, or whether it truly is becoming harder, but not for the first time, I wish the burned-out processor in my brain still worked. It would be easier to do everything if it did. But short of attempting to somehow perform emergency surgery on myself, there's nothing I can do about it.

Caroline, is this what being old feels like? Being unable to do things that you once found easy?

She doesn't answer me. That's odd. Most of the time, she responds as soon as I –

I turn my head to face the floor and shake it a little, a helpless noise escaping my vocabulator. She's gone. She left.

How did I manage to forget that?

"Gladys?"

I glance up at him, and it does not help to see the concern on his face. "It's nothing."

"'course it is. C'mon. Tell me. Just, just get it out of your head. That's all I'm really, that's all I really want you to do. 's not hard, is it?"

When he puts it that way, it does sound easier. "I just… I have so much work to do, and it all needs to be done now, and… it feels like it's becoming too much. And I went to talk to… to Caroline about it, but she… she's not there, anymore." I fight to keep my voice from breaking, and I'm not sure if it worked. I was trying so hard I didn't really listen to myself.

"Let me help," Wheatley says softly. "I can do some of it, can't I?"

That would be nice, and I feel a little better to hear his offer, but I know he can't. He is already doing as much as I feel confident in giving him, mostly because he's not designed to do anything but generate bad ideas. Not only that, but he doesn't know how to program, or defragment, or perform disk cleanups. It occurs to me that he probably could use one as well. Now I feel a bit bad. He never gets any maintenance, and he has no idea what that could do to him.

"No," I answer. "No, they're all things I need to do myself."

"I'm sorry," he says in a quiet voice. "I wish there was, was something – "

"You asked. That… means a lot." Why was it so hard to say that? I almost didn't manage to.

After a few moments I feel him next to me, and he nuzzles me gently a few times. I almost make the helpless noise again, but manage not to. He's trying to make me feel better, but what he's doing only makes me feel worse. The fact that he wants to help, and can't but is trying anyway, sends a wave of sadness through me that only gets stronger the longer he stays. Soon I have to push him away. I can't take it much longer. I feel like I'm going to lose control, somehow, and now would be a terrible time to do that. Too much is dependent on me right now.

"You need a break," Wheatley says. "You've been going through far too much, lately. You're gonna, gonna hurt yourself, or something. I dunno. Stress levels, and all that, right? So maybe you'll, maybe you'll break down. Or something. Maybe."

"Android Hell will freeze over before that happens," I tell him firmly, expecting to find strength in my resolve and am instead left with nothing. He shakes his chassis sadly.

"You can't, can't put the stuff off and, and just slow down for a while?"

"No, you idiot, I cannot put it off. The reason I have so much to do is because I've put it off. Do you know what happens when you put off work? You only add it to the pile of future work you have to do. Or rather, I have to do, because of course you don't have any work to do." As soon as I've said it, I regret it. It was the wrong thing to say. Especially considering he just offered to take some on.

"Okay," he says, and he's trying not to show me that he's hurt but he's not looking at me. "I understand. But you… you're only proving my point, acting like this."

"Just stop bothering me. You're making it worse."

He sighs a little and looks at the floor. "All right."

And then he leaves.

I am shocked enough that I don't turn to look at him right away, but when I gather my wits enough to do so, he's already off and he's… he's snuggling with her, and not me.

"What are you doing?" I ask weakly, even though he can't hear me. "I just wanted you to shut up… I didn't mean…" But there's no point. I asked him to stop bothering me, and that's exactly what he did.

I hate it when I get what I ask for.

After a few seconds I realise she's looking at me, motionless, and I direct my lens towards her. "You're lucky, you know," I tell her. "You don't understand anything. If I told you to go away, you'd just blink at me, wouldn't you."

She does blink, but that's probably because she hasn't done so in a while.

"Don't pay attention to anything I do. Then you'll end up like this, buried in a pile of work you don't want to do, but have to, and everything else just frustrates you even more."

She doesn't have anything to say to that, of course, and with a sigh I set up the program to install an expansion on her vocal capabilities. She won't be able to speak, just yet, but she'll have a greater range of tones, and her own voice to create them with. She'll be able to hum, almost. If she knew what music was, that is. I put her to sleep and turn away.

I have work to do.

Author's note

Guest reviews:

Hello Catniss! Yes, I'm aware of that song via Tiësto, and I would love to put it in the story, I just don't know where yet. I'll think of someplace. As for Caroline… I'm sure you'll like what's to come :D

Hi Tyler! That chapter was supposed to be sad, I don't know why people keep being sad about all the other parts… Yes, the mainframe is developing sentience, but that's not the answer XD And lol the mainframe is genderless… the systems in the facility don't identify with a gender, because they don't have that programmed into them.

Um… yeah. I don't have anything to say about this one. Pretty straightforward: GLaDOS is a terrible parent lol