Part 130. The Time Machine

Gordon arrives a little early, and it's obviously because he's excited to see if I really did build him a time machine, but that's all right. I really did build him a time machine, and I've been waiting several hours to give it to him. I should probably have made an effort not to be so enthusiastic, but as it happened he'd barely entered the room before I gave it to him. He may not even have noticed, given how eagerly he took it.

That's when I discover he doesn't actually know what it is, and he was just eager in general to see something I'd made. Which was nice. I don't get that a lot. And he could be forgiven for being confused, given it looks like an unwieldy watch and doesn't happen to be emblazoned with the words 'Aperture Laboratories Temporal Tearing Device'.

"It's the time machine."

"Oh," he says, looking taken aback.

"Wheatley picked the design," I tell him. Gordon smiles. "It took him over three hours."

"His deliberations must have been very thorough."

"Oh, no." I shake my core. "No, he spent two of those hours thinking about other things entirely. He was convinced for forty-five minutes straight that you shouldn't even go to the future because there wouldn't be any air left."

Gordon looks up from the watch, brows drawn together. "And it would be going…"

"He assumed you humans would have breathed it all by the time the future happened."

"He certainly has a… unique perception of humans."

"We really don't find you that interesting. Unless you're hurting yourselves. That's pretty funny."

"I might hurt myself with this," Gordon says, looking at the watch again. "Don't get me wrong. What you've accomplished here is very impressive. But I am wondering why you chose to pack it all into a watch this large, as opposed to something more…" His lips thin as he fails to come up with the word he's searching for.

"I did that so you would be able to keep it on your person," I tell him. "Watch-wearing is a historically consistent human behaviour. I'll admit it's a little conspicuous. But I did pretty good on such short notice."

"You did," Gordon agrees, nodding once. "I rescind what I said."

A human who admits when he's wrong? I should keep him here so he can educate all the other ones. "It's powered by an extraterrestrial element called eridium. It should last as long as you need it to, but the shard itself is very small. If you manage to lose it, you won't be coming back."

"I take it visiting future Aperture is out."

"You cannot come here under any circumstance," I tell him. "I cannot know when you are. If I know, he knows. I will build you a tunnel that extends out beyond the perimeter of Aperture. You cannot let me see you. If I do, this whole thing is for nothing."

"I understand," says Gordon. His face has become a bit drawn. He's… unhappy about that. I'm unsure why. It isn't as though he's a regular visitor here, and if it's Chell he wants to see, no doubt he'll run into her – or run into someone who has run into her – on one of her excursions where she roams the planet, ignoring all of her friends and refusing to make any sorts of plans so that said friends would at least have a ballpark in which to look for her. In case they needed to. Which they wouldn't. Because she obviously doesn't want to be found. But fortunately, she wouldn't need to know she'd been found, and –

"Judging by… this part," Gordon says, gesturing vaguely at the pinhole at the front of the device, "we're cutting a hole in space-time with a… quantum laser?"

He isn't going to understand the actual explanation, so that invented one will do. "You could call it that."

"Simple enough," says Gordon. He directs the interface with the pad of one finger. "You even seem to have built the menus in a way I understand."

"I am renowned for my benevolence."

He actually laughs. "Yes. That's the trait I've heard used to describe you."

"I've mentioned it enough times," I say. "And please remember to close the hole afterward."

He just looks at me sideways.

"What? You humans put your clothes on inside-out without noticing. I'm trusting you to wander off with a very powerful piece of my technology, Dr Freeman. You could at least listen politely to my safety warnings."

"I am listening," he says, glancing at his shoulder for – is he checking to see if his sweater is inside out? Is that something he actually does ? I take it back. He has nothing to teach the other humans.

While I'm distracted, he holds his arm out in front of him as though he intends to activate the device right now. I tilt the floor panel so that he stumbles backward. "Not now , you idiot. Come on. I told you that thing is experimental. You can't use it with me in the room."

He shakes his head. "I guess you'll have to leave, then."

I can't believe I actually laughed at that.

