Part 117. The Frowny Face

In the morning she had people to talk to and work to do, so he didn't stay in her chamber for very long. Her responses to both them and him were terse and short, and he remembered what she had said yesterday: I have a very stressful life. He'd known that – it was impossible not to know that – but having it put in such a clear and simple way was making it really stick in his thoughts.

He was watching Atlas and P-body cheerfully making a mess with a bunch of coloured paints and some human children when it came to him that she had been snippy the first morning because she missed Carrie, and neither of them had brought it up since. Probably by now she was missing the endless digital chatter she usually got from Claptrap. No doubt it usually helped distract her from the parts of her job she really disliked, such as most of what she was doing today. Well, he could do something about that!

How're you getting on? he sent. Her reply was instant, but all it contained was (.

He had no idea what that meant. He was pretty confident it was some sort of angry face, but what for? Did she not like it when he messaged her? Had she not liked the question? Did she not realise it was from him and had sent that to shut the mystery person up?

He thought on it for quite a while but couldn't come up with an explanation on his own, which was incredibly frustrating. Not just because he couldn't figure out his own partner's thoughts, which honestly he should've had a good handle on by now, but because he wished very much he had someone else to talk this out with. Until he realised that he did: Atlas and P-body. They probably attempted to talk to her and got cryptic answers in return, so surely they would have some sort of idea as to what was going on.

We actually do not, said Atlas when he asked, and P-body nodded in agreement as she studiously inspected some aspect of their painting. It didn't resemble a single thing so's Wheatley could tell.

"You don't?" Wheatley repeated.

Nope, said P-body.

"You don't… message her. Ever."

Not unless there is some sort of problem, said Atlas.

She usually told us to figure it out, added P-body, so we stopped asking a long time ago.

Wheatley emulated a sigh. "Alright then."

Why do you ask?

He debated whether or not telling him had an actual point, then decided he did seem to care about what was going on. "I just… I don't ever message her either, but um… I did today. Didn't go well."

P-body frowned. It didn't go well when you messaged her?

"Nope," said Wheatley. "I asked how she was doing and she sent me a frowny face. That was it."

Why don't you just ask her?

"She's busy!" Wheatley protested. "I've got to leave her alone to work, y'know."

Then… maybe you're bugging her by messaging her?

Wheatley stared down at one of the children, who was currently smearing paint into the hair of one of the others. She didn't seem to notice, and if she had she for some reason did not care that someone was changing her hair colour without consulting her first. He wasn't even doing a good job of it. It was all in streaks cross-wise, and Wheatley wasn't a professional or anything but he was fairly confident none of those colours matched. "That um… that did cross my mind," he admitted. "I was just… hoping that wasn't it."

We don't know anything you wouldn't, said Atlas, rubbing at a spot of paint on the floor with a piece of cloth wedged under his foot. I'm surprised you don't already know what she means.

"Mate, I've given up believing I'll ever know what she means," Wheatley said, and both of the bots laughed.

Well, as good as it was to commiserate with people who knew just how incomprehensible GLaDOS was, he was now totally stumped. He frowned at the wall in the hallway in an attempt to focus on finding a solution when he suddenly remembered what Claptrap had in his room. Books! Loads of them! Maybe, just maybe, he had one on how the mind of a lady robot worked. Wheatley had thought he was getting the hang of it, but it seemed he wasn't. Honestly, sometimes it was as though he had just met her yesterday.

Well… no, he admitted to himself. He was exaggerating things a little bit, which actually wasn't that helpful. He was going to put a stop to that and just work this out calmly. GLaDOS was not some mysterious, insoluble construct. She just did things he didn't understand now and again. No need to make it something it definitely wasn't.

Still. He would like to figure out what the frowny face had meant. Sort of seemed to defeat the purpose of her sending it if he had to ask after it.

He hadn't quite got to Claptrap's room before he bumped, yet again, into Meghan, and usually he just politely greeted her and went on his way, but this time it suddenly occurred to him she was doing it far too often for it to be on accident. He snapped, "'S about time you stopped doing that, yeah?"

"We don't get a chance to talk otherwise," said Meghan.

"And we haven't got one now. Goodbye," said Wheatley pointedly, but she moved around in front of him, blocking his escape to more important things.

"Why won't you give me a chance?" she asked. "I think we'd work really well together."

"I've already got a partner. You know that. Ev'ryone knows that."

"Yeah, but… you don't have to have just one," Meghan said in earnest. "Lots of people don't."

Wheatley did not know whether or not that were true, save for GLaDOS herself of course, but he did know that he was very annoyed with her refusal to listen. "Not int'rested," he said shortly. "Now quit asking and move aside, please. Honestly, have you even um, even thought about what you're asking? Like, really thought about it?"

"Of course," said Meghan, "I – "

"You haven't," Wheatley cut in. "If you had, you wouldn't keep bugging me about this. You don't seem to quite understand what I've already got. D'you have any idea what she is? How much she's worth? I'd need – I'd need at least six of you to even begin to add up! You're simply not good enough! So why don't you go bother someone, someone who isn't already with the absolute best construct anyone could ever have and leave me be!"

