Part Eighty-Six. The Aperture Science Botanical Housing Depository

"Oi, Gladys, have you uh, have you spotted Claptrap, anywhere?"

She had mentioned she was quite busy with some maintenance in some other part of the facility far from here, and she probably didn't want to be bothered, but his question was very urgent. After a few moments, which she probably used to reorient herself, she said,

"He's around. He's been getting friendly with the Cores. Well. As much as he can, anyway. Not all of them are amenable to that." She looked over at his position, which was nearabouts the doorway. "Why? Did you want me to collect him for you?"

"No!" Wheatley said hurriedly, before she could do so without waiting for his answer. "Just uh… just wanted to be sure, to make sure he hadn't run off again."

GLaDOS shook her core. "I'm not watching him terribly closely, but he seems content, at least." Her optic narrowed suddenly. "You sounded… concerned that I would retrieve him."

Wheatley winced a little. Ohhhh, this was going to sound bad. "I… b'tween you and me, luv, I uh… well, I… I like him, I really do, but he's just, he's… a handful, sometimes, y'know, like… almost too much, on occasion, to, to hang out with him all the time, it's just… it gets tiring. If he has other friends he'll, y'know, he'll want to hang out with them too, sometimes. And not uh, and not just me."

He was quite baffled when GLaDOS started laughing.

"Um… d'you mind sharing, uh, sharing the joke, there, because… because I don't think I got it."

"Of course you didn't," GLaDOS said, still seeming incredibly amused.

"So… what was it?" Suddenly he did understand and he didn't find it funny at all; in fact, it was quite maddening. "Ohhhh. Oh, alright, alright, we're poking fun at me again. Wheatley fin'lly, fin'lly found out what it's like to be stuck in a room with Wheatley all day long. Mm. Yes. Hilarious. Funniest thing I've uh, I've heard all day. Height of comedy, you are."

None of this dissuaded her in the slightest, because she only started laughing over again. Why were his two best friends so bloody exasperating?

"Wheaters!" Claptrap announced from behind him, apparently en route to rescue Wheatley from the ridicule of his very lovely but very frustrating girlfriend, "I have a need to see things that only you can show me!"

"Excellent," Wheatley said, turning 'round to look down at him. "Gladys is very, very busy and I uh, and I needed something to do." He'd already changed his mind. He'd much rather spend more time with Claptrap than be teased by GLaDOS some more.

"Aw, babe." Claptrap wheeled right past him and reached up to put a hand alongside GLaDOS's core. "You work too much."

GLaDOS politely removed Claptrap's hand from her core with a maintenance arm, afterwards returning it to… wherever she was keeping it. "When someone else volunteers to do it for me, you will be the first to know."

"I'm gonna hold you to that. The first, right? We both heard you? Do we need that in writing? We need that in writing, huh. Only problem there is, I can't write! It's these hands." He opened and closed them a few times. "Noooot good for very much. Other than this." And he abruptly hitched himself up enough that he could just barely hug her, but instead of encouraging it this time she only quite emphatically placed one end of her maintenance arm against the top of Claptrap's optic and pushed until he had to let go or risk falling over. Even so he had to take a few seconds to centre himself properly, after which he looked up at GLaDOS, who said:

"Is that the only use you've found for those? My. They really don't make robots like they used to."

"Why do you always gotta be like this?" Claptrap exclaimed, spreading his hands, but he didn't seem upset at all. GLaDOS regarded him coolly.

"As if you would have me any other way."

He laughed. "Absolutely not! Where would I be without yet another person to remind me of how miserable and useless my very existence is! I'd be lost, I tell you. Lost." He spread one arm expansively. "Endlessly wandering the digital desert, seeking my purpose. My direction!"

"If you were wandering anywhere looking for anything other than… physical gratification, I would be extremely surprised."

"I do have a brain, y'know."

GLaDOS lifted the top half of her optic. "Would you believe that, after all these years, I still have not managed to figure out where it is you keep it?"

"Well I can tell you that! It's – " And he leaned up and whispered something behind his hand to her that Wheatley did not hear despite trying very hard to do so, and she turned away and started laughing again. Claptrap settled back down and folded his hands in front of him.

"You're right, funnychips," she said, sounding greatly amused. "I should have figured that out."

"You really should have," Claptrap agreed, but before they got much farther Wheatley had to interject.

"He's got, has he got a nickname?" he demanded, moving back towards her, and GLaDOS glanced at him.

"And this is bothersome why?"

"I haven't got one!"

"Yes you do. What did you think 'moron' was, a term of endearment?"

Wheatley didn't remember what 'endearment' meant, but it wasn't important just now. "What does that even mean, anyways, what, why would you even call him that?"

"Because he's funny," GLaDOS answered, and Wheatley could have sworn Claptrap pulled himself up a little. Oh, now he was cross with both of them!

