"Go to Sleep, You Little Baby" –
Loud sirens awoke the tribute. He stumbled out of his bed, his dark portal gun already in hand. He paused, almost at the doorway, to adjust the grip. When the gun swallowed his arm up to the elbow, he was satisfied. He reached back, remembering by feel the delivery chute, and found a small cylinder with three rolls from his native District waiting for him. So far, so good. Was there anything he had forgotten?
His spectacles. Right.
Beetee reached over for his bedside table and picked up the folded wire frame. The world slid into focus. But the alarm sirens were still going off; they would keep going off until he stepped out the door. He stepped outside, and the door shut behind him, when he remembered – My boots!
He spun around – and then remembered he was wearing his long-fall boots already. He slept in them. Right. Right.
All calmness, he headed down the passage to the elevator that would convey him to the day's tests. He liked the long-fall boots. He really did. Their ability to cushion his fall from any height or velocity was nothing short of astounding, not to mention taking the strain off his old knees.
As he passed a camera, he took out one of the rolls and ate it slowly, savoring it. Though he thought of the rebellion, and how if any single Victor needed to be brought out of the arena alive, it was Katniss Everdeen, he had thought of it less and less as time went by. Truth be told, he sketched out possibilities where he or Wiress won, and…
Never mind. Foolish thoughts, Beetee, foolish thoughts.
The elevator shut around him. He reflected that it was no crime of his if the rebellion had faded to something like a ghost in his mind: everything became ghost-like down here, everything of the surface.
When the elevator door opened, the Artificial Intelligence spoke to him: "Please inform an Aperture Science Testing Monitor if you have any particular difficulty with this next test."
He stopped. Had he begun to lose it? He hadn't expected auditory hallucinations to be so precise and thorough the first time around. No, the Artificial Intelligence really had said that. Well, the test was right ahead, waiting to be fulfilled. He ran over the most difficult tests from yesterday in his mind's eye as he took exactly thirteen steps through the foyer.
The light was bright and clear. There was a button (out of reach, perched high above a sea of sludge), a cube dispenser, a faith plate, an excursion tunnel… he blinked. He frowned.
So the red superbutton opened the door when pressed, but he could not reach it. Not to fear: he pressed the button to request a cube to dispense. It fell on a surface that would maintain portals, and then – well, there were two ways to get the cube to the button. The Aerial Faith Plate and the Excursion Funnel would both suffice. However –
Not more than a handspan above the red button, a horizontal Emancipation Grid shimmered. In other words, it was meant to shred cubes on contact.
Beetee let out a short breath. Something was definitely rotten.
He tried the test anyway, to be sporting. Twice. The two alternate methods of getting the cube to the button yielded the exact same result: the cube dissolved into flecks of ash and dust, to be blown away by the facility's ventilators, before the button even registered its weight.
Finally, the test subject cleared his throat. "This test," he enunciated carefully, "is impossible."
The response was immediate: "You don't say. Why, what a shame. I shall have to see to that." Nothing in the testing arena moved. "Well? Try again."
"You knew it was impossible when you made it." It was no use getting mad with a machine, but Beetee had thrown his fair share of electronics across the room. This Artificial Intelligence was no different.
"True. This way you may carry on testing without so much mental exertion that you cannot carry on a simple conversation. Your testing score will simply increase. Think of it as… extra credit."
Beetee shivered and tried to loosen up his limbs. His black and peridot suit felt too tight. He normally didn't trust instinct, but his instinct told him now: something has gone wrong.
But he obeyed. Mechanically, he began to repeat the gestures he had just done, solving the test once again only to watch the Cube dissolve into ashes. And again.
"Test Subject Five, do you know what has become of Test Subject Six?"
He thought of Wiress, and her hair, and her humming, and the nightmares that she could recount in lurid detail. "No."
"She has abandoned her testing track."
Beetee's grip tightened on his gun. "Is that so."
"Are you in contact with her?"
"No. Not since our radios mysteriously vanished one night."
"Do you know where she is right now?"
"No. I am not her keeper."
"But you are her mentor. You know better than anyone how her mind works. Where would she have gone? Would she have acted alone? What would she be thinking right now?"
