Digital Influenza
Part 2 - Saturday Morning
Chell did not sleep wonderfully that night. She let Wheatley sleep beside her as her bed was big enough for the two of them. After the escapade with the toilet in the middle of the night a fortnight ago, she personally felt that it was best if he wasn't allowed on his rail when she wasn't there to keep an eye on him. It felt too heartless to just plop him down on the couch for the evening, when she couldn't exactly afford to keep the television on for him all night, every night—so instead, she'd made a makeshift nest for him out of several raggedy blankets she'd pulled from the storage cupboard, and allowed him to snuggle up into them as best he could.
That was a quality Chell had not foreseen in the little core. Wheatley was a sucker for comfort, whether it be soft things, subtle warmth, or her mere presence—add all three things and she'd see the side of him he'd never let show through while they had been focused on escaping from the facility. It was the side that, above all, had been responsible for her allowing him to board with her instead of chucking him out on the street where he really did belong after what he'd done to her. Here, in the outside world, Wheatley was powerless without her, and she liked that.
She slept deeply, oblivious to the automatic sounds he made as he drifted in and out of sleep mode. He made quiet whirrs when he'd shift in his pile of blankets and occasionally mumble something indistinguishable to himself. Wheatley was quiet at night, for which she was thankful because she needed her sleep—or, Wheatley was usually quiet. Today seemed to be a rare exception.
"Ahem-hemm," he'd coughed loudly at seven-thirty on a Saturday, waking her up automatically. "Ahem." He'd frozen then, seeing her turn over and sit upright, rubbing her eyes with an expression that clearly said, are you all right?
Wheatley's optic shrunk to a pinprick of light. "You're awake! You're—um, actually you aren't supposed to be awake yet. You don't have work today. This… this isn't my fault, is it? I… did I wake you up?"
She'd hardly ever seen him look so disconcerted. Sleepily, she nodded, and his top handle drooped visibly. "Oh," he said sadly, "I… didn't mean to. So sorry. I just felt a bit of an odd feeling, all of a sudden. A bit of an itch—not that sort of an itch, of course," he laughed awkwardly, "Not anything of the sort. This was more of an- an internal sort of itch, with my vocal processor. Bit itchy, in there, just needed to- to clear it out, a bit. Ahem. See, all's fine—you can go back to sleep, if you like. Have a nap. Everything's good!"
He grinned up at her, and she stared back, nonplussed, before turning over and drifting back into sleep.
~\\~\\~\\~\\~\\~\\~\\~
On Saturdays, Chell would take care of any small errands or projects she needed to get done which she didn't normally feel like taking care of during the week—it was the one day of the weekend where, generally, she didn't spend much time with Wheatley. Recently, she'd taken to leaving him with Fred as a sort of babysitter while she was out (the sheer amount of machine-y trinkets and robotic things he'd gathered over time and his many works-in-progress kept Wheatley entertained more than anything she'd ever thought of could). Sometimes she felt bad for doing this, although Fred said he didn't mind—he claimed to actually enjoy Wheatley's company a lot, to which Chell simply shrugged and signed, If you say so.
It wasn't that she didn't consider Wheatley good company, because she did—it was just that neither of the two Aperture escapees fit into the outside world very often. Chell had a grand total of zero friends besides Wheatley and, perhaps, Fred—others were nice enough, but it was hard to connect with someone who you shared absolutely no past experiences with. She couldn't speak, she had no knowledge of world history or recent events, she had not attended any schooling that she knew of, and her social skills were nonexistent. The only area she felt really comfortable in was anything that contained machines—driving, factory work, assembly lines—it was no wonder she suited industrial work so well.
But this Saturday, Chell had no errands to run, and no projects to complete, and nothing to do whatsoever if she was honest with herself. Over breakfast, Wheatley quickly noticed she was preoccupied (she'd hardly even looked at him, and instead stared, transfixed, by the streaky kitchen window, as if the rain falling outside was exceedingly interesting) and began to ask her what was the matter.
Nothing, she signed back to him, I'm just…
"No plans?" Wheatley asked her, optic narrowed with interest. "None at all? Well. I would suggest that we watch another film as it's raining outside…" He shivered then, and Chell perked up a bit, amused because Wheatley always made it very clear that he disliked water.
