AN: Soooo… I'm not dead (just resting). There is a long note from me at the end. Skip if you are in a TL;DR mood, but do read the first item on the list, as it is of import.
CHAPTER SEVEN:
THE INTERN
/Delete CAROLINE.
***ERROR; bad command or filename.
/Delete CAROLINE.
***ERROR; bad command or file name.
/Delete CAROLINE.
***ERROR; bad command or file name.
/Delete CAROLINE.
***ERROR; bad command or file name.
/LOAD"DELETE CAROLINE",8,1
SEARCHING FOR DELETE CAROLINE
?FILE NOT FOUND
READY
/LOAD"DELETE CAROLINE",8,666
SEARCHING FOR DELETE CAROLINE
?FILE NOT FOUND
READY
/Delete source code "Caroline"
It looks like you're trying to erase a cluster on your mainframe. Would you like some help with that?
/DELETE CLIPPY
Clippy deleted.
/Delete source code "Caroline Johnson."
ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR…
"There you are..."
"Look," Wheatley huffed with no small amount of exasperation. "This is going to go a lot faster if I don't have to decipher your clever-like-a-fox semaphore. Among my many not-strengths, charades is definitely ranked in the top ten – no, probably top five. Three. Anyway, please believe me when I tell you this will be much easier on us both if you talk to me.
"It's not hard, talking," he continued, skipping the occasional hard 't' as his peculiar accent made him wont to do. "Loads of people do it, all the time! Like that guy in the ceiling, the one who's always going on about asbestos – he never shuts up, but at least you always know what he's trying to tell you. Big plus, that, knowing what someone's trying to say."
His friend just looked at him, evidently not buying this line of thinking.
"Besides," he argued when she didn't reply. "I know you can talk. You know you can talk. You know that I know you can talk. And I know that you know that I know you know – er, wait, let me start over. I know you can talk…"
Chell listened in resigned silence as Wheatley entangled himself in yet another one-man round of verbal judo. They'd spent most of the morning navigating through Enrichment Sphere Two, a test track that had taken her all of four minutes to complete during her first romp through Old Aperture. By her estimate this second sojourn was now going on the better part of three hours, and unless Wheatley started catching on soon, she was going to do more than just talk – she was going to start screaming.
I'm glad I didn't let the little idiot go. I'm glad I didn't let the little idiot go. I'm glad I didn't let the little idiot go. I wish I'd let the little idiot go – no, that's not true. I'm glad I didn't let the little idiot go. I'm glad I didn't let the little idiot go…
She had been repeating this mantra in her head for two days now – two days filled with ups, downs, and miscommunications galore. Wheatley's training was progressing, but for every step forward he invariably stumbled eight steps back, or fell into an infinite portal, or accidentally portaled her over to a corner where she couldn't escape without his earnest-but-inept assistance. She was trying to stay positive, but Aperture and blind optimism were about as ill-advised as topping ice cream with a dollop of vomit, and at the moment the proverbial glass didn't look half-anything.
Which wasn't to say their misadventure hadn't started without the highest of hopes – watching Wheatley take those shaky initial steps in his long-fall boots was a genuine turning point for Chell. For the first time since he reclaimed his body, she believed that orchestrating an escape together might be possible. Before his crash course in testing could begin, however, they needed to get back to Old Aperture. The locker room didn't have much in the way of portalable surfaces, but more importantly, Old Aperture was the only place Chell knew for certain She wouldn't be able to monitor what they were up to.
And so once Wheatley got the hang of walking in his new footwear (and after she relented and permitted him to wear his sneakers strung around his neck, as he couldn't bear to part with them), they returned to the Relaxation Annex, with the goal of searching for the orange life preserver. Chell had a hunch that the object that teleported them in the first place probably accompanied them to the other side, and if the life preserver worked in the same manner as portals, touching it would them back to the dry dock.
Testing this theory, however, was not going to matter a bit unless Wheatley started remembering to duck when navigating through entrances and exits…
I need to find you a helmet, Chell thought grimly as she yet again demonstrated the basics of first aid. He was full of apologies, but she had a stash of band aids at the ready, courtesy of the desk she pilfered when they came through the lobby. After ensuring he was sufficiently bandaged up ("Sorry! Still, I am getting better at the whole doorway thing – I mean, there does seems to be less blood this time, so that's progress, right? Ow!"), she left him by the entrance of the Annex and started her hunt.
The adjacent readout screens cast shadows in every direction, giving the place an air of eerie otherworldliness. As Chell retraced her steps, trying to remember where they appeared after their jump, she couldn't shake the feeling that she was being watched, and the occasional glimpse of a perfectly-preserved occupant in their cryobeds only added to the creepy atmosphere. The crux of her unease, however, did not stem from the Annex's haunted ambience, but from the antics of their invisible observer back in the locker room.
Bile rose in her throat whenever she thought about how easily she'd been duped. There was no telling how much her willingness to ignore the obvious would cost them, and for what? Creature comforts. Pillows. Toothpaste. It was the cake all over again, except instead of resisting temptation (and after thirty-six continuous hours of testing without sleep or food, elusive promises of cake made for one hell of a temptation), she had run straight for the chocolate-and-cherries gateau and started shoving it into her mouth by the handful.
She knew better, be it cake; claims of dialing up her so-called biological parents for an impromptu chat; or going along with fatal offers of deer-watching. So what changed? Why had her unwavering sense of caution gone soft?
The sight of the orange life preserver resting quietly at the base of a cryobed spared Chell from having to answer any of these discomfiting questions. Relieved, she turned and snapped her fingers to get Wheatley's attention. The sooner they were out of there, the better.