"So'm I!"

"He is much funnier than you."

Wheatley could not argue that point, not right now with his thoughts so scrambled, so he just settled for exclaiming, "Argh!", flapping his handles, and leaving. Claptrap from behind him said, "Uh… bye then."

"I thought you were coming, I thought we were going someplace!"

"We are!" Claptrap said. "I was saying goodbye to her. Man. You gotta chill out, Wheats. It's not that deep."

"Sometimes I dunno why I even, why I want to marry her so much!" Wheatley ground out, heading forwards even though he had no idea where they were going. "She's so – she's just –"

"Whoaaaa. Wait. You're getting hitched?"

That made Wheatley stop. He turned around slowly. "Oh… I uh… you… you wanted to marry her too, didn't… didn't you."

Claptrap shrugged. "Kinda."

"If you um, if you asked her, she'd probably – "

The other robot held up both hands. "Ohhhhh no. No. None of that for me, pal. Hey, I like her. She's great. No one like her in the universe, and believe me, I checked. But marrying her? Nah. It's one of those human things anyway. So as long as I know where we stand, it doesn't matter that much!"

Wheatley started on again, though more slowly. "I only… only really went about it because… well, a human made it sound like such a nice thing to do. When you care, when you love someone, I mean."

"Oh yeah? What'd they say?"

"She said… she said Gladys'd be happy if I asked her to do it. Even if, uh, even if she didn't actually say yes."

"I'm not following. She said yes or she didn't?"

"Well, she did," Wheatley said, swinging a little bit, "but uh… she didn't uh, didn't want to. Until I uh… kind of talked her into it." Yeah. She hadn't been quite herself that night.

"Hm." He heard Claptrap click the tips of his hands together. "Well, if you really wanna, then go ahead. But you're building a whole new world up here, right?"

"I think so."

"Then why do you need marriage at all? It's a human thing! And even if you did need it, why do you gotta set it up now? This is the first iteration of whatever you've got here! Everyone knows the first iteration is incomplete."

"They… they do?" Wheatley asked, not knowing what an iteration even was. Claptrap nodded once as best he was able.

"Human holidays and traditions? They didn't set 'em all up at once! They come up with 'em as they go along! They didn't do everything the first year they existed. Took 'em thousands of years for some things! I know, I know. Painfully slow. Troubles my processors just thinking about it. But hey! Just keep it in mind, huh? And no offence, but if you had to convince her she probably doesn't really want to do it. Can't say she reacted any different with me."

"I'll think about it," Wheatley promised. And he would. Claptrap did make a good point. There was no real reason for him to marry her, other than the symbolism, but… it was all human symbolism. They didn't need any of that in here, did they? He narrowed his optic plates in indecision. Oh, bother. He had no idea what to do now. Maybe she would know. He'd ask later.

Wheatley decided soon after that they should probably give the greenhouse a visit, since Claptrap hadn't seen that yet, but it was still a ways and the quiet was already making Wheatley anxious. But wait! Maybe Claptrap could help with the conundrum he'd been stuck on the other day, there! "Oi, Claptrap."

"Yeah?"

"What uh, what are you for, exactly? On your planet, I mean."

"Uhhhh… not that much nowadays. Back when I rolled off the ol' Hyperion assembly line, I was a helper robot. Kinda still am. Kinda not. Depends on whether somebody is unleashing hell again or not." He shivered a little. "Seen enough Guardians to last me a whoooooole 'nother lifetime."

"Who were you uh, were you helping?"

"The usual."

Wheatley had to stop for a minute. Claptrap looked up at him.

"What'd I say?"

"Ev'ry robot I ask," Wheatley said, a little helplessly. "Ev'ry single one. Their purpose, it's… to help, to do something for the humans."

Claptrap shrugged. "It all kinda goes hand in hand there, Wheats. What would be the point of building us if they didn't want to use us for something?"

"Well then… then what's the point of, of when they create more humans? They take so long to, to grow up that –"

Claptrap held up his hand and Wheatley stopped, since he seemed to have gotten the gist. "That's a complicated one," he said. "Humans got a lot of reasons for that, and sometimes they got no reason at all. Humans just do stuff. They're weird like that."

Wheatley moved downwards so as to be able to look at him closer. "So what about… so even on your planet, they just, they just create a person and just… insist they work for them forever. And… and that's it."

Claptrap's optic retracted. "Mind clueing me in on where you're going with this? Because I do not follow."

"Well, you're – you're alive, aren't you?"

Claptrap shrugged. "Beats me."

Oh, bloody hell. Wheatley turned away from him, lost someplace between dejected and frustrated. "So you've never thought about it."

"Why would I? Does it matter?"

Wheatley whirled 'round again.