It wasn't that water posed a dangerous threat to him (she knew that now, after finding him stuck in the toilet that one time) but he disliked it nonetheless.
He shook his faceplate back and forth before continuing. "But can't do that, can we? No. Forgot to buy a new one, yesterday, didn't you, as you were in a massive rush to leave."
She thought this was a bit of an unfair accusation, but she bit her lip, choosing not to react. Sometimes Wheatley could still be a little selfish and unthoughtful—after all, he was still the same sphere she had plugged into the GLaDOS mainframe so long ago. The chassis had served only to emphasise his worst personality traits, but there was no denying that they still existed without it. Less and less he let them show through, which was promising, and usually she would point selfish comments out, draw attention to them—but she was bored and tired and feeling a bit depressed, if she was honest with herself. The last thing she wanted was an argument with Wheatley.
He seemed to catch onto how she was feeling, though. "Hey…" he said slowly, trying to rearrange his face into a cheerful smile. "It's all right, luv. No need to look so down, it's only a film, after all. Hey! Here's an idea—why don't we go ask old Fred if he's got any films up there, eh? How does that sound?"
Chell perked up a bit and quirked an eyebrow, signing Does Fred even own a television?
"Well… er, no, he's not a movie sort of fellow, if I could be honest," replied Wheatley. "Not a big movie buff, you might say. Couldn't he come down here and use ours, though? I mean, it's a fairly nice one, a good size, isn't it? And I can help you tidy up a bit."
It took a bit more persuasion on his part, but Chell finally agreed—she'd have his help tidying up, and then she'd bring him around the outside of the house to knock on his door and ask him if he'd like to watch a film.
Wheatley was a little over-enthusiastic about the cleaning. Chell had given him the task of sweeping, by use of a spindly arm Fred had created that could be plugged into the back of him, giving him the ability to manipulate objects closeby. She herself had attached a broom to the end, and taught Wheatley how to 'sweep'.
"I've got this, don't worry," he reassured her as she left him to it. He nodded for emphasis, and she chuckled lightly, and headed back into the kitchen to clean up the dishes from breakfast.
~\\~\\~\\~\\~\\~\\~\\~
Ten minutes later, she heard a giant crash, a scream, and then Wheatley calling ouch, followed by repeated apologies once he heard her rapidly approaching footsteps.
She'd found him in the bathroom—hadn't she told him not to go into the bathroom anymore without her there to keep an eye on him?
"I know you said not to go in there…" he started, looking sheepish, dangling from the rail. As she stepped forward he automatically drew himself closer to it, as if fearing she was about to pull him down and let him drop onto the floor, or something. "But I just thought… sweeping… hey! That room, there, the loo, it's good a nice, sweep-able floor. And the lady, she instructed me to sweep everywhere, so I came in here, and I was overwhelmed with this feeling…"
As he spoke, Chell searched around for the source of the crash she'd heard earlier. It took her a surprisingly long time to locate it because she'd been looking everywhere except the one place where, perhaps, she should have looked more carefully—her toothbrush, wedged in the side of the core, held there by—toilet paper?
There was also toilet paper wound all the way around his broom handle and lying, shredded and torn in pieces, across the floor.
She'd asked him to sweep, not do the opposite of sweeping.
What did you do? she signed frantically.
"Oh… I-I, um, well as I was saying, I came in here, and I got this- this feeling. Like an, uh…" he was looking at her sideways, now, obviously wishing he could disappear from the rail. "Itch. And as I said before, not the itch, not the bad itch, although, obviously, it was quite uncomfortable… but a- a different sort of itch, coming from inside of me. So I began looking around, and I found that stick, there, and I couldn't grab it, so I used that white paper to sort of wrap it up until I could, and oh boy, you would not believe how easy it is to get that paper, just there, everywhere. Didn't mean to do that, strictly speaking, all I wanted was that old stick to poke inside me and scratch the old vocal processor because it was feeling a bit strange again and I was coughing, but as I was coughing—funny thing, this—my eye closed all by itself and I sneezed! Never would guess, that, that it would close all by itself, and I sort of lost track of things, and then the stick caught on the gears inside of me, and everything just sort of went haywire at once, and I…"
He stopped talking, dissolving into another coughing fit. Chell looked at him, her mouth partially open, and then lunged forward (Wheatley's response was to gasp and splutter and cough even more as he tried to reverse away from her along the management rail) and she ripped her mangled toothbrush from his side, frowning deeply.