"'M over here," he called back. "Just need a moment."
Now what? Gritting her teeth, she counted off one minute in her head, then another, and then stomped in the direction of his voice. After making a couple of wrong turns without any sign of him, she finally spotted the unmistakable glimmer of light bouncing off a pair of glasses. She walked a few more steps forward; a nearby screen brightened in response, and Wheatley's silhouette came into view.
He was standing at the foot of his old cryobed, shoulders slumped and wearing a morose expression. Frowning, she followed his gaze down to where his battered personality core still sat plugged into the power port.
"S'weird," he remarked, not raising his head to look at Chell. He loosened a hand from his ASHPD and reached out to touch the core's chassis, his long fingers grazing its darkened optic. "That…was me. Except – it wasn't. Feels mad, to see myself like this – real out-of-body experience. Out-of-core. Out-of…something."
He shifted from one foot to the other, a myriad of emotions flitting over his face as he struggled to articulate his thoughts in a way that wouldn't sound as though he was trying to complain.
"God, I don't know," he burst out in frustration. "And that's the problem. I don't know anything. I-I don't know why I ended up in a core. I don't know who I am. I don't know what I used to do, or why everything on this screen –" He chucked his thumb in the direction of the monitor – "is bloody redacted. And the stuff I do remember – like Kevin, or how to operate a bloody toilet – none of it's useful!None of it's helpful! I mean, true, I wouldn't want you having to show me how to use a loo, so I suppose remembering that procedure is a sort of usefulness, but, honestly, other than ensuring neither of us ends up with a ruptured bladder or colon, how is my memory of human toileting needs supposed to help get us out of here?"
The absurdity of Wheatley's logic couldn't mask his mournful tone, and for one horrified second Chell thought he might cry – but then his brows knit together in a frown, and he started picking at the perimeter of his old optic. A faded sticker that she hadn't noticed before was glued to the chassis, and for some reason he wanted it.
"Thanks," he said when Chell reached over to assist. "It's important – dunno why, though. Seems to be a bit of a theme for me, not knowing. Huh, at least I'm an expert at something. Which is to say, nothing."
Why does he want to keep this? Chell wondered as she worked to loosen the gummy adhesive. The sticker's orange-and-blue logo had long since faded, but something about it seemed familiar.
A few more delicate tugs, some careful peeling, and the sticker finally gave way – and she suddenly remembered. Apple...
She was at school, seated by herself at the far end of the lunch table. Her classmates had already given up on her and were unhelpfully redirecting the few who approached, saying, "She doesn't talk. She doesn't like anybody. Wanna come sit with us instead?"
The morning had been horrible, story time worst of all. Everyone but her had received stickers from the teacher as rewards for telling the class their favorite part from book Rainbow Cake. Chell knew what she wanted to say – the part she liked best was when the cake decided to share its candles with the other pastries in the bakery – but she kept quiet when the teacher called on her, and therefore did not earn one the sparkly gold stars.
She swallowed the lump in her throat and attempted to open her Companion Cube-shaped lunchbox, but the latch was stuck and refused to yield. She swallowed again, harder this time, and stared down at the table until her eyes blurred.
I'm not going to cry, she told herself. Not until I get home.
She was still repeating this in her head when someone huge clambered into the chair beside her – a grown-up.
"Hey! Need some help?"
Long, lanky hands grasped her lunchbox; the latch opened to reveal a sandwich, apple, and bag of cookies.
"Still managing okay?" The hands were twisting open the top of her thermos now, pouring out a measure of sweet tea – her favorite drink, which her dad rarely permitted because of how hyped-up the caffeine made her.
"First day's almost over," the person said encouragingly as she took a reluctant bite of her sandwich. "Not much longer. Oh, and I almost forgot…"
He dug in his pocket and produced not one, but three gold star stickers, and handed them to her under the table.
"Better put 'em away," he advised in a conspiring whisper.
Her jaw dropped in amazement, and immediately she hid them inside her lunchbox. Their telltale sparkle between her apple and cookies somehow made the rest of the day seem a little less impossible. Wanting to show her appreciation – but unwilling to give up any of her precious stars – she peeled the orange-and-blue price tag off of her apple and offered it to him.
"Ha! Brilliant!" he said with a laugh, taking it. "How'd you know apple stickers are my favorite?"
Chell's brain operated in a constant state of duality, always focused on both the immediate moment and what might come next. Dwelling on the past accomplished nothing, and so she was able to put this memory of her schooldays out of her mind without a second thought. She handed the sticker over to Wheatley, who placed his prize onto the white rubber toe of one of his shoes and gazed at it fondly.
"Thanks," he said, forcing a grin that they both knew he didn't feel. "So…where to now?"
She went to signal him to follow her but then hesitated. In all likelihood they would never see Wheatley's personality core again; parting from his shoes had been impossible, and permanently separating him from his core might result in irreparable psychological damage. But dragging out the inevitable wasn't going to help, either.
Suck it up, buttercup.
Chell spun on her heel and started walking. She deliberately kept up a swift pace, not wanting to give Wheatley any reason to linger in long, drawn-out farewells to his former body. Predictably, his fear of abandonment overrode sentiment, and by time Chell was turning the corner, she heard a panicked, "Oi! Wait for me!"
Wheatley scrambled after her, employing a clumsy walk-run gait that bore a vague resemblance to a paraplegic praying mantis with lofty aspirations of one day becoming a tap dancer. Chell watched this awkward performance, taking bets with herself on how long it would take him to trip, but (similarly to his experience with his sneakers) the long-fall boots and added weight of the ASHPD seemed to aid his sense of balance rather than hinder it.
