Wheatley was starting to hate the panels.

If he still had that terminal he would compile a program to hack into the panels' command prompt and gain root permissions so he could reorganize their files so much their subsystem's syscheck's syscheck wouldn't even be able to find their AI file in the mess of code-

Hang on, how did he know this?

To Wheatley's knowledge he had never taken a class in hacking, or programming, or file-system organization, so he shouldn't know all of this!

But it didn't change the fact that he knew exactly what commands to give the terminal to get into the panels' programming.

Wheatley was dropped, rather unceremoniously, onto his portal gun, into a test chamber with a count of fifty turrets, eight faith plates, four thermal discouragement beams, seven buttons requiring cubes, a hard light bridge, and nine thermal discouragement beam receptors.

It took him about three hours to complete the test.

After which he felt like he had just won the gold medal in the Olympics without any sense of achievement whatsoever. Not even any cake.

Unfair.

Wheatley went over to one of the round screens in the round elevator room, tore off a small iron bar, then started scratching out words on the screen.

'I WANT CAKE'

"The Enrichment Center regrets to inform you, that all of the Victory Pastry was consumed while the Test Subject was lollygagging around in the Reactor Core Control Center." GLaDOS replied in her best 'I art holier than thou, I art also a supercomputer, do not argue with me' voice.

That's unfair too.

"Please proceed to the elevator to continue testing." GLaDOS insisted.

And Wheatley just shook his head.

So a panel on the ceiling opened up and an arm reached down and grabbed him, then threw him into the aforementioned elevator.

"The Enrichment Center thanks all Test Subjects for cooperating." GLaDOS said smugly.

And Wheatley just wanted to yell at her.

The elevator did not deposit him at a Test Chamber, no, it deposited him in the Aperture Science How To Talk Classroom and Teaching Center for Children.

Of course, the sign that told him it was a children's classroom was hanging in front of a sign that said 'Learning to talk, the easy way for retarded persons.'

Salt in the wound.

"To increase the 'fun' in the testing experience, all mute Test Subjects must learn how to speak."

Not. True.

In reality, GLaDOS just wanted to see what the little human had to say, that and she wanted to verbally torture him in his most vulnerable subjects.

Inside the room, there was a projector and a white screen, with a bunch of seats lined up as if it were a stadium.

The interactive movie started playing after he sat down.

And the voice of the Announcer showed up.

"Hello, and welcome to the *FZZZCH* Aperture Science How To Talk Classroom and Teaching Center for Children, today you will learn how to speak."

Huh, this wouldn't be so bad after all.

"Start by saying "OH", to say "OH', do as the screen instructs you."

This continued for three days.

After those three days, Wheatley could talk, although haltingly, and hold a steady conversation with a pre-recorded message.

But Wheatley felt something was off when he spoke, not only did it feel weird to move his tongue and lips to talk, but something was wrong, his words didn't sound like his own, it was almost as if it wasn't his voice… That's it! It isn't his voice! Sure, it sounds British because of the way he talks, but his new voice sounds a little lower than his old voice, totally unrecognizable as Wheatley!

This was good.

"Now that the Test Subject can speak, the Enrichment Center requires the Test Subject to state his/her name."

Or not.