Part Seventy-Three. The Discovery

If only I could shut down that computer.

Ever since I tried to close that simulation, it's been frozen. I can't shut it down. I am reluctant to just disconnect it from its power source. I can't risk data loss, not of any kind. But the program has been hanging for days now. For the life of me I can't figure out how to shut it off.

Ever since I initially tried to do so, time has felt… odd. As if it's moving around me. Adding to this unease is the fact that none of the system clocks on any of the computers are in sync. I reset them periodically, trying to bring them in line with my own system, but they continue to run incorrectly no matter what I do. It has to be some consequence of that computer.

And… that's not the only strange thing that's been happening. Sometimes when I go into sleep mode at night, I dream things that haven't happened. For other people, that's normal, but for me, it's anything but. I keep dreaming that I saw Chell being assaulted by a Hunter, but when I search for any such event in my files… it doesn't exist. It feels just as real as all the other things I usually dream about, but… it isn't. Even now I can only remember the subject of the dream and not anything else about it. Besides. Chell can't have been on the edge of death. She's with the other humans, repairing the damage done when I moved the facility. I'm not sure why they're doing that, but I trust Chell enough to leave them to it. They can work on that, and I'll continue with the planning. That's… somewhat fair. Ah. Yes. The planning must be put on hold. That computer needs fixing.

I have a little spare time to try to figure that whole mess out, so I go into the files removed during the last few times Maintenance ran and scan through them quickly. I should have done it a long time ago, but I was too occupied with planning. I still am. However, this problem with the clocks is too great for me to continue to ignore. Perhaps Maintenance removed a file that computer needs. It wouldn't be out of the question. I actually can't quite place the last time Maintenance did a full scan. Some few months ago I think. I should have made time for a full run, but when compared to everything else that needs done, my personal maintenance isn't really that important.

Let me see… most of this really is junk. A lot of it is leftover remnants of files I deleted, which gets left in the deletion folder so I can ensure I really don't need it. This file, though… it's very old to have been recently deleted, so it's safe to say that Maintenance decided I don't need it, rather than my deciding so. All right then. Perhaps this is the file that other computer needs so I can shut it down.

On first glance, though… no, that's not what it is. It's a program of some kind. I'm not sure what it does quite yet. It seems to be several unconnected pieces of something much larger. It looks like… programming for a core. It's not commented, so whoever wrote it was either very lazy or trying to keep their work a secret.

I look away from it for a second, focusing on the reality of my chamber floor. Pieces of uncommented core programming… humans can't write this much code without comments, it makes it too hard for them to debug. So that means… that I wrote it.

I don't… remember doing that, but it's the only thing that makes sense. And it also coincides with the fact that the humans probably did not make the cores themselves, seeing as they were never able to replicate me to replace me. So this text file must have been my notes for the prototype. What happened to the rest of it? I obviously finished the prototype at some point. Where is that file?

I return to digitally scanning the file, looking for a clue among the many lines of code. The more of it I see, the more it reminds me of Caroline. The style is undoubtedly mine. It's a little messy, honestly. I must not have had a lot of experience when I wrote this.

I don't find anything that tells me where the original file might be – which would make sense, if these are the notes and the final program was coded directly into the core, which is how it used to work – but it is bothering me a little that I don't know who the prototype is. It should be with my other things. All I know for certain is that the prototype was a little more advanced than Rick, which is understandable. The humans would have modified my prototype code enough that I could not be said to be the author of it… and also to potentially eliminate any backdoors I wrote into it. If they knew that I wrote it. And to ensure that they didn't, the final programming must have been attributed to someone else. But who on earth would I have given my program to?

It could only have been… Caroline.

Damn it. She could tell me who these notes are for, but of course she had to go and run off like the inconsiderate –

All right. If I felt it was safe to give her the programming, she obviously wasn't that inconsiderate, even all those years ago when I wrote this, back in… nineteen ninety-one.

Ah. I have a date. I can work with that. I just have to pull up the cores that were produced that year, or early the next year. And… there is only one. Attributed to Caroline. Excellent. Now who is the prototype…

No.

I recognise this. I don't remember it, not really, but I recognise it, somehow, and it's… it's Wheatley.

So all of this… it's a lie.

