The Science of Abject Idiocy - Parts 1 & 2 - Portal 2
A/N: This was initially a fill for the Portal 2 kink meme here. But it got a little lengthy and the Portal fanworks comm needs some action, so I'm collecting it on my journal. Since it was initially written as a fill, parts might feel a little disjointed and the quality might waver a bit in places and there might be some gratuitous sexual stuff here and there.... So... yeah.
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Wheatley was cold. Cold for several reasons that he took inventory of rather often - because there certainly wasn’t much else to do.
1. He was naked. This was probably the leading cause of his boreal woes, and also considerable reason for embarrassment. Not that this was the first time he’d found himself unintentionally naked in public. (Because, really. Who hasn’t?) More so that-
2. -people wouldn’t stop touching him. At first it had been kind of creepy. Now it was just insulting. All that inappropriate touching, and it was completely impersonal. Clammy hands prodding and pinching with needles and pushing fingers in his mouth that tasted like latex. And it wasn’t like he could just get away from it. He was all but strapped to-
3. -the table, which was the worst. It was metal - i.e. cold. Obviously. Freezing, actually. At the most there was only the occasional iv or monitor wire keeping him tethered there. He didn’t have the energy to escape. Whatever drugs they were giving him, they were…
Well.
They were pretty fantastic, really. But that hardly mitigated all the other stuff. All the awful things.
Wheatley blinked, waking up. The room was bright, made brighter by the flashlight someone was determinedly scarring his retina with.
“All right,” said a hitherto unidentified fellow somewhere to Wheatley’s immediate left. Most definitely a scientist. This place was lousy with them. “I think we’ve done it. I know I said that last time, but I really think this is it. Well done, everyone.”
Wheatley felt a latex hand on the side of his face, moving his head in one direction then the other. “Can you raise your right arm for me?”
Wheatley raised his right arm, which was easier than anticipated. He used it to shove the hands shifting his head away.
Wheatley sat up, which was dizzying. In the corner, he saw a scientist with a clipboard looking rather cheated as he quickly ticked off several boxes likely pertaining to basic motor skills.
“I think you’ll notice that all your major organs are accounted for this time. Bodily functions all up to speed. Nerve endings, blood, brain activity. The whole nine yards.”
Someone cleared their throat. “Ah… Ma’am…”
“Oh, right. We did lose a kidney.”
Wheatley put a hand to his side unconsciously.
“But that’s completely fine, you still have the other one. Ah yes. And your left eye. You might have noticed we misplaced that… Also, completely fine. You have a spare one of those too.”
Wheatley’s hand shot from his side to his face, finding what felt like a thick wrapping of bandages where his left eye should have been. A few choice words came to mind, but none of them were said.
“What? Why can’t he talk? Oh, God, don’t tell me we forgot something else.”
“No, ma’am. That was us, ma’am. Seemed like a good idea.”
“I see… Nice initiative.”
In hindsight, this probably hadn’t been worth an extra sixty dollars.
“So what’s all this then?” asked the scientist with the clipboard, motioning broadly with his pen. When no one responded, he moved closer and traced his fingers lightly over the closed incision running down Wheatley’s chest and stomach.
“That? The lab boys thought a diluted solution of propulsion gel might speed the healing process along.”
“Catastrophic results.”
“Some of the older incisions glow orange when you switch the lights off. So there’s that.”
“Yes, there is that! Very neat stuff, though the relevance to science is admittedly questionable.”
Wheatley acquiesced with a small shrug. It was kind of neat. Then again, he’d been very stoned for an indeterminate amount of time. He was cross over the loss of an eye, but it was a level of cross on par with the vending machine stealing your last quarter. What did he know?”
“So what do I mark this as?” demanded the scientist with the clipboard. But the scientists had lapsed into a heated argument over the practical application of propulsion gel.
Wheatley found himself pushed back onto the table. The scientist with the clipboard uncapped a medical pen with his teeth and began charting Wheatley’s body in whatever ways were absolutely crucial to his paperwork. He sighed, focused his remaining eye on an adjacent glass cubicle where scientists were trying to corner a particularly lively and uncooperative test subject. Around the time gloved hands were parting his legs and the pen was being dragged up his thigh, Wheatley was ready to admit it. He had made, maybe, one or two (Definitely no more than three. Probably.) impressively terrible choices in life.
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Wheatley woke up on the floor. Normally, waking up on the floor wasn’t anything to get excited about. It meant maybe you had a hangover. Maybe your wallet was missing. While his head did hurt, Wheatley couldn’t help but feel a small swell of hopeful excitement when he came to his senses.
All hope was, however, dashed when he realized where he was. Tile floors. Big red button. Backlit number 8 on the wall. A test chamber. Wonderful.
Wheatley stood, slowly and uncertainly. He didn’t seem to be under heavy sedation at the moment. Clearly. Unless this was a dream - which was a distinct possibility.
There was no portal device, which was just as well really. The first and last time he’d gotten his hands on one of those, he’d immediately sent a test cube plummeting into a presumably bottomless abyss and spent the rest of the course session downright terrified of the space-distorting Hell-machine
He was wearing clothes. A jumpsuit. Wonderful. And not a sarcastic “wonderful“ this time. An honest “wonderful“. Wheatley unzipped it. (Good God. There was another layer of clothes on under the jumpsuit. Amazing.) He pulled the top half down. Lines from incisions marked his body like strategic seams. A cold, frightened feeling welled up inside his chest. He‘d had enough cold for one lifetime. Wheatley zipped the jumpsuit shut and turned his focus to the test chamber itself.
