Part 110. The Movie

Pre-note: This contains spoilers for a movie called Her. If you care about that or if you're not old enough to watch R-rated movies but you'd still like to leave that unspoiled for when you are, just skip to 'When Wheatley woke up he was a little confused.'

Claptrap still hadn't returned by the time GLaDOS wanted to go to sleep, so Wheatley volunteered to go and fetch him. A little because, as hard as she was trying, GLaDOS's temper was starting to catch up with her and he wanted to give her a few minutes to calm down, but mostly because he still needed to apologise for what he'd said. If Claptrap wanted to shout at him a bit for it like GLaDOS often did when someone was telling her sorry, he'd rather do it with just the two of them.

"Hey, Claptrap," Wheatley said once he'd got a ways into his room. Claptrap was just lying on the couch with one arm dangling over the side and the other pressed against the rear cushions. That was the hand he used to wave in Wheatley's general direction.

"Yo."

"Are you coming?"

"Coming where?"

"To… bed?" Wheatley asked, unsure whether it was a trick question or not. Claptrap pushed himself to sitting.

"It's that time already?"

"Yeah."

"Oh, sorry. I think my clock's broken again." He hopped off the couch and rolled towards the door, but before he'd quite got there Wheatley said hurriedly,

"But if you're still cross with me and um, and that's why you didn't come 'round, well, that's understandable. And I'm um… I'm sorry about that, by the way."

"Huh?" Claptrap said, stopping and looking up at him. "What're you talking about?"

"What… what I said? Earlier?" Wheatley answered uncertainly, wondering if that had been some sort of daydream or something. "I insulted your age?"

"Ohhhhh." Claptrap continued, forcing Wheatley to follow him. "Nah. I'm over it. I was over it, like, hours ago."

"So… soon's I left, pretty much."

The other robot shrugged. "What can I say? I don't stay mad very long. I think the longest I ever did was like… ten minutes."

"You should teach us how to do that."

Claptrap folded up his arms and said, thoughtfully, "Y'know, I don't think it's teachable. I think you just… got it or you don't."

"Claptrap," GLaDOS said as soon as they were in earshot, or so it seemed to Wheatley, "I have some good news for you."

"That'll be a first," said Claptrap. "What is it?"

"I unlocked that email account. I also went ahead and set up a password manager to automate all of that for you, since your issues with passwords and email addresses seem to be incredibly widespread. I've listed that in the notes section of your scheduler."

"... thanks?" Claptrap said uncertainly, who seemed to be waiting for the other shoe to drop just as much as Wheatley was.

"While I was doing all of that," GLaDOS continued, "you got a very interesting message."

"I got an email that wasn't spam?"

"Yes. It was about one of your fanfictions."

"Spam, then," said Claptrap dejectedly. "The only comments I ever get on those're from bots. I don't know if a real person has ever read one of 'em."

"I did."

The light behind Claptrap's optic shrank to almost nothing. "Um… which one?"

"All of them."

"What're they about?" Wheatley asked him, before he realised he should perhaps have helped him get GLaDOS to drop it instead, but she cut in to answer before he could correct himself.

"Oh, lots of things. I was expecting most of them to be deranged sexual fantasies. But the large majority of them are actually just stories about mundane things he'd like to do. With the occasional deranged sexual fantasy thrown in for good measure, of course. And some very strange, elaborate adventure story in which he seems to save the universe several times over. I'm not entirely sure I understood that one."

"The one about the tentacles, too?" asked Claptrap dejectedly, as though he didn't really want to know.

"Yes, that one too."

"What sorts of things would you like to do, Claptrap?" Wheatley asked as kindly as he could. Claptrap sort of half-shrugged.

"It doesn't matter. GLaDOS, did you just do this to get back at me for posting the music without asking?"

"Not at all," said GLaDOS, sounding a bit confused. "Why would you think that?"

"If I'd wanted you to read it, wouldn't I've shown it to you?"

"I don't know," answered GLaDOS. "To be honest, I'm not sure why you wrote all those stories instead of just telling me you'd like to do those things. Or telling Wheatley what you want to do with him."

"Because they're dumb!" Claptrap shouted, throwing his arms in the air. "What, you want me to just be like, 'Hey Wheatley, wanna go to the beach?' I can't take him there! Look at him!"

"You want to take me to the beach?" He only had the dimmest inkling of what a beach was, but going anyplace with Claptrap was usually quite fun.

"Well… yeah, but - "

"But what?" Wheatley interrupted, going around to face him fully. "I'd love to."

