Prologue
"Wow, I- I think I might actually be losing my sanity."
A spherical robot named Wheatley gently drifted through the vastness of space, his white-to-blue gradient of an optic with a long, unfortunate crack in the lens lethargically flitted about, his top shutter half-closed in bored exaggeration. The chill infested his metal frame, as the silence did his mind.
"I think it's been years at least, since that little space guy ran out of power. Died, really, with no one to charge him up. Tragic. Honestly, I'm tired of talking to myself. Y'know, you'd think, 'oh, he's just a- a robot,' y'know? 'Can't feel a thing, really.' People who say that are- are telling stories, alright? Absolute nonsense, if you ask me. Icanfeel! I can feel quite a bit, actually. Just- just like uh, physical! That's one. Uh, emotional, I suppose. Yeah, Ifeelreally tired. Actually, why is that, feeling tired? Haven't felt that, that's uh, new, to say the least. Um, let me just do a little system check, here. It's not like I haven't got the time! Hah… Let's see here, um, 'Maintenance Protocols', sounds good, alright. What have we got here, yadda yadda yadda, don't care, um… Here we are! 'Systems Check', perfect. Let's- Let's run that! Shall we? Alright. We are a go, it is, uh, it is running."
His ocular danced back and forth in his inner casing, waiting patiently for the load to complete.
"Ninety-nine percent, c'mon… Alright!-"
His aperture drew inward, and his shutters retreated back into his shell as he realized what the data had come back as. He blinked a few times, his demeanor shifting to something more solemn than shocked.
"Oh. Oh okay. I am just about dead. Little red bar, in the battery there, that's no good. There doesn't happen to be a charging port in space, does there? Yeah, no I don't think there is. Fair enough."
He remained stagnant beside the slow drift through the dark. His sky-blue optic flickered out, becoming a useless black disk.
"Oh! There goes my sight. I guess I am officially shutting down. Just- just sleeping, that's all it is, really. Even though Iamin the middle of space, I'll probably never get charged to wake up again, so it's closer to dying than anything. Ah, I- it's getting less cold, what- what's going on? Is there a rocket of some sort? Is that why it's- Oh, no, it's just my feeling going away. Suppose I'm numb now. Brilliant. Right, my chances are not so good, are they? Well, if anyone is listening, on a frequency of some sort, I hope this is not the-the-the-the-..."
Wheatley's voice distorted and glitched until it was unrecognizable, his words cut short by silence, and his slight shifting movements within his casing had slowed to a still. A husk of what used to be silently wafted through the cold, dark, motionless nightmare that he had ended up in five years ago.
An hour had passed after the last movement he had made, and although Earth was miles upon miles away, something surreal came from the colored planet. A translucent orange beam contoured with delicate swirling lights shone on the lifeless sphere, slowly pulling him inward from his seemingly infinite drift. Although his destination was improbable, it was true. He was going back to Aperture Science.