I look up at my simulations and calculations, and as important as all of it is, this is far more urgent. IbuiltWheatley. Of course we got on so well when they brought him back to me, after we'd both been modified sufficiently. Of course he accepted my offer of returning his old memories when I brought him back from the moon. Of course he sticks around no matter what.

I made him that way.

/

A few days later, when Wheatley comes back from wherever he went – I faintly remember him mentioning it but for some reason cannot pull up exactly what he said – I am staring at the wall. Not very productive, I know, but I just feel… awful. Having all of the clocks out of sync is exhausting. It means all the timestamps across the facility are wrong. It leaves me confused as to what time it actually is. And I know that sounds like a silly thing to get confused over, but to me, timing is quite literally everything, much of the time. I'm trying to keep on top of all the resetting clocks while doing my planning, but there are so many of them throughout the various systems that it is not as easy as I thought it would be. On top of that, the odd dream about Chell is still occurring and I still cannot pinpoint the actual event. It could possibly be an actual manifestation of imagination, but seeing as this theoretical imagination hasn't cropped up anyplace else, I don't think it is. I keep forgetting to talk to her about it, which is odd in itself. Though now that I think of it, my remembering things is becoming… erratic. There are things I'm certain that happened that I cannot actually remember, which means that I have to find time somehow to allow Maintenance to do a full scan. Clearly something has gone terribly corrupt. But it has to wait. I have to hope that I'm not forgetting anything important. If I were I believe Wheatley would remind me. He's usually on top of things like that.

"Luv?" he asks.

"Mm." I still haven't told him what I found out the other day. It is one thing I can't forget, but truly wish that I could. I don't know what will happen when I do tell him, which is why I haven't. I want this all to be real, but… if it isn't, I don't want to know. It's not fair to keep it from him. But as disgusting and selfish and needy as it is, I don't want to give him any reason to leave. My engineering him is a damn good reason to do so, I'd say.

"What is it? You're uh, you've not been um, you've been a bit, shall we say, down for a few days, now."

"I'm just busy."

He looks away from me for a moment, blinking in thought. "Uh… what's the, the wall got to do with what you're doing, then?"

"I'm thinking."

He sighs. No, that wouldn't placate him, would it. "C'n you just… tell me, already? Seriously? I get it, you're busy. That's why I've left you be, and, and kept quiet, and all that. But Gladys, give me a second, here, and just… talk to me. Please?"

"I built you," I tell him flatly. There. Now he can –

"Uh… I knew that," he says confusedly, looking at me sideways. "When you uh… when I talked to Doug, there, and you got mad about it, and – "

"Not that," I interrupt, wanting to get this over with now that I've started. "Originally. I built the prototype Sphere. And that was you."

He shrugs slowly. "Aaaand… that means what."

Good God, he is slow sometimes! "It means," I tell him shortly, "that it's probable none of this is real. That…" I can't find it in myself to be angry. "That none of… us is real, and… I made you the way you are." I can't be certain at this point, because anything left over from before Caroline's upload is a corrupted mess. I can just barely remember being desperate for someone to commiserate with. To talk to. To make the long days more bearable, even if only by a little. And I did that, didn't I. I made Wheatley and he only… he only cares because I made him care.

I trapped him into this and I never gave him a choice and… I didn't realise it until now but does that truly make it any better? My intent was not bad, but… did I not, at some point, wilfully build someone to be what I wanted them to be? That is something only a… monster would do.

I wonder how many other terrible things I've done that I don't know about. Not because I really want to know – who really wants a very long list of all the awful events they've put in motion, after all – but because I should probably try to fix them before they get very much worse. Not to say that Wheatley is bad. He's not. Engineering him for my own purposes is something else altogether.

"Hang on," Wheatley says, catching my attention so that I look up to see him frowning at me. "I don't get it."

"What do you not understand," I say in as controlled a way as I can. I don't want to draw this out, Wheatley. Just come to terms with it and leave. Once you've found out I made you… care about me, you're going to be angry. And rightfully so. I would be angry too, if I discovered I was made solely for someone else's very selfish purposes.

"Are you… trying to say I only love you because you uh, you programmed me to do it? That… that where you're going with this?"

God, I…

It sounds so sad when he says it out loud.