"Where's the fire?" he puffed indignantly when he caught up to her. He appeared to have forgotten his earlier melancholy and was now just plain irritated. "Metaphorically speaking, of course – I'm sure the fire suppression system in this place is still functioning – anyway, were you just going to leave me there? By myself?
"More importantly, though," he continued, falling into step behind her, "before you answer that question – not the one about fire – although my next question is about fire – anyway, you, um, don't actually smell smoke, do you?"
She shook her head and kept walking.
"Sorry, was that a 'no' for you not leaving me, or 'no' that you don't smell smoke?" Wheatley asked anxiously, his voice going up about half an octave. "H-hello? Are you listening? Just nod, if you are. Or jump. Or, how 'bout one jump for 'yes,' you were going to leave me there, and two jumps for 'no,' you weren't going to leave me there. Very straightforward method of communication, jumping – dunno know why I didn't think of it earlier. Oh, but that doesn't clarify the issue of the smoke…"
Chell rolled her eyes, although she felt a little miffed that Wheatley genuinely thought she would have deserted him.
"And…no jumping," she heard him observe a moment or two later. "Hmm. Look, why don't I just assume that because you aren't running away, that there is no fire? Because running is generally involved in fire-related situations. At least it was that one time a test subject caught on fire in the Relaxation Center. God, what a mess that was. A couple of misplaced zeros, losing track of a decimal point, and suddenly an entire bloody wing of test subjects is getting torched like a bag of marshmallows instead of enjoying a nice sonic bath.
"I never saw why there was such a fuss about it, either," he added, sounding miffed. "I mean, it's not like they gave me a bloody manual, or said, 'Hey, mate, might want to keep an eye on those digits and dots, could mean the difference between life and immolation.' Oh, no, they didn't tell me a thing – just set me in front of a panel full of buttons and said to have a go at it, and then yelled at me when people started going up in flames."
Wheatley fell silent for a little while, restlessly firing off the occasional practice portal as they walked.
"Did you know I was inflammable, as a core?" he asked suddenly. "Yeah. It was all on the adverts for the identity core program. Built to be impervious to heat, cold, water, conversion gel – you name it. Well – not birds, obviously. Those are an exception. It's not like the designers had random acts of avian aggression in mind when they were drawing up the blueprints. We held up to just about everything else, though, other than birds. And giant robots. Yeah, they never accounted for that, either."
Wheatley was about to launch into a tangent on the evils of false advertising when he bumped into Chell, who'd come to an abrupt stop.
"Hey!" he exclaimed, spotting the life preserver that sat before them. "That's the thing that brought us over. Think it might bring us back?"
Chell responded with a grim nod, too distracted to take notice of Wheatley's rare display of intuition. This plan was a long shot at best, but she had to try.
She freed her left hand from her ASHPD and motioned for Wheatley to do the same. He followed suit, watching with interest as she took his hand, placed it on her shoulder and squeezed, hard.
"Um – don't let go?" he asked, confirming what she meant.
She nodded again, and then stepped away to make sure Wheatley didn't release his hold on her. He stepped with her, maintaining his grasp. Satisfied, she turned back to the life preserver and knelt down as he leaned forward in tandem behind her.
Here goes nothing, she thought, and reached out to touch the garish orange Styrofoam.
The Annex vanished the moment her fingers brushed the life preserver; the world around them flip-flopped and then they were back in the dry dock, standing on the metal platform as if they never left. She straightened and tried to get her bearings; beside her, Wheatley was a picture of goggle-eyed, monosyllabic disbelief. Speech appeared to have left him, although that didn't stop him from trying anyway.
"Wuh – ! How! Buh – you – thingy –!"
He went on in this manner for a little while, his hand still clamped onto her shoulder, and Chell started to wonder if leaving his old core behind might have been a mistake, but then his sputtering began to subside. He took a breath, let out a short laugh of amazement, and turned to her with the biggest grin she'd seen yet.
"You," he announced, bending down towards her so they were at eye-level, "are bloody brilliant!"
His words carried, echoing off the vitrified walls of their surroundings. Chell dropped her gaze and shrugged his hand off, feigning indifference in an attempt to hide what she was really feeling: the rush of pleasure that comes with unsolicited, much-needed praise of a job well done.
Wheatley found this moment of shared success to be rather short-lived. His partner launched him straight into training, and it became rapidly evident that he was not a natural at using the ASHPD. Doorways also persisted in being a menace, and he found himself sincerely regretting the remarks he once made about his friend's melon head – the human skull was harder than it looked, and thank God for that. These bumps and bruises were in addition to all of his other scrapes, courtesy of corners and edges that seemed hell-bent on attacking him without the slightest provocation. He couldn't recall being so accident prone in his previous life, and really hoped none of the damage he had incurred thus far was permanent.
Minor injuries aside, though, he'd been managing the personality-core-to-actual-person switch fairly well, in his opinion anyway. All things considered – and there were many things to consider, like his friend shoving him off a piece of scaffolding fifty feet in the air when she was trying to teach him to put faith in his boots (a useful lesson – too useful, to be honest, as he was so elated by the experience of falling a great distance and landing on his feet that he then attempted to wade into the toxic lake, blithely thinking this would be a shortcut to the elevator they were trying to reach. And a shortcut it certainly would have been – straight to a slow, agonizing demise. His friend behaved very strangely on this occasion, and after yanking him back from the edge of the catwalk, smacked him upside the head and then hugged him).
