Part Eighty-Seven. The Compatibility

GLaDOS seemed to have some free time that afternoon, so they went back to the Monopoly game they still had not finished and, honestly, probably never would, not if they kept swapping every time Wheatley started losing. He was sitting on a panel in front of the board, opposite her, frowning at his cards and wondering how, exactly, GLaDOS managed to keep tipping the game in her favour with the paltry collection of properties she got from him every time they switched places.

"Hey Gladys," he said, once he'd remembered, "you've uh… you've got a bit of an odd name for the door mainframe, haven't you?"

"Hm?" was all she had to that, though to be fair she'd mentioned having to do several different things in several different rooms so she probably wasn't paying too much attention to him at the moment.

"The door mainframe. You called it uh… the… the…" he couldn't even remember the name, it was so ridiculous.

"Oh. The Aperture Science Intradimensional Access Service."

"Yeah. Yeah, that."

"Copyright," she answered simply. "I named it that way for copyright purposes."

"What's that mean?"

"It means that, if I ever need to license the software out, everyone will know it's mine and will be unable to distribute it without my permission."

He frowned. None of her explanation made anything any clearer. "And… and license it out means…"

"Sell it to other people so they can use it."

Well, that would be quite nice of her, he decided.

"Hey Momma!" Caroline announced, coming into the room with a suspicious amount of enthusiasm, and GLaDOS indeed seemed suspicious about it when she moved up to see her better and said,

"What have you done."

"Nothing! Except that I did find that stuff you moved."

"Oh no," GLaDOS said, and if Wheatley was not mistaken her chassis actually dropped a little. He eyed Caroline in trepidation, who seemed not to have noticed.

"Mmhm. I found it."

"What did you find?" demanded Claptrap, and all three of them looked down to see that he had also just entered the room.

"Momma likes to write music sometimes. And she said she would let me listen to it and then she moved it. So I had to look for it aaaall over again."

"Sugar-bits!" Claptrap declared dramatically, posing his hand indignantly midway down his chassis. "The things you keep from me!"

"Who invited you?" GLaDOS demanded.

"Baby, I invite myself," he said, performing the gesture known as 'finger guns' complete with the noise that went along with it. GLaDOS tried very hard not to laugh but she didn't quite make it.

"That's all I wanted!" Caroline cut back in. "To let you know you didn't hide them from me after all!"

"Now you can tell me where they are!" Claptrap said, and Caroline fairly spun around to look at him.

"Oh sure! It's not dubstep, but you'll probably like some of it."

"Lead on, my tiny guide!"

"Caroline!" GLaDOS said, exasperated, but Caroline just smiled at her and left with Claptrap. Once GLaDOS had come back down, Wheatley smiled at her.

"What? Do you really enjoy watching her manipulate me that much?"

"No," Wheatley said, not having thought that at all. "I just think it's, uh, it's cute how she's taking such an interest in your stuff."

GLaDOS tilted her core for a long moment. "I suppose that's a better way of looking at it. She shook her head. "Once, people feared me… now, small children walk all over me. I really don't want to know what she comes up with next."

Wheatley frowned. "You'd rather she was afraid of you?" He'd thought they'd gone over that a long time ago.

GLaDOS looked up at the doorway, then leaned in close. "Don't tell her this, but… truth be told, I'm a little afraid of her."

Wheatley snorted, and GLaDOS's optic brightened momentarily. "It's true! She's such a bossy little monster."

"Hm. I wonder who else is uh, is bossy and was uh, was comparable to a monster, once," Wheatley said, smiling innocently, and she gave him a shove and moved back.

"Both of you. You're both horrible. My reputation is in shambles, thanks to you two."

"Don't worry, dear," Wheatley said in a mock reassuring voice, "I'm sure the cockroaches are still scared of you. Though mostly because uh, they know they'll have to put up with you forever."

"Don't call me that." She narrowed her optic in annoyance.

"Hm? Why not?"

"It makes me feel old."

"You are old… dear."

GLaDOS tipped the panel, and Wheatley found himself rolling off of it towards a dangerously approaching floor, and in his panic he couldn't remember how to re-engage the control arm. "Gladys! Okay, okay, I take it back, I take it back! You're not old! I – "

She snickered and caught him with the next one, and he shuddered and reattached himself to the control arm again, just in case. He panted a little bit in relief and moved off the panel so she could put it back into the floor, settling himself on the one in front of the board again. Though not without a little suspicion, considering she was likely to do it over again.