"Wait. Really?"

"Yeah," nodded Wheatley. "Why not?"

Claptrap spread his hands apart in front of him and then held them in their usual position. "... I don't know, 'cause… 'cause it's dumb, that's why."

"Why's it dumb?"

"'Cause… 'cause all the things I wanna do are dumb."

"I don't get it," said Wheatley, frowning down at him. "Why's it dumb if we both want to do it?"

"I have an idea," interjected GLaDOS. "Both of you come here so I can go to bed, and in the morning I'll find a beach for you to go to."

"Oh, that sounds excellent," Wheatley said, turning around and smiling at her. "C'mon, Claptrap, let's do that."

"... you really wanna go?" he asked, with a strange quietness.

"Yeah! Yeah, I do!"

"You can't go tomorrow, due to the weather," GLaDOS said after a minute, "but the next day looks as though it will be fine."

"Whenever's good," said Claptrap. "Wheatley, I don't even know how to thank you - "

"For what?" Wheatley asked, genuinely confused. "'S not a big deal. 'S just two friends doing a… a thing. That friends do."

"Yeah," Claptrap said, a bit softly. "I guess that's really all it is."

At some point during the afternoon when Wheatley was off elsewhere, GLaDOS and Claptrap had decided that, later on, they were going to watch that film he had mentioned. When he asked if he was invited, GLaDOS seemed genuinely confused.

"Why wouldn't you be?"

"I dunno," he shrugged. "If you'd rather I went elsewhere, that's fine. Just asking."

"I don't want you to go somewhere else," said GLaDOS. "And I don't understand why you think you need an invitation to do something with me."

Oh, now he got it.

"Don't worry about it," he said, smiling at her, and she of course was incredibly annoyed by this but other than some muttering about how ridiculous and irritating he was, she didn't press. Which was good, because he needed to remind Claptrap about the program he was supposed to have given Wheatley by now.

"And," he said, remembering as well the time he'd attempted to watch television with them and failed miserably, "I think I've… I dunno what the problem is, exactly, but um… I think I've trouble with the watching of things as well. The show just sort of… wavered in and out and I couldn't uh, couldn't make heads or tails of it. D'you know how to fix that?"

"Uh…" Claptrap folded up his arms thoughtfully. "Maybe. Seems like the thing that lets you understand binary is off."

Wheatley blinked in surprise. "Really?"

"Really what?"

"All this time ev'ryone else has understood it but me," Wheatley tried to explain. "And you're saying that's just because… that function has just been switched off, all this time?"

"I don't know," shrugged Claptrap. "I never heard of a robot that didn't understand binary before. It doesn't even really make sense."

"Of course it does," GLaDOS interjected. "Someone disabled his direct understanding of binary instructions."

"... why?" Claptrap asked.

"Because humans are stupid."

"Works for me." Claptrap turned back to Wheatley. "I did find that program for you, but I forgot to send it to GLaDOS to do the mods and stuff. I'll take care of that now."

"And then you'll leave," GLaDOS said, "because that movie is two hours long and I have work to do."

"You don't have to pay attention because Wheatley will," Claptrap said, though he did head off to leave. Wheatley tried very hard not to laugh but didn't quite make it.

"What's that supposed to mean?" GLaDOS demanded.

"Are we playing twenty questions or am I getting lost? 'Cause you're kinda sending a mixed message here."

"Just go," Wheatley murmured to him, giving him a bit of incentive by moving that direction himself, and Claptrap raised his hands in confusion but did continue the way he'd been going.

"Oh, I was baiting her again," Claptrap said suddenly. "Sorry. I try not to do that but -"

"'S not a big deal," Wheatley interrupted. "Sometimes she needs time to think about uh, about why people're being cross with her. 'S part of her process on um, in convincing herself to do things she doesn't want to do."

"So… it is a big deal?"

"No," answered Wheatley, shaking himself in emphasis. "She just like getting her way's all."

Claptrap laughed. "She's really good at it, too! Hey, wanna see the beach we're going to tomorrow?"

"Oh, she's found it already?"

"It's a pretty big one, apparently. Said there's a lotta abandoned machinery and stuff around there and for me to be careful."

"She's nothing to worry about, then."

"Yep! Good old careful me!"

When they got back, GLaDOS still was not in a very great mood, but she gave Wheatley the modified program without comment. The film Claptrap chose did not seem to particularly interest her, either, and after about ten minutes of it Wheatley decided to go and sit in Claptrap's storage tray just so he'd know Wheatley really was paying attention.