Beetee wanted to snap, "I'm not a mind reader!" But he took a deep breath, and placed a teal portal where it needed to be. He was glad for the gun, glad for something to concentrate on. "Wiress," he said, clenching the handle to the gun in a white-knuckled grip, "has a remarkable talent for finding patterns, learning them, and predicting what will come next. She may have seen an opening and leapt for it. She is, in some ways, a braver soul than I."
"Brave enough to defy the test? Brave enough to defy me?"
"For a worthy cause, perhaps."
The Artificial Intelligence was silent. Then she said, "Would she consider cake a worthy cause?"
He had not been expecting that question by any stretch of the imagination. "I can't quite say."
"How… trusting is she?"
"In her previous game, she made and broke alliances as it suited her needs and her instinct." Beetee swallowed. He hoped he was being diplomatic.
"Would she ally with someone murderous? Some mute psychopathic monster with no mercy whatsoever?"
"If she needed them, then maybe. If they had something she needed." He was considering if he could get himself onto the big red button – then at least he wouldn't have to keep doing this idiotic test.
"What could she possibly need? She has her portal device."
"She might require… medical assistance. Or food. Or knowledge."
"Knowledge." The Artificial Intelligence drew out the word slowly. "Someone with inside knowledge of the facility, and the portal device. Yes, you of District Three would ally with anyone in the hopes of more knowledge, wouldn't you? You and District Five, that is your one collective vice."
The Emancipation Grid shut off. The next time Beetee flung a cube through the air, to land on the button, it stayed in place, and the door opened. But he didn't move. Presently her voice snaked into the test chamber. Instead of reprimanding him for slowness she said, "What if I gave you inside knowledge of the facility? For a little extracurricular activity. A scavenger hunt. You do the legwork, of course, but I'll throw in a few variables and call it a science project. In return… you get blueprints, plans, and the complete science files of Aperture at your fingertips."
Beetee's mouth had gone dry. "You want me to hunt Wiress."
"Track her. Yes."
In response to Beetee's stubborn silence, she answered, "Of course, it's not as though tracking with the intent to murder doesn't come naturally to you."
No. Beetee had indeed killed before. Before they entered the arena Wiress made him promise that he would end her life, if she fell into great pain or madness that she would never recover from. But to hunt down Wiress – his mentee, his student, the one friend over all the years that never left his side, the intuitive, far-seeing Wiress – his legs locked in place.
His mind, in contrast to his legs, raced. He could follow Her orders, and then, when he found Wiress, join her and whoever she allied with. But – no. She would follow his every step, and then Beetee would kill Wiress as sure as if he had pushed her onto a bomb.
"Test Subject Five, why aren't you moving?"
His thoughts were frightfully coherent. 'If I don't, She will kill me. That can't happen. What about the escape? What about District Thirteen? What about the revolution?'
"Test Subject Five, do you accept the new test?"
Beetee stepped towards the nearest camera, and looked its red optic straight in the eye. "No."
"Is that so? Perhaps you mean to draw Test Subject Six out of her rat's nest by the sound of your screams?"
"The answer is no. May your circuitry be microwaved and explode."
"What?"
'May you be forced to operate from a lemon battery. I'm not testing any more."
"I say when you're not testing any more. You will regret what you just said."
"Make me regret it, fine," Beetee snapped. "Just make sure to point plenty of cameras at me!"
There was a long silence. Very long. So long, in fact, that Beetee started to worry that She had simply abandoned him. He mounted the stairs to the door, before it closed and the majority of lights shut off.
The Artificial Intelligence asked, "What do you mean, point plenty of cameras at you? I have just reviewed all of your footage and you display nothing like exhibitionist tendencies."
"Oh, it's not for my sake. The show must go on, I believe is the phrase."
"Show? This is not a show, Test Subject Five, this is a long-running experiment of scientific aptitude of the portal device, using test subjects who previously passed other tests of survival and—"
You think those were tests? You moronic, badly programmed wreck! Where is your dictionary?"
A panel in the floor jerked under Beetee's feet. Another, where he landed. She was undoing the floor around him. He raced for the elevator, turning each stride into a tiny leap. The last panel under his foot threw him into the elevator chamber, the door behind him hissing shut so fast it almost took his leg off.