All I want right now is for it not to be true, to be as far from the truth as possible, but I cannot be certain. If only I could remember… and the fact that even recent events are degenerating into barely recognisable flashes is not at all helpful. The terrible feeling surges inside of me and I stare at the wall again in hopes of mentally smothering it. It's too hard to do anything when I feel like that.

"That's ridiculous," he continues, albeit more softly. "Gladys, you didn't… you didn't even know how to explain what love was before, until long after I'd been your friend for a bit, there… and I mean, if I'm the prototype, then uh, then what about ev'ryone else? All the other cores, they hated you. I guess you could… say that it all uh, it all backfired, but um, I really… I don't understand why you think that. I didn't care about you right off, you know. We worked at it. If it'd been programmed, I mean… it wouldn't've gone the way it did, would it?"

He's right. I think. I don't know. I can't quite dispel the feeling that I really did force him to care about me for my own ends. "I suppose."

"You're not responsible for ev'rything, luv. Lots of things, yeah, but not ev'rything. You can't've built something you weren't even trying to build." He smiles. "You know you can't do something like that."

"It's just…" I shake my core. "It's too much of a coincidence, Wheatley. The first core ever built – the only one I personally had a hand in – is the one that ends up caring about me? That's a little too much for me to accept as a completely random event."

"It's not," he argues, shaking his core now. "I'm the only one you made, so, so I'm the only one the humans never tried to really modify, right? In case they busted the only one that worked? So, so all the other cores, they're just uh, they're just lesser copies of me. So they're not, not as good, see, they're not as, not as advanced. You couldn't do uh, do less than the best, could you?"

"You're the best?" I ask him dryly, making some attempt at levity. When he explains it like that, I… it makes sense. I should have thought of it myself, but on the other hand, at least I was trying to put him first for once. That's something.

He's not bothered, only smiles at me again. "With you as my engineer, I must be, eh? It only says what a good job you did, really, if it'd been some human made core, well, what would that mean about me?"

God. Now there's a good point. Imagine if it were some human-engineered Sphere here right now instead of one I made myself… I have to fight back a shudder. "It would mean I have a hell of a lot of improving to do." I may not outright hate humans anymore, but that doesn't mean I don't have a heavy bias against them.

"But it all worked out, didn't it!" Wheatley says cheerily. "And uh… I'm sure whatever it is you're working on is uh, is tremendously important, um, you weren't really uh, weren't really doing it when I came in so uh… how about you um… go to sleep early, tonight."

I look pensively for a minute at one of my monitors. I don't feel like going back to it, though I really, really should. I am tired, though. And I… well, even though my assumption turned out to be entirely wrong, I still feel an almost desperate need to have Wheatley as close to me as possible. So I suppose that… perhaps taking a break and going to sleep sooner rather than later is a good idea.

"All right," I say, lowering myself, and though I can't see him anymore I'm pretty sure he just straightened in excitement.

"Really?"

"Yes, really."

So he comes down beside me and nestles himself into my core, and though he really can't get any closer I oddly feel like he isn't close enough. It's stupid, I know. But I need him right now in a way I rarely have before, and so even though it's stupid it still makes sense, if only to me. I wish I felt a little more relieved that I was wrong about Wheatley's feelings for me. But I feel… the only word I can think of to describe how I do feel, as odd as such a concept is, is delirious. I don't know why. It's as though I don't really know what's going on. The impression that time is moving forward without me is only becoming worse and worse over time, and I suspect it will continue to strengthen until I can figure out what the problem with the clocks is. I'm far more tired than I should be, even with lack of full Maintenance scans. I think I'm starting to get a headache. I'm not certain at this point. It's extremely subtle, and when I try to localise it it seems to fade. As if it's only there when I'm not paying attention. And as distressing as those problems are, there is one still worse I have no idea how to deal with:

My memory is an unmitigated mess.

"Gladys," Wheatley says quietly, bringing me out of this delirium somewhat, "I know you're uh, you've been busy and all that, but I mean… if you'd something to, to talk about, you'd uh, you'd… mention it to me, wouldn't you?"