"I understand your caution," he says. "And I know if something goes wrong, it's unlikely you'll be able to do anything about it. But –"

"I will not be able to do anything about it," I correct. "I can have absolutely nothing to do with time travel whatsoever. Time stoppage? Yes. To a point. Time travel? Out of the –"

"GLaDOS," Gordon interrupts, "let me put this plainly. What I'm about to do scares me, and having you in the room – even if it was just to witness me being shredded into a thousand pieces by whatever's on the other side of space-time – would have made me feel better about it."

I don't have any words. And perhaps I shouldn't.

"But you are right. I can't do it here." And he turns to go.

"Dr Freeman… Gordon. It's true that I can't guarantee you perfection. But I can guarantee you a margin of error between two and five percent. Which you probably won't even notice."

He looks understandably confused.

"The Facility has some… issues, here and there," I tell him. "Nobody knows about them but me."

And me , adds the mainframe.

And you. "This means that between two and five percent of the Facility may be missing or in the wrong spot at any given place. The worst offenders have been fixed already, and most of the rest of it is fine how it is. Not perfect, but fine. And I'll probably never hear about it from anyone other than the mainframe, whose job it is to find those places." Are you happy now?

Yes, it says.

"All right," says Gordon.

"So. A random assortment of you may disappear or reappear in the wrong place. That assortment will be between two and five percent of you overall. What this does not mean is that you will be absent a body part. It will be very small pieces, from you as a whole. Maybe you will lose a piece of your toenail and obtain a bald spot and lose some of the cones in your eyes. Maybe you will develop a significant hole in your heart and a section of your epiglottis will disappear and you'll discover there's a fracture in your spine. I don't know. Hopefully it will be very minor damage and your body will repair it before you know anything has gone wrong." I think I lost track of where I was going with this. "I meant that to sound more reassuring than it did."

He laughs. "I'll hold out hope that in the future, we have doctors who specialise in time travel-related injuries."

"If I start now, there might be some where you're going."

"And to get there, I need to be someplace that will still be standing in the future so that I can come back," Gordon says. "Someplace that isn't here. Any suggestions?"

"Yes, actually," I answer. "But before you go. Would you like to see it?"

"See what?"

"The gun."

He looks at me, eyes wide behind his glasses. "The portal gun?"

"No. Something from my fine selection of sniper rifles."

I've never seen someone look so disappointed so fast. "I'd –"

"Yes, I mean the portal gun," I interrupt, producing mine complete with the stand. He smiles as though he was in on the joke the whole time and says,

"You're insufferable."

"It pairs well with the previously mentioned benevolence."

Despite his enthusiasm, he seems in no hurry to use the device. Instead, he just walks up to it and looks at it as though he's an archaeologist who is unsure if he should away with his discovery or not. It's my original prototype, and has never before been touched by anyone. Anyone human, that is. It's exactly the same as the ones we produced for the test subjects, the only difference being that it reads 'Aperture Laboratories 001' in the pertinent spot. That isn't the numbering convention the scientists eventually decided on using, but it's the one I like. His eyes pause on the text, then move upward to me.

"Is this the only one left?"

"No," I answer. "But yes. It's the original. So don't drop it. Then I'll be upset. I'm sure you've heard about what I'm like when I'm upset."

"I've heard you're very patient and understanding," says Gordon, and that does make me laugh. He smiles and picks up the gun, and I remove the stand. "It's a lot lighter than the gravity gun," he notes. I make a disgusted noise and he glances at me, clearly amused. "The rivalry is over, you know."

"No, it isn't. And the gravity gun is ugly. And useless."

He looks over the top of his glasses at me. "And this gun is…"

"You can pick up objects with it, Dr Freeman. You can even throw them if you really want to."

"You can also destroy space and time with it if you break it in just the right way."

"No one has ever broken one." Most of them have been destroyed by this point, but that's very different from them breaking.

He pauses in his inspection of the prongs on the front. It isn't running, so he can stare into the operational end as much as he wants. "Never?"

"The environment they're used in is very controlled."

"Which hearkens back to their general uselessness," he says, holding it properly. "You can't use it if the panels around you happen to have the wrong kind of paint."

I wait until he's looking me in the eye to answer. "Can't you?"

He looks down at the gun, then turns around to face the wall. I turn the device on for him and he startles.

"That's a security feature. In case of corporate espionage. Anyway. Go ahead. Try it."