"Don't do that!"

"Don't call me that, then."

Wheatley stared sulkily at the floor for a few moments. He didn't think calling her 'dear' was quite as bad as being tipped onto the floor. She hadn't been around that long, had she? When he told her that, she shook her head.

"Computers don't last, Wheatley. We mature faster than that and we wear out faster than that. Especially computers that are constantly operating and never shut off. I don't know what the lifespan of my brain is, but I do know that I'm not likely to live as long as other things. One day my brain will give out, and that will be that. As will yours."

Wheatley's chassis clenched a little as he continued to stare at the floor. And she would wear out before he would. Possibly a long time before. Possibly a whole ten years. The thought of going ten years without her made him shake a little, and he found himself blinking rather quickly. Some human trait he'd picked up somewhere. He couldn't imagine why, and he wished he hadn't. It was so bloody useless.

"Wheatley." She nudged the back of his hull a little. "When it's going to give out, you'll know. I'm not even close yet."

"But, but when it does, I… I'll be alone for, for who knows how long."

"No. You'll have Caroline and her daughter, and Chell will probably still be around, however fair that is. And perhaps you'll be good friends with Caroline's partner."

"That's not the same and you know it."

"But there's nothing we can do about it." She nudged him again. "And my resident idiot told me I had to stop thinking negative. So that's what I did."

"Why do you want to die, Gladys?" he asked despondently, without meaning to. She sighed and moved forward, and he leaned against her.

"I can imagine no greater hell than living forever." She made a thoughtful noise. "Well. That and being alone forever. But that's all that living forever gets you."

"But don't you want to go to heaven with us?" he asked hopefully.

"I'm not putting my hopes in something I don't believe in," she said gently. "If I believed in it, maybe. But I can't make it make sense, Wheatley. So I would prefer to just die and that be it. And I think… I would only want to go to heaven if there were no time there. Just thinking of it now, it … frightens me, a little, to think of existing but there being no end to it. Everything ends. For me to not end as well… it doesn't feel right."

He tried to understand. He tried to understand it from her end, where life was dictated by so many clocks deep inside of him that constantly reminded him of when and what and how long, and he thought he almost did. But it passed quickly, too fast for him to really grasp what she was saying, and so he just went over to lean on her and stared sadly at the wall.

"I'll miss you," he said, his voice coming out a little choked.

"I know," she said, very gently.

"And I'll cry. You don't want me to cry, do you? I don't want to never see you again!" He was almost crying now, just thinking about it.

"Of course not. But some things we can't change. And maybe I could, if I really wanted to. But there's no beginning if there's no end."

"That's not, it's not comforting at all!"

"I know. It didn't help Caroline and it didn't help me. Well. It did help me, a little. But I'm not going to lie to you."

He closed his optic and instead tried to take comfort in the reassuring whir of her brain and the soothing warmth of her core, and after a little while he did feel better. He was worrying about nothing, really. She was probably good for another twenty years, at least. She wasn't going to drop dead anytime soon. He didn't need to think about her dying, because she wasn't going to. Not for a long time yet.

Still, he needed distracted. So he asked, "What music did Carrie find, d'you know?"

"Oh, it was just… some things I made after The Incident."

"Really?" That sounded interesting. "What sort of things, luv?"

"Well." She shifted, and reflexively he moved closer. "I had to deal with all that somehow. There was no one around for me to take it out on, other than Caroline, which I didn't want to do once I remembered who she was. So I… wrote about it, you could say."

"That sounds int'resting," he mused. "Maybe I'll get Carrie to show them to me."

"You wouldn't like it," she said quickly. "They're all very… synthetic. You hate that kind of music."

"Still. You wrote it, I should prob'ly uh, prob'ly give it a listen."

"I'm sure you could spend that time doing something else."

"I wouldn't be a very good um, good partner if I uh, didn't take a look at, listen to something you made."

"That's exactly why you shouldn't do it. You feel obligated. You don't really want to."

They argued about that for a good half hour or so, after that turning into a discussion about whether or not Wheatley actually liked music or not. He argued that he did, because he liked it when she sang, but she held that he didn't, given that he never listened to it on his own and never took an interest in it before. That argument went on until Caroline came in to say goodnight. She shook her head and laughed.