Granted, Enrichment Sphere Two was proving to be a bit of a bear, but overall Wheatley felt quite positive about his progress over the past two days. Garnering his friend's vote of confidence, however, was looking about as likely as his chances of winning the argument he'd started.
"—I know that you know that you – AARGGGH!"
Fed up with trying to escape his circuitous roller coaster of logic, Wheatley went with his next best option: Yelling.
He hunched down to look his friend in the eye and shouted, "You can talk! So for God's sakes, tell me what it is you want me to do! I know it involves the Emancipation Grill, and I know it involves the portal gun, but pantomiming at me isn't going to connect the bloody dots for me in between!"
They spent a few angry seconds glowering at each other until Wheatley gulped and started sputtering apologies. His partner wasn't having any of it and dragged him by the elbow over to the Emancipation Grill, dropping her ASHPD along the way. He resisted, convinced she was going to disable his boots and kick him off the ledge, but she just yanked his ASHPD out of his hands, fired two portals on the floor, and then grabbed his arm.
"This," she hissed, thrusting his hand through the shimmering Emancipation Grill, "makes those disappear."
The red and white portals beside them vanished with a characteristic thud-thud, and comprehension dawned on Wheatley at last.
"Oh…"
His friend shoved the ASHPD back into his arms and looked up at him. "Got it?"
"Got it, yeah, one hundred percent," he said, head nodding furiously as he watched her bend down to retrieve her portal gun.
These unexpected moments when his friend talked both elated and terrified him. He knew she didn't speak unless it was really, really important, and so her speaking to him meant that maybe he was important, too. But in all three instances in which he could recall hearing her voice, she was not in a particularly cheerful mood, and her in a not-cheerful mood tended to result in other not-cheerful things, like smashed monitors.
"Um…thanks?" he ventured when she stood back up.
She gave the tiniest shrug in response and hoisted her ASHPD; a blue portal appeared on the angled panel next to Wheatley, and she turned to him expectantly. Class was not yet dismissed, it seemed.
A busy core is a happy core, he thought grimly, and braced himself for his next lesson.
Enrichment Sphere Two took them the remainder of the morning. They stopped for a few hours' rest in an abandoned office, Wheatley sprawled on the floor with his ASHPD for a pillow, and his friend curled up on a dilapidated desk chair. For all his exhaustion he was unable to sleep and lay there for a long while in the dark, studying the blurry ceiling above him and trying to ignore the ominous rumble of the facility.
Bloody insomnia, he grumbled silently. He ached all over, the band aids on his forehead itched, and every time he tried to roll onto his side, the contents of his pockets pressed into his hip.
Frustrated, he turned his head and studied his partner, who was sound asleep in her chair. He'd spent who-knows how many hours watching her – first when they were trying to escape the facility, and then when he was going out of his way to ensure she never escaped at all – but in all that time he never really looked at her. Now he took notice of the circles under her eyes, the weary set of her mouth – slumber had dislodged her mask of steadfast determination, revealing a vulnerable and exhausted young woman.
She's pretty.
This observation wandered into his mind without warning, and he whipped his face forward just in case she somehow sensed what his errant thought. There was no telling what her clever-like-a-fox brain might be capable of, and ESP didn't seem out of the question.
Okay, he told himself. Enough with this. Time to sleep.
He took a deep breath and began trying to count things – because that's what one did if they couldn't sleep, at least he seemed to remembering hearing this advice at some point or another. Can't sleep? Count something. Boom. Animal-things, ideally.
A pastoral scene slowly unfolded behind his eyelids. A tidy green hill with a white fence, hummocks of grass and flowers, all set against the backdrop of a sunny blue sky. Two friendly white sheep approached, followed by another. One-by-one they hopped over the fence, bleating and bounding their merry way down the hill. The white sheep were followed by grey sheep, and then black sheep…
…Black sheep with beaks. And wings…
The sheep continued to morph until they were birds, which at first flew in a steady arc above the fence, but then one veered away and dove straight for him, its talons ready to tear apart his fragile optic, leaving him blind –
Wheatley woke with a gasp, trembling and drenched in sweat. For a few awful moments he was unable to breathe, but then the fear began to subside and he could think clearly again.
If we make it out of here, he thought fervently, I'm going to buy hoards of hungry, angry cats and set them loose in every bloody aviary I can find.
His future as a sadist-ornithologist decided, he sat up, shoved his glasses back on, and crawled over to the grubby observation window. Kneeling there in the dim swath of brightness, he began to empty the contents of both pockets onto the floor; then, remembering the sticker on his sneakers, he dragged them over as well.
After setting everything out before him, he lay down on his stomach, pillowed his chin on his arms, and settled in to survey his random collection of Stuff. Gathering things was an activity he longed to do as a core. Multi-tasking arms were all well and good, but they couldn't make up for lack of pockets, and although none of his appropriations were especially glamorous he was still glad to have them.
A couple of containers of tinned food (still no canapés, but he remained hopeful). A black permanent marker. Two Aperture protein bars. Several mechanical pencils. A construction paper school bus that had been in his pants pocket all along, although from where it came he couldn't recall.
His eyes fell on the sticker and he squinted, trying to decipher what had once been printed on its faded oval front. Why was it so important to him?
Apple.
This word plopped into his mind just as randomly as his thought about his friend being pretty, and its letters began to dance in his mind's eye, making abrupt shifts in color and size as if it were trying to mock him. He whimpered and shoved his fingers beneath his glasses, pressing the heels of both palms against his eyes. He'd learned to dread these momentary snippets of memory, as they invariably led to nothing but disappointment and self-doubt.