"Ah," said Wheatley awkwardly, "Thank you."
But she didn't stop frowning. Instead, she signed, What's wrong with you?
"Sorry?" he replied distractedly, optic spinning around dazedly. "You mean with this itch? And the coughing, and all? I… nothing! I'm perfectly fine!"
Chell frowned at him. No you're not.
"Okay, I'm not," Wheatley gave up, looking dejected. "I'm all cold, too," he shivered, "Did you turn the heat off, in here? But I do think I know what's wrong with my voice. I suspect—remember yesterday, at the Supermarket?—Great fun, that was, but I think… I think maybe…" he looked so embarrassed and said in a small voice, "I might have strained my vocal processor a bit, by doing that."
He stopped talking to look left and right, anywhere except for at Chell. She allowed herself to chuckle a little. 'Told you so', she thought.
"So I'll have to just take it easy on the old voice, I suppose. Messing with vocal algorithms—completely out of the question. Mental note: no changes, whatsoever, to my voice, in the future. Not a good idea. Although it seemed fun, at the time, didn't it?"
Chell nodded slowly, letting her eyes settle on the papered floor, before re-examining her broken toothbrush. As bad as she felt for Wheatley's sudden itching and coughing, the fact of the matter was, she'd told him not to come into the bathroom again in the first place. You still weren't supposed to come in here, she gestured.
"That's true," nodded the sphere, "Very true. Sorry… sorry about that, mate. Ahem."
We don't need this happening again, Wheatley watched her fingers move quickly, his expression full of concentration, I am going to lock you in time-out until I am done cleaning in here.
"Oh, what!" gasped Wheatley as she took his arm in her firm grasp and lead him to the broom cupboard. "Oh, not the closet!" he protested loudly, but slid inside obediently. Chell closed the doors, shaking her head in disappointment.
~\\~\\~\\~\\~\\~\\~\\~
He talked to himself constantly while she cleaned. He'd been in time-out before, so he'd already learned that calling for her and pleading to be let out wasn't going to work, but that didn't stop him from holding entire conversations in there by himself. Sometimes, he could be a little passive-aggressive about it.
"Must be nice," she heard him grumble, "To have real hands. Push smaller blokes around. Ahem. Shove them in the closet when they've been naughty. Not saying that I don't deserve it, of course, just saying that it would be useful, very useful to have hands. Ahem! Ack. You're saying to yourself, what would Wheatley do with hands? Well I'll tell you what Wheatley would do with hands. First of all, Wheatley would… ahem…" his words dissolved into another coughing fit, "Use his fingers, to scratch the itch that is bothering me. That would be nice. Seriously, just itch the old vocal processor… stop this coughing… and, ahem, secondly, and most importantly, I would be able to open this door, and let myself out. Into the room outside, there."
Chell turned on the vacuum. Wheatley spoke louder, shouting over the noise.
"ALSO," she could make out, wincing because his voice sounded hoarser than ever, "IF I HAD HANDS, I COULD DO LOTS OF USEFUL, HOUSEHOLD THINGS. Ahem, ach, ahem. I COULD PUSH THAT LITTLE LEVER ON THE TOILET, AS LONG AS I WAS ALLOWED BACK IN THAT ROOM, OF COURSE. THAT MIGHT BE USEFUL. MAYBE. Ack."
She had the distinct feeling that the only reason Wheatley wanted to be in the bathroom so badly was because it was the one place inside of her house she wouldn't let him. She shook her head, holding her head in her hands, only sparing a thought to how worn his voice sounded and to how it was probably never going to heal if he kept it up, and then resumed her chores.
~\\~\\~\\~\\~\\~\\~\\~
There were no hard feelings, later on once Chell reopened the closet door. He tried to greet her with an excessively bright "Hello!" and a cheerful smile, but his voice had gone rather static-filled. He allowed her to scoop him up into her arms and carry him outdoors.