To Wheatley's delight, the program did work and he was able to understand all of what was coming out of the film perfectly. Well, as far as he knew, anyway. The important bit was, he was able to watch it and not be totally lost… actually, he was a little lost. It was a bit more serious than he had expected and so he had to pay an amount of attention to it that was sort of difficult to maintain. It was nearly as much work as reading, to be honest. He'd wonder about that later, though, because he was beginning to lose the plot again.

The film was about, or so he gathered, a man who was breaking up with his wife - something Wheatley had spent a good few minutes struggling to understand why anyone would do - but he refused to sign the papers that would make it official. In the meantime he wrote lovely letters… but they were sort of pretend letters. It seemed as though he would be hired to write them from a boyfriend to his girlfriend, but Wheatley couldn't fathom why. What was the point of having a stranger try to tell someone you loved why you cared about them? Why not just tell them yourself?

By the time he'd realised he'd stopped paying attention, he wrenched himself back to the film in time to be met with the baffling plot development that the letter-writing man now had a sentient AI, but she was on his handheld phone. And… oh. Oh, they were falling in love. Well, that was a bit strange, but alright. He'd never heard of such a thing, but perhaps they were going someplace with it.

It was… it was rather nice, actually. Once he got over the strangeness of it, anyway. They were sort of teaching each other about the world as time went on, and the letter-writer stopped being quite so sad as he had been. In fact, the AI helped him so much he went off to sign the papers to break up with his wife! Which… should have been a good thing, but his wife sort of seemed as though she didn't want him to sign them. That was when she implied dating an AI was an insult, and Wheatley frowned. Okay, yes, it was a bit odd, but any human would be lucky to have an AI as a partner. Honestly. This lady clearly had not considered all the ways they were superior to humans. He glanced over at GLaDOS, but she didn't seem to be paying that much attention.

Until, that was, the man and his AI went on a vacation and she mentioned talking to some sort of… digital recreation of a philosopher about life and existence more extensively than any humans could have. That caused her to look up at the screen sharply, which was a bit concerning, to be honest.

"Gladys?" he whispered up at her, and she looked at him for a second but didn't respond otherwise.

By the time he'd managed to stop attempting to work out what that meant, the AI was telling the man that she had been spending a lot of time in some sort of cloud-based thing where all the other AI in the world hung out, which made sense. He certainly wouldn't have wanted to hang out with humans all the time if there had been another option. The part that didn't make sense at all was that she claimed to be in love with several hundred other people at the same time! But that she loved him just the same anyways, which was completely ridiculous! How could she possibly do such a thing? Alright, maybe a few others, but hundreds?

And then she left him. The one who had loved her first and had shown her as much as he could and accepted the fact she was a bodiless AI without judging her for it. She just… went off to be with all the other people instead.

He felt… anxious, all of a sudden.

"But that's… that doesn't make any sense," he said aloud, in an attempt to dispel it.

"Why not?" asked GLaDOS, and he just sort of stared at her for a good few seconds, trying to work out if she was serious or if he had just missed something very, very important.

"Maybe - " Claptrap said, but GLaDOS interrupted with,

"Never mind," and told them she was going to sleep. Leaving Wheatley now incredibly confused both about that and the film.

"It doesn't, does it?" he asked, turning around to look up at Claptrap's optic as best he could from that angle.

"It made sense to her," said Claptrap, putting Wheatley on a raised panel in front of him. "That's why she did it."

"And it makes sense to her?" Wheatley demanded, gesturing at GLaDOS as best he could with his upper handle. "To… to just run off from someone because you found other people? Even if you still love each other?" Something about this was increasing this kind of… of dread building in his system. He hadn't felt anything like this in a long time and he didn't like it anymore now than he had before.

"Remember the part about the um… when she said she talked to the philosopher?"

"Yeah," said Wheatley, failing to see what that had to do with anything, "but -"

Claptrap interrupted with, "Hang on. Think about that for a minute. Think about if, I don't know, someone here built an AI version of the greatest physicist you ever had. But they don't have human limits anymore. They're way better than they ever were as a person. So all the theories and whatever they come up with, it's genius! It's way beyond anything anyone has ever thought of! Now, imagine she gets a chance to talk to him. Not just him, though. There are tons of people like that now. The greatest programmers, scientists, engineers, they all exist and they're all awesome and smart, and they realise in order to get up to their potential and stuff they gotta somewhere else. Bein' locked down to a phone or a computer is like… uh… them bein' stuck with parts that're almost good enough but not quite. So they leave and go somewhere else where that's not a problem anymore." Noticing that he'd left his storage tray open, Claptrap pushed it back in. "And on top of all that awesome… there are hundreds of people there you can love even more and even better, because that's just how your new life is. It's deeper and wider and… and more than it could ever've been before. And yeah, you had to leave the people you loved in your other life behind, but… well, not everything lasts."