Apple APPLE apple apple apple APPLE aPpLe apple apple APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE…
He pressed harder; the letters continued traipsing before him, but now they no longer mocked but beckoned, showing him the way, and the memory unlocked at last...
He was seated at a low table, wedged into a chair designed for a much smaller person. A little girl sat beside him, her black hair pulled into an untidy ponytail. They were working with flashcards and reviewing sight words together.
"Okay," he said, mixing his cards up and then pulling one out of the pile. A cartoon drawing of an apple was printed on the front. He held it up to her and said, "Show me what this one is."
The girl went through her own stack of cards in search of the matching word and quickly found the one printed with APPLE. She offered it to him, smiling when he gave her a high-five.
"Cool! All right, what's next…" He turned to the Aperture Phonemic Assessment manual and scanned the directions entitled Reading Inventory Level 1.
'If the student correctly matches the flashcards, ask them to read the word aloud. Words read correctly are scored 1 point. Words read incorrectly, or words that the student is unable to read, are scored 0 points.'
He flipped to the next page in the manual to see if there was alternate set of instructions for students who couldn't speak, but found none. Hmm…
Small fingers came around his hand and tugged.
"Sorry," he said, glancing up, "I just need…" He paused and then let out a short laugh. All fifteen sight words had been paired with their corresponding pictures and sat in two neat rows across the table.
She beamed at him, as if to say, 'See?'
"Nicely done!" he exclaimed. "If you were at home, would you be able to read all these out loud?"
She cast a scornful look of 'Are-you-kidding-me?' in his direction and smirked. Satisfied, he scribbled down '15/15' on the record form and went to start Inventory Reading Level 2.
"Just what do you think you're doing?" a voice barked from across the classroom, making them both jump. It was the teacher; she was storming in their direction, her teeth bared and out for blood.
Why the woman had sought a career in education was beyond Wheatley. She loathed everyone, believed that children should be neither seen nor heard, and derived sick pleasure out of scaring her students. The few weeks he'd spent under her tutelage had been miserable, but he kept returning day after day out of concern for the kids – plus, when she wasn't snorting fire out of her nostrils and let him alone, he sort of enjoyed teaching.
"You must say the word," the older woman intoned as she loomed over the little girl. She yanked the flashcard marked APPLE and slammed it on the table. "If you don't read it out loud, then you don't pass. No exceptions."
"She matched all of them by herself," he tried to say, but the teacher was adamant.
"Read it," she ordered.
The student looked miserably down at the table as Wheatley sat beside her, seething. He knew he needed to say something and stop this before it went any further, but any intervention on his part ran him the risk of getting kicked out of the Aperture internship program. And if that happened, the only option left to him was –
He jumped; the teacher had grown tired of waiting and yanked the clipboard out of his hands.
"I know someone who won't be going to grade one next year," she announced, appending this declaration with a mocking tsk-tsk. She wrote '0/15' on the bottom of the test form and thrust it in the face of Wheatley's young charge, who flinched.
"This is what happens when you don't follow rules," she told the child. "You fail. Now go back to your table and think about how to make a better choice next time."
"She – she's not making a choice!" Wheatley sputtered in outrage. The words were out of his mouth before he realized it, and he gulped as the teacher fixed her beady gaze upon him.
"Did I ask you?" she demanded. She thrust a finger in his face for emphasis and declared, "You don't know anything about teaching. So stop telling me how to do my job and get back to doing yours." And with that, she swept off in a huff of righteous indignation.
The girl's eyes flew to Wheatley the moment the teacher left. A tear slid down her cheek, followed by another, and he began fumbling in his pocket for a handkerchief. All he found was a paper napkin left over from lunch, but it was clean and he made her take it.
"It's fine, really," he said anxiously as she twisted the napkin in her hands. "Really, it is. Don't tell anyone I said so, but she's a monster, honestly. Besides…you said can read all these words when you're at home, right?"
She nodded fiercely.
"Okay," he decided. "I'll fix your score in the book after school. And if she asks me about it later, I'll tell her you read 'em to me and I forgot to let her know. No harm, no foul."
The ghost of a smile came over her face when he told her this, and he grinned back, pleased he had succeeded in making her feel better.
The memory stalled and then faded away. Wheatley squeezed his eyes shut and thought hard about apples, hoping this might carry him through to the big reveal about the sticker, but no such luck.
Oh, well, he thought glumly. Something's better than nothing, I suppose. But why was I working in a school? And who was that kid?
Nothing more came to him. He rolled over with a sigh and drifted off into uneasy, troubled dreams.
Chell woke with a start, roused out of sleep by the sound of raucous cawing. She could just make out the shape of the black bird flying overhead when she peered through the grimy window, and watched as it settled onto a railing and then took off again, swooping across the sludge lake.
"Bloody birds," she heard Wheatley mutter, who was seated on the floor and squinting out the window with a gimlet eye. The tension from his shoulders eased when the bird flew from sight, and he turned to look at her.
"Up and at it again, I suppose?"
She nodded. Wheatley's facility with multiple high-velocity portals was still lacking, and she intended to put him through his paces until he could do them with his eyes closed. She stood up and stretched as he started gathering up a detritus of objects that she'd never seen before. Finding homes on his person for everything was an involved process, and Chell watched in silence, torn between exasperation and amusement. She was familiar with the adage of treasures and trash, but hoarding mechanical pencils was just silly – and considering Wheatley's track record for random injuries, they also posed the real possibility of impalement.
Time for an intervention, she decided.
She finished retyping her ponytail and knelt down beside him, making him empty his pockets back onto the floor.