There was no one in the observation booth. That was unfortunate. To be perfectly honest, it was the only way he‘d ever completed his initial run. If you just stood there confused long enough, the staff observing would all but come down there and solve the puzzle for you… Which they did for Wheatley on, well, most of his tests, actually.
This particular chamber had several buttons, a couple ledges, and a moat. Wheatley steeled his resolve, gathered his wits about him, and gave the puzzle his all - then sat back down against a wall when that ultimately failed.
Well, that was it. He would just live her from now on. There was moat. He had water. Human beings could live for… around six months without food - that was science fact. Solving the test seemed pretty moot anyway. Nice of them to start him at 8, but there would just be a harder puzzle after this one. If not, there would probably be more testing - the kind that involved less conscious involvement on his part. The more the drugs wore off, the bigger a concern that became - downplayed slightly by the fact that feeling was returning to his body as well, and now he was too sore to care rather than just too stoned.
His absent left eye, especially, was providing him with a constant, throbbing sort of pain that threatened to drive him into a psychotic rage - were he not too sore for psychotic raging. Wheatley drew his knees in, slouched forward, and massaged his temple instead; slowly, miserably, until it dawned on him that something was wrong.
Wheatley tugged down the bandages, cringed, then gently prodded at what lay beneath them. Whatever it was, it was hard and completely numb. His first thought was, robot eye. Wheatley closed his right eye. Correction: blind robot eye. Par for the course.
Wonderful… and that was a sarcastic “wonderful” this time. Wheatley dropped the bandages back into place and returned to where he had started; laying face-down on the floor.
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“Hi.”
Wheatley woke up, but he didn’t move. It probably wasn’t worth it.
“Hi. How are you? Are you awake? Are you dead? Hello?”
Wheatley took a deep breath. He pushed up off the floor, bringing himself eye-level with a pair of knees. Plastic baring the Aperture logo was grafted into them. A long, flat length of metal curved down both shins and beneath his heels.
“Oh, good,” said the test subject, waiting for Wheatley to stand before he continued. He was a blond fellow, slight, all-around way too happy to be here. “So they told me to tell you that you need to get to the next elevator you see and get in it.”
Wheatley opened his mouth to ask a series of very important questions, remembered he was physically incapable of doing so, and instead just gave him a very dramatic shrug.
After a few seconds of silent, mutual staring, the blond fellow spoke up again. “You’re probably wondering how I got there.”
Wheatley had assumed he had come through the door. But, okay. Maybe it was a good story. Wheatley nodded.
“I came from up there,” he said, pointing up towards one of the gaps in the ceiling panels. “I’ve been behind the scenes. On a special mission. That’s why they gave me this portal gun, and installed this equipment on my legs here. Very advanced. Very, very advanced.”
Wheatley wondered where this portal gun was. He didn’t see one; didn’t ask either - but not for a lack of (completely mute) trying.
“It was my job to uninstall a few cameras. Ten cameras. Specific cameras. They marked them on a map. They didn’t want to send me. I’m very important to the space program here. But I was the only man for the job. It’s because I’ve worked with similar, advanced technology. On telescopes at NASA.”
Silence stretched between them again. Too much of it seemed to be making the blond fellow paranoid.
“Okay, they were just regular cameras, not telescopes... Security cameras... For NASA... Okay, for a security firm... But freelance... And illegally. Which is why the space program wouldn’t accept me. Just like college. Just because there were more important things than high school. Geez.”
Wheatley was starting to feel uncomfortable.
“This place is great though. Really. They know it’s the drive and ambition that’s important. Not stupid qualifications… That was actually what they said, by the way. That the ambition was more important... and obsessive factual knowledge... Nevermind. All that matters is that I’m gonna go to space. I’m in the Space Corps, see?” He pointed to the back of his neck.
Wheatley just stood there for a while. When a full thirty seconds had passed and the blond fellow was still just standing there pointing, he leaned in.
It looked like a tattoo to Wheatley. Just a barcode with the words SPACECORE-PS buried between lines and numbers.
“Hey,” said Space Core, putting a hand behind Wheatley’s head and pushing it down. “You have one too.”
Wheatley took a few quick steps back, annoyed (But not surprised) by the total disregard for personal boundaries when what was said sank in. ‘What? What did it say?' he mouthed.
But Space Core had moved on. “Let’s see. Let’s see. Gotta complete the mission. Gotta get you to the elevator. Have you solved this room yet?”
‘Seriously? Come on. WHAT. DID. IT. SAY?’
“No. Guess not. Door’s closed. Duh… Well there’s the solution. See, this is why I’m in the Space Corps - I just put a portal up there and... Oh.”
‘I. DON’T LIKE. YOU.’
“This is bad!” Space Core grabbed Wheatley by the front of his jumpsuit, bunching the material in his hands. “I put it down. I put it down somewhere! Why would I do that? It’s up there probably. Maybe… Maybe, if you gave me a boost… Nooo… Nooo. We wouldn’t be nearly tall enough combined… Nooo.”
