Portal: Love as a Construct

Part Sixty-Seven. The Readying

Part Sixty-Seven. The Readying

The next three weeks were very stressful.

Wheatley knew he really had nothing to complain about. He had no calculations to run, no battles to plan, and no world to save. But he worried about GLaDOS. Constantly. All day long, no matter what he was doing or who he was talking to, he worried about her. A piece of his mind was always on her, wondering how or what she was doing. He was, again, honestly scared of the intensity of his thoughts. But he could not stop them, or even slow them down, so he just tried to think them and then let them go. It didn't always work. But it was all he could do.

It was on the second morning that she'd given him the news.

"Wheatley, I have a job for you," she'd said matter-of-factly, not looking at him.

"A... a job?" he'd asked hesitantly.

"Yes. I'm putting you in charge of the repurposed testing tracks."

"Me?" He'd been so surprised he couldn't even think. "But... I've never even built one before!"

"I've already built them. And the panels know enough now to move themselves as you see fit. However. What I mainly need you to do is to come up with games for the humans. They learn better when they feel as though there's no pressure on them to do so. I need you to make the training fun for them."

"Oh, well... I guess I could do that," he'd said, a frown coming across his optic. "But..."

"If you do need to modify the testing tracks, show Caroline what you're doing. Reassure her that I'm not backing out of my promise. But if you're doing it anyway she might as well do it with you."

"Are you sending me away?" he'd asked quietly. She'd lifted her core to look at him slowly, shaking it in denial.

"No," she'd answered softly. "You have no idea how much I'd prefer to keep you here. I'm going to be stuck here, dealing with humans all day. Having meetings and hearing plans and trying to get a little real work done while they tell me whatever things they think are important. But I genuinely need you to do this. If the humans aren't sufficiently prepared, that places a lot more pressure on us."

"Us? You haven't told me my role, what I'll be doing when the, the Combine comes."

"I meant myself and the systems. The panels. Surveillance. The mainframe. And so on. No, you... don't really have a role in that. You're just going to stay here with me, as far as I know."

"Can't I do that now as well?" he'd asked, unable to think of a task he'd like to be given more.

She'd shaken her head and given him a shove. "What I've told you to do is more important. So go get started. Take Caroline with you."

"I wish you were your first priority, for once," he'd told her sulkily, and she'd laughed a little.

"That's the point. Go. Train those humans for me."

He'd pressed himself into her, hard, and then sadly gone to do as she'd asked. It was really rather fun to come up with odd little testing tracks to train the humans in, and it was just as fun to shout at them as they ran the courses. Carrie was helping him with that on occasion, though she usually pestered him to make her a little track too so she could race the humans to the finish. He hoped she didn't realise he was cheating a little bit; the humans were being trained with live turrets and lasers and such, but he didn't want her having any part of that. Anything dangerous was carefully timed to miss her by at least two seconds. She seemed to be having a whale of a time, though, so even if she did notice she didn't seem to care.