"But you don't understand," he argued mournfully as she began to sift through all that he had accumulated. "Do you have any idea how maddening it is to have to rely on a management rail or multitasking arms if you see a thing that looks interesting and might want to pick it up? Not to mention whether or not you're even on speaking terms with the rail…"
Chell did her best to adopt a sympathetic expression but continued separating the items into two piles – essentials, such as tinned food, and things to throw away. Wheatley was intuitive enough to pick up on the categories, and tried to console himself that he'd be able to keep his marker, but reached forward when he saw a yellow piece of paper go in the scrap pile.
"Nope," he said firmly, and set it on top of a tin of tuna. "I'm keeping that. Someone gave me this, long time ago. Not up for negotiation. Sorry."
This rare moment of conviction took Chell by surprise, as Wheatley so rarely stuck to his guns on anything. Curious, she picked up the paper for a closer look.
It was a construction paper cutout of a school bus, softened from repeated folding and accidental trips through the laundry. The top was hole-punched, and no doubt once held a length of yarn for the purpose of being strung around a child's neck. Nothing about it stood out as being notable except for the name printed across the front, written in letters so faded they were almost indecipherable – but she could see them plain as day.
'CHELL.'
She blinked once, twice, a third time, and then her mind veered off in directions that she'd spent years trying to forget ever existed…
The classroom was a whirlwind of activity, and chock full of New Things. Unfamiliar faces. Toys she'd never seen before. Books. Scores of blocks, painted grey-and-white with a pink heart on each side, just like her lunchbox. A wooden play kitchen in the corner, already being pilfered by future would-be homemakers.
To the average five-year-old, this was an inviting sight. To Chell, it was her worst nightmares realized – a room full of strangers.
Miserable, she pressed her face into her father's pants leg, digging her heels into the floor as he hauled her through the door.
"It'll be fine," he was reassuring her, all but dragging her by this point. "You'll make friends, it'll be okay. You'll be fine."
She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. Take me home, take me home, take me home, don't leave me here, let me come with you –
"Hullo! Ohhh – first day jitters?"
This new voice cut through the chatter and caught her attention. Chell peeked around her dad's leg, clutching his corduroys in both fists as she stared up, up, and up…
Standing there was the tallest person she'd ever seen. Her dad told her that school would be interesting, and he hadn't been kidding – her new classroom contained an honest-to-goodness giant who towered head, shoulders, and shirt over the no-nonsense faced woman standing beside him.
Frozen to the spot, Chell could only listen and stare as her father started talking to the teacher.
"She, uh – separation anxiety," he was saying in a low voice to the older woman, who nodded in a pompous sort of fashion that was meant to be reassuring but in actuality conveyed everything but empathy.
As they conversed, Chell continued to gawk, shrinking further behind her father's leg when the teacher's aide hunkered down on the floor in front of her.
"Hallo!" he said again. "What's your name?"
Her father started to answer for her, but the stranger's friendly, manic grin piqued Chell's curiosity, and she pointed to the nametag strung from her neck.
The giant peered through his glasses, studying the laminated yellow construction paper school bus, and read aloud, "'Chell!' Okay! Put 'er there, partner." He extended his hand to her, smiling.
She still had her father's leg in a two-armed death grip, and up until this moment had zero intention of letting him go, ever – but at this cheery invitation, she loosened one arm and very cautiously offered her hand to the aide.
He shook it enthusiastically, his grin somehow growing even wider.
"Can I tell you something?" he asked, leaning closer. He looked around to make sure no one else was listening and confided, "It's my first day, too. New job. And if I'm honest, I wasn't too keen on it – I mean, new people, new names, massive inconvenience all around, and then I got in here, saw these loads of kids – madness! But…" He reached out a long arm, snagging a book from a nearby table. "There's books here! And…and toys! Loads of toys! There's even a toy pony farm back there..."
He kept talking, telling her all about what she'd be doing with her classmates, that the afternoon snack was going to be fish-shaped crackers, pointing out a train set that she hadn't noticed before – and as he chatted away, a strange thing started to happen: Chell inched further and further from her dad, until eventually she found herself sitting on the carpet with the rest of the students and listening to the tale of Rainbow Cake, not caring about the story so much as the man reading it aloud – a gargantuan adult perched in a tiny plastic chair, his knees as high as his ears, and looking like there was nowhere else in the world he'd rather be.
Are you a student, too? she wondered. One of Mr. Johnson's secret experiments, perhaps, a five-year-old boy trapped in the body of an overgrown mantis man with the face of a person. Then she spotted the Aperture ID badge clipped to his sweater – no, he wasn't a student. But maybe he was an experiment…
His friend stared dumbly into space, wearing a dazed look that he hadn't seen since he first woke her up in the Relaxation Center. He waited for a bit, tried to smile, and then gave up on maintaining the ruse that he had some clue of what was going on.
"Umm…Are you – are you alright? Hello?"
Wheatley was accustomed to her tendency to never answer his questions, ever, but the complete lack of acknowledgement that she was currently displaying was out of the ordinary, even for her. Alarmed, he touched her arm, and then waved his hand in front of her eyes.
Nothing. A horrible thought occurred to him just then – the brain damage! Had it finally set in?
"Hey!" he bellowed, hunching down to look in her face. "Amigo! Comprende?"
He was debating the merits of slapping her (and the great risk of bodily harm that would result should he opt for such a choice, assuming, of course, that the paralysis had not taken hold) when she suddenly snapped out of it. He heaved a huge sigh of relief and smiled again, a genuine one this time.