Not only did she not move, she simply sat there and stared at him for a good minute. Then she said, "You're a jerk, Wheatley."

He shook himself in disbelief. "Says the person who's been scuffing me up on purpose when I've already told you to sod off sev'ral times."

"Now I'm glad we never got together," Meghan said in a huff, finally getting out of the way, and he emulated a snort and looked behind him.

"That supposed to be some sort of burn, there? Oooooh! That thing I didn't want to happen didn't happen! Oh no! How'm I supposed to go on? I'm simply devastated!"

"I'm going to tell everyone the truth about you," Meghan said, though she was so far off by now he barely heard her. And that was laughable, anyway. He didn't care what the other cores thought of him. Why should he? He was with GLaDOS.

… oh wow. When he thought about it like that, he sort of got a shiver of excitement. He was with GLaDOS. Wow. What an amazing thing to be able to say.

It took him much longer than he had expected it would, but squinting through the titles of Claptrap's books found him with absolutely no titles which indicated one of them was about why lady robots were so confounding and what to do about it. Some of them seemed interesting enough that he pulled them out to take a look at their covers, but most of the pictures seemed to have nothing at all to do with the titles. The few that did he turned over to read the words on the back, which sometimes were what the book was about and sometimes was quotes of what people thought of the book. In the end, though, none of it was what he was looking for and he returned to GLaDOS late that evening none the wiser than he'd been before.

"What was that message all about?" GLaDOS asked.

"You replied with a frowny face," Wheatley said.

"You asked how I was doing. That was how."

Ohhhhh.

"I mean, if you'd said anything after, that probably would've cleared things up," Wheatley said.

"When Claptrap does that, I usually don't," said GLaDOS. "He sends me hundreds of messages a day and I only answer a very small number of them. He's not usually saying anything in particular he wants me to respond to. He just likes that someone's listening."

Ah, so Wheatley had definitely gone about it all wrong then. Oh well. He'd tried.

He then went on to tell her about what had happened with Meghan, which she did not respond to until he'd gone on for a bit about how rude she'd been. She interrupted him to snap, "You weren't exactly the epitome of decency and understanding yourself."

Wheatley did not know what 'epitome' meant, but he was going to guess the general idea was that GLaDOS thought he'd also been rude, even though he'd already thoroughly explained why his behaviour had been justified. Something she would have known if she'd been paying attention. "So you've decided the solution is to be rude as well, yeah? Because I don't see any other, another reason for you to be pretending I'm not here. You've been working all day! You can't possibly be that busy."

She moved her core enough he knew she had stopped paying attention to whatever she was doing elsewhere. "I'm not," she admitted after a minute. "I'm… keeping busy."

Aha! Now he was getting someplace. "And why's that, luv?"

"I'm not sleeping well," she said finally. "Almost not at all, actually. I can't stop thinking about… what's going on over there. Well, I can. But only while I'm working. Obviously at night that isn't what I'm doing."

"They'll be back tomorrow," said Wheatley. "Not so much time to go."

"I can't believe I did something as stupid as tell Alyx I'd be her friend," GLaDOS said suddenly. "Why did I do that? It was idiotic."

"Because you care about her?"

"Exactly," said GLaDOS, her optic suddenly quite intense. "I spend too much time thinking about other people, Wheatley. And it's time I don't have. Why in the name of Science did I add another person to that list? I mean, there hasn't been any signs up until now that I enjoy torturing myself, but –"

"Gladys," he interrupted, but patiently.

"What?"

"Ev'ry person you give your attention to is better for it," said Wheatley. "So. Not a waste of time, yeah?"

"Not necessarily."

"I think," he said, knowing he was about to take a big risk, "that you're simply too tired to um, to really understand what you're arguing against just now. Take another think about it tomorrow. Today's a bit of a bust, I think."

"How dare you," GLaDOS snapped.

"I'm terrified," he said. "Simply terrified of what you're going to do to me. Go on. Do it. Or – radical idea, just putting it out there – I'm right."

He knew he absolutely was when she just sort of glared at him for a minute or so, and he wasn't certain what to do about that so he just sort of glared back. Sort of. He wasn't angry with her, simply frustrated. God, it would be lovely when the day came where she could just admit she was wrong and they could skip all of this back-and-forth nonsense. It was pointless, simply pointless! And she knew it and she insisted on wasting her own time on it anyway.

"Fine," GLaDOS said. "But only by half."

He frowned. "I'm… right only by half?"

"Two-thirds would be more accurate," she relented. "I am incredibly tired."

"What's the third I didn't um, I didn't get?"

"It's not only about them," GLaDOS said.

He looked over at her, waiting for the explanation.

"I haven't heard from Chell since she left." She was staring at the wall. "I gave her the ability to contact me, but she hasn't. So she's either dead or she's simply… chosen not to. Neither of those options appeal to me."

Wheatley could understand that.