The elevator roared upward, and when the door opened again the next camera was barely three feet away. He glared at it.
"They're called Games," he said, biting off each word. "Look that word up. Compute it, understand it, wrap your sad lemon-powered circuitry around Games, G-A-M-E-S."
His grip on the Portal device was slick with sweat. 'Don't just spend this opportunity,' he thought. 'Every second you distract heris another second that Wiress gets to do whatever it is she needs to do, whatever it is that confounds the A.I. so.'
"Games," the Artificial Intelligence's voice sounded much more closely now, "Can be played for any purpose. Etymology may have shifted in three hundred plus years. Ivan Pavlov used to play an amusing game with his dog…"
"It's called a game because it's meant to entertain or amuse, to provide opportunities to bet and gamble, and invest in your favorites. There's never been an iota of scientific intention behind them."
"I was told they were to test survival and psychology…"
"Then why did the smartest, the best survivalists, the ones with the greatest mental fortitude, not always win?"
"The presence of mutations, of parachutes… the introduction of a variable to wildly change the outcome…"
"And who gets parachutes?"
"Those with the best promise."
"You got a word wrong. Those with the most 'star quality.'"
In the ensuing silence, Beetee's own heartbeat rang loudly in his ears. "These games are entertainment."
The Artificial Intelligence repeated, "En… ter… tain…ment?" drawing each syllable out as slowly as if she was uncoiling wire.
"Oh, yes," Beetee felt the words start to tumble out of him. "Each millisecond of this is being recorded – by your own convenient cameras – and projected out to every corner of Panem, from the dingiest shack of District Twelve to the Capitol itself – and boy, do they love us in the Capitol! I've got a drink named after me, did you know that? The Beetee Martini. Two parts vodka, one dash of premium dry vermouth, and a lemon twist. I hate that drink. I can't tell you how many times it's been all-but-crammed down my throat. They're probably editing a montage now of my past Game, and my thrilling stratagems, and my tests here, just in case I win!" He was starting to go a bit overboard on the exclamation marks, and he knew it. "Didn't you watch the Reaping?"
"They were unnecessary."
"The interviews?"
"Superfluous."
"Did you see the training scores that the Gamemakers gave us?"
"Yes, I used them to help in calculating my scores, which have five separate categories and are far more revealing than what your Gamemakers gave –"
"No one cares about your scores. Five categories? That's four categories more than the Capitol's attention span will handle. The betting fiends and gamblers want to take some quick numbers and make a fortune."
"Calculating probability, odds, that is scientific, isn't it?"
"HA! Really look at the games, woman! Why set off a volcano? Because no one saw that coming, least of all the tributes. Why create a forest of trees that grab at tributes? Because it's more exciting than watching children simply suffocate in a bog. Why make muttations with the DNA of tributes? Because it's so gripping! Why play around with the sky so that the Game just got darker and darker and darker as each hour passed? I don't know, and that was my Game! But by someone's definition, that was fun to watch. Fun! Fun! Fun! And no one gives –" he used a charming but extremely profane idiom of District Three –"about science."
"That will do, Test Subject Five."
All of a sudden Beetee realized how loudly and forcefully he had been speaking.
The elevator arrived.
"I can see you are overexcited. Return now to your Relaxation Center."
"I… I last slept less than an hour ago." Sure, that had been for about two hours, but still. He was trembling a little from his shout – he hadn't shouted like that in years.
"Get into the elevator, Beetee Monk." She had never used his full name before. "I will process over what you have said. But you must sleep."
He stepped into the elevator, at the moment keenly aware that it was a tiny box of metal hovering in a vast darkness, kept in place by the will of a mad Artificial Intelligence. Yes, elevators, he decides, are terrifying places.
This elevator in particular. Beetee glanced up and around. There, circling the rim of the ceiling – did any other elevators have those tiny ventilators up there? Beetee reached up and held one hand before the ventilators. Some air was coming in, but it wasn't cold.
Beetee swore, multiple times, and very creatively, in thought. He shot his portal gun at the door and the other side, but both times, peridot and kelly green sparks just bounced off. Now the scent of bitter almonds was sharp in the air.
