Part Eighty-Two. The Visitor

"I have something for you," GLaDOS told him.

"Really?" Wheatley said, nearly unable to contain his excitement. That was something that didn't happen often.

"Mm. I'll send it to you in a moment."

When he got the notification that the file had been received, he asked as means of a stalling tactic while he tried to remember where his received file folder was, "What is it?"

"Claptrap's email address."

He stopped his search immediately. "You… want me to email him?"

She shrugged. "You wanted to meet him."

Ohhhh boy. She was actually going to make it happen? "Can he come here?"

"If he wants."

Wheatley decided he needed to get on that right away and told her as much before speeding away… but not so fast that he didn't hear her laughing at him as he left.

/

Wheatley waited anxiously for Claptrap to arrive, bouncing his lower handle and looking at the floor panels. More than anything, he hoped that Claptrap would like him. They were fairly similar, so far as he knew, so… so they should get along, right? Ohhhh, he hoped so. It was so exciting, it was, that maybe he'd get a new friend. There were lots of Cores about, that was true, but… he didn't want to be around people who didn't trust GLaDOS.

Then, without warning, Claptrap appeared, and Wheatley almost jumped onto the floor by accident. God, he was so much bigger than Wheatley'd expected him to be! Not GLaDOS's size, obviously, not anywhere near, but still… Wheatley was used to most robots being his size or much smaller. Claptrap defied that unspoken rule of Aperture, and… and already it seemed like Claptrap was going to shake things up, one way or another.

"Hey," Claptrap said, with a wave of one of his odd little hands. "I'm lookin' for a guy called Wheatley. You seen him anywhere? I don't know who I'm lookin' for."

"That's me," Wheatley said, a little taken aback by his very loud voice. And GLaDOS often told Wheatley he was loud. "I'm… I'm Wheatley."

"Put 'er there, then!" Claptrap said, holding his hand out, and after a moment Wheatley realised he was supposed to offer his lower handle. The whole shaking hands thing still slipped his mind now and again.

"Don't do that a lot, do ya." Claptrap positioned his arms in a way that Wheatley only knew how to describe as 'hands on his hips' though, of course, Claptrap didn't have any.

"Uh… no," Wheatley answered. "None've us've got, uh 've got hands, and the um, the humans, well, I don't really hang 'round them."

Claptrap moved back a little. "What's wrong with 'em?"

"Humans are… untrustworthy?"

"They are?" Claptrap shrugged. "They're sketchy, sometimes, but I trust 'em."

Wheatley echoed his motion. "Uh… I think we've um, we've found something we don't have in common."

The other robot laughed. "There's always something, isn't there! Hey… can I go see her, real quick? It'll only take a second."

"Oh, sure," Wheatley answered. "She might um, might be busy with something. I dunno, she didn't tell me what she was going to um, to be doing. While I was gone."

"Where'd you go?"

"To meet you," Wheatley said, frowning in confusion. Truth be told, he was getting a little apprehensive. He wasn't sure this was going so well.

"Duh," Claptrap said, smacking himself in the… face. "Shoulda thought of that."

Wheatley led him down to GLaDOS's chamber, to find her doing something or another with Carrie. Central Core stuff, probably. Before they'd quite entered, Claptrap stopped abruptly and brought his hands in front of him, gripping one with the other. After a moment he said, in a quieter voice than Wheatley'd heard out of him in the last five minutes, "Hey, GLaDOS."

GLaDOS snapped to his position instantly, giving him a nod. "Hello, Claptrap. It's good to see you again."

"It… is?"

"Of course."

Claptrap twisted his hands together. Wheatley couldn't even tell if he was looking at her or not, because of the odd state of his optic. "You… uh… weren't all that glad to see me last time."

She tilted her core in consideration. "I… should not have done that. It was… inappropriate. I'd rather pretend it never happened."

"So… we can start over, that what you're saying?" He sounded pretty hopeful, Wheatley thought.

"It is."

"All right." He bounced up and down a little. "Hey, babe! How're you doing?"

GLaDOS laughed. "Pretty good, actually. And you?"

"Well, it's… nice to be back, if you know what I mean." When he finally moved farther into the room, Wheatley followed him. He wasn't quite sure what that'd been about, but it seemed to've been smoothed over. "And who's this?"

"Carrie," said Carrie, and it appeared she kept the handshake thing more in mind than Wheatley did because she was the one to offer it up to Claptrap.