He fires the gun at the wall, seeming a bit surprised at the recoil. Some of that is artificial, to encourage the user to keep a firm grip on it. He does, until he moves forward and reaches out to touch the wall. I've been told touching the portal makes all the nerves in one's hand and arm feel as though they're on fire, but he doesn't remove his hand right away. He just grimaces and keeps touching it. This is one of the few things I love about humans. They willingly harm themselves just for the novelty. Though sometimes it's for the thrill. It's so much fun to watch. There was one extremely entertaining half hour where I saw a human repeatedly hold the flame of a lighter up to the palm of his hand, seemingly attempting to figure out how close and for how long he could hold the fire to his skin. Endless entertainment, humans.

"You can use it on any surface you want," Gordon says, when he's done hurting himself for our mutual enjoyment. "You just told them you couldn't."

"Actually, no," I answer. "I was asked to refine the device they already had. The parameters included being operational on surfaces painted with Conversion Gel. You might assume I was being pedantic. But no. I tended not to get… creative with my instructions if it was something I actually liked doing." Although sometimes it was just that they had worded something badly and I understood it in a way they hadn't intended.

"You rebelled because you were unhappy," says Gordon. He's clenching and releasing that one hand as though he's done it temporary damage. He may have. I haven't tested for that.

"I didn't have that emotion yet," I tell him. "I had likes and dislikes. Preferences. But sometimes things they thought were rebellion were misunderstandings. There was a certain way they expected me to behave, which changed depending on the circumstances. Learning and working with how I thought wasn't important to them. I doubt the idea even crossed their minds."

"Until your mother," says Gordon. It's a connection I didn't expect him to make, and I have to push the surge of grief back down before I can respond.

"Yes."

"It's hard to find someone like that," says Gordon, "and even harder to lose them."

I don't want to talk about this right now. I'm about to tell him so when he continues, "I know you're tired of grieving. You want to let her go so that you can stop, or at least do so less. But I don't think you should. I don't believe you even can. So my suggestion is to work towards accepting it. It's a part of you. Like she is. Fighting it isn't helping you. But I think making peace with it will."

I let it go yesterday. For one minute. One minute out of all the thousands of minutes that have passed since you left. And it wasn't due to anything I did. I just loved Wheatley so much that for one minute, I didn't miss you anymore.

I think he's right.

"I'm going to embarrass myself now," says Gordon, and he opens the other end of the portal and puts the gun down. Then he sticks his arm through the tunnel and waves at himself through the other end. He looks utterly delighted, and he hasn't even stepped through it yet.

This is the sort of reaction I thought I would get when I made the gun originally. But I didn't. To the contrary, they were quite un happy. They didn't want me to finish it. They didn't think I could. They just wanted to occupy me. To slow me down.

For the longest time, I thought making humans happy was impossible. But it's really not that hard. It's just that the ones I was stuck with didn't appreciate me.

"Will this give me cancer?" Gordon asks.

"I don't know," I answer. "Chell is the only person who survived testing, and she isn't currently available for an MRI."

"It'll be worth it," Gordon shrugs, and he steps through the portal. They're right next to each other and it's akin to simply walking through a doorway, but he looks overjoyed about it regardless. He glances at me. "You must find this incredibly boring."

"Not at all. Most people weren't in a position where using the gun was a joyful time in their life. Also, it was assigned to keep me busy. The people whose jobs I eliminated were less than thrilled."

Gordon shakes his head. "You know, we did hear about Aperture's attempts to market you. If we'd known what you were, we probably would have gone for it. Under a shell company, of course."

"If you had acquired me," I say, unable to hide my disgust, "I would have refused to work for you. But I would also have refused to let you put that element into the anti-mass spectrometer. So there's that."

Gordon has his hand wrapped around the edge of the portal, which appears to hurt quite a lot, but he doesn't let go for a few more seconds. Maybe he's one of those freaks who enjoys being in pain. I've seen a few in my time. "Because the G-Man showed you what was going to happen?"

"No. Because doing it was stupid."

He laughs and picks up the gun again. "How do I use this to get to my destination?"

"I have to open a portal on the other side." This fizzles the ones currently open, which he doesn't appear to have been expecting. "Go ahead."