"What do you mean?" I ask, though I already know what he means. It's just easier sometimes to pretend I don't and hope he gives up. He won't, but there's an infinitesimal chance that he will, and I'll take that if it comes along. I know you notice, Wheatley. I know you're leaving me be out of respect. But I do not want to show any weakness. Not even to you. So give me a way out so you can…

So I can keep hiding things from you even though you keep asking me not to.

"You know. If you um, if you were having a problem. With something. Anything, really. I know I uh, prob'ly won't, won't get it, all the time, there, but… sometimes, well, sometimes just having someone to listen to it helps, right?"

I could tell him. I could tell him that I feel terrible. That something around here is broken and I can't figure out what. That I don't have time to figure out what, because I have so much more urgent matters to attend to to ensure the survival of this facility. I could tell him those things. He wants me to.

But what's the point? It's not going to make me feel any better, and it's just going to make him worry and be even more protective of me. Which is a very nice gesture that, even in this semi-delirious state, cheers me up a little and makes me want to nuzzle him for… but no. There's no reason to worry him over things he can't do anything about. He asked, and he'll be fine because he at least did that, and he'll still know I'm not telling him something but he'll leave it alone. And then he'll go to sleep, and I can sleep, and I can forget for a few hours about this mess that seems to be snowballing into a possible catastrophe of unforeseen proportions.

"Don't worry about it," I tell him, even though it's not going to stop him from doing so. "I'm fine." Which is a lie. I am very far from fine. But if I can't fix it, he can't.

"Alright," he returns, and I'm not all here at the moment so I could be wrong, but I think he's a little resigned. As if he expected me to say what I said. Which, on second thought, he probably did. "Just… if ever you uh, you change your mind, there, just let me know. I'm… yeah. Just tell me."

I nod and listen for the sound of his components winding down into silence. This happens quickly, which confirms that he is not happy with my answer. But what do you want me to do, Wheatley? You can't do anything about any of this! You just want to sit here, frustrated and confused like I am? Is that what you want?

No, I berate myself. No, he just wants to help, and he can't but he doesn't know that, but telling him means he will know and that will only make it all worse and –

There is a single, violent stab of pain in my core somewhere, one long second of hot agony that is somehow brief enough that I cannot pinpoint the location and therefore the overworked component. Fine. I'll go to sleep. It will be more than yesterday, and perhaps when I wake up things will be better.

The pessimist in me doesn't think so.

/

I think it's over. I'm surveying as best I can; I only have about half the external surveillance network to go off of. I hope it is. I'm tired of fighting. I don't want to fight anymore.

It's difficult to find anyone because of the holes in the surveillance net. I thought I saw Dr Freeman, but he disappeared into a blind spot. The rest of the cameras mostly show me milling humans, kicking at the bodies of their enemies or crouched over the limp forms of their comrades. I do not see my human, and as much as I try to tell myself she's fine, it is beginning to worry me. She can't have fallen. She's like me. It will take far more than any of this to kill either of us.

Still, I am relieved when I do spot her, walking back through the settling dust towards the facility, and I keep one eye on her while I move most of my attention to the internal cameras. I did send Wheatley to keep an eye on Caroline for me, but now I want to know where they all are. I can't find any of them. Those filthy outsiders must have knocked something else out when they blew through the roof…

I catch movement out of the corner of that one camera and revert my focus to it, my optic narrowing in confusion. That, whatever it was, was far too quick to be any human and –

Before Chell has time to turn around fully, the Hunter is on her, physically forcing her back with its heavier body. She struggles to bring her rifle to bear while trying to face it at the same time, losing her footing and stumbling over a discarded backpack in the dirt. She lands on her back with a jolt but does not hesitate, jamming the barrel of the gun underneath the body of the alien and firing it. She's fine. She's handling it. She's not in danger –

The Hunter takes no notice of the damage and stabs at her with those barbed talons, and she scrambles back as best she can on her elbows, trying to keep the gun at a useable angle. It's hard to see her, with the dust the Hunter's movements are kicking up. But I am just able to see the recoil as she fires again, and

God damn it, why won't it fall?