"My daughter," GLaDOS clarified. Claptrap turned to look at her, his arms pulling into a more defensive position. Why? Did he feel threatened to know GLaDOS had a daughter? Maybe, Wheatley decided. Maybe he'd thought he hadn't lost GLaDOS as a girlfriend after all. And he hadn't, because Wheatley didn't mind sharing, but he supposed Claptrap didn't know that yet.

"You have a daughter?" Claptrap exclaimed. "Man, you've really been busy! You shoulda told me that last time!"

GLaDOS shrugged. "You learn things when you learn them, Claptrap."

He faced Carrie again. "You look pretty sweet, Carrie! Haven't seen a robot like you since – "

"You can't have both of us," GLaDOS interrupted. Claptrap spread his hands.

"I was just saying – "

"You're never 'just saying'."

"I am this time! Promise! And anyway, you built her, so it's just a compliment for you! Don't take it so seriously. Sheesh."

Wheatley was beginning to understand just what had drawn GLaDOS to Claptrap in the first place. He didn't see her like anyone else did. He didn't revere her, wasn't awed by her authority or her power, and seemed to take even her sheer size in stride… which was not always easy to do, even for Wheatley. And if he admitted it to himself, he was sometimes cowed by her sheer presence, as so many other people were, and he was her closest friend. But Claptrap didn't. Claptrap just saw… a robot, like him. A little smarter, a little bigger, and a little better off, but a robot all the same.

Wheatley wanted to know his secret. How did he do it?

GLaDOS was shaking her core, clearly not buying it.

"Scared I'm gonna steal your boyfriend, Momma?" Carrie teased, and GLaDOS looked at the other side of the room and sighed as if dealing with the most irritating people in the universe. Which she really was.

"Oh, you meant that?" Claptrap asked, wheeling around to face her, which Wheatley had to admit was far more efficient than laying rail was. "That thing about…"

"I said to start over, didn't I?"

Claptrap immediately lunged over and hugged GLaDOS's core, which Wheatley was mildly jealous of merely because he was unable to do it. After he let go, he looked down at his hands and tapped the tips of them together. "I missed you, sugar-RAM," he said, and Wheatley was pretty sure that was a private thought, but Claptrap's voice was still fairly loud. He elected to look away and pretend he couldn't hear instead. "Can you just… give us a chance to work it all out, this time? I mean, you just kinda… threw me out, and didn't – "

"Don't worry about that," GLaDOS interrupted. "We can discuss it later. You're here to see Wheatley, aren't you?"

"Yeah," Claptrap said, backing up, "I just… wanted to make sure we were cool before I started runnin' around your facility again."

"Oh," said GLaDOS in surprise. "That was… considerate. I never would have seen that coming."

Claptrap made a noise Wheatley didn't recognise, but was fairly certain humans used when they felt disdain. It was called a raspberry, or something. "I'm not a total jerk."

"Hm," was all GLaDOS said to that.

"Wheats!" Claptrap proclaimed, heading back over. "Let's roll!"

Wheatley hadn't actually worked out what they were going to do, embarrassingly enough, so he just took Claptrap to his hole and explained for a bit where they were at, what with the events of the war and all, and Claptrap was suitably impressed with their combined exploits. Eventually the question on the tip of Wheatley's mind needed asked, though, so quite abruptly he said, "What was it like."

"Uh… what was what like?" Claptrap asked.

Wheatley turned to face him, though he did kind of want to see which of the children was going to win that game of tag. "When she was at her worst, you… you moved in with her."

Claptrap sighed. "Look, Wheats. It's not a big deal. I'm not the kinda guy that has a lot of options. If it moves, I'm in. If it looks at me, I'm in. If it talks to me? Cool. I can come back later! That's all that happened."

Wheatley was somewhat crushed. That couldn't be it. That was… that was incredibly sad.

"But you were um, you were… weren't you going to marry her?"

"She's got a pretty sick place, what can I say? Beats mine by a hell of a lot."

"You didn't love her?" Wheatley said, disbelieving. Why would you marry someone if you didn't love them? What was the point, then?

But Claptrap didn't answer and only gave a sort of half shrug while looking for something out of the hole. Or maybe he was only pretending to.

"You did."

"So what if I did?" snapped Claptrap. "What's the point of asking that anyway?"