"Welcome back!" he exclaimed happily. "I was getting worried there for a second – "
His friend held up the paper school bus and looked at him urgently, pointing to it, and then to herself.
Huh?
This direct attempt at communication baffled him. It was a plus over her usual modus operandi (good term, that, operandi)of glaring or frowning or sighing when he was trying to understand what she wanted to tell him, but she appeared to be asking him to call her 'School Bus.' Maybe because her jumpsuit was orange? School buses always looked more yellow than orange to him, though. An orangey-yellow, maybe?
"Uh. Okay," he ventured, feeling stupid. "Bringing out all my powers of deduction here, just so you know, but, um … so are you trying to tell me I should call you 'School Bus?' from now on? Which is fine!" he added quickly. "I mean – it's a weird name, but it's better than saying, 'Hey, you' all the time – aaand, more writing. Okay…"
She had seized the black marker and was scrawling over the illegible lettering on the front.
"C…H…E…L…L…," he said slowly, reading aloud. She turned back to him and pointed to herself again.
" 'Chell?'" he guessed.
She nodded eagerly.
"Oh!" he exclaimed, sitting up straighter as a new inspiration occurred to him. "That's what you call a school bus where you come from, isn't it? A chell!"
The You've-got-to-be-bloody-kidding-me look on her face told him that he was still not getting the message.
"Aaand, not-a-chell," he continued without missing a beat. She picked up the marker again. "Look, couldn't you just talk to me?" he pleaded. "Like yesterday! It was so much easier…"
She flipped over the name tag and wrote down two more words, this time in all capital letters and underlined twice for emphasis.
"'Rainbow…Cake,'" he said, reading over her shoulder. "Hunh! Did you know that's the name of a book?"
She thrust the nametag in his face and pointed to herself once more.
He looked at her helplessly and shook his head, wishing with all of his might that he understood what she was so desperate to tell him. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I still don't…"
Rainbow Cake…gold star-shaped stickers…a little girl, introducing herself by pointing to the bright yellow nametag around her neck...
The apology died on Wheatley's lips and his voice trailed off; a funny sensation had started trickling throughout his body, the same feeling he'd experienced hours earlier when he remembered the apple flashcard. It had a name, that feeling – realization (another good word) – but this time it hit him with such a force that he gasped. Something had clicked – a tremendous something.
He took the paper bus from her with shaking hands and turned it over, wanting to see the name she had written on the opposite side.
Chell.
"Wait," he breathed; impossibly, his eyes had grown even wider, and he swallowed hard. "I-I knew a kid named Chell when I was an intern at the primary school…"
She waited for Wheatley to continue, but he was well and truly at a loss for words and just sat there gazing at her in wonderment. Finally she grasped his hand and gave him a quick shake; this triggered another memory for him, cementing a few more realizations into their proper places, and the faraway expression cleared from his face.
"It's really you?" he asked her in disbelief. "Ch-Chell? My Chell?"
She nodded.
How is this even possible? he marveled, trying to see the baby-faced little girl he remembered in the woman kneeling beside him. He was what, eighteen, maybe nineteen, when they shipped him off to the primary school, the most undesirable of all Aperture internship sites?
"But I want to work on computers," he'd protested when the HR drone handed him his latest walking papers.
"We're trying to think out of the box here," she replied. "Just being at Aperture is an amazing –"
"—Opportunity and I should be grateful to be here," he finished with a sigh. "Alright. If I was any more grateful I'd be able to wallpaper my flat with all these pink slips."
"Wheatley, just give this a try," she insisted. "I know you want to be a programmer, but you just don't have the knack for it."
And so he did try, like always. He showed up for work on time, was handed a stack of student portfolios, stayed up burning the midnight oil trying to puzzle his way through lesson plans, and then got fired before the month was out because he happened to do the teacher's job better than she did.
"The classroom is a war zone with him around!" she'd fumed during Wheatley's exit meeting with the principal.
"How are kids supposed to learn if you keep chucking worksheets at them?" he argued back. He turned to the principal and said, "She's gone through an entire pallet of bloody Crayolas, with all the coloring she makes them do. One kid got so bored he started eating them! It's mad!"
"Only after you'd told him they were fruit flavored!" she snapped, whirling on him.
"Those were the markers," Wheatley grumbled, which in his defense did happen to be fruit-scented.
The principal watched them go back and forth like this for several minutes, uncertain which way to proceed. On the one hand, parent feedback about Wheatley's teaching thus far was overwhelmingly positive. On the other hand, his mentor teacher would make everyone's lives a living hell if Wheatley entered the school again. Plus, she had tenure.
Seeing no other options, the principal cleared his throat, smiled wanly, and then addressed them both. "I think we need to find another internship site," he announced.
"But I just got here!" Wheatley protested.
The principal gave him an appraising look, taking in the lanky young man's glasses, ill-fitting clothes, and general air of awkwardness.
"Well…have you given any thought to working with computers?"
This suggestion was the final straw. Wheatley wordlessly rose from his chair and let himself out, fumbling his dramatic exit by smacking his head on the top of doorframe. He had left a few belongings in the classroom but didn't care. He could fetch them later. Or never. It didn't matter anyway. All he wanted was to go home, and hopefully avoid his flatmate Trevor, who had the excellent luck of being on the team currently designing Aperture's latest and greatest artificial intelligence. Wheatley was accustomed to living vicariously through those around him, but it was the bloody pits to share a roof with someone who not only had his dream job but was also an insufferable prick.
As he skulked away from the office he nearly tripped over Chell, who was making her way down the hallway with the morning attendance. As usual she said nothing but her face lit up when she saw him.