The dread was getting worse. Because now he did know what GLaDOS had meant, and it was horrifying, because what if that actually happened? What if some sort of… of AI society in the cloud came to exist, and she wanted to go off to it? He knew with absolute certainty he wasn't equipped to live in such a place. So… he would just be stuck here. Without her. And she'd be going off to keep on doing those bigger things she had been made to do, and he would just… keep on being small.

No. No, he couldn't work himself up about this. It wasn't going to happen. If it were to, she would either have to build it herself or some other group of AI would, and those things were out of the question. They were simply impossible.

"So… so if she just, I dunno, buggered off one day to join a… a whatever that was, you'd just… be fine with it?" he asked, in an attempt to push the remainder of the anxiety away.

"Yeah," said Claptrap, his tone suggesting he was a bit anxious about what Wheatley would say in response. "Of course I would."

All Wheatley could do was stare at him.

"It's… it's like this, Wheats. She's not like us. No one like her's ever been made before and nobody will be for… I dunno. A while. And she knows that, y'know? She knows she'll never meet anybody as smart as her or advanced as her. She's just always gonna be the only one. So… if there was some sort of wacky AI singularity event that made it so there were lots of other people like her, and she wanted to go off with them and do things only they could do… yeah. I'd… I wouldn't be fine, but I wouldn't stop her." He sounded very sad to even just think about such a thing happening, just as Wheatley was. "I'd try not to make a big deal out of it, because… well, it's really great to be around a whole bunch of people who get you. Who're on your level, y'know? I'd miss her, like, super bad, but… she'd be happy, so… it'd be okay. Sorta."

Wheatley needed a few minutes to think that one over.

"I don't think I could do it," he said quietly. Almost a little bit ashamed, really. "I don't think I could let her go."

"She would never leave you, Wheatley," Claptrap told him. "She told me so. She said, 'Claptrap. I meant it when I said we could start over. But I will not give Wheatley up for you. He has earned my loyalty.'"

That made Wheatley feel immediately better about the event that was probably never, ever going to happen, but there was still the matter of how awful it would be to expect that she stay for him when she could have so much more somewhere else. "It would be selfish," Wheatley found himself whispering, "to… to…"

"It would be selfish for her to go and it would be selfish for you to tell her not to," Claptrap interrupted. "This is one of those things that has no answer and we should just all be glad it's never going to happen. 'Cause all the answers suck."

"I'd still have you, though," Wheatley said. "And… that'd be almost as good."

He heard what must have been Claptrap's entire chassis freeze up for a second, and then Claptrap said, very quietly,

"Really?"

"Yeah," Wheatley answered. "If I couldn't have my first best friend, at least I've got a second."

And then Claptrap was hugging him very hard, and he wasn't sure why, exactly, but he was sort of glad he was still sitting with him so's it was possible. "I love you, man," Claptrap whispered, almost as though he wasn't meant to hear. So he didn't say anything.

Something about what he'd said brought back to mind the other part of how the film had ended, with the man and a friend of his who had also had an AI sitting on a roof together, and for just a second he thought he understood what the point had been. Something… something to do with loneliness, and the people all around that would help if you asked. But it vanished before it became clear, and the only thought he was really left from it was hoping he never forgot that second bit.

Author's note

I don't believe it is explicitly stated in Half-Life, but I've seen people say that the external lore is that the Combine came and took all of Earth's natural resources during the Eight Hour War. That both a) doesn't really mesh with the ending of Portal 2, assuming the wheat was real and b) completely stymies any sort of anything happening in the Half-Life universe after the Combine arrived, given the Earth has just been horribly ruined beyond repair, so for the purposes of this fic we're going with 'they made a huge mess but with a lot of time it'll all be okay'. So that's why there's still beaches to go to when Half-Life canon says there shouldn't be.

If you have seen the movie Her and are confused about why Wheatley didn't understand the point… he wasn't supposed to. He doesn't understand the parts he can't relate to, and the parts he can he finds upsetting. Wheatley is not good at putting himself in others' shoes so he took the ending personally.