AN: This is a re-dux of the original Chapter 13, which contained a random Jeopardy! scene. Enough people commented that it was crossing the line into crackfic, which was not my intent. The new stuff starts after the first line break.
Come Downstairs and Say Hello
CHAPTER THIRTEEN:
THE NULL HYPOTHESIS
Tragic surprise.
It was the only way to describe this most recent turn of events. All this time she had been running on the perfectly reasonable assumption that She and the moron were up to no good and trying to take over the facility using her old mainframe. Yet here they were, showing up in one of the new testing tracks and looking genuinely shocked when she tried to murder them. Adding insult to injury, the moron had acquired not only a body, but also an ASHPD, and seemed to know how to use both.
And to think she'd once accused him of overachieving.
Still, it wasn't all bad. On the one hand, she now had time to better prepare for whatever the Undynamic Duo might be scheming. On the other hand, it still didn't solve the mystery of what the hell was going on in the prototype chassis.
Irritated, she checked the entryway cameras again, and then – not quite believing what the monitors were displaying – zoomed in for a close-up.
She and the moron, having recovered from the turrets' attempted ambush, were sitting on the floor together in close quarters. Very close quarters. In fact, they appeared to be…cuddling.
She ran a rapid self-diagnostic to confirm her optic was functioning properly, and then checked the monitors again.
Yes. There was no mistaking it. Her, sitting on the moron's lap and submitting to a long, prolonged hug.
If she'd been in the possession of eyeballs, they would have been rolling sky-high. What kind of self-respecting dangerous, mute lunatic was She, anyway? Or had She gone soft, down there in Old Aperture?
The moron, she noticed, appeared to be talking – not that that was a shocker. Every so often he would pause in his babbling long enough to lean back and examine Her face. Then he would embrace Her again and resume speaking, even going so far as to occasionally rub a comforting hand up and down Her back.
Out of sheer morbid curiosity, she switched on the audio.
"Do you hear me? Chell? You don't need to talk. We'll – we'll figure out how to do this without you talking, I promise. Cross my heart, hope to die – ummm, no. On second thought, scratch that, scratch that right out. Cross my heart, hope to live!"
She switched the audio back off, sincerely wishing she'd been built with a uvula and throat so she could make herself gag. Had the moron actually developed feelings for Her?
Idiot.
Her logic circuits then posed the most unpleasant of follow-up queries: Did She return those sentiments?
What a ridiculous prospect. Of course She didn't. She wouldn't have survived in the testing tracks for this long if She'd permitted Herself to fall victim such foolish vulnerabilities. It was simply out of the question, a null hypothesis if there ever was one.
But humans were a notoriously ridiculous species…
Hmmm.
She entertained this possibility, just for the sake of argument, and carried out a few simulations to see their results. To her amazement, said results yielded horrifying after horrifying conclusion – that it was possibly, perhaps even likely, that She was experiencing feelings for the moron. Feelings that went beyond friendship and bordered on the territory of…affection. Love, even.
She could almost hear her world come crashing down around her as this sickening realization sank into her circuits.
Subject 1498's greatest asset had been Her ability to switch off emotion while inside the Enrichment Center, allowing Her to be both a truly objective data point, but also one that could think creatively and surprise the observer. Therein lay the crucial difference between Her and the bots: the data yielded from Her time in the testing tracks had greater validity and reliability. And although she could certainly continue Testing for Testing's sake with ATLAS and P-Body, well, where was the fun in that?
So. Her ideal test subject was, for all intents and purposes, tainted. The question was, were these changes of an irrevocable nature? Or could She somehow redeem Herself, and prove that She was still worthy of being a test subject?
Unbidden, her optic drifted back to the monitor, where the moron was continuing to make a fool of himself.
'Cross my heart, hope to die,' he had said.
Well. That sounded like a fabulous plan. She would get right on it. And maybe even break a few hearts in the process, too.
Not her own, of course. Theirs.
Chell had not gone bowling since she was a child, but she hardly ranked this sadomasochistic iteration as being a legitimate version of the sport. After politely asking Caroline to make the turrets disappear (and then narrowly avoiding getting maimed when he poked his head out the door to see if his request had been obliged), Wheatley asked for a container of Legos, specifically Lego people, and a baseball.