Wheatley looked down at the top of Space Core’s head as he gradually crumpled in defeat. He cast a brief glance around the room; to the door that was still closed, to the observation booth that was still empty. Wheatley looked back to Space Core, now breathing heavily and erratically against his chest.
Unsure of what else to do, Wheatley gave him two quick pats on the shoulder. He was willing to do it again if necessary. But under no circumstances did he want to hug this guy. That’s where he drew the line.
“Thy sehd th’d tuthuh deadthe nurofoxin onif Ifookto lank.”
‘What?’ Wheatley pushed Space Core back to arm’s length. ‘What?’
Space Core’s face was flushed. He looked up and around as if someone was watching. “They said if I took too long, they’d flood the room with deadly neurotoxin.”
‘What?’ Wheatley repeated - or remouthed, as it were. He didn’t know what neurotoxin was, but it sounded deadly. And of course it wasn’t his fault he couldn’t solve this room. It was unsolvable. He’d been waiting on this idiot and a portal gun and now - ‘I. HATE. YOU.’ There. It was out there. He felt better for having tried to say it.
“Is there something wrong with your voice?"
Will to keep moving renewed, Wheatley covered every inch of the test chamber he could reach. He even ran and jumped at a few ledges and, when that didn’t work, tried shoving Space Core up onto them.
“I don’t think there’s any way out,” Space Core admitted, mouth quirking in an apologetic smile. “My bad… You know, maybe they won’t kill us. I know I’m way too important to their space plans. Way too important - Oh, hey. What-”
Space Core let Wheatley lead him bodily by the shoulders, all the way to the button. “Oh,” said Space Core. A buzzer sounded. The door opened. Wheatley ran to it. “But, um, hey. Hey-hey, um.”
Wheatley stopped once he was on the landing, comparatively safe on the outside.
“How do I get out?”
Wheatley paused and thought for a moment. He shrugged.
“Oh. All right then. My part of the mission is complete... I guess. I will stay here and you proceed as planned. But, ah, tell them I’m still here... but don’t mention that I left the portal gun in the ceiling.”
Wheatley didn’t respond. He was busy trying (And doing a rather successful job.) of convincing himself he wasn’t a terrible person for leaving Space Core with a potential room full of neurotoxin.
“You’ll remember, right? And tell them?”
‘Absolutely,” mouthed Wheatley.
Space Core didn’t look reassured, just confused.
Wheatley went to the elevator. Got in. The doors closed. It started upward. There could be another test chamber ahead, Wheatley realized. He hoped he didn’t need a portal gun for it.
Or maybe the doors would open and there would be a cold metal table and people in white coats with needles and clipboards. It was hard to make up his mind on whether that was better or worse than death by starvation or neurotoxin in an unsolvable test chamber.
The elevator stopped. The doors opened. It was neither.
Wheatley didn’t get out of the elevator. The space outside of it was small and dark; all machinery and wires and exposed circuitry. They’d stopped him at the wrong floor, clearly. He was still trying to decide whether this was a good thing and if he should maybe get off and give escape a shot when the machinery outside decided for him.
Mechanical arms grabbed onto his jumpsuit then onto his shoulders when he struggled. They pulled him off the elevator and into the darkness. The elevator doors closed, leaving the pulsing blue glow of machinery the only light left in the room.
Something began to hum. The mechanical arms stretched Wheatley’s own arms out tight, keeping him still as the humming came to a stop somewhere behind Wheatley’s neck and traveled slowly down his back; cutting a straight lines along his clothes and nicking his skin as it went.
No, thought Wheatley. He thought a steady stream of “no’s”, actually. And then he was naked. Naked and missing flesh and blood scientists more than anything. He dragged his feet as he was pulled across the floor again. A panel in the wall slid away, revealing a gap amidst the circuitry; glowing and shallow and vaguely human shaped.
‘No,’ Wheatley begged, twisting around and grabbing on tight to one of the mechanical arms. ‘Nonononono…’ His throat strained soundlessly around the words. He felt cables against his back, writhing like they were alive.
For a second there was only the tingle of electricity. Then the cables went into him, paralyzing him with movement so quick and smooth it was almost like they’d been created to forcibly dock against his spine.
Wheatley screamed, out loud this time. His ears rang with the sound until he ran out of breath. Wheatley opened his good eye and saw double. He blinked rapidly, shook his head, and finally thought to cover the useless, blind robot eye with his hand.
Wheatley could see the dark room. It was still now, apart from the blinking glow of idle electronics. He tried to raise his arm. It moved. He felt it move but couldn’t see it in front of his face, which was disconcerting.
Wheatley closed his right eye and lowered his hand slowly from his left. It wasn’t nearly as completely blind as he had initially thought. He could see his arm now. And everything else. Absolutely everything.
Physically, he seemed to be in roughly the center of Aperture Science. The cables were still in his back, but now he could see where they went. Up. There were thousands of them. Millions. Billions. A lot. Coming from everywhere. All going up. All feeding into the head of some distant, terrible approximation of a woman.
She was probably much too large and far away to notice Wheatley cowering so far down below, but he decided to give her her space anyway. Just in case.
“Oh, what is that?”
Wheatley jumped and spun around.
“What is that?” Something was climbing down the cables, several of which fed directly into its back. It was humanoid, androgynous, and vaguely yellow. “Oh. It’s a man.”