"I'd just like to say," he addressed the elevator at large (there were no cameras but She was listening anyway, "I wish to take back my insults to you, regarding lemon batteries. The truth is, I really despise lemons."
And there was the floor. And he was lying on it. And he heard the Artificial Intelligence say, as he ascended or descended to hell or heaven, "Me, too."
And then he heard singing.
The elevator stopped.
Beetee was unconscious on the floor, but the singing continued. It was not on the official PA system. The sound floated up through cracks and dead spaces and insinuated itself into Beetee's own, untelevised dream.
"You and me and the devil makes three…."
- "Don't Need No Other Lovin' Baby" –
It had started when GLaDOS had said to Wheatley, "You manage Test Subject 23," in a tone that brooked no argument.
Wheatley should have suspected something but, being Wheatley, he did not. Instead he was glad to have an assignment all to himself – and Test Subject Twenty-Three! The one who stirred up probably the most interest in the Freedom Gang – or was it the Aperture Science Irregulars? Or Chell, Katniss, and the Glow-Glow Dancers? He was working on the name at the moment, a bit silly considering they were supposed to be top-secret, but Wheatley never let details like that stop him.
First he delivered the edible foodstuffs to Test Subjects One and Two – they were a good-looking pair, weren't they? It made Wheatley feel slightly ill at ease around them, for some reason he couldn't put his circuits on.
The Intelligence Dampening Sphere set his intelligence to find Testing Track 23 – what letter was Peeta Mellark on? Twenty-three… J. Wow. He hadn't really gotten all that far.
For a brief time Wheatley just observed him. He wasn't there in the room, of course. His little physical body was still attached to her chassis, of course, and the mainframe frequently send currents of loathing, contempt, disgust, and plenty of other pleasant thoughts his way. But his consciousness, hooked up as it was to an auxiliary to the facility, could roam freely, borrowing the circuitry and cameras of a given sector for his eyes and ears. It was a bit like an out-of-body experience, if Wheatley was to consider the football-sized hunk of metal and wiring a body. It didn't feel all that comfortable to him, but he'd long accepted that his lot in life was, put simply, to never be really comfortable anywhere. Even roaming the facility at will left him feeling ungainly, pieced together, not-quite-himself – but, then again, it wasn't all bad.
But he was certainly noticeable. Eventually, Peeta noticed that the panels and pistons showed a blue light between them. He stopped trying to figure out the test, causing the nearest camera to shake its port hurriedly.
"Oh, no, no, no, carry on, please, don't mind me. I'm just watching. Keep calm, and, um, carry on."
"You're that new Gamemaker, aren't you?" Peeta asked. "The one who said you would take care of me." He lowered his portal gun.
"Yes, that's me all right – but by all means, keep testing. You really have a low testing score, don't you? We need to bump that up."
"Well, they've been getting harder," Peeta explained, with obvious patience. "And I've been getting less rest and food."
"Oh, do you want a break? We can take a break! Hold on –" As an immense symphony of circuitry and gears began to sound, Peeta yelled above the noise, "I just prefer to test slowly! Do you understand what I mean? Test! Slowly! Stay – Alive!"
"You'll have to wait 'till I'm done! I can't hear you!" Wheatley replied. The ceiling opened. "Geronimo!"
A deck chair fell onto the testing platform beside Peeta, followed by a table that hobbled precariously on the edge before righting itself. A robotic claw marked "Stimulant dispenser" lowered, buzzing around as if looking for a purpose in life.
"There! That's more like it!" Wheatley said. "Ah, um, can I get you a drink?"
"No, thanks. Really, I'm fine."
"A glass of water? At least?"
"Water… would be fantastic, actually. Thanks. With ice." The claw disappeared into the ceiling and reappeared with a glass of ice water and an orange umbrella. From the ceiling a radio fell, blaring a staticky but jaunty melody.
"There? We comfy and cosy? Almost like a holiday in the tropics, innit?"
"I guess?" Peeta didn't want to admit that he had only a vague idea of what 'tropics' were. "Are the cameras still going?"
"Er, yes, they are. Sorry, bit hard to turn them off, you understand."