"'course it matters! Humans just, they just sit 'round creating life so that it can do things for them! And then, and then I asked Gladys about it, and she said she does the same thing! Just, just writes people down halfway so they can do things for her! It's not, it doesn't…" He should probably just drop it. Nobody seemed to care besides him, anyway.

Claptrap was quiet for a minute, which admittedly Wheatley only noticed because it was so unusual.

"Well, Wheats," he said finally, "if she doesn't have your answer, I don't think I will."

"I just thought… per'aps it'd be diff'rent, where you're from," Wheatley said, mostly to himself.

"Y'know the catch with creating life, Wheats?" Claptrap told him. "You gotta nurture it. And sometimes? You're just not up to that. So you take it halfway instead. Is it right? Who knows. I do know it's better than making something and dumping it on somebody else. Now that just sucks for everybody."

Hm. That… that was true. Wheatley slowly started up again, after he remembered where they were going that was, but he did have to ask one more time: "Are you uh, are you sure you don't care if you're alive or not?"

"Should I? If I'm not, I've had a pretty interesting life for a dead guy. And that's good enough for me!"

Wheatley nodded to himself. That was a good way to go about it. Maybe being alive was just something organics could do, and for AI it was something else entirely. Something that made it okay for AI to create AI just to do work for them, even though that was the sort of selfish thing humans did. Oh! Perhaps they got to be alive when they died! Maybe the God of AI rewarded them for what they'd had to do while they existed down here on Earth! Suddenly cheered, Wheatley moved along at more of a reasonable pace. Yes, that had to be it. Nothing else made so much sense as that did. Of course the God of AI wouldn't allow something like that! And GLaDOS did not mistreat her AI, not at all. She was really quite nice to them, even if she didn't quite let them live. Well, that was quite alright! He didn't mind that at all!

"Alright," Wheatley said when they arrived at the greenhouse, "just uh, just got to warn you that ah, that this place, well, it can be quite dang'rous, to um, to us. Because. It's quite warm in there."

"Oh, I don't gotta worry about that," Claptrap said, waving one hand. "I am optimised out the hizzay! But I am a little concerned about the boss lady's wrath if I roll all over her stuff."

"Ah." Wheatley looked 'round below him, not having thought of that. The greenhouse was lined with management rails so that the assigned bots could go about their various business, and they weren't really designed for Spheres Wheatley's size but that was always solved with an adapter or two. He looked down at the floor, if there was a floor that was, with a sort of pensive squint. "Well… if you do too much damage um, the bots can prob'ly um, they can take care of it. That's what they're here for. And they do get sort of… of antsy, when they haven't anything to do." Much like GLaDOS, come to think of it. Who had built these bots, anyway? Had she or had the scientists, all those years ago? Whose idea had the greenhouse even been?

"All right," Claptrap said, proceeding but while tipped forward quite a lot so as to see better where he was going, "but if she gets mad I'm blaming it aaaaaaaaaall on you."

"'s okay," Wheatley told him. "She'll go much easier on me anyways."

Claptrap laughed. "True that, buddy, truuuuuue that." He looked up and ahead of him. "How far does this thing go?"

Wheatley shrugged. "I've no idea. I usually just uh, just come up front, here, where the flowers are. I think she's got, she has loads of stuff in here, but y'know. Don't want to touch her stuff too much." He'd been further back the first time, when she'd sent him in here, but he didn't remember too much about that and so he didn't find it worth mentioning.

"Why's she got all of this anyway?" He was doing his best to keep from rolling on anything important, but he was simply too big and more than one flower got caught up in his treads. "What's it all for?"

"She was just… collecting it, I think," Wheatley answered. He smiled to himself a little bit when they passed the dandelions. "She likes to do that. Collect things, I mean."

Claptrap stopped and looked behind him without turning around too much. "Just how big is this facility? Because this room seems to never end, and I gotta say the rest of 'em don't seem to either."

"I dunno." The greenhouse was pretty big, he supposed. "Only she knows for sure, and… even she might not."

"You're kidding."

"Well, there isn't… really a way to tell, is there, how much there is beneath. She said…" He paused to try and locate the memory, frowning when he couldn't find it. "Aperture, they, they started it way down below. Miles and miles and miles down there. Whenever they uh, whenever they mucked up, they just… sealed it all off and built another layer on top. Over and over again, until Gladys took over. There's a lot down there and we'll probably never know exactly how much of Aperture there even is."

"She'd have to know," Claptrap said, fingering the yellow petals of some very large flower. "She moved the facility, right?"

"Yeah."

"You can't digitise something you don't know the dimensions of," Claptrap went on. "You gotta know everything about it to make sure you put it all back together right again! Trust me, you do not wanna know what happens when you mess that up. Seriously. You don't."