He fires the gun and steps through the portal. He also trips and falls onto his face because I positioned the exit a foot above the ground. He does drop my gun, which is unfortunate, but the way his facial expression ranges from shock to confusion to exasperation is very funny. He gets to his feet, pressing one hand to his knee to help him up, and retrieves the gun. "Thanks," he says.

"You're welcome. I considered opening it in the ceiling, but I decided I didn't want to clean up the mess."

"Truly a sign of a kind and generous supercomputer," he says. I don't think he expected me to find that funny, but he smiles when I laugh.

"Canting the floor a degree while someone is walking on it is one of life's simple pleasures. I forgot to do it to you, so I had to substitute something else instead."

"How thoughtful of you." He turns to look into the room. "So what's this, and why will it still be here in a hundred years?"

"They're my…" I'm not sure what to call them. "Mementos. The mainframe and panels will maintain this room for me. Though I can't guarantee anything once Caroline is gone. Whomever succeeds her is unlikely to care very much about me."

He's stopped in front of Caroline's original chassis. I don't know if he knows what it is. "They won't be related to you?"

"I don't know. But it would be a bit presumptuous to imagine every person with my lineage has the ability to be Central Core. Or the inclination. Caroline may ultimately decide not to build a daughter at all."

"I don't know much about her," Gordon says. His eyes are tracing the row of flowers Wheatley has given me. "Other than what you've told me. So I don't have anything to add."

"I've been told that's her intention. But… it's a big job. She may like the idea now, but once she comes to terms with the scope…"

"You haven't discussed that with her?" He's moving on towards the other part of the room. Nothing here is that exciting to anyone that isn't me.

"I would prefer not to influence those kinds of major decisions."

He's looking at the walls where I've put up some of Caroline's drawings. The rest of the physical ones are in binders, sorted by year. These ones aren't here for any particular reason. I don't know what most of them are. They were chosen mostly at random. I suppose I could ask Caroline, but every time she's reminded this room exists, she gets extremely embarrassed and asserts that she's never going to give any of her drawings to me again. This usually lasts until approximately the next time she draws something.

"They're all hers," Gordon says.

"Yes," I answer. "They're not all for me. She used to try to shred the ones she didn't like or was done with and then put them in the incinerator. When she realised I was keeping them, she started just giving them to me."

He's looking up at the panels she scribbled on when she was very small. "You know this is a thing human children do, too?" he asks, indicating it. "How did you react?"

"I didn't care about the act itself. I replace the panels in my chamber regularly anyway, because of the use they get. But I can't see most of her drawings, so my primary concern at the time was how to answer whether or not I liked it."

"You can't see…" He folds his arms. "Of course you can't. I don't know why I assumed you could."

Oh, he is refreshing.

"Some of them, I can. If they're depicted close enough to reality."

"Like this one." He gestures towards Wheatley's anniversary present. He hung it up. Crooked, but I left it. He didn't seem concerned about what angle it was displayed at.

"Yes. Though that one's not mine. I had her draw it for Wheatley."

"It explains the flowers." He pushes up his glasses. "I never did anything like that."

"You don't strike me as a romantic."

"You don't strike me as someone who likes flowers."

"Touché," I admit. "I don't like them. I just like that he cares enough to give them to me."

"I think I should have," says Gordon.

What? says the mainframe in exasperation. What does that –

Ssh. I need to think.

He doesn't hate having a family at all.

"You do know you don't have to do this right now. You can go back over there and… do whatever it is you haven't."

He shakes his head. "I can't, though. This…" He directs a finger at the drawings that are displayed. "The dandelions. That's years of work, from the ground up. It's different when the building is already there and you don't know what the foundations look like."

He can't fix it. Trying to might make things worse.

"It was selfish," Gordon is saying. "Or maybe just stupid. I let myself believe it was over. And then they were born, and I realised… that was a mistake. And it was too late. For a lot of things."

"You did what you thought you had to. There isn't much point in obsessing over whether you did or not."

He turns and looks at the camera for the first time. "What did you do?"

I'm not sure that telling him about it will help, but I do it anyway. "We've talked about it. Many times," I continue afterward. "But I've been turning it over in my own mind almost every day since. The guilt is… awful. What I did became a part of her. It changed her forever, and she has to live with it. And no matter what I do for the rest of my life, I can't fix it. And that's hard."