"Just – just humor me," he told Chell as a box filled with little plastic figures and a baseball appeared at his feet. He took the marker from her and went to kneel down on the floor. "I promise I haven't gone mad. More mad. Madder. 'Cause, really, we're all mad, when you think about it - varying degrees of it, anyway." He laughed nervously and uncapped the marker, sitting back on his heels and asked, "D'you remember how many turrets were out there?
Chell shook her head. By her estimate, a hundred, but she couldn't recall for certain.
"Okay," Wheatley said, undaunted. He absently scratched at his chin – at this point his scruffy bits of facial hair had developed into a full-on beard, but it somehow suited him – and then gave a determined nod. "Not a problem – I mean, it is a problem, but we can solve that one later. For now…here's my idea."
He began to draw circles on the floor as he continued, saying, "So, hypothetically speaking, let's say that she's got fifty turrets out there – ten rows of five." He finished scribbling a row of five circles, drew a column of nine more beneath the row to form an 'L,' and then began to fill in the rest until there were fifty circles in all.
"Right? Right. Fifty turrets, all ready to kill us. Brilliant." He re-capped the marker and handed it back to her, then picked up the box of Lego figures. "Wow, these bring me back," he remarked, reaching in to pick up one of the little yellow men. "I used to be mad for these things, when I was kid. Anyway…"
Wheatley set the figure down on top of a circle, and then reached into the box once more to pull out a handful of Lego figure. One-by-one, he set a little yellow-faced man or woman on top of a circle, each representing a turret.
"It's a long shot, I'll be honest," Wheatley admitted as Chell knelt down beside him to help. He tried to smile at her. "But a long shot's better than none at all, right?"
Chell gave him a decisive nod in the affirmative. Besides, it's not as though she'd come up with a better idea.
They quickly finished assembling their fifty-turret-slash-Lego-man army. When it was complete, Wheatley picked up the baseball from where it still sat on the floor and offered it to her.
"Rolling it across the – " He paused, his brows knitting together in a frown. "The – arg, what's the bloody word…Diagon? Dragon?"
Diagonal, Chell silently supplied, taking the ball from him.
She set it down by the corner of the rectangular assembly they'd put together, and sent it rolling on a diagonal course through the rows of Lego men. The yellow figures toppled over, domino-style, in the baseball's wake, leaving only a few still standing by the time the ball reached the opposite corner.
This just might work Chell realized. Of course, even a single turret left standing could be deadly, but if Caroline – or whatever it was that seemed dead-set on sort of helping them – supplied a second sphere, they could make another attempt to knock over any remaining turrets. Or, she could pick the sphere up with the ASHPD energy field manipulator and use it to shield her from any oncoming bullets…
She glanced up and saw a pair of anxious blue eyes looking back at her. Wheatley was waiting in white-knuckled silence for some sort of reaction, some sign from her to show that his idea had merit.
"So, um…what do you think?" he asked hopefully. "Good idea? Bad idea?"
Smiling, Chell reached out with her free hand and tapped his forehead (taking care to avoid touching any still-healing bumps and bruises), and then gave him a thumbs-up.
His face broke out into a wide grin of relief.
"Brilliant!" he happily exclaimed, but then his smile faded. "We, uh – we probably should get a head count on what's waiting for us out there, though," he said, looking none too happy about it.
Chell shrugged and rose back to her feet. This was a simple matter of standing at the edge of the doorway and taking a few quick – very quick – glances through, before the turrets' sights could land on her. She'd done it plenty of times, and confidently approached the door.
"Be careful," Wheatley gulped, scrambling to his feet. He wanted to hover, to do something that might be of use, but knew that she was an expert at what had to happen next. Still, that didn't mean he couldn't be ready for whatever might happen – hopefully nothing catastrophic.
Chell pressed herself flat against the wall by the door and edged sideways. The doorway opened. Carefully, she leaned out and peered around the corner, ready to count turrets as fast as she could. She could feel the adrenaline coursing through her veins, and a part of her thrilled to the challenge of evading the turrets' deadly aim.
But an entirely different room greeted her eyes. The cavernous chamber and the turret army were gone, replaced with a dimly-lit…classroom?
Her jaw dropped. What the hell?
Wheatley saw the startled expression on Chell's face and blanched. "What's - what's wrong?"
He hurried to her side, stopping short when he, too, saw that the room beyond the doorway was altogether different than when he'd last seen it.