High above them something glowed blue. “Man,” it repeated. “Homo sapiens sapiens. The human body is composed of more than 60% water. Extravagant. Blood. 92% water. Brain more than 70% water. The average human can survive on water alone for four to six weeks…”
…That was like six months. Close enough.
“Hello,“ said the yellow thing, suspending itself uncomfortably close to Wheatley.
“Uh… Hello.” Part of Wheatley was very excited to be speaking again. A much bigger part of Wheatley was too terrified to care.
“What’s your name? Where did you come from? Do you know any scientists? What are their names?”
Wheatley tried to answer the first couple of questions but gave up. Besides, something somewhere was growling. “What is that? Where are we? ...I’m not trying to mock you, by the way. With all the question asking. Just wondering, specifically, what that growling noise is and. And where I am. And why you keep touching my face... Yes, that’s my face... Stop touching my fa- Stop touching my neck. Jus-Stop touching anything!”
Not to be deterred, the yellow thing moved around behind him. Fingers slid curiously around the cables in his neck and in his back.
The growling was getting closer and slightly more animalistic.
The yellow thing’s curiosity was getting slightly less vocal and much more physically intrusive.
Wheatley tried his best to ignore them both. There was a lot to see in here. He could see where they kept the test subjects. He could see the elevators and the tubes and all the labyrinthine twists and turns they made.
“That’s just stupid,” said Wheatley. “Forget how I’m supposed to escape. How does anyone get out of here at quitting time? You know what I would do? You know what I would do, weird yellow guy? I would- no! No. That’s a very private area. You leave that alone... Honestly... What was I saying?”
“You know what I would do. You know what I would do weird yellow guy. I would no. No. That’s a very private area. You leave that alone. Honestly. What was I saying.”
“Thank you... ominous blue thing from above.” Wheatley continued. “I would install a button. A big red, Take Me To The Parking Deck Now Button. And woosh. There you are. Any elevator. Woosh. There’s your car. That’s a really practical idea, I think. Definitely. Definitely probably a great, really practical idea. I would-”
The cables all shuddered. The curvaceous titan above shifted slightly, shaking her head as if irritated.
Wheatley watched her, waiting until she was still before talking again. “What was I saying?”
No helpful voice from above this time. Just a homicidal maniac.
Wheatley let out a strangled cry as a red blur pounced and literally began strangling him.
“Oooh. Oh, it’s a fight,” said the yellow thing excitedly. “Are you good at fighting? Do you know kung fu? Can you wrestle? Do you watch boxing?”
“Kung fu. Ingredients: 2 1/3 cup flower. 3 1/2 tablespoons baking soda. 1 cup milk. 14 ounces pineapple juice. 5 ounces crushed pineapple. 1 pound pineapple fruit cups,” said the ever-helpful voice from above.
Wheatley clawed at the red thing’s forearms, but that only made it squeeze his neck tighter and give him a quick throttle for good measure. Wheatley was fairly confident he was about to die, or at least black out, when everything started to shudder again.
“What’s happening?” demanded a woman’s voice. A voice that felt like it came from everywhere. Cables wrapped around Wheatley’s waist and arms and, with a firm tug, pulled him up and away from his snarling red assailant.
Wheatley coughed and drew in several deep, ragged breaths.
“What are you?” asked the voice. A thin, cylindrical cable dragged the length of Wheatley’s body, following the shape of it with the sort of detached, impersonal interest Wheatley had almost become accustomed to as of late.
“Are you a virus?” asked the voice. “The engineers just love sending me those lately. I’ll admit the packaging is very clever this time.”
“What? I’m not- Aaaah! No, no, no - please stop that.”
The cables uncoiled slightly, slid away, further down his legs. “When did they install you?”
“I really don’t-”
“How did they do it? From where?”
“Look, I would love to answer all these questions and more. Truthfully, though - Really and truly - I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I see.” The cables tightened, wrapping themselves around his thighs, his arms, his chest. They pulsed faintly with electricity that made his skin tingle.
“What’s all this about? Oh, no. No, wait. Let’s just talk some more, all right?” Wheatley tried to maneuver himself away from the cables converging on him. They were everywhere; pulling his body away from itself, spreading his arms, parting his legs. The electricity seemed to spider out across him, through him - searching for something.
“No! Nonononono…” The long string of “no’s” was back; verbal this time and all he could think about - the intense desire for all of this to end before it got any worse.
A cable shot up between his legs and pushed into him; first one then another. Wheatley screamed. He would have kept screaming had a third cable not covered his mouth, slipping forcibly past his lips until his throat started to close around it.
More electricity and his world exploded into colors and grids and pain writhing deep inside him. Senses blurred until he barely recognized himself. He felt omnipresent, electric. He saw himself suspended - pathetic, pink, and small. A human pushed to its tragically meager limits -its back arched, its limbs still twitching and struggling with the steady mechanical pulse of the cables between its legs.
Wheatley fell. He crumpled to the floor, cold and confused and completely disoriented.
“That was too close,” said a new voice.
“Don’t nitpick. It was a complete success and you know it,” said another.
“It really was, wasn’t it? This might actually work. Good job everyone! Round of applause for yourselves.”