"Because what you did was really, it was, it was difficult," Wheatley said. "And… and I really, I really respect you for it."

Claptrap was suddenly facing him.

"You… you do?" he said in awe, holding his hands together in front of him again. Wheatley nodded.

"Yeah! I mean, it's just, it, she was impossible, back then, y'know, and, and you not only uh, not only stayed with her but you, you… she let you."

"She said it was just an experiment," Claptrap told him. "Annnnd… it did not go very well." He let go of his hand.

"She does like you," Wheatley said, feeling like he had to make it clear. Actually she loved him, but that was probably something she didn't want shared just yet.

"She's got you now, so it still doesn't matter."

"We're not like that," Wheatley told him quietly. "We can both be… we can both be with her, Claptrap. We already talked about it."

Claptrap held his hands apart. "Uh… no we didn't."

"No, not, not you and me," Wheatley said. "Gladys and I, we uh, we've been over it."

"Oh," was all Claptrap had to say to that. He tapped the tips of his hands together a little bit and then said, "So she… is really gonna give things another go?"

Wheatley looked at him, optic half shielded, resisting the temptation to roll it. "How many times d'you need us to say it, mate? She's said it, I've said it, d'you need an, an invitation, or something?"

Claptrap shrugged uncomfortably. "I… get rejected a lot, okay? I just… wanna be sure you guys mean what you're saying."

"We're your friends. Why would we lie to you?"

"I don't know, man. I don't have any friends."

"Yes you do. Us!"

Claptrap laughed. "All right, I got it. What's up next, friendo?"

/

Claptrap, as it turned out, was not a particularly busy guy, so he was able to visit quite often. Wheatley loved it when he did, because they always had a whale of a time. Most often he came to hang out with Wheatley, which was amazing! He had an actual friend that wanted to visit him! No matter how many times he related this incredible development to GLaDOS, it never failed to amuse her. And it all worked out rather well: Claptrap kept Wheatley occupied so that GLaDOS could work or, more often, show Carrie more of the ropes. But after a while Wheatley decided that a change had to be made, and arranged it for the next time he showed up.

"What's up, Wheats?" Claptrap said, after meeting him at what they'd taken to calling the Pandora Portal. "What're we in for today?"

"Change of plans," Wheatley told him. "I don't think you'll mind, don't think you will, but… thought it'd be nice if you, um, if you spent some time with her, today."

Claptrap froze, his optic retracting possibly as far as it would go – he still wasn't certain of that – and said nothing. Wheatley hoped he was alright with it, and wasn't upset or anything. "I'm gonna um, me and Carrie are going to go help with the um, well we're putting together a system to let the cores leave the facility, and it involves some things we know best, like rail placements and such. So… she's um, she's not busy."

"Doesn't she have… work, though?"

Wheatley shrugged. "'course she does. But she doesn't work all the time."

"She doesn't?"

Wheatley always wondered just how much Claptrap knew about GLaDOS during conversations like these. Both of them avoided talking about their short-lived living arrangements whenever Wheatley attempted to bring them up. "No. She doesn't."

"All right," Claptrap said, not sounding convinced.

"C'mon, I'll take you to her," Wheatley volunteered, though mostly because he was confident Claptrap didn't know the way, and they set off.

When they arrived, GLaDOS didn't notice and Claptrap didn't seem to want to vacate the doorway, for whatever reason, so Wheatley decided to take charge and lowered himself enough to push Claptrap with his lower handle. Claptrap yelled and started flailing, and GLaDOS started and directed her attention to the both of them.

"Hey, sugarbits," Claptrap said, a little weakly. GLaDOS raised the top half of her lens.

"Hello, Claptrap. And Wheatley."

"'allo, luv!" Wheatley called back. "I was just uh, just showing him how to get here! I'll take Carrie to uh, to go help with the um, the, the…" He was struggling to come up with the name and failing.

"It doesn't have a name yet, Dad," Carrie said, now visible. GLaDOS had been obscuring her from view, though of course not on purpose. "Just call it the project or something."

"Project it is, then!" Wheatley declared. "C'mon, Carrie."

Carrie came to join him, and while she was on that Claptrap held up a hand and said, "Hey, if she's busy I should probably go with you guys."

"I am in the middle of something, but give me a few minutes and I'll wrap it up."

"You will?"

GLaDOS's optic narrowed. "God, Claptrap, stop being so timid. It really does not suit you."