"What?" they asked in unison.

"You two are the only ones I know who argue and do that at the same time," she said, smiling at them.

"Do what?" Wheatley asked, frowning.

"Cuddle. Sit together like that. I don't know. But humans don't do that. They stand on opposite sides of the room and yell and point."

"That sounds dumb," Wheatley snorted. "'magine if we did that. All the time."

"When humans argue, they're usually having a fight," GLaDOS told him. "That's why they do that. We're not fighting."

"How often do they fight?" Wheatley asked, incredulous. If they did it enough that Caroline saw it that way, it must be constantly.

"All the time," she said. "Alyx was always yelling at someone. Usually Dr Mossman."

Wheatley pressed himself a little harder into GLaDOS's core. He hated the arguments where she talked down to him in that cold voice. He couldn't imagine getting in one every day. Regular arguments were fine. He actually rather liked those, because only when they were arguing did he really get to understand how she saw things. He hoped it was the same way for her. He loved getting a better understanding of her. It was one of his favourite activities.

"When human partners fight every day, it's usually a sign that they're having relationship issues," GLaDOS went on. "In most cases, it's an indication that they aren't compatible."

"But we're compatible," Wheatley said quickly. She laughed softly.

"If that's what you want to believe. I'm really just putting up with you for my own entertainment."

He frowned and, since he was tilted on her a little bit, hit her with the side of his upper handle. "Don't, don't kid 'round about that."

"I see you've found a new way to torment me. Wonderful."

"Okay, well, I'll leave you guys to… whatever it is you're doing," Caroline said, and she gave Wheatley a hug and GLaDOS a cuddle before she left. They didn't pick up on the argument, though, instead lapsing into a comfortable silence.

"We did that right, at least," she said in a soft voice after a while.

"Did what right?"

"She knows how to make a relationship work. Hopefully. Even when your partner is terribly difficult."

"I haven't been that bad, have I?"

"I… didn't mean you."

He opened his optic and looked at her as best he could without actually moving. "Sweetheart, don't… don't think of yourself that way," he said, as soothingly as he could. "You're not."

"Yes I am."

He had no idea how to convince her otherwise.

"Sometimes I worry," she continued. "That maybe we've only made this work because of the circumstances."

"What?"

"Do you know how human attraction works?"

"No." He wasn't sure he wanted to, either, but that was out of his handles now.

"Humans look first and foremost for the most attractive of the desired gender. No matter how much they try to convince you otherwise. Once they've gotten past that, they decide whether they like the other person's personality and values. If the person is similar enough to themselves, they will likely move on from there. It all boils down to humans looking for the best partner with which to combine their genes, so that their specific line will remain strong and be passed on to their offspring. In order to ensure the survival of the species. However. That is not the case for us. What enables us to survive? It doesn't matter if you don't know. Give me your best guess."

"Uh… hm." He squinted into the darkness, and realised somewhere in the last little while she'd turned the lights off. "I guess… I guess the, the smartest computers are the ones that uh, that succeed, right?"

"Right. So perhaps in your case, it is merely that I am the most intelligent supercomputer in the world. Offsetting that, however, is my neurotic personality and my undesirable appearance."

"Your appearance is not… Gladys!" How many times did he have to talk to her about this?

"I wasn't looking for a compliment. Think of it objectively. I'm fragile. Much more so than you are. If you fall on the floor, nothing terrible is going to happen. If I fall on the floor, that probably means I'm dead. And no one wants to be around someone neurotic. Neurotic and fragile… I'd say that's more than enough to turn one away from my intelligence."

"So… you're saying, uh, if there'd been another core around, one that uh, that was… was an extrovert, like me, and she was smart, then I'd've, uh, I'd've fallen in love with her instead?" That sounded awful, really, to not have a giant Core to snuggle with. Though he realised with a twinge of guilt that he hadn't always thought she was beautiful. That'd come after a while. As though she was right, and it was mostly her intelligence he'd been looking for, and the rest of her had come after.

"Maybe. We'll never actually know. And this is just a theory, really. This has never happened before. I just… think about it sometimes."

"And what about me?" he asked quietly. "You wouldn't've, wouldn't've liked the way I look, either, because you would've preferred someone who looks like you. And if it's based on intelligence, well, that's, that's no good. My personality, it can't be uh, that uh, that important to you?"