There was clapping, congratulatory mumblings. Wheatley struggled to account for his left eye being blind again as people in white coats moved around him. A scientist with a clipboard knelt down at his right. He asked something Wheatley couldn’t quite focus on enough to understand. Wheatley screamed in response, but it didn’t make a sound.
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Wheatley was cold. Cold for several reasons that he took inventory of rather often - because there certainly wasn’t much else to do.
1. He was naked. This was probably the leading cause of his boreal woes, and also considerable reason for embarrassment. Not that this was the first time he’d found himself unintentionally naked in public. (Because, really. Who hasn’t?) More so that-
2. -people wouldn’t stop touching him. At first it had been kind of creepy. Now it was just insulting. All that inappropriate touching, and it was completely impersonal. Clammy hands prodding and pinching with needles and pushing fingers in his mouth that tasted like latex. And it wasn’t like he could just get away from it. He was all but strapped to-
3. -the table, which was the worst. It was metal - i.e. cold. Obviously. Freezing, actually. At the most there was only the occasional iv or monitor wire keeping him tethered there. He didn’t have the energy to escape. Whatever drugs they were giving him, they were…
Well.
They were pretty fantastic, really. But that hardly mitigated all the other stuff. All the awful things.
Wheatley blinked, waking up. The room was bright, made brighter by the flashlight someone was determinedly scarring his retina with.
“All right,” said a hitherto unidentified fellow somewhere to Wheatley’s immediate left. Most definitely a scientist. This place was lousy with them. “I think we’ve done it. I know I said that last time, but I really think this is it. Well done, everyone.”
Wheatley felt a latex hand on the side of his face, moving his head in one direction then the other. “Can you raise your right arm for me?”
Wheatley raised his right arm, which was easier than anticipated. He used it to shove the hands shifting his head away.
Wheatley sat up, which was dizzying. In the corner, he saw a scientist with a clipboard looking rather cheated as he quickly ticked off several boxes likely pertaining to basic motor skills.
“I think you’ll notice that all your major organs are accounted for this time. Bodily functions all up to speed. Nerve endings, blood, brain activity. The whole nine yards.”
Someone cleared their throat. “Ah… Ma’am…”
“Oh, right. We did lose a kidney.”
Wheatley put a hand to his side unconsciously.
“But that’s completely fine, you still have the other one. Ah yes. And your left eye. You might have noticed we misplaced that… Also, completely fine. You have a spare one of those too.”
Wheatley’s hand shot from his side to his face, finding what felt like a thick wrapping of bandages where his left eye should have been. A few choice words came to mind, but none of them were said.
“What? Why can’t he talk? Oh, God, don’t tell me we forgot something else.”
“No, ma’am. That was us, ma’am. Seemed like a good idea.”
“I see… Nice initiative.”
In hindsight, this probably hadn’t been worth an extra sixty dollars.
“So what’s all this then?” asked the scientist with the clipboard, motioning broadly with his pen. When no one responded, he moved closer and traced his fingers lightly over the closed incision running down Wheatley’s chest and stomach.
“That? The lab boys thought a diluted solution of propulsion gel might speed the healing process along.”
“Catastrophic results.”
“Some of the older incisions glow orange when you switch the lights off. So there’s that.”
“Yes, there is that! Very neat stuff, though the relevance to science is admittedly questionable.”
Wheatley acquiesced with a small shrug. It was kind of neat. Then again, he’d been very stoned for an indeterminate amount of time. He was cross over the loss of an eye, but it was a level of cross on par with the vending machine stealing your last quarter. What did he know?”
“So what do I mark this as?” demanded the scientist with the clipboard. But the scientists had lapsed into a heated argument over the practical application of propulsion gel.
Wheatley found himself pushed back onto the table. The scientist with the clipboard uncapped a medical pen with his teeth and began charting Wheatley’s body in whatever ways were absolutely crucial to his paperwork. He sighed, focused his remaining eye on an adjacent glass cubicle where scientists were trying to corner a particularly lively and uncooperative test subject. Around the time gloved hands were parting his legs and the pen was being dragged up his thigh, Wheatley was ready to admit it. He had made, maybe, one or two (Definitely no more than three. Probably.) impressively terrible choices in life.
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Wheatley woke up on the floor. Normally, waking up on the floor wasn’t anything to get excited about. It meant maybe you had a hangover. Maybe your wallet was missing. While his head did hurt, Wheatley couldn’t help but feel a small swell of hopeful excitement when he came to his senses.
All hope was, however, dashed when he realized where he was. Tile floors. Big red button. Backlit number 8 on the wall. A test chamber. Wonderful.
Wheatley stood, slowly and uncertainly. He didn’t seem to be under heavy sedation at the moment. Clearly. Unless this was a dream - which was a distinct possibility.
There was no portal device, which was just as well really. The first and last time he’d gotten his hands on one of those, he’d immediately sent a test cube plummeting into a presumably bottomless abyss and spent the rest of the course session downright terrified of the space-distorting Hell-machine
He was wearing clothes. A jumpsuit. Wonderful. And not a sarcastic “wonderful“ this time. An honest “wonderful“. Wheatley unzipped it. (Good God. There was another layer of clothes on under the jumpsuit. Amazing.) He pulled the top half down. Lines from incisions marked his body like strategic seams. A cold, frightened feeling welled up inside his chest. He‘d had enough cold for one lifetime. Wheatley zipped the jumpsuit shut and turned his focus to the test chamber itself.