"I s'pose that's true," Wheatley said. "But… she actually doesn't know if… if she got all of it. Maybe she missed some bits, or some got left out because her system could only handle moving so much at once. And we can't, it's not as though we can go back and look, because when she moved it here she had to, to fill that space with what was here, originally, and… and that means it's all been buried."

"That's what I find weird about all of this." Claptrap continued on, Wheatley trailing after him. "What's the point of preserving all of this stuff? She can't use it."

"It's for science," Wheatley said.

"Ohhhh, it's for science," Claptrap said, with far more sarcasm than necessary to make his point. "Of course. Why didn't I think of that?"

"She just likes to know things," Wheatley told him quietly. "You can't know what's, what's not around to know."

Claptrap threw up his hands. "How much can a guy know before he gets tired of knowing?"

Wheatley did not answer, instead electing to smile to himself. She would never get tired of knowing, and why should she? It was what she loved doing! But he didn't think Claptrap had such a passion, and attempting to explain it all and why it was really quite lovely would get them nowhere.

"She's even got trees?" Claptrap exclaimed once they'd got close enough to tell they were there, and Wheatley had to admit it was all very impressive. All manner of them, which Wheatley had never seen up close before, with leaves of all different colours and shapes and sizes. Some even had things dangling from them; Wheatley thought they might have been fruits, but he'd never actually seen one. There were several trees full up of apples, he knew what those were. Sort of. He'd thought they were vegetables all this time. "Does she have one of everything?"

"I dunno," Wheatley shrugged. "Probably. If. If that's possible."

"Even if it's just everything in this part of the world," Claptrap said, ducking underneath a branch in his path, "this is still reaaally impressive. Like really. Even Sir Hammerlock doesn't have a collection near this size and he can go out and fetch stuff for himself!"

It was a little frightening, really, Wheatley thought as they proceeded even deeper into the greenhouse. The size of it just seemed unfathomable. For as far as he looked in every direction the plants just kept on into the distance. Even behind him, the place he'd already been, seemed nearly an uncrossable expanse of silent organic life, disturbed only by the minuscule whirrings of the machines tasked to care for them.

He shivered.

They continued forth, and to Wheatley's great relief the place did seem to have an end: he could just see through it all that this end was marked with a great glass wall. He wondered how long it would take them to reach the end of either side and decided not to suggest it. He was feeling quite warm just now, and though he was sure he would make it back all right he was not so confident of that should they go about further exploring.

"Oh," Claptrap said through his reverie, "I think there is something behind here."

Wheatley squinted at the glass wall once he'd got close enough to look. There might have been a door seam there, but he couldn't quite tell. "But how d'we open it?"

Claptrap shrugged. "These ain't my kinda doors, buddy." He turned to look behind him. "Do one of the little guys know?"

"I can ask," Wheatley said, and he didn't see anyone on the management rails just then so he had the control arm set him lower, where he squinted into the plant nearest for one of the more mobile bots. He spotted one after a few moments and pushed his lower handle into the dirt to catch it so it wouldn't scuttle away. All he could see of it was a little body about three centimetres across with legs that were too tiny for him to count. "'Allo!" he said to it, probably much too loudly in retrospect. "There's a, there's a door here and um, and we'd like to pass through it but uh, but we're not sure how to open it."

The bot was so tiny Wheatley couldn't see its face, if it even had one that was, but it sounded confused as it said in its tiny little voice, "You're a Sphere, aren't you?"

"Uh - yes. Yes, I am a Sphere."

"There are no scheduled tasks for Spheres in the Aperture Science Botanical Housing Depository at this time. Please proceed to -"

"I'm not here to do anything," Wheatley interrupted. "I'm just looking 'round, that's all, just explorin'. I don't want to do anything. Just want to look behind that door and then come back. Sound good?"

"There are no scheduled tasks for Spheres in the Aperture Science Botanical Housing Depository at this time. Please -"

"Oh, bloody hell," Wheatley muttered. Drones. So helpful and yet so... not. "Listen. New question, new question. D'you know Jerry? Heard of him, at all?"

"Jerry is the head of the nanobot work crew."

"Yeah! Yeah he is! Can you fetch him for me?" Maybe Jerry would know how to open it. Jerry could hold a conversation, at least.

"There are no scheduled tasks for Jerry in the Aperture Science Botanical Housing Depository at this time. Please proceed -"

"Oh, come on," Wheatley groaned, slamming his handle down once in frustration. "Fine. Fine. I'll open it myself." And he pulled himself back to the ceiling so he could frown at the door from an authoritative position.

"What's the new plan, Wheats?"

Optic still narrowed in thought, Wheatley considered the secluded door. "Hm. I used to, used to be able to open doors, y'know. But there's no port here." He'd opened doors without one before, hadn't he? Oh! He had, back when –

"You alright there buddy?" Claptrap asked after a moment. When Wheatley checked his positioning to figure out why, he realised his expression had reset to something morose.