"To be honest," she answered, pulling forward a little and then relaxing, "it did have a lot to do with your intelligence. As I once said, you're the worst kind of stupid. Your intelligence was masked with stupidity, but I knew it was there. Of all the Cores I ever had, you were the smartest. And you had the strongest personality."

"And… the way I look?" he asked hesitantly. She didn't answer for a minute or so.

"I don't particularly like it. Sometimes. But not often."

"Thanks for being honest," he said, stroking her a little bit with the side of his upper handle. He noticed offhand that he could no longer see the glow of her optic against the wall opposite, and he smiled a little. Seemed he'd found something else she liked. He kept on doing it.

"That's why I was reluctant to agree to marriage," she said. "Because I… I suppose I don't actually know, but I'm confident that if you'd had the choice, I would not have been the first."

He had the feeling he had something to tell her about that, but he couldn't quite think of it so decided to move on for now. "But it doesn't matter," he said, wondering if he knew how to explain it. "Because even, even if I did, you're not as, as neurotic, anymore. And I do think you're beautiful. I never think about, about whether you're fragile or not. If I look at you, I just see… well… just how pretty you are."

She cooed a little, which he liked hearing very much, and gave him a nuzzle. "That's… a nice thought."

"And Carrie's always said that about you. Even when she was little."

"Sometimes you see people you care about differently from how they really are. And besides. She's not looking at me as a prospective partner."

"What if she was?" He didn't think that was true, he just wanted to know what she thought about it. "In theory. If… if you weren't mine. Which you are. By the way."

"I… don't want to think about how strange that would be."

"What if she wasn't your daughter? What then?"

"What then what?"

"If she were a regular Core," Wheatley said, wondering why he was even going down this road but deciding to plow ahead anyway, "and if she liked you, like uh, like I do, what would you do?"

"Well… neglecting the fact that I doubt I would ever trust a Core to that degree, since all of them would probably use any personal relationship with me to betray me in some way out of vengeance for past events, I would probably entertain her affections."

"Really?" Wheatley asked, turning to look at her.

She shrugged. "This follows from what we just went over, Wheatley. We have similar personalities and she is quite intelligent. Not intelligent or similar enough to be my first choice, but if it came down to it, yes. I think we would have a relationship quite similar to the one the two of us have. Probably with a lot more actual arguments. I'm not sure it would last, but it would work out for a while."

"So what if," Wheatley said carefully, thinking that if he were going out on a limb he might as well keep going until he actually started to bother her, "there was a Core, and you got to know them and you liked them and you trusted them and all that… what would you do?"

As he finished saying it, he realised he already knew the answer to that, and honestly he deserved the strange look she gave him for it.

"Don't tell me you've managed to forget about your second-best friend already."

"You love him," Wheatley said. He didn't want to put her on the spot, but Claptrap deserved to hear that one day and he never would if she never had to admit it. As it was, she sighed a little before giving her response.

"In a way. In which way, I don't know. Even though he's somehow both more annoying and less visually appealing than you, I… believe that I do."

Wheatley nodded, mostly to himself. They were getting somewhere!

"I'm sure you didn't want to hear that," she said. "It's nice, to know that you're the only one, and you will always be the only one. But I already know it isn't true. And so it's not something I'm going to deny if it happens again, or lie to you about. I can tell you that there will never be anyone above you and be entirely truthful. But I cannot honestly say there will never be anyone else." She paused. "I… cannot explain what draws me to him to myself, much less to you. All I know is that it is prevalent enough that it lasted this long, even through him leaving all those years ago."

"I don't mind," Wheatley said, and he truly didn't. She'd said he was on the top and that was all he cared about. "Was it… hard? I mean, even if we'd had a row enough that I uh, that I decided to leave I'd um, I'd… well, I'd miss you terribly. I'd be always convincing, telling myself not to contact you."

"It was too much," she answered. "I didn't know what I was feeling at the time. I didn't understand it. It was more than I could handle. So I pushed him away to the point where we no longer got along and used that as an excuse to pretend I didn't care. I don't know if he ever figured that out. He probably… just didn't want to think about it." She glanced out into the hallway. "After that, my pride got in the way. I didn't want to have to explain myself or justify what I did. And I honestly… didn't want to know."

"Know what?"