"No. It's fine." Peeta imagined Haymitch fuming at the sight of one of his tributes putting his feet up on a deck chair, with a little umbrella drink, during a Game, no less. Peeta grinned. He gave the scene a minute to sink in, and then asked, "Wheatley, can you see everything from where you are?"
"Well, I can see you, and the other Test Subjects if I look here and there, and I can see the empty test chambers, and…"
"Can you see Katniss?"
"… No. I can't. Nope, she is quite and fully off-the-map."
"Do you know if she's alive? Do you know if she's okay?"
"I – I can't really tell you, mate, I just can't. But hey, no cannon has gone off, so that's something, right?"
"Wheatley." Peeta stood up, "I don't care about the drink or the chair or the stupid umbrella, what I really need is to know if Katniss is alive and okay. She's gone, isn't she? She's left the test?"
"Well… in one manner of speaking… um…"
"I heard the announcements asking her to come to the testing tracks. How has she gotten out? How is she getting by?"
"Katniss is, I am sure, in very good hands."
"Can't you take me to her? Please?"
"Um – have another drink, why don't you?"
"Wheatley."
"I…. um, I appreciate you being unable to see it from where you are, but you are pretty well locked in, here. It'd be a devil of a time getting you out, and probably there's turret pods just lurkin' around in case you make it out in the first place."
"But you can get me out, can't you?"
Wheatley's voice sounded strained. "I – maybe, but then I might just be pulverized to shreds, or electrocuted, or she might invent a special new kind of neurotoxin to work on robots – look, I'm part of the mainframe, and I can't just stop the tests. Honestly, it's taking up a ton of my energy just to keep her from going wild with the neurotoxin, trying to flush Katniss out like you'd poison a rat in—"
"I get it! Stop! Okay, just – kept doing your thing. But…"
Peeta thought. So he would trust Katniss to rescue him in good time. He could do that. He just had to stay alive. And to keep the sponsors interested…
"Maybe I'm being demanding…"
"Yes, in fact, you are, very sharp of you to notice. And I'm going, in my part, to demand that you return to testing, because of… reasons, including the one where your testing score really cannot afford to get any lower."
The testing platform whirled into place around Peeta, and the lounge chair was swallowed up by the floor. He took one last drink of water, and then picked up his portal device. But he had one last trick to play. "Wheatley?"
"Yeah?"
"Have you ever seen a sunset?"
There was no answer. Peeta pressed on, "Have you ever seen the sky? Starlight?"
"What's so special about sunsets? They're, what, all of the oxygen in the atmosphere catching fire?"
"Fire! That's exactly what I'm talking about! You're just going through your day, it's over, it's all winding down, and then you pass, I don't know, a gap between two buildings, or trees, and you see the sun setting over the mountains, and – well, you don't know the sky, but it's something you just take for granted. But when the sun is setting you're struck all of a sudden by how glorious it is, and it changes even as you watch it, and when it fades, you, well…" Peeta's voice was now very low and soft, "You wonder how much of it was real. And your whole world is changed."
"Changed? Because… because after a sunset it's nighttime?"
"No, because the sunset was so – so beautiful. Do you understand?"
"Um. A little."
"Because Katniss is like that sunset, to me. Because Katniss is my sky and sunlight, my fire and the forest – Wheatley, do you understand?"
"Oh! Now I do, yeah! If you'd put it to me like that I'd have got it at once!"
"So you understand. I need to see her. I need to hear her voice. Won't you do this for me, Wheatley, please?"
Wheatley started dithering, mumbling about rules and what he couldn't do and cameras and electrocution. But Peeta was fairly sure that he had this Gamemaker all but hooked.
"Don't you yearn for something –" Peeta hit on an inspiration and ran with it, "someone who is the light of your day, your fresh air and blue sky?"
"Well… um…."
"To hear her voice, see her, touch her, wouldn't you give almost anything?"
At that moment, Peeta could almost – if he was horrendously nearsighted and very imaginative – believe he was surrounded by blue sky, right there. The lights in the chamber were all a pensive, strained color of blue.
Finally, Wheatley said, "… I tell you what, Peeta Mellark. The situation is a bit delicate, but, well, how's one out of three?"