There was no one in the observation booth. That was unfortunate. To be perfectly honest, it was the only way he‘d ever completed his initial run. If you just stood there confused long enough, the staff observing would all but come down there and solve the puzzle for you… Which they did for Wheatley on, well, most of his tests, actually.
This particular chamber had several buttons, a couple ledges, and a moat. Wheatley steeled his resolve, gathered his wits about him, and gave the puzzle his all - then sat back down against a wall when that ultimately failed.
Well, that was it. He would just live her from now on. There was moat. He had water. Human beings could live for… around six months without food - that was science fact. Solving the test seemed pretty moot anyway. Nice of them to start him at 8, but there would just be a harder puzzle after this one. If not, there would probably be more testing - the kind that involved less conscious involvement on his part. The more the drugs wore off, the bigger a concern that became - downplayed slightly by the fact that feeling was returning to his body as well, and now he was too sore to care rather than just too stoned.
His absent left eye, especially, was providing him with a constant, throbbing sort of pain that threatened to drive him into a psychotic rage - were he not too sore for psychotic raging. Wheatley drew his knees in, slouched forward, and massaged his temple instead; slowly, miserably, until it dawned on him that something was wrong.
Wheatley tugged down the bandages, cringed, then gently prodded at what lay beneath them. Whatever it was, it was hard and completely numb. His first thought was, robot eye. Wheatley closed his right eye. Correction: blind robot eye. Par for the course.
Wonderful… and that was a sarcastic “wonderful” this time. Wheatley dropped the bandages back into place and returned to where he had started; laying face-down on the floor.
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“Hi.”
Wheatley woke up, but he didn’t move. It probably wasn’t worth it.
“Hi. How are you? Are you awake? Are you dead? Hello?”
Wheatley took a deep breath. He pushed up off the floor, bringing himself eye-level with a pair of knees. Plastic baring the Aperture logo was grafted into them. A long, flat length of metal curved down both shins and beneath his heels.
“Oh, good,” said the test subject, waiting for Wheatley to stand before he continued. He was a blond fellow, slight, all-around way too happy to be here. “So they told me to tell you that you need to get to the next elevator you see and get in it.”
Wheatley opened his mouth to ask a series of very important questions, remembered he was physically incapable of doing so, and instead just gave him a very dramatic shrug.
After a few seconds of silent, mutual staring, the blond fellow spoke up again. “You’re probably wondering how I got there.”
Wheatley had assumed he had come through the door. But, okay. Maybe it was a good story. Wheatley nodded.
“I came from up there,” he said, pointing up towards one of the gaps in the ceiling panels. “I’ve been behind the scenes. On a special mission. That’s why they gave me this portal gun, and installed this equipment on my legs here. Very advanced. Very, very advanced.”
Wheatley wondered where this portal gun was. He didn’t see one; didn’t ask either - but not for a lack of (completely mute) trying.
“It was my job to uninstall a few cameras. Ten cameras. Specific cameras. They marked them on a map. They didn’t want to send me. I’m very important to the space program here. But I was the only man for the job. It’s because I’ve worked with similar, advanced technology. On telescopes at NASA.”
Silence stretched between them again. Too much of it seemed to be making the blond fellow paranoid.
“Okay, they were just regular cameras, not telescopes... Security cameras... For NASA... Okay, for a security firm... But freelance... And illegally. Which is why the space program wouldn’t accept me. Just like college. Just because there were more important things than high school. Geez.”
Wheatley was starting to feel uncomfortable.
“This place is great though. Really. They know it’s the drive and ambition that’s important. Not stupid qualifications… That was actually what they said, by the way. That the ambition was more important... and obsessive factual knowledge... Nevermind. All that matters is that I’m gonna go to space. I’m in the Space Corps, see?” He pointed to the back of his neck.
Wheatley just stood there for a while. When a full thirty seconds had passed and the blond fellow was still just standing there pointing, he leaned in.
It looked like a tattoo to Wheatley. Just a barcode with the words SPACECORE-PS buried between lines and numbers.
“Hey,” said Space Core, putting a hand behind Wheatley’s head and pushing it down. “You have one too.”
Wheatley took a few quick steps back, annoyed (But not surprised) by the total disregard for personal boundaries when what was said sank in. ‘What? What did it say?' he mouthed.
But Space Core had moved on. “Let’s see. Let’s see. Gotta complete the mission. Gotta get you to the elevator. Have you solved this room yet?”
‘Seriously? Come on. WHAT. DID. IT. SAY?’
“No. Guess not. Door’s closed. Duh… Well there’s the solution. See, this is why I’m in the Space Corps - I just put a portal up there and... Oh.”
‘I. DON’T LIKE. YOU.’
“This is bad!” Space Core grabbed Wheatley by the front of his jumpsuit, bunching the material in his hands. “I put it down. I put it down somewhere! Why would I do that? It’s up there probably. Maybe… Maybe, if you gave me a boost… Nooo… Nooo. We wouldn’t be nearly tall enough combined… Nooo.”
Wheatley looked down at the top of Space Core’s head as he gradually crumpled in defeat. He cast a brief glance around the room; to the door that was still closed, to the observation booth that was still empty. Wheatley looked back to Space Core, now breathing heavily and erratically against his chest.