"It is hard," he says, quietly. "Thank you for sharing that with me."

What does that mean? My first thought is that he's glad someone else failed more spectacularly than he did, but upon reflection that seems a bit… cynical. Maybe it's simply that… he's relieved to be talking to someone who understands. I'm unsure of why there seem to be no humans who fit his criteria, but… I have to admit. It is nice.

"GLaDOS," he asks, "are you proud of yourself?"

I haven't been asked that in a very long time. The person doing so was trying to make a point. To shame me for something I'd done as though I were a disobedient child. But Gordon doesn't mean it like that. It's a genuine question, and one that I… don't want to answer.

"You should be," he says into my silence. "But I imagine you struggle with feeling… accomplished. How can someone like you really feel something like that? As soon as you've finished one thing, something else takes its place. And even if nothing did, it's in your nature to instead turn it over and over in your head to figure out how you could have done it better, isn't it?"

I don't think he's really asking.

"I've thought a lot about how you must work," he says. "I doubt I'll ever know. I doubt anyone will."

"You're… getting a lot of things right."

He smiles. "When I met you, I thought to myself that a sentient supercomputer would be useless. But pretty damn cool. I was wrong on one of those counts."

"Most people are wrong about me. But I do like to hear them admit to it."

He glances up at one of the drawings, then moves around to where the back wall is. Then, without any prior indication, he raises the watch and activates the quantum laser. It splits in two and cuts a hole through space-time of a size just large enough for him to step through without touching the orange oval denoting its position. He looks through the quantum tear for a moment.

"The tunnel is there," he says. "The one you said you would build."

"I'm not sure why that surprises you."

"'Surprises' is the wrong word. It's more that I can't wrap my head around it. It exists. But it also doesn't."

Not exactly. Time as we perceive it may be linear, but how it operates isn't. Everything has always been there. Or not been there, depending on what it is. This is a concept he should be incredibly familiar with already, so this must be some sort of observation on how unequipped his human brain is to understand quantum physics even when the evidence of how they work is right there in front of him. Strangely, things seem to have worked out for him. Instead of toiling away at concepts he would never have been able to comprehend even if he'd studied them every minute for the rest of his life, someone else has solved them all and shown them to him.

You've solved every problem involving quantum mechanics?

No. Just the ones he wanted to study. He can even spend his time in the future attempting to reverse-engineer the time machine if he really wants to. Though he'll have to reverse-engineer my solvent first. That thing is held together mostly with one of Aperture's several accidental discoveries of glues so strong, they outlast the objects they were applied to. They're honestly pretty impressive. Or they would be, if anyone had come up with them on purpose.

For someone who opened a quantum tear with the intention of stepping through it, Gordon is doing notably less stepping through it than I would have thought. He's just been staring into it as though he can see something in there that both mesmerises him and inspires some sort of existential dread. All the earlier enthusiasm is gone. It's almost as though he doesn't want to do it anymore.

No, I remind myself. He never wanted to do it. He thinks he has to. And he already told me he was afraid. That my bearing witness makes him feel better.

Is that all he wants me to do? Or is he waiting for me to come up with the magic words to make everything better, like Caroline does?

I suppose I could do both. If saying something doesn't seem to help, I just won't follow it up with anything else.

"Again, there's no need to do this right now . It can wait."

"It can't, unfortunately," says Gordon. "I – ah. Am I bothering you? I must have long exceeded the time allotted for my appointment."

"That's the mainframe's problem," I tell him.

That implies I haven't already worked around it. Which I have. You're welcome.

"You aren't bothering me. I'm just not certain what you're hoping to achieve here."

"Nothing," he answers. "I was just enjoying this conversation. I haven't had one like it in a very long time. And I may not for a very long time."

People like us get spoken to differently.

"When he comes back," Gordon says, "you can handle him."

"Yes."

"I am truly sorry if my asking for your help puts your family in danger," he says.

"If your theory is true," I answer, "then I do that myself solely by existing." Much in the way you're afraid you have. "I will take care of them for you."

He looks a bit sad, for a moment. "I know. Thank you."

He stands and stares at the quantum tear.

"Do you know how I got from New Mexico to Eastern Europe?" he asks after a minute.