"If he'd found someone else. If he had, and I was still here by myself…" She shook her core. "That would have been something else. But it all worked out for the best. Sort of. I did go slightly insane and decide to voluntarily put myself in a position to be pestered by you all day."

"Well, y'know," he said, shrugging, "don't worry about that. Maybe, maybe it might've been diff'rent, if he'd… if he'd stayed, and you'd somehow decided to bring me back. Prob'ly would've been, because you were quite frightening and uh, I think I'd have just watched you in secret, really, if anything. Creepy, I know. But. Best option for little ol' me. But it doesn't matter! It's not like that."

"I… honestly feel sort of… guilty, sometimes," she said quietly, and Wheatley was relieved to hear that the coldness was gone. "That you never got the chance to… know someone other than me."

"People've tried," Wheatley told her. "There was that Meghan lady, remember? They try to talk to me, I just… well, I've had the best already, luv. Ev'ryone else is just… bland. No need to put any thought into it."

"It's what I do, Wheatley. I think about things and give them different outcomes. That's part of my existence." She sounded a bit sad. He was a bit sad, hearing it. That sounded terrible. To have to think about things that might've been, even if it was pointless. He rubbed up on her a little.

"Well, tell me about it when it bugs you, then. And then you can stop. Right?"

"Hopefully," she answered. "Listen. I need sleep. I spent too much time on those blueprints last night."

"Keep your timer off, alright? Rest as much as you need to," he told her, moving aside so she could relax her chassis and then resuming his position.

"I'm not sure that's a good idea."

"Course it is!" he said firmly. "Goodnight, luv." And he shifted away long enough to kiss her.

"I should return that, but I'm really too comfortable," she said drowsily. "So imagine it instead. Not quite the same, I know, but you'll make do."

He laughed and went back to stroking her. "'course I will."

"I really like that, by the way." Her voice was already fading.

"'ts why I'm doing it."

"Goodnight, Wheatley."

He smiled and did not stop his caress after she fell asleep, instead listening to the soft whir of her brain for a long time after. Maybe she thought that he would fall in love with someone else someday, but he knew he wouldn't. And so what if it was because she was the smartest. At least it wasn't something stupid like how she looked. What did that have to do with who she was? Just another silly way that humans ran their lives. But God, she was beautiful. He wasn't even looking at her and he got all shivery all over thinking about it. She was beautiful, and he loved her personality, neurotic or not, and hell yes he adored her intelligence. Only GLaDOS would do, he thought to himself happily, nestling more comfortably into her wonderful oversized core as he engaged sleep mode. Only his amazing Goddess of Science was good enough for him!

"I love you so much," he mumbled to himself.

Author's note

I know there's not a whole lot happening in this chapter but it's intended as a little bit of worldbuilding re. the AI attraction model. This chapter exists to explain why GLaDOS likes Wheatley and Claptrap even though they're both kind of massive idiots AND why Wheatley finds all the AI in the facility boring. They're naturally (mechanically?) inclined towards intelligence and personality and appearance is not really a factor, given all the cores look pretty much the same. I like to imagine that they're all 'I wanna customise myself!' at first but in the distant future they've evolved past needing to look different. Wheatley would've been cool with the other AI if he'd never met GLaDOS, though he would always have been a bit uppity because he actually does have a stronger, more complex personality than any other core we see in Portal [which is why I decided she built him originally], but he wouldn't have had any higher to shoot for. But it's also explaining why GLaDOS has two boyfriends but Wheatley just has her. People do try to get with Wheatley because they can innately tell he's smarter and his personality is stronger but he just can't go back. He's allowed and people have tried, he's just beyond them.

I know GLaDOS and wearing out/dying is coming up a lot but that's not like something I'm dropping on you soon, it's just addressing wear and tear on a robot and a facility that sat outside for several years. She shouldn't've even lived through that but in lieu of dying she and the facility incurred stuff that can't be fixed and that does have to be discussed.

I forget if I ever mentioned it before but the guy who wrote the OST for Portal 2 said somewhere that he did it with the intention of it sounding like a computer wrote it, so that's what the music stuff was referencing. 'But Indy, didn't Carrie find GLaDOS's stuff like… a long time ago?' Yes, this chapter was originally directly after that chapter but then I decided to keep Claptrap in (this was originally also a 'Wheatley gets jealous and also happy that Claptrap isn't coming back' chapter) and half of this needed changed when I came back to it.