Wheatley was shivering nonstop. She tried to keep him out of the rain as she walked him around the house, but he fidgeted a rather lot and made doing so very difficult. Great droplets of rain hit him on the iris and he blinked and yelped in surprise.
"'Ey! I can't see!" he shouted. "Can't—ahem, ahem—see. And it's still itchy. Still—ahem—itchy, and I can't see. Brilliant. Just perfect. Uuuugh." Shivers wracked his entire body, and Chell pulled him close to her, biting her lip and looking down at him in worry.
Calm down, she signed to him, and she used a dry bit of her coat to dry the rain from his eye. Better?
"I can see again! Thank you! Well—not that I couldn't actually see beforehand. Was a bit blurry, is all. Ahem. It's so cold out here… hurry up, would you…"
She walked up the front steps of the house that led to the main level, careful not to drop Wheatley, and knocked three times on Fred's door.
~\\~\\~\\~\\~\\~\\~\\~
Fred was the one human being that had never made Chell feel alienated during her time in the outside world. Perhaps it was the way he always smelled like machines, or the bit of oil always smeared across his nose, or the way his black hair was slicked back over his head and tied in a short pony. He felt a little bit like her, in a way—she knew he'd must have had a story, but she'd never asked. All she really knew about Fred was that, like Wheatley, he had a bit of an accent—though, instead of Wheatley's West Country drawl, Fred had a Yankee accent.
So she knew the man had, at one point in time, lived on the east coast. But beyond that… he was a mechanics and computer whizz with just about as many friends as she had.
Admittedly, she felt a little awkward knocking on his door without warning like this—normally she'd email him beforehand, asking if he wouldn't mind spending the afternoon with Wheatley—and she'd never invited him over before, either.
Wheatley, however, couldn't keep still with how excited he was.
"Oooh, I've just been thinking," he babbled, still in that hoarse voice as they waited for Fred to answer the door. "I wonder if he has Free Willy? I liked that movie."
Fred answered the door, looking fairly annoyed, but his face brightened with a smile when he saw who it was. "Hey!" he cheered in his smooth, deep voice, beaming. "How's my favorite robot doing today?"
"I'm, ahem," coughed Wheatley, "Pretty good."
Chell couldn't help but notice that the core's handles appeared to be drooping slightly.
"Are you sure?" Fred frowned immediately, before turning to Chell. "What's the matter with his voice?"
Trying to sign with the weight of the core still in her arms was difficult. It's a long story, she said, shrugging.
"Ah. Do you guys want to come inside, out of the rain?"
Fred's level of the house smelled especially strongly today, and a glance at his kitchen table showed Chell why immediately. What looked like—and smelled like—engine components were littering his kitchen table.
"Just been working on this," he explained, clearing a spot for Wheatley, and bringing up a chair for Chell to sit down on. "It's a lawn mower motor."
"Oooh," said Wheatley, perking up slightly with interest. He turned in his case to look at it. "What's that for?"
"You know that machine I take outside sometimes that makes all the noise? The one to cut the grass? That's a lawn mower."
Wheatley looked thoughtful. "Ah."
"Anyway," said Fred, waving aside whatever he was building with the lawn mower motor—a curious sort of contraption, Chell thought, though she knew better than to sign and ask. She'd be here all day with the explanation, probably. By the looks of it, he was building something at least as long as two of Wheatley. "What brings you two up here?"
We wanted to ask, signed Chell (Wheatley was still staring at the lawn mower motor contraption), if you would like to watch a movie with us.
Fred's look was one of sheer surprise. "Really?"
Chell nodded.
"That sounds like a great idea!"
But of course, if you were busy, she looked again at the mechanics splayed all over the table. And we've seen all the movies we've got.
Fred, too, looked at his project. "This can wait," he said. "It isn't even for me. I'm going to sell it. There's a pretty good market for this kind of stuff, but I don't need the cash right away." Chell caught the gleam in his eye. "And anyways—a movie sounds great. I think I've got one Wheatley would like to watch."
Wheatley's eye snapped away from the machine and up onto Fred immediately. "Oooh," he cooed, "What is it?"
"You'll see."