"Whoa," he breathed. "They're…they're gone." He blinked a few times, trying to take it all in, and looked down at her. "Is – is it safe to go in? Do you think? Granted," he continued, muttering now, "nothing in this madhouse ever qualifies as actually safe - except the Companion Cubes, I suppose, although I wouldn't put it past Her to turn the whole lot of them into jack-in-the-boxes with fangs - but, you know what I mean."
Chell wasn't listening. Yes, this was definitely a classroom, although she was certain they were nowhere near the education wing of Aperture. A toy kitchenette stood in one corner, and piles of miniature (presumably fang-less) Companion Cubes in another. Bulletin boards were hung on every wall, one with a calendar on its front, another with a chart for the day's weather. Several low-profile tables were placed in the center of the room, around which were tiny chairs.
Unconsciously, her eyes drifted to one little table in particular. It sat in a far off corner, next to the hanging African violet that never seemed to bloom - stifled, just like the tiny people who once occupied that room - and for a fleeting moment she could feel the warmth of her father's hand as he'd led her to her seat, so many years ago on that dreadful first day of kindergarten.
Wheatley fidgeted next to Chell and wondered when she was going to snap out of her lost-in-profound-contemplation mode and return to reality. Although, when he thought about it, it wasn't as though the reality they were currently facing was all that great. Whatever she contemplating was probably much nicer. South America, perhaps. Or a plateful of tasty canapes.
He waited a few moments more, trying to be patient, wondering if counting Lego men might help pass the time. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see a number emotions rushing across Chell's face. Fear seemed to be cropping up an awful lot, which wasn't terribly reassuring. They'd gone from facing an army of sentry turrets and certain death to staring down the contents of a primary school classroom. He knew which one he preferred, and would much rather take on a batch of dusty bulletin boards any day of the week and twice on Sunday than try to play the most depressing game of ninepins of his life. He did not doubt that Chell was of a braver constitution than he, so much that she might be leaning towards death-by-turret-bowling as opposed to death-by-faded-bulletin-board, but up until now she'd seemed pretty bloody focused on their mutual survival. What had changed? Oh, God, maybe the brain damage was setting in. Again.
He decided it was time to speak up. "Um. Hello?"
Hesitantly, Wheatley reached over and touched her arm, then out a yelp when Chell jumped as if she'd been scalded.
"It's me!" he exclaimed, reaching out his other arm and putting both hands on her shoulders. "You're okay! We're - we're both okay. I...think?"
Chell's eye focused on his for a few seconds before drifting back to the room beyond the doorway.
"I'm, uh, a bit confused," Wheatley said loudly, trying to redirect her attention. "Isn't this," he made a vague motion in the direction of the door, "a positive turn of events? I mean - what's the worst that could happen to us in there? Death by sight word quiz?"
She just gave him a grim look and waited. It clicked for him a moment later: The flashcards from so long ago.
That wasn't just any classroom, he realized. It was their old classroom.
He stared at Chell, mentally overlaying her face with his memories of her younger self, and recalling how helpless he'd felt that day. His shoulders sagged. God, he was an idiot - no, he was worse than an idiot, he was a moron. The biggest moron who'd ever lived, be it as an identity core, human, intern or otherwise.
He'd been unable to protect one little girl from a teacher who took pleasure in picking apart a child's spirit. So how on earth was he supposed to protect her from Her? Sure, Chell had really been the one protecting him all this time, but secretly, deep down, he thought that he'd been doing her a bit of good, too. He wasn't daft enough to think he'd ever be her knight in shining armor - they didn't make armor in his size, for one; and two, 'Sir Wheatley' wasn't exactly a name that would strike fear into his enemies' hearts - but he and Chell were a team.
But...maybe morons didn't get to be part of a team.
Wheatley's shoulders sagged a few inches more.
A hand tugged on his sleeve, and he reluctantly raised his head. The trepidation in Chell's face was gone, he noticed, replaced with her usual expression of dogged determination. She wasn't getting hung up in a tailspin of misery, and, really, she had more reason to dread the sight of that classroom than he did. He'd at least been able to make a quick exit - she had been stuck there for the remainder of the school year.
The flicker of self-doubt in Wheatley's heart guttered, then snuffed out. He straightened. He'd come a very long way from his spectacular failure as an Aperture intern, he reminded himself. Time to put on his big-boy pants. Er, Long-Fall Boots. Whatever.