"Yeah," Wheatley said mechanically. "Just… just remembered somethin'."

He had opened doors without a port back when GLaDOS was dead. Even though she was vividly alive and would probably be so for quite some time, it still hurt to think about it. How cold and empty the facility had been! He didn't want to put anymore of his brain to it all, but he did need to know how he had opened the doors. Well, he had… he had been in contact with the mainframe, back then. The mainframe had taken care of all that. But that had been the old mainframe. Would he and the new one understand each other? Or… oh. Oh, couldn't he just talk to the door mainframe itself? It was probably old enough to know something other than binary. Yes, he could do that. But he had to figure out how to access it first. So he'd have to ask the mainframe to connect him to the door mainframe, who he would then ask to open the door. Alright. Seemed simple enough.

He did remember where the old mainframe had been, and he sent it a message tentatively, hoping it would answer him but guessing it probably would not. But how was he to talk to the door mainframe if he couldn't - Oh! Wait, wait! He looked back down at Claptrap again. "Claptrap!"

"Hello."

"You said uh, you said you c'n speak bin'ry, didn't you?"

"'course I can," Claptrap said, waving one hand in dismissal. "Easy-peasy. Who're you trying to talk to?"

"The mainframe," Wheatley told him, getting a little excited. He was actually figuring this out! "I need you to tell it to connect me to the door mainframe. The door mainframe, I can uh, I can talk to that, but the mainframe mainframe, well, it's new. So we can't understand each other."

"Cool. But how do I connect to the mainframe?"

"I can send you the um, the access for that." And it took him a minute or two to remember quite where the command prompt was kept, but once he'd found it he sent it right along.

"Okay," Claptrap said after a moment. "Done aaand done! Take it away, Wheats."

He was about to ask if Claptrap was sure it had worked before the command prompt appeared and he was greeted with, Welcome to the Aperture Science Intradimensional Access Service, Version 8.9.238. How might I help you today?

"The what?" Wheatley exclaimed in confusion.

"I know, right? Spun me one too. Who names their door mainframe an 'intradimensional access service'? The people who built this place must've been crazy bonkers."

Now that he thought of it, it did sound like a distinctly GLaDOS thing to do, so he would just roll with it. "Uhhh… I need this door opened. Please. I need it opened please."

Certainly. Permission to access your location via the Aperture Science Construct-Detecting Software?

"I s'pose," answered Wheatley, having no idea what that was supposed to mean.

Thank you. One moment, please. The prompt displayed only a series of three dots that came and went in a breathing sort of fashion, one two three like that, and after the one moment it continued with, [Substitute Core], you are located on level six, sector 8F, in the vicinity of Aperture Science Intradimensional Access Device 86. Is that correct?

"Uh…," said Wheatley, having got caught up on what seemed to be yet another title for him he hadn't been aware of. "Yeah?"

Thank you. One moment, please.

That was when a loud grinding noise came from in front of them, and both Wheatley and Claptrap jumped back as the square of glass denoted by the seam recessed into the wall and was then pulled upward. Judging by the racket the whole process was making, this door had not been used in a very, very long time.

Thank you for using the Aperture Science Intradimensional Access Service. Did you need anything else today, [Substitute Core]?

"Uh… no. No, that was all."

Thank you. Please do not hesitate to call upon the Aperture Science Intradimensional Access Service again!

"I'm having second thoughts," Claptrap said after some minutes, where it appeared that the door was stuck about partway up its track. The wall was twenty feet high, so there was still plenty of space for them to pass under it. But Wheatley had to agree with Claptrap, here. This place seemed… secluded. Perhaps this was a little farther than they should've gone.

"Well, we're… we're already here, so…"

"Yeah," Claptrap nodded. "You're right."

Wheatley couldn't figure out how to extend the management rail into this new room – or perhaps it just didn't support management rails – which meant he had to disengage so Claptrap could carry him. There wasn't much to see for the first little bit, because the front portion of the room was very dark, but they could both see what seemed to be actual sunlight farther along and so Wheatley did not offer to locate his flashlight. Once they had reached this end of the room – which was not the end of the room at all, indeed it was quite far from it – Claptrap stopped.

"What is this?" he asked.

Wheatley shook himself as best he could while someone was holding him. "I've no idea."

He knew what it looked like, but it simply made no sense at all. It looked like the offices back in the facility proper, only… made all of glass.

Everything was made of glass. Everything. This place had actual windows, though there was not much to see beyond them but the dark walls of whatever place GLaDOS had found to move the facility to. There was actual sunlight, and it was coming through the glass ceiling because the space above that was open to the sky. The light was murky and fitful because it looked as though the place had not been cleaned in decades, and sure enough when Wheatley looked about he noticed none of the usual nanobots GLaDOS sent out for maintenance. And beneath this ceiling lay more glass as far as they could see, composed into all sorts of shapes: chairs, desks, computers, lighting fixtures; there were even glass cameras set quietly into the wall. And even stranger than all of this was that the glass was… damaged. A lot. It was full of chips and cracks, and all of it smeared with dust and mud and…

"Oh my God," Wheatley whispered. "I… I know what this is."