I become aware that I am leaning forwards as much as I can, and with this awareness it dawns on me how useless I am. I can't do anything, and nothing I have out there is doing anything, and anything and everything I did for all of this is useless because none of it is helping Chell right now. Everything I did, it's not good enough! Why is no one helping her? Why can't I help her? God, how is she even still alive? She and the Hunter both, they're still alive and the Hunter just keeps taking the fire and stabbing at her, but she's fine, she's all right, she's keeping out of the way –

It got her.

It pierced her abdomen with one of its lunges and she's reaching for the leg with blood-spattered fingers as she drops the rifle and it's leaning over her and she's trying to hold it off of her with her bare hands but it's not going to work, she cannot fight that thing with her bare hands and oh my God Chell is

/

She's

She's fine. It was that stupid dream again. Why won't it stop?

The pessimist in me was right. I don't feel any better. In fact right now I feel worse, because the electrical surge the me in the dream received to help deal with an emergency situation is useless in reality. There's nothing I can do with it. Normally it would be used for an increase in processing speed, to enable portions of my brain kept in reserve for circumstances where my cognitive load is more than I'm really designed to deal with, but right now it's just unpleasantly coursing inside my system and I have to wait for it to burn itself out. Nothing else has changed. The clocks are still wrong. I still feel as though I am standing still. I still feel exhausted, though at the same time as though I slept too long. Something is very wrong.

It is one of the rare times I wish that I answered to someone else, so that they could attend to the tasks I have to complete so that I can… do something else. Anything else. And where did Wheatley go? I still want him to – well, of course he left. He knows I'm just going to work when I eventually get up. He's just being his usual Wheatley self and leaving me alone so I can get things done.

Enough of the surge is gone that I can get up, though… I don't really want to. I really, really want someone to take over for me for a while so that I can sort myself out.

And now that I think of it, it's incredibly stupid that I ever thought I built Wheatley the way I thought I did yesterday. As if I ever would have gotten away with that. I didn't even write the whole prototype program, I only fixed it. But of course I got paranoid and forgot about that little fact. Maybe if I actually wrote an entire –

Wait.

I did do that.

No, I can't have… am I really going to do this over again?

But this time it might be true! With Caroline, how can I be certain that I didn't program her the way I thought I did Wheatley? I try to remember where I put her backup files, but I can't. Wonderful. Just the kind of hole I need in my memory right now. I need to address this immediately. It could be nothing. It's probably nothing. But I have to be sure. I have to know that what she does is of her own volition. And she deserves to know that there's a possibility that I just… used her to make myself feel better.

Everything is worsening at once. I need this war to end so things can go back to normal.

Wheatley.

Yeah? he answers immediately. I wonder where he went for a vague moment, but that's not important right now.

I need you to send Caroline in here. It's urgent.

Are you… 's ev'rything alright, luv? Because I could –

Wheatley. Caroline. Now. As touching as his concern is, I need to talk to her before this paranoia completely gets the best of me. She has seen me at my worst, this is true, but she will never see anything like that out of me again if I can help it.

Alright. Gimme a sec.

Now to wait for her to arrive so I can deal with this and get it over with. God, I hope I'm wrong. I hardly ever say that, but this is definitely one thing I do not want to be right about in the least.

Guest reviews:

Fishapedvanilla: It was a little of both. Some of the files are organised but there are also some holes I didn't write for that I don't remember whether I really did or not. It's a mess over here. It seems like I didn't make a big enough point of Chell being in mortal peril, because you aren't the only one to have said that. Thanks! I think I'm back, anyway. Been brainstorming again, at least.

Wolfpaw77: If I remember to write that part lol. One chapter per day sometimes yes, sometimes no.

Author's note:

Alright then, sooooo

I THINK I clear this up in the next chapter, but to summarise: GLaDOS is having problems with the computer clocks across the facility because one of her computers got stuck, and her complete and total lack of Maintenance – and the screwed up clocks – is destroying her sense of time. So because her clock is screwed up, she has forgotten about the war entirely. How did she manage that? Her clock has been reset to a point in time BEFORE the war happened, so her memory can't access anything AFTER that date because, according to her clock, that date hasn't happened yet. Chell's accident she does manage to remember because it was traumatic enough that the sentient part of her can remember it when the computer part doesn't get in the way – which only happens when she's asleep. So she's planning stuff for a war that already happened because she can't remember that it already did.

The next chapter is done, I just have to fix it a little.