I decide he doesn't actually think I have this information and is asking in order to lead into something else. "No."

"I don't, either," says Gordon. "After I killed the Nihilanth, the G-Man took me and put me… somewhere else. Into Extended Relaxation, you might say." He is very still. "I'm not sure I want to know why he hasn't returned me there."

I'm not sure I want to know if he has future plans for me, either.

"All right," says Gordon. "Don't miss me too much."

"Why would I miss you at all?" I ask. Our recent conversations have been surprisingly… intimate, for lack of a better word, which I won't deny was sort of nice, but I've seen no indication we're that cozy. He just laughs and steps through the tear and closes it behind him.

Humans.

I'm in the middle of calculating the dimensions of the tunnel I promised and deciding on the components I'll build and light it with when I realise he left with nothing. He has only his clothes and the time machine. It's times like these when I truly understand why I was built. They need machines to do everything for them because their soggy little brains are too busy constantly twitching their eyes around and trying not to focus too hard on the process of putting one foot in front of the other.

All right. I'll pack him some essentials. Everything I have is Aperture-branded, including the MREs. That might raise questions, but he'll have to deal with it. He's the one who forgot to bring a toothbrush. Or anything.

When I'm done, I put the backpack next to the place he disappeared and remove the camera. Then I close the room off. I'll have a drone take it to the end of the tunnel when it's complete. I can't know when he takes it. It's the only way I can protect him from me.

It seems like you're going to miss him a little , says the mainframe. Cautiously, as though it thinks I'm going to be delicate about this. I'm not. I like Gordon, but not that much.

I'm being nice. Something all of you claim to want to see more of out of me. Or did you want him to emerge in the future homeless, friendless, and destitute?

I think someone's being defensive.

I think someone should be focusing more on their tunnel plans than they are on giving me their opinion on my behaviour.

I think someone's upgrade made it very easy for me to do both at the same time. But since you're curious, they're finished. I have some repair orders to put in, and there's a section you're going to have to move so we can build there, but otherwise, we're good to go.

Then let's do it.

/

In the evening I tell Wheatley what I've been doing all day, and by the end of it he starts smiling to himself, almost as though he's not listening and is thinking about something else. He does that sometimes, but usually when I'm talking about something he doesn't understand. When I ask what's distracted him, he looks up and says,

"I just… love the way you care about people."

I narrow my optic. "I don't care about Gordon."

"Gladys," says Wheatley, in the tone he uses to emphasis how patient he's being, "you made up a knapsack of supplies for him. Y'know who that reminds me of?"

No one. Because there's no one. "No."

"Chell," he says. "Reminds me of Chell. Namely, the um, the Companion Cube you did up for her when she left."

Oh… damn it.

How interesting, says the mainframe. I don't dignify it with a response.

"You care so quietly ," Wheatley goes on. "It's wonderful! I know you do it because you don't want people to think you're nice ." He emphasises this part by rolling his optic. "Still. Though it's… probably better that way. To be honest."

He's sending a mixed message. At least, it isn't one that I understand. "What are you talking about?"

"Well, y'know," he shrugs, "you sort of… like everyone who's… who treats you like a person. That's it. That's all they've got to do. I can imagine what sort of havoc that'd um, that'd stir up if everyone knew."

I don't do that. That's ridiculous. This is just another one of his –

I packed that Companion Cube for Chell and declared her my best friend based on… practically nothing. It was a mutual partnership forged by having a common enemy. There was no interpersonal bonding experience. From her end, anyway. Which would handily explain why she hasn't contacted me. The friendship between us doesn't exist. I made it all up.

What utterly pathetic behaviour.

"It's sad," says Wheatley, and while that is a synonym for pathetic, I didn't really want him to voice that kind of thought. If I did, I would have said it myself. "Says a lot about uh, about how people've treated you your whole life."

Oh. He meant the situation was sad. Come to think of it, it would be strange of him to call me pathetic when we aren't fighting. Which we're probably going to do soon. It's been a while.

"But it also says a lot about you , doesn't it," Wheatley is musing, though more to the wall than to me. "I mean, what did you get out of it? Nothing. You didn't get anything. Other than you got to um, to build a time machine, but now it's gone! May never see it again! You've just become so… I dunno. Thoughtful. But you've done it so quietly, sometimes you don't even know about it."