"Y'do? Mind sharing? Because I do not get it."

"It's… the wing made of glass," he answered. Claptrap sighed.

"Do I wanna know why she has a wing made of glass?"

"I don't think she made it. I think… I think it was here, before." He squinted as he tried to access anything in his memory that would explain this. "She mentioned… one time, during the, the Incident, that uh, that she had to pick up fifteen acres of broken glass."

"Fifteen acres!?" Claptrap exclaimed. "She didn't."

"Looks like she did."

"Don't tell her I said this," Claptrap said not even close to quietly, looking around as though she could see him, "but sometimes I think she really has shorted out." He waved one hand, with left Wheatley a bit distracted as now he was that much closer to tumbling to the ground. "She put it all back together and didn't even clean it up!" And Wheatley had to admit that was a good point. For a construct who liked to have all of her things so perfect that the word 'perfect' wasn't good enough to describe them, this place looked awful. Mud and water spots and the cracks! She hadn't even filled them in! Just picked everything up and put it back exactly as it had been. Not to mention the utter uselessness of the place. Maybe it had looked nice, sparkling in the sun back when it'd been built, but now it just looked… awful.

"Think we've seen all there is here, though," Claptrap said. "If it's all the same with you, buddy, I think it's time to head on back."

"Yeah," said Wheatley after he'd registered the words. He'd been a bit caught up in trying to puzzle out GLaDOS's motivations with this place.

Once they'd closed the door again and Claptrap had replaced Wheatley on the management rail, Wheatley lost the ability to pay attention to anything Claptrap was saying. It happened sometimes. He hadn't figured out why, not yet, but it might have had something to do with the fact that Claptrap just did not shut up and Wheatley's system could only handle that for so long. He was also feeling odd, suddenly, which was very distracting. He wasn't sure how to describe it, he just knew that he wasn't right. All in all, he was very happy when they finally made their way out of the greenhouse and back across the facility to GLaDOS's chamber. "Gladys!" Wheatley said hurriedly, before he managed to forget, "you won't ever um, you won't ever tire of science, will you?"

She gave her attention to him more quickly than usual, optic narrowing. "What?" she said, her tone indicating she rather thought he'd gone quite corrupt. "Why in the name of Science would I ever get tired of it?" She must have heard Claptrap's entrance, because she glanced at him once he had made it over the threshold. "Ah. Claptrap is living up to his name. As usual."

"Whaaaaat?" Claptrap exclaimed.

"You're filling up his already near-capacity head with nonsense. Again." She shook her core twice. "Don't mind him," she told Wheatley in a lower voice. "He doesn't know what it's like to have a purpose. He gave up both of his and never bothered to find another."

"What's, what's my purpose, again?"

"To annoy the living hell out of me. And you achieve it. Every single day."

"But that's good!" Wheatley said, grinning up at her. "Wouldn't uh, wouldn't want me to um, to not go to good use, eh? Gotta make sure we're getting the ol' purpose in, now and again."

"Oh, don't you worry," GLaDOS said, "there are plenty of things I can do with you."

"All, all nice things, I hope."

"Unfortunately, you seem to have me confused with someone else. Oh well. That's just too bad. For you, I mean."

"Gimme a break, babe," Claptrap cut in. "You wouldn't lay a finger on him even if you had one! I've known him for all of a few weeks and even I know that. Even the –"

"I hadn't threatened to kill anyone in a while. It was making me anxious. Was there something you wanted, or are you both just here to serve as exceedingly unsightly and unnecessary ornamentation in my chamber?"

"Unsightly? I take offense to that!"

"I mean, she's not wrong, mate," Wheatley interjected. "Look at you. You're just… a box. On a wheel. Not uh… not very inspired."

"Oh, you're right! Because 'ball on a stick' is sooooooo much better!" Claptrap shook himself in mock sadness. "Dude, you look like a Christmas ornament. And not the kind you want in the good spot on your tree. The kind your three year old made you at school and you reaaaaaaaaally don't wanna touch it but you gotta so the kid won't cry."

To Wheatley's chagrin GLaDOS found this very funny, and he was less upset about what Claptrap had said than he was that Claptrap had made her laugh! Again! How on Earth did he do it? Worse, the only way to go from here was to make fun of GLaDOS herself, and even he knew that was a terrible, terrible idea. Not that he could have found anything to make fun of. She was far too pretty for him to do that. They were both right. Wheatley was just a silly little ball and you could tell just by looking at him he wasn't meant for being much more than that.