Claptrap dropped his arms to his sides. "I've never seen you stop working before! In… the middle of the day, I mean."

"Oh, sometimes she doesn't stop even to sleep," Carrie muttered.

"We don't need to do that right now, Caroline."

"I just don't wanna blow it again, babe," Claptrap confessed, his shoulders coming up as he looked at the floor. "So I'm just – "

"I don't want to hear it," GLaDOS interrupted. "Claptrap, you're the only person I know who never feared me. And you have always made a point of being up-front. If I want to talk to a suck-up, there are plenty of them around. Do not become one of them."

"One second, you're complaining that people might not be frightened, be afraid of you," cut in Wheatley, "and now you're complaining that not enough people aren't?"

"Why would I want my friends to fear me?" GLaDOS snapped. "The general public has to, because I am both the Administrator of this facility and law enforcement. Anyone with ill-intent should fear authority."

"Administrator of the facility?" asked Wheatley. "Is that like… you're saying you're the President?"

"No, the Prime Minister. You granted me Canadian citizenship some time ago, in the extremely limited capacity you were able to do so. Which is to say, you couldn't."

Wheatley had never heard of a Prime Minister before, so he couldn't really argue the point.

"You're not scary, babe," Claptrap told her. "You're like a Bandit: you've got a lot of shots, but you don't do a whole lot of damage and it takes you forever to reload!"

GLaDOS stared at Claptrap for a good handful of seconds. "Thanks for that," she said dryly. "I've always wanted to be compared to a series of weaponry cobbled together with duct tape and sniper scopes rescued from the garbage."

"There are no Bandit sniper rifles!"

"I know that."

"What's a Bandit?" Wheatley asked, not following any of that. Claptrap turned around.

"One of the gun brands on Pandora. Mostly just leftover gun parts taped together. That's what she's like with the people she likes, anyway. To the people she's not… more like a… a Vladof or a Maliwan. Depending on who we're talking about."

"It really comes down to efficiency at that point," GLaDOS agreed. "I would prefer to ambush with a Vladof, though. The… Surkov."

"No, gotta go with the Jakobs Bessie if you wanna do some real damage."

"That is outrageous overkill, Claptrap. I don't want it to be too easy."

"You should set yourself up over there!" He waved his hand expansively. "Imagine it: Aperture sniper rifles in every vending machine!"

"I don't know about that," GLaDOS said, shaking her core. "I don't care about profits and I really don't like having my technology out of my control."

"What are you guys talking about?" Carrie demanded, and though Wheatley was also quite confused he didn't think she should've gone about clarification in that way.

"Are you guys gonna get going or what?" Claptrap interrupted. "We have stuff to talk about and you've got stuff to do!"

"Don't let us stop you," said Carrie, frowning. She didn't seem to appreciate Claptrap's nature quite as much as GLaDOS did. "You're just talking about guns anyway."

"Is it too much to ask that I get a minute to talk to my girlfriend in peace?" Claptrap demanded, turning to face Carrie and throwing up his hands. "I haven't seen her in like ten years, would it hurt you to cut me a break? Sheesh. Newer models. Think they're a big deal, isn't that right, sugar-RAM?"

GLaDOS started laughing. "That's the Claptrap I know."

"Momma!"

"Caroline, you can leave at any time. We already all discussed this and you chose to stick around. I'm not going to defend you."

"Fine," Carrie said sulkily, and turned around so she and Wheatley could make their exit.

"She had a point, princess," Wheatley said quietly after a few moments. He wasn't sure quite what to do now, because he was supposed to spend the day with her and it wouldn't be much fun if they were fighting, but he was going to do his best.

"He looks at her like she's a goddess," Carrie muttered. "You do it sometimes too."

"She is a goddess."

"She doesn't look at either of you like that."

Wheatley sighed.

"Carrie, both of us're… not high up on the um, on the list of best AI ever made. We're not anything close to what she is. So we don't expect her to do that. It'd be silly, really."

"Is he really her… boyfriend?"

Wheatley frowned, stopping. "Thought you liked him."

She shrugged and bounced her lower handle. "I… well, if you're both her boyfriends, then… that means he's my dad too, right?"

"No," Wheatley answered, shaking his core. "Pretty sure he's not at all int'rested in having a daughter."

"I just don't like sharing," Carrie admitted, tilting back and looking at the ceiling. Wheatley laughed.