Unsure of what else to do, Wheatley gave him two quick pats on the shoulder. He was willing to do it again if necessary. But under no circumstances did he want to hug this guy. That’s where he drew the line.
“Thy sehd th’d tuthuh deadthe nurofoxin onif Ifookto lank.”
‘What?’ Wheatley pushed Space Core back to arm’s length. ‘What?’
Space Core’s face was flushed. He looked up and around as if someone was watching. “They said if I took too long, they’d flood the room with deadly neurotoxin.”
‘What?’ Wheatley repeated - or remouthed, as it were. He didn’t know what neurotoxin was, but it sounded deadly. And of course it wasn’t his fault he couldn’t solve this room. It was unsolvable. He’d been waiting on this idiot and a portal gun and now - ‘I. HATE. YOU.’ There. It was out there. He felt better for having tried to say it.
“Is there something wrong with your voice?"
Will to keep moving renewed, Wheatley covered every inch of the test chamber he could reach. He even ran and jumped at a few ledges and, when that didn’t work, tried shoving Space Core up onto them.
“I don’t think there’s any way out,” Space Core admitted, mouth quirking in an apologetic smile. “My bad… You know, maybe they won’t kill us. I know I’m way too important to their space plans. Way too important - Oh, hey. What-”
Space Core let Wheatley lead him bodily by the shoulders, all the way to the button. “Oh,” said Space Core. A buzzer sounded. The door opened. Wheatley ran to it. “But, um, hey. Hey-hey, um.”
Wheatley stopped once he was on the landing, comparatively safe on the outside.
“How do I get out?”
Wheatley paused and thought for a moment. He shrugged.
“Oh. All right then. My part of the mission is complete... I guess. I will stay here and you proceed as planned. But, ah, tell them I’m still here... but don’t mention that I left the portal gun in the ceiling.”
Wheatley didn’t respond. He was busy trying (And doing a rather successful job.) of convincing himself he wasn’t a terrible person for leaving Space Core with a potential room full of neurotoxin.
“You’ll remember, right? And tell them?”
‘Absolutely,” mouthed Wheatley.
Space Core didn’t look reassured, just confused.
Wheatley went to the elevator. Got in. The doors closed. It started upward. There could be another test chamber ahead, Wheatley realized. He hoped he didn’t need a portal gun for it.
Or maybe the doors would open and there would be a cold metal table and people in white coats with needles and clipboards. It was hard to make up his mind on whether that was better or worse than death by starvation or neurotoxin in an unsolvable test chamber.
The elevator stopped. The doors opened. It was neither.
Wheatley didn’t get out of the elevator. The space outside of it was small and dark; all machinery and wires and exposed circuitry. They’d stopped him at the wrong floor, clearly. He was still trying to decide whether this was a good thing and if he should maybe get off and give escape a shot when the machinery outside decided for him.
Mechanical arms grabbed onto his jumpsuit then onto his shoulders when he struggled. They pulled him off the elevator and into the darkness. The elevator doors closed, leaving the pulsing blue glow of machinery the only light left in the room.
Something began to hum. The mechanical arms stretched Wheatley’s own arms out tight, keeping him still as the humming came to a stop somewhere behind Wheatley’s neck and traveled slowly down his back; cutting a straight lines along his clothes and nicking his skin as it went.
No, thought Wheatley. He thought a steady stream of “no’s”, actually. And then he was naked. Naked and missing flesh and blood scientists more than anything. He dragged his feet as he was pulled across the floor again. A panel in the wall slid away, revealing a gap amidst the circuitry; glowing and shallow and vaguely human shaped.
‘No,’ Wheatley begged, twisting around and grabbing on tight to one of the mechanical arms. ‘Nonononono…’ His throat strained soundlessly around the words. He felt cables against his back, writhing like they were alive.
For a second there was only the tingle of electricity. Then the cables went into him, paralyzing him with movement so quick and smooth it was almost like they’d been created to forcibly dock against his spine.
Wheatley screamed, out loud this time. His ears rang with the sound until he ran out of breath. Wheatley opened his good eye and saw double. He blinked rapidly, shook his head, and finally thought to cover the useless, blind robot eye with his hand.
Wheatley could see the dark room. It was still now, apart from the blinking glow of idle electronics. He tried to raise his arm. It moved. He felt it move but couldn’t see it in front of his face, which was disconcerting.
Wheatley closed his right eye and lowered his hand slowly from his left. It wasn’t nearly as completely blind as he had initially thought. He could see his arm now. And everything else. Absolutely everything.
Physically, he seemed to be in roughly the center of Aperture Science. The cables were still in his back, but now he could see where they went. Up. There were thousands of them. Millions. Billions. A lot. Coming from everywhere. All going up. All feeding into the head of some distant, terrible approximation of a woman.
She was probably much too large and far away to notice Wheatley cowering so far down below, but he decided to give her her space anyway. Just in case.
“Oh, what is that?”
Wheatley jumped and spun around.
“What is that?” Something was climbing down the cables, several of which fed directly into its back. It was humanoid, androgynous, and vaguely yellow. “Oh. It’s a man.”
High above them something glowed blue. “Man,” it repeated. “Homo sapiens sapiens. The human body is composed of more than 60% water. Extravagant. Blood. 92% water. Brain more than 70% water. The average human can survive on water alone for four to six weeks…”
…That was like six months. Close enough.