He took a couple of deep breaths and went to retrieve their portal guns.
"What's the plan?" he asked.
Chell's eyes trained on Wheatley's, and she cocked her head in the direction of the classroom. They were going in, it appeared.
He tripped over a couple of stray Lego men on his way back to Chell, but the weight of the ASHPD in his hands gave him another welcomed boost of confidence.
"Okay," he said, handing her portal device over and then hefting his own. "I'm ready."
He was rewarded with a rare, albeit grim, smile, and together they crossed the threshold of the classroom.
The greeting came the moment their feet touched the faded carpet: "Welcome back."
Wheatley swallowed hard and looked to Chell, who was looking warily at the ceiling.
"Don't mind the change of scenery," Her voicecontinued blithely on above them. "I decided that I wasn't ready to kill either of you just yet. But don't worry. The inevitable will be coming soon. Speaking of good news," there was an almost sing-song lilt to Her tone now, "your attempt to take over my facility failed. I've added that to the list of things you've done, by the way. It's getting very long. Lucky for you my memory banks are a mile wide."
Wheatley and Chell exchanged a baffled look. Had someone tried to overthrow Her in their absence?
"Besides, I think it's better to keep a running tally of things you've done than to fall into a false sense of security and let you break my heart a third time. That would just be poor judgment. And we all know I'm incapable of that."
Her words hung there for a second or two, as if daring them to proffer a contradictory opinion. For once, Wheatley kept his mouth shut.
To their left, the air above the teacher's desk shimmered, accompanied by a familiar metallic hum, and they looked over in time to see a pair of identity cores materialize. The core on the left was battered almost to the point of disrepair, but Chell and Wheatley recognized it immediately: Wheatley's old chassis. The core on the right stood in stark contrast to its counterpart. It was brand-spanking new, and contained a grey optic.
"Please approach the desk," She said pleasantly.
Neither Chell nor Wheatley budged. Beside them came another shimmer of air, followed by another hum. A turret appeared between the cores.
"Sorry," She announced as the turret's red laser honed in on Wheatley's chest, "but that wasn't a request."
AN 2: Helloooo! Betcha wondering where I've been. I spent the time between updates dealing with horrible morning sickness and having a baby. Readers didn't respond well to the Portal-Jeopardy scene I wrote way back in June, and pointed out that GLaDOS channeling her inner Alex Trebeck was delving into the realm of crackfic. I was feeling so run down at the time that I decided to take a break from writing altogether until the morning sickness let up. Which it did...minutes after my sweet baby girl arrived. Since then I've been doing the mommy thing (and waiting for ThinkGeek to get more Companion Cube onesies in stock) and trying to catch up on sleep. I am finally feeling myself again, though, which also means getting back to my fics. Yay!
(I'm still proud of my Jeopardy! categories, though.)
If you have the time or inclination, please leave a review or drop me a note. Your feedback helps me stay motivated, and I really would like to get this fic concluded for you all before we hit the two year mark. Which is next month. Eek.
AN 3 (from when this chapter was originally posted):
Did anyone catch the reference to Narbacular Drop in Ch 11? Or was that another one of my only-funny-to-me inside jokes? (Narbacular Drop is the game Portal is based upon. It's fun. Go try it!)
Thank you to everyone who left me feedback regarding the genre category. It's switched back to Adventure/Romance. I don't know why I started second guessing myself on that one.
Sooo a couple of people have left me reviews that are quite frankly, staggering, and leave me squee-ing like an idiot. Unfortunately I cannot directly reply to the ones that are left by folks who don't have accounts, and seeing as I am absolute rubbish at remembering to update my Tumblr, please indulge me as I take a moment to respond to those reviews here...
To snailing-along: As Andy Samberg's Nic Cage would say, "That's high praise!" Thank you! o.O - my expression when I read your review
To Ravenblinded: I cackled to myself like an evil person when I saw your comment (Ravenblinded called me a shameless bastard because Chapter 7 made them cry). Please accept my apologies and a box of digital tissues.
Also, to Guest who posted way back in April about my inaccurate reference to the number of circles of hell in Dante's Inferno – thank you for pointing it out. I keep forgetting to go back and correct it, but it's on my to-do list.
Finally, please forgive any improper use of the terms "null hypothesis," "validity," and "reliability." Three degrees in psychology later, my knowledge of basic statistics remains shaky at best.