"He was around long before either of us, princess."

Carrie more or less calmed down after that, though Wheatley tried to make a note to discuss it with GLaDOS later. Carrie's possessiveness left a lot to be desired, but then again, she was a pretty spoiled AI, to put it bluntly. The two of them indulged her a lot. He wasn't quite sure whether that was very bad at this point, but she could at least be civil when GLaDOS made the very rare decision of spending time with one of her friends from the outside. Speaking of which, Wheatley had to work on not being jealous when Dr Kleiner came 'round…

/

Carrie had gone off to bed a while ago, but Wheatley had wanted to hang back for a while. He didn't want to interrupt whatever it was Claptrap and GLaDOS had ended up doing. He didn't care what that was, he just didn't want to be a bother. But he figured that, since he had no messages from GLaDOS, it would be alright if he went back to her chamber to sleep. Claptrap could visit every day if he liked, and he would leave them alone for however long they wanted; Wheatley just wanted to be sure he could sleep next to her at night.

To his relief, GLaDOS was in the default position and Claptrap was on Wheatley's left, sort of leaning into her core. His left arm was inside the track and he was just running his hand up and down along her core with the other. After he'd noted that, he looked back at GLaDOS again and was momentarily dazzled. She was obviously a goddess. Why did it offend Carrie so much if he looked at her like she was what she was?

"Oh," Claptrap said suddenly, standing up straight. "You weren't back yet, so I – I'll go."

Just then GLaDOS's optic flickered, very softly, and she moved enough that she was alongside Claptrap's chassis again. It wasn't a huge motion, since Claptrap hadn't been more than a couple of inches from her, but to Claptrap it was obviously a much bigger gesture than just a readjustment. Wheatley raised his upper handle and looked at the other robot pointedly.

"Guess you're in for the uh, for the long haul, mate."

"I… always wanted to do this," Claptrap said, and he tentatively put his arm back inside her core.

"You lived with her and you never, never stayed the night in here?" Wheatley asked in disbelief. Claptrap presented his free hand palm up.

"She always kicked me out." His antenna drooped. "Look, man, I'm totally new to all this! I've never actually spent the whole night with a girl before. Is there something I should be doing?"

Wheatley was floored that he was being asked for relationship advice. From a robot who had gotten GLaDOS to agree to have them move in together. It really felt terribly backward. "Uh… no, you're um, you're doing a great job. Really. I'd do that myself, if I could, but uh… well, honestly, it's the arms, see, I… haven't got any. Sometimes the handles'll do in a pinch, but they just… they aren't as good as hands for that sort of thing, y'know?"

Claptrap perked right back up and resumed what he'd been doing. Wheatley took his place on GLaDOS's other side – which was, quite conveniently, the side he usually took – and after a moment or three Claptrap whispered, "Is she still mad? Carrie?"

"Carrie needs… to be talked to, 'bout that," Wheatley sighed. "I have to bring it up with Gladys. She was tremendously spoiled, I think. We never really uh, said no to her, or punished her – not that she needed punished, she's a good girl, really she is – but she's… far too used to getting her way, I think. We've got to, um, to… to fix that. I mean… I'm glad you're here, and Gladys is, I know that as well, so Carrie shouldn't have a problem with it."

"Thanks, Wheats," said Claptrap. "You're a pretty good friend, you know that?"

Wheatley smiled to himself. He did know that, of course, but it was nice that Claptrap thought so as well. "Thanks, mate."

/

The following morning was a slow one, because GLaDOS had apparently had such a good time chatting with Claptrap that she'd forgotten to set her sleep timer and was still asleep after Wheatley got up. When she did get up, she stretched herself out and Wheatley smiled to himself. Then he saw for himself Claptrap looking at her in the way Carrie'd described, and it just made things better. He was glad Claptrap'd come up all that time ago, when Carrie'd been nosing through GLaDOS's things. Claptrap was, overall, a pretty good thing to happen.

"Morning, babe," said Claptrap, bringing Wheatley's attention back to the present.

"Good morning, Claptrap," GLaDOS returned, glancing down at him. "I didn't… expect you to stick around."

Claptrap shrugged. "Eh… it ah… it felt like the best decision. Yeah."

GLaDOS emitted a burst of static. "I'll bet it did."

"Oh, don't bother pretending like you wanted him to leave," Wheatley scoffed. "We all know you didn't."