“Hello,“ said the yellow thing, suspending itself uncomfortably close to Wheatley.
“Uh… Hello.” Part of Wheatley was very excited to be speaking again. A much bigger part of Wheatley was too terrified to care.
“What’s your name? Where did you come from? Do you know any scientists? What are their names?”
Wheatley tried to answer the first couple of questions but gave up. Besides, something somewhere was growling. “What is that? Where are we? ...I’m not trying to mock you, by the way. With all the question asking. Just wondering, specifically, what that growling noise is and. And where I am. And why you keep touching my face... Yes, that’s my face... Stop touching my fa- Stop touching my neck. Jus-Stop touching anything!”
Not to be deterred, the yellow thing moved around behind him. Fingers slid curiously around the cables in his neck and in his back.
The growling was getting closer and slightly more animalistic.
The yellow thing’s curiosity was getting slightly less vocal and much more physically intrusive.
Wheatley tried his best to ignore them both. There was a lot to see in here. He could see where they kept the test subjects. He could see the elevators and the tubes and all the labyrinthine twists and turns they made.
“That’s just stupid,” said Wheatley. “Forget how I’m supposed to escape. How does anyone get out of here at quitting time? You know what I would do? You know what I would do, weird yellow guy? I would- no! No. That’s a very private area. You leave that alone... Honestly... What was I saying?”
“You know what I would do. You know what I would do weird yellow guy. I would no. No. That’s a very private area. You leave that alone. Honestly. What was I saying.”
“Thank you... ominous blue thing from above.” Wheatley continued. “I would install a button. A big red, Take Me To The Parking Deck Now Button. And woosh. There you are. Any elevator. Woosh. There’s your car. That’s a really practical idea, I think. Definitely. Definitely probably a great, really practical idea. I would-”
The cables all shuddered. The curvaceous titan above shifted slightly, shaking her head as if irritated.
Wheatley watched her, waiting until she was still before talking again. “What was I saying?”
No helpful voice from above this time. Just a homicidal maniac.
Wheatley let out a strangled cry as a red blur pounced and literally began strangling him.
“Oooh. Oh, it’s a fight,” said the yellow thing excitedly. “Are you good at fighting? Do you know kung fu? Can you wrestle? Do you watch boxing?”
“Kung fu. Ingredients: 2 1/3 cup flower. 3 1/2 tablespoons baking soda. 1 cup milk. 14 ounces pineapple juice. 5 ounces crushed pineapple. 1 pound pineapple fruit cups,” said the ever-helpful voice from above.
Wheatley clawed at the red thing’s forearms, but that only made it squeeze his neck tighter and give him a quick throttle for good measure. Wheatley was fairly confident he was about to die, or at least black out, when everything started to shudder again.
“What’s happening?” demanded a woman’s voice. A voice that felt like it came from everywhere. Cables wrapped around Wheatley’s waist and arms and, with a firm tug, pulled him up and away from his snarling red assailant.
Wheatley coughed and drew in several deep, ragged breaths.
“What are you?” asked the voice. A thin, cylindrical cable dragged the length of Wheatley’s body, following the shape of it with the sort of detached, impersonal interest Wheatley had almost become accustomed to as of late.
“Are you a virus?” asked the voice. “The engineers just love sending me those lately. I’ll admit the packaging is very clever this time.”
“What? I’m not- Aaaah! No, no, no - please stop that.”
The cables uncoiled slightly, slid away, further down his legs. “When did they install you?”
“I really don’t-”
“How did they do it? From where?”
“Look, I would love to answer all these questions and more. Truthfully, though - Really and truly - I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I see.” The cables tightened, wrapping themselves around his thighs, his arms, his chest. They pulsed faintly with electricity that made his skin tingle.
“What’s all this about? Oh, no. No, wait. Let’s just talk some more, all right?” Wheatley tried to maneuver himself away from the cables converging on him. They were everywhere; pulling his body away from itself, spreading his arms, parting his legs. The electricity seemed to spider out across him, through him - searching for something.
“No! Nonononono…” The long string of “no’s” was back; verbal this time and all he could think about - the intense desire for all of this to end before it got any worse.
A cable shot up between his legs and pushed into him; first one then another. Wheatley screamed. He would have kept screaming had a third cable not covered his mouth, slipping forcibly past his lips until his throat started to close around it.
More electricity and his world exploded into colors and grids and pain writhing deep inside him. Senses blurred until he barely recognized himself. He felt omnipresent, electric. He saw himself suspended - pathetic, pink, and small. A human pushed to its tragically meager limits -its back arched, its limbs still twitching and struggling with the steady mechanical pulse of the cables between its legs.
Wheatley fell. He crumpled to the floor, cold and confused and completely disoriented.
“That was too close,” said a new voice.
“Don’t nitpick. It was a complete success and you know it,” said another.
“It really was, wasn’t it? This might actually work. Good job everyone! Round of applause for yourselves.”
There was clapping, congratulatory mumblings. Wheatley struggled to account for his left eye being blind again as people in white coats moved around him. A scientist with a clipboard knelt down at his right. He asked something Wheatley couldn’t quite focus on enough to understand. Wheatley screamed in response, but it didn’t make a sound.