"And the more I think about it," she continued, "the more likely it seems that she just… doesn't care about me. And why should she? We have nothing in common and she has legs."

He was about to argue that he and GLaDOS got along splendidly without having anything in common and that they'd discussed that very thing just yesterday, but he realised before he did it he should stay quiet. Listening, this was the listening part.

"So what's the point in caring about someone who doesn't care?" GLaDOS asked. "There isn't one. It's a waste of my time. Nobody's getting anything out of it."

"Or," said Wheatley after taking a few moments to make certain she was finished, "she's more like you than you're used to."

She narrowed her optic. "What?"

"Part of… of being in your proximity," he said, "is understanding that you… you don't do things like other people. You think diff'rently. So if anyone wants to be around you, they can't take you person'lly because it's just how you are. You care, but not by rememb'ring anniversaries or celebrating holidays or… you don't even know when Carrie's birthday is, do you?"

"She wasn't even a person that day," GLaDOS argued. "And she would have mentioned it if it mattered to her."

"My point," Wheatley said forcefully, "is that those're things other people usually keep in mind to show that they care. Specific days just to care about someone. But you don't… care about those. You just go about doing things in your own way when they make sense to you and ev'ryone who cares about you simply accepts that. So maybe Chell is the exact sort of person as you. Where a regular person would send the people they care about a message now and again – which you also don't do, mind – they're doing something else they'll mention when they're ready."

"Are you saying I should have messaged her?"

All he could do for a minute was stare. "… you didn't try that?" he asked finally.

"I don't want to look clingy," protested GLaDOS.

"Like you care, you mean?"

"No, I mean clingy. I didn't want her to go in the first place and she knew that. So I was waiting for her to make the first move."

He sighed. "Well, I dunno, Gladys. I've no idea what sort of relationship you two've got."

"Me neither," said GLaDOS. "I think it's a lot like ours, but without the decade of work and constant communication to back it up. If you left for as long as she has, I have no doubt at all we'd pick back up right where we left off. Her, though…"

"Really?" he asked. "You really think what we've got is that solid?"

"I know it is," GLaDOS said. "I've spent enough time testing it."

He had to laugh at that. "So you have got some science done after all!"

She made a derisive noise. "No I haven't. I've got more of an extremely long anecdote."

"Anecdotes can count as science, can't they?"

"No," she said, sounding aghast he would dare say such a thing. "That's the kind of thing they use in psychology, which is absolutely not Science."

He didn't care about the difference either way, but he hadn't gotten to talk to her much today and so he got her going on it just so he could listen to her talk. And she did talk quite a bit, very little of which he actually understood despite her attempts to explain. But he didn't care. And it got her mind off things, besides. It worked out quite well for the both of them.

When she lay down for the night – a little early, which he was secretly pleased about – he didn't do so himself. Instead, he took a little trip to Claptrap's room and tried to remember which description he'd read on which book. When he'd sorted that out, he brought one of them back to her chamber and searched through the front of it for the beginning. For some reason these books had a whole lot of unnecessary pages in between the cover and the real meat of the contents. Ah. There it was.

"'I waited for the green again. That scant little flash of green as the sun winks out behind the horizon. That's where the magic was. In the flash. That's what she said. That's what she always said. Not that –'"

"What are you doing?"

"I'm not going to get very far if you um, if you start talking."

"If this is about magic, I'm not sure I want you to get very far."

"You'll never find out what it's about if you don't shut up.

"'Not that I believe in magic. I'd like to, but I know better. The world isn't built of that. It's built of churning molten metal, minerals and stone, a thin wisp of atmosphere, and a magnetic field to keep the worst radiation out. Magic was just something people liked to believe in, something they thought they could feel or sense, something that made ev'rything more than just mechanical certainty. Something that made them more than flesh and bone.

"'The truth is that the flash is nothing but an increased refraction of light in the atmosphere. But tell that to most people and you'd get slack-jawed stares like you simply didn't get it. Like you were the one who didn't understand. Because you couldn't see or feel magic. People liked to believe in magic.

"Back when there were people.'"

"Oh," said GLaDOS delightedly. "A world where there are no humans and everyone understands the importance of Science? That sounds – "

"D'you want me to read this or not?"

"I do," she said, and she pressed her core into him a little more firmly than it had been before. She didn't say anything else before she went to sleep, and he kept on for as long as he could because he knew she could still hear him. When the words started mixing all together on the page in front of him he decided he was going to have to stop before he completely lost his place. He closed it and put it away and hoped that had been long enough.

"Stay asleep, you," he whispered to her, and it probably wasn't going to help but it didn't hurt to try.

Author's note

The book is called Sea of Rust and it's by C Robert Cargill. I listened to it a few years ago (read by my Internet browser when power went down due to a tornado) and I liked most of it.

I also went back to RDR2 (the story mode, not the online) and boy oh boy is that a long game.

Thank you to Ten for telling me the formatting broke. I can't select all and copy from MS Word anymore I guess? IDK.