GLaDOS muttered something in binary and shook her core.

"I heard that," Claptrap piped up, and Wheatley had to speed 'round to him in disbelief.

"You understand bin'ry?" he asked, gasping. Claptrap shrugged.

"Why wouldn't I?"

"I don't," Wheatley admitted.

"Well then, I'll show ya! It's not hard."

"Whatever you two are doing, do it someplace else," GLaDOS cut in. "I have work to do."

"You always have work to do," Claptrap said bitterly in a low voice. GLaDOS narrowed her optic.

"Yes. The only one of us with an actual job has work to do. How bizarre. On your planet, it must be the people without jobs who do all the work."

"I'm working," Wheatley reminded her. "I've a job too."

"… yes," GLaDOS admitted reluctantly.

"Well, we'll take off," Claptrap said. "C'mere for a sec, will ya?"

She, surprisingly, did so without comment, and he grabbed the inside of her core with one hand and used it to pull himself up somewhat so he could… well, Wheatley wasn't sure what the total point of it was, but it seemed to be so he could kiss her faceplate as high as possible. After he moved away she gave him a nudge, but Wheatley wasn't sure if Claptrap realised that. The two of them made their exit, Claptrap eventually falling behind Wheatley a bit because he didn't know where he was going.

Wheatley led the other robot to his hole again, even though he hadn't liked the view for some months now, and they both watched the humans outside. The adults were engaging in some building project, while the children were scampering underfoot, giggling and chasing each other in some other sort of absurd game they liked to play when they didn't have other things to do. Wheatley thought it might be a variation on tag but he wasn't sure. They'd only been there a minute or two when Claptrap said, somewhat wistfully, "She's so hot."

"Hm?"

"GLaDOS."

"Well…" Wheatley could've guessed who 'she' was. "I dunno what you mean by 'hot', actually."

"You know," Claptrap said, waving his right hand dismissively. "She's sexy."

Wheatley started. "You know what that means?" he gasped.

Claptrap turned to face him, looking at him a bit sideways. "Uh… yeah?"

"What does it mean, then?"

"It means… you'd hit that? That you think she's… attractive? I don't get what you don't get!"

"Ohhhh," Wheatley said, not entirely familiar with the first term either but more certain of the second. "Yeah, 'course she is."

Claptrap turned back to the horizon. He tapped his hands together, then looked at Wheatley again and said, "Hey, I… if you don't want me to talk about her, I'm cool with that, it's just… nobody believes me."

"'bout what?" frowned Wheatley.

Claptrap shrugged disinterestedly, but Wheatley didn't miss the curve of his antenna. "You try to tell people you have a super smart, hot, powerful supercomputer as a girlfriend… and they just laugh. They think she's imaginary. I can… talk about it with you."

"'course," said Wheatley. "I know what you mean, mate." He doubted anyone would believe him if he said something similar. Many of the Cores didn't, and the proof was right in front of their faces.

"It's so stupid," Claptrap said in a low voice, gripping the vacated panel frame. "Why do I have to go to a whole other planet to find some friends, Wheats? It… you start to wonder if something's wrong with you, after a while."

"There's not," Wheatley said, concern crossing his optic. "And don't think of it like that! Just think of it like… well, there aren't a whole lot of robots on Pandora, is there? Where are you s'posed to get your friends from? And I mean… in a, in the whole universe, the friends you're meant to have're only on your, are only where you come from? That… it sounds a bit silly, y'know, to think… to think that what you've got is all you deserve, and… and it all you're going to get."

"You're right," Claptrap said. "I… could go anywhere, but I stick to Pandora and wonder why things don't get any better."

"There's not a whole lot of robots here either," Wheatley admitted, "but there's got to be a whole planet full of 'em, someplace."

"Maybe I'll try to find it."

"You'll have to hurry," Wheatley told him, smiling. "She's building a facility on the moon and uh, and she might just get there first."

Claptrap laughed. "Of course she will! I'd be worried if she didn't!"

They stood in silence until Claptrap clapped a hand on the back of Wheatley's chassis hard enough that he almost disengaged from the control arm. "I'll head back for now," the other robot said. "Thanks for everything, Wheats. I'll let you know when I'll be by next."

"Whenever you like," said Wheatley, but when he offered to go with Claptrap to the Pandora Portal he just waved a hand in dismissal and headed off alone.