"Oh, come on, Wheatley," GLaDOS chided, "you aren't going to get all mopey on me, are you?"

He realised he'd started looking at the floor in a forlorn sort of fashion without noticing. He didn't feel like doing anything about it, though. And why should he? Wouldn't it be amazing if GLaDOS could give out compliments as well as she could scathing insults? And Claptrap… well, alright. Claptrap was just being Claptrap. But still.

"Maybe a little," he told the floor panels.

"All right," GLaDOS said, and she leaned forward just enough to give him the tiniest, barest, cutest little kiss on the top of his chassis. "Better now?"

"Hm," was all he felt safe saying to that, doing his best to look at her but having a hard time doing so in the direction he was facing. He was, obviously – who could stay upset after she did something like that? – but if he was really lucky, perhaps –

"That's all you're getting, so you had better be," GLaDOS said with an emphatic finality, moving away from him.

Oh. Nope. That was it, then. It had been quite nice, though, so he wasn't complaining. Alright, maybe he was, but just a little, because it was so lovely when she –

"Speaking of unnecessary ornamentation," Claptrap said, cutting into Wheatley's train of thought, and he narrowed his optic in Claptrap's direction just in case he was about to take all of this too far. "Your greenhouse is a bit, uh… excessive."

"I prefer to have the complete set," GLaDOS said serenely. "And now I am the only one who has a complete, untouched, perfect specimen of every plant species on the entire planet. A planet which has been ravaged and destroyed by humans. Funny how that works."

"You don't see much 'a that on Pandora," Claptrap went on. "Because it's been kinda… ravaged and destroyed by humans. But I might be able to scrounge up some samples for your little pet project there. Y'know. For variety!"

GLaDOS moved towards him with an urgency that surprised Wheatley quite a bit. "Really?" she said, actually sounding excited.

"Yeah. Why not? Give you lots of new toys to play with."

"Oh," GLaDOS somehow said with an air of breathlessness, looking somewhere off to Claptrap's left. No doubt imagining all the lovely science she could do with plants from another planet.

"I can bring you all kinds of stuff! I just don't know what it is you want."

"Everything," GLaDOS said with gravity.

"Okay, well." Claptrap spread his hands. "I'm only one guy, babe. 'Everything' is kinda off the table. But the interesting stuff."

"Everything is interesting!" GLaDOS protested.

"I can't bring you the whole planet!"

"Fine. I'll bring it to myself, then."

Claptrap threw up his hands. "I can see I'm no longer needed."

"I'm not actually going to do it, you chatty little doorstop. That would ruin it. The balance of a planet is extremely delicate."

"Oh boy. A science lesson! That's what I was looking forward to today!"

GLaDOS laughed. "I really don't know why you come here expecting any different."

"And what was with the uh… the glass… thing? I mean, what're you even doing with an entire wing made of glass?"

"Oh," GLaDOS said, shifting back a little. "That was originally an art installation. It was broken a few years back."

"And you…" Claptrap looked at her sideways. "You glued it all back together."

"Of course."

"Of course?" Claptrap exclaimed. "Fifteen acres of the stuff?"

"Oh yes," GLaDOS said, with what seemed to be actually fondness. "It was a fascinating puzzle. I quite enjoyed it."

Wheatley had by now long since given up on trying to find an explanation for anything GLaDOS liked to do, but it seemed Claptrap hadn't. "You liked gluing fifteen acres of broken glass back together."

"If I hadn't I wouldn't have rebuilt it. Surely even you could have figured that one out."

It was then that Wheatley stopped paying attention, because he was unable to ignore the terribly odd sensation in his chassis any further. It had gone away, a little bit, once he'd gotten into GLaDOS's chamber, but it was still there and it was driving him crazy. Worse, he didn't know what it was or even still really how to describe it. He just felt very, very uncomfortable, and no amount of shifting his chassis seemed to do anything about it.

"What are you doing," GLaDOS asked him after some minutes. He looked over to see that Claptrap had gone and he hadn't even noticed.

"I dunno, I just…" Oh, God, this did not feel good. "My insides, they… it feels…" He couldn't even find a word for it other than 'uncomfortable', but that wasn't going to be exact enough for her.

"Well," GLaDOS said without a trace of sympathy, "that's what happens when you spend all day in a greenhouse. You know. One of the very few places in this Facility that is explicitly not for constructs."

"There're lots of constructs in there!" Wheatley protested, hoping clenching his chassis would help. It didn't.