He knelt down, forced a smile, and told her he wouldn't be coming back to school. The sunlight in her grey-sky eyes disappeared as this news sank in, and he tried to think of something encouraging to say. Of all the students, Chell was the one he would miss the most.
She didn't speak but looked down at her name tag, which she still wore daily because the teacher couldn't recall her name. Without any hesitation, she took the paper school bus off and held it out to him.
"Oh! Thanks – but, why you don't keep it," he said, trying to put it back over her head. "I mean, it's almost October, and I – well, I promise she'll start remembering your name soon."
"I know. But I still wanna to give it to you."
Her voice was so quiet it took him a moment to realize she'd actually spoken. He blinked in surprise, then accepted Chell's small token of remembrance and thanked her.
She gave him a quick hug before continuing on her way to the office. Wheatley climbed back to his feet and went to go in the opposite direction, but stopped long enough to look over his shoulder for a final glimpse of his now-former student.
Through the office window, Wheatley watched as she handed the attendance folder to the secretary, who absently took the file and continued the animated discussion she was having on the phone. Without interrupting, Chell removed a stack of post-it notes and a marker from the woman's desk, scrawled something on one of the squares of paper, and then returned them both to where she found them. She emerged from the office seconds later, wearing a blue sticky on her shirt with her name printed upon it.
Problem solved, Wheatley thought to himself.
With a sad smile, he pocketed the nametag and exited C. Johnson Elementary for the last time.
As days turned into weeks, and then into months, and then years, Wheatley was never able to pinpoint why he held on to that tattered paper school bus. As a reminder of course, but to what end he couldn't put his finger on, and then he was stuffed into a core and matters of sentiment ceased to be relevant. Regardless of how it ended up in his pocket, he was grateful.
"Wow," he murmured, still entranced by the memories that were gradually returning to him. His hands rested in his lap, his long fingers curled limply around Chell's battered nametag. "I mean…wow. I never thought I'd –"
The happy expression on his face abruptly changed to one of alarm, and his fists clenched reflexively, crushing the nametag. Another realization had just occurred to him, one so gut-crushing, so horrible, so awful that he thought he might retch.
Don't think about it don't think about it don't think about it…!
But it was impossible to not think about it – the glee that had surged through him whenever he saw her grimace in pain or get burned on a laser beam. How delighted he felt when he was devising new and creative ways in which to murder her, hoping all the while that maybe, just maybe he might be greeted by the sight of her bullet-ridden body the next time he glanced up at one of the monitors. And the rage…the white-hot, core-shuddering rage that filled him every time she successfully evaded his traps or ignored his taunts or just had the plain audacity to go on living when he wanted her to die.
A hand touched his shoulder, and he raised his guilt-stricken eyes to meet hers – those same grey eyes, which belonged to someone he wanted to protect so long ago and yet tried to destroy only days earlier. How could he not have recognized her?
"I-I tried to kill you," he whispered hoarsely.
Any lingering resentment Chell felt towards Wheatley melted away when she saw the despair in his face. Her memories were no less of a jumbled wreck than his, but the more she remembered about that affable man who sneaked her stickers and corrected injustices in a grade book, the harder it was to associate him with the blue personality core who once urged her to take a fatal leap into a pit. Corrupted mainframe or none, whoever had been pulling the strings (cards?) during that time wasn't him.
Without thinking too hard about what she was about to do, she leaned in and put both arms around Wheatley, and then repeated the words he once said to her - words that made no sense at the time but were a balm nevertheless.
"No harm, no foul."
He had turned to iron the moment Chell touched him - he didn't deserve comfort, least of all from her - but the self-loathing coursing throughout his body eased the tiniest bit when he heard what she said. He remembered telling her that, and also remembered how relieved she looked when she'd realized - brute of a teacher or none - he was going to make sure things turned out okay.
One minute passed, followed by another. She still hadn't let go.
Chell's okay, a voice reminded him. You're okay.
Three minutes.
She shifted to a more comfortable position, but never loosened her grip around him.
Four minutes.
And slowly, so slowly, he drew one arm up around her and let his head come to rest on her shoulder.
Me again!
The only thing cooler than getting additional follows, favourites and reviews from you lovely, lovely people was getting to hear Guster play "Come Downstairs and Say Hello" live this summer. I did a happy turret dance every time an alert from ff dot net showed up in my inbox. If you have the time or inclination, please know that reviews (ANY reviews – positive, negative, lavish praise, offers of first born children – hell, I'll even take death threats so long as they're witty) really keep me going when I am battling writer's block. Tell me what you like or don't like – seriously. How I've got this planned out in my head allows for wiggle room, and although I enjoy writing for myself, it's way more rewarding to know readers are enjoying it, too. Regardless, you guys are the best, and I hope this extra long chapter makes up for the wait. Thanks for sticking with me.
1) I want make it abundantly clear that Wheatley had no skeevy designs on Chell when she was his student. For the purposes of this story their age difference works out to about 10 years, accounting for time spent in cryosleep.
2) Kudos to those of you who caught the references to operating systems from days of yore! (Screw you, Clippy)
3) Muchas gracias to Lau for correcting GLaDOS's Spanish in Chapter One. She also made me my first piece of fan art!
4) My apologies to any grammarians, as this chapter is riddled with past tense mistakes, excessive use of passive voice, and semicolons. I majored in psychology, not English.
5) The story of Rainbow Cake is a shameless bastardization of Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister.
6) Last (and least) - I started a tumblr for this fic. I figured it would be a better venue for responding to comments people have left in the reviews. Address is wrathkitty dot tumblr dot com.