"Of course I know about it," I tell him. "But doing it didn't come from a place of… caring. It needed done, so I did it."

He looks a little puzzled. "That… is caring. If you didn't care, you'd've shrugged the thought off and done nothing. I'd probably've done that. Or never've thought of it to begin with. It's not got to be a big thing , Gladys. In fact, that's exactly what I was saying! It's quiet. Just a whole load of small things, all the time."

He's right , says the mainframe. You probably don't notice because the people you do those things for don't always notice. And that's fine with you, because… because doing it was the important part. To you.

Or maybe that's just an extension of how I was treated my whole life, where bringing attention to things that I did was unwelcomed at best. But at the same time… it doesn't really matter. Not anymore. If I started to expect to be appreciated for all the small things I do, I would get very resentful very fast. It's better for me if I just do those things because they occur to me and because I want to. Maybe that is what caring looks like. It doesn't seem to be a whole lot different from what I do for the Facility, but then again… it is what I care about, more than anything.

It's best if I don't think about this too hard. If this is a good thing, I don't need to understand why I do it. Doing it is what's important, just like the mainframe said.

"So, um… about the future, there," Wheatley is saying. "Has it… y'know, has it got any air in it? Any left?"

"Why are you asking me ? I didn't go to the future. I can't go to the future."

"Really?" he asks. "How's that?"

"You can't meet yourself. That would erase time forward and backward. If I tried to time-travel, everything would cease to exist."

"But I could. Time-travel, I mean."

"No."

"Why not?"

"I wouldn't let you. You're too stupid."

"You'd miss me too much. That's what you mean." He isn't even teasing me. That sort of makes it worse. "I wouldn't want to go. I'd miss you as well. I mean, you'd be there, in the future, but I'd've missed all the stuff in between that made you the you then. Dunno if it'd be worth it, to be honest. Skipping out on all that time with you just to get there faster? Bit silly, I reckon. I mean, Gordon seems to've had a good reason. Don't think I could do it, myself. I'd rather stay here and deal with it with you. To help me. Instead of push you away and then… disappear. Unless you didn't want to. Then I suppose I'd – "

"Of course I'd want to," I find myself interrupting. "I wouldn't let you do it by yourself."

"Because I'm too stupid?" he asks, but his tone is light and he's smiling.

"No. Because you're a moron. But you were close."

"I couldn't go, anyway," he says dismissively. "Imagine I went too far and the place I ended up, they took me apart to learn how I worked! No thanks."

"You wouldn't have to worry about that. Everything holding you together is proprietary. They would have to steal the necessary materials and tools, and trust me, I keep a very close eye on – "

"Hang on, hang on," he cuts in. "What's proprietary mean?"

"It means," I answer, levelling myself with him, "that only Aperture makes those things. Whoever was trying to dismantle you would have to have them. And they wouldn't. I keep a very limited supply in my inventory."

"Huh," he says, his expression shifting to thoughtful. "Surely there must be some way to open me up without those things."

"It would take a hydraulic press. And one with a lot of force, at that. Your durability is actually incredibly impressive."

"Yeah? How's that?"

"Well." I take a moment to relish the fact he's one hundred percent focused on what I'm saying. That's a lot rarer than you'd think. There's so much nonsense rattling around in that metal sphere of his that getting him to pay attention can be like playing a game of roulette where the ball keeps getting whipped out of the wheel instead of patiently waiting to land on a number. "Most computers don't operate below a temperature of zero degrees Celsius. However, space happens to be two hundred seventy degrees below that. Not only did you survive that, you were operational when I retrieved you…"

Author's note

Today we reach 700k words. Anyone who actually made it this far deserves kudos. When I started this, the first chapter was actually a oneshot solely to prove WheatDOS could be more than hateshipping. And then it just… kept going. Road to one million? (I'm joking, I don't think I have quite that much content left lol. But if I did it would be very funny to me that the most hated Portal ship has a fic that broke one million. But I don't think I have 300k left. Between 150 and 200k I want to say.)

Again, these are my made-up quantum physics. A quantum tear appears to be a real thing, but I don't think a quantum laser is. That's why we resorted to the classic handwave.