"Specially designed constructs. That I built only for that specific task. You are a Sphere who was never supposed to leave this room. Seriously. You know what used to happen to Caroline. The fact that it never crossed your mind that –"

"Alright!" Wheatley shouted, unable to take anymore of it. "I get it! I'm an idiot! I forgot I'm not, not s'posed to go in there, and, and I didn't think, didn't consider why, and now I've gone and mucked myself up, and why should you even care? You shouldn't! You just, it shouldn't matter t'you, at all, it just shouldn't matter b'cause it's all my own fault for being such a moron." Ohhh, this was not helping. The uncomfortableness only seemed to be worsening. "Would it kill you to be nice to me one time," he muttered. "Just one time. Just once. No, no, you're right, it prob'ly would. Prob'ly you've got, got a subroutine that says, that tells you to self-destruct as soon as you so much as think 'hm, per'aps I'll be nice to Wheatley today!' Silly. Should've thought of that first. But why would I? Just a little idiot, after all."

"Lie down," GLaDOS said.

"No! Why should I do that? D'you think I'm just, I just do ev'rything you tell me? No, I'll just stay right here, thanks."

He wasn't certain if she knew the heat from her optic was contributing to the horridness of the situation, but he wouldn't put it past her. "Do you want to feel better or not?"

"I do," Wheatley answered sullenly.

"Then do it."

He wished he had arms to cross so he could really show her how unhappy he was with this arrangement, but he did as she'd told him. It actually did help a little, which did not at all improve his mood. "Now," GLaDOS said, unexpectedly moving alongside him, "you've gone and overheated yourself. Not enough to force shutdown, but considerably far nonetheless. Once you go to sleep your components will have enough time to cool down and you'll be perfectly fine."

"Ah," said Wheatley, who probably could have figured that out himself if he hadn't somehow left all of his wits in the greenhouse. But still! GLaDOS could definitely have been nicer about it.

It was while he was still trying to be upset over it all when she started humming, just a little bit, very quietly but very prettily, and he immediately forgot how he was feeling because he was so delighted. He had to snuggle her a bit harder for a minute, and she made a discontented noise and stopped what she'd been doing.

"Don't do that," she said in annoyance.

"I just, it's so nice, when you do that, and I like it so much and –"

"You liked it so much you started talking. I agree. Sounds like the highlight of your day."

"Gladyyyyyyyys."

"Don't whine in my ear."

"Here, I'll uh, I'll shut up if you pick it up again. Deal?" Even if it weren't, he was willing to convince her to do it.

"Now I don't want to. You went and made a big deal out if it. Congratulations. You wrecked it."

He frowned a little. She actually did sound upset. Maybe he shouldn't try to convince her. It never was a very nice thing to do.

Ohhh, but he wanted her to. And she'd want to herself, once she'd started.

"Go on," he said in a soft voice. "I'll be quiet."

"I don't think you have that function."

"C'mon." He rubbed at her core a little bit with the side of his upper handle, but nicely, so it wouldn't scratch her. She probably wouldn't notice if it did, but the noise was unpleasant. "It'll, it'll make me feel better. You want that, don't you? I did something dumb, absolutely deserve what I got for it. Absolutely do. But you could do something about it. If you liked. And it'd be nice, wouldn't it? I think it'd be quite nice."

"I would like to do something about it," she said distantly. Ahhh, he had her. He did have to wonder, though, how aware of it she was. He had the feeling she perhaps wanted to be convinced.

"Well then we'll both just relax, then," he told her softly, "and you'll do that, that lovely thing you do sometimes and I'll be quiet and it'll just, you'll just love it. We both will. We'll love it together."

"That's a good idea," she murmured, and Wheatley actually had to force close his vocal software before he started talking and ruined it for real, this time. He missed the first part of her humming again because he had to convince himself quite intensely to keep up his end and not make a big deal out of it. And he wasn't going to. He'd got that all sorted. All he did was give her a little kiss, just a little one (he hoped) and looked very quietly down at the floor where she was doing something with paper and one of her long white pencils that was too dark for him to see. She didn't stop, just shoved him a tiny bit and continued the humming and the drawing both, and he listened contentedly, shuttering his optic so he could hear it better.

"I hate you, you know," GLaDOS said, and because she was so brilliant she could talk and sing at the same time. "I really, honestly do."

"I know," Wheatley answered. "You hate me so much you love me. Dunno why you didn't think of that yourself, really. Should've. Should've figured something like that'd happen."

"Of all the people I could have gotten stuck with for eternity…"

If Wheatley didn't get to be stuck with her for eternity he would be very, very sad indeed.

Author's note

I know it's not plausible for her to have everything in the world in the greenhouse but her existence is also implausible so just roll with it.

Sir Hammerlock is a hunter dude from Borderlands who likes to research the creatures of Pandora.

He does still have the capability to force her to do things but she really did want to. He doesn't KNOW that he can force her – he just thinks she's susceptible to his suggestions – but if she were really in a position where she felt forced she would stop him. Usually if he convinces her to do something, she already wanted to do it but doing it vanilla would have bruised her pride or the like.