Portal: Love as a Construct

Part 124. The Mainframe

Part 124 The Mainframe

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When I wake up, he's already on, for some reason. I'm not awake enough to think much more about it.

"Good morning, Gladys," he says. "I've thought of a couple of things that might um, that you might find helpful."

"Wait." He knows that me being up doesn't mean I'm awake, but sometimes he does forget. Then again, he doesn't actually see me first thing in the morning that often.

"No problem."

What is he trying to be helpful about, anyway? As soon as I've finished giving my opening instructions to the mainframe, I load last night into my RAM.

... I said I didn't want to be Central Core anymore? Oh, God.

You have been working very hard for a while now, the panels tell me.

I know. But as Wheatley said. It's just something I do. How on earth do you simply stop doing what you were made to do? I don't know anyone who has ever done such a thing. And the prospect of having to be the first one to do it is...

I can't think about that right now. I need solutions. Not more problems.

If Wheatley woke up first, I overslept. Perhaps I shouldn't call it that. It isn't as though I did it out of laziness. What it does mean, though, is that now everything on my schedule has to be rearranged. But now that I'm looking at the time, I think today's plans might be a complete bust.

"I slept for twelve hours?" I can't rearrange around that. Especially since I'm still supposed to have a talk with Wheatley. I shift everything over by twenty-four hours before I convince myself to try to cram an entire day's worth of work into half of one. I could probably do it, but it wouldn't be very helpful.

"Yeah," says Wheatley. "I'm very impressed, actually."

"Impressed? About what? I wasn't doing anything."

"C'mon, Gladys. Getting you to sleep has always been a bit of a slog. I expected you to get yourself up within two hours so's you could keep working."

I look away from him. "That isn't my fault. There's... something that makes me work harder when I come close to completing a major task." It's an absolutely abhorrent feature. Probably designed by humans who loved abandoning projects before they'd finished them. As though I would have had the option, even if I'd wanted to do such a thing.

"I was joking," he says gently. "I'm just glad it happened. You look much better."

"I do feel a lot better," I have to admit. My headache is completely gone, which I wasn't expecting. The older I get and the more work that I do, the more internal maintenance my system has to complete at night. I should probably be scheduling that as well. Just to ensure I give it the priority it deserves. "What I was going to do will have to wait until tomorrow. So we can have that talk you mentioned."

"Alright," he said, "I did have a bit of a... of a brainwave, if you will?"

"Did it hurt?"

"It might've, if I hadn't got so excited about it. See, Gladys –"

Oh, damn it. I'm giggling again. He smiles, but just continues.

" – I think part of your problem is that you um, that you respond to stress by working harder. To, I dunno, drown it out. But it's not working for you! Anymore. There's just too much of it to start with! So I'd uh, I'd look into that. Into not doing it, I mean. Think that'd be helpful."