Portal: Love as a Construct

Part Two. The Lie

Part Two.  The Lie

GLaDOS had a room. A very special, secret room that he wasn't allowed in and this, of course, made him want to get in it more than anything. He cajoled her and he begged her and he endeared to her softer side, but she would only shake her head once in refusal and say nothing.

So Wheatley decided to find it.

Through the facility he went. He looked behind the stiffest panels and below the most movable floors. He went both deeper and higher than he'd ever gone before. He began to get discouraged. He knew the facility was massive and he knew full well he could search for every second of the rest of his life and never find it. But he also knew that people preferred to be around others who were like them, and so Wheatley was going to have to take on GLaDOS's determination and immovable nature if he wanted her to keep him around. And he was pretty determined and immovable, he told himself as he searched. True, he didn't know if he could demonstrate that in quite the same way she could, but he reckoned he could come pretty close. So he continued his search.

When he returned to her chamber each night for their chat before they went into sleep mode, Wheatley would inch close enough to touch her and she would pretend not to notice. Wheatley especially loved that part of the day. She did not look it, but GLaDOS was very good for snuggling with. He could not think of anyone or anything he'd rather snuggle with more. Not even the human, and she had been soft and squishy. Those were supposed to be good attributes for that sort of thing, but Wheatley much preferred GLaDOS's massive, robust chassis to the human's tiny, fragile frame. While they were doing this, GLaDOS would ask Wheatley what he'd been doing all day and he would reply with (what he hoped was) a nonchalant, "Exploring, luv. Just exploring." And she would nod a little and change the subject. He wasn't sure if she knew what he was doing and was leaving him to it, or if she really had no idea, but he elected to keep it to himself. If she didn't want to tell him, she didn't want him to know and would certainly not approve of his quest.

Time wore on, with Wheatley becoming less and less convinced he'd ever find it until he overheard a conversation between two nanobots concerning a very old Companion Cube three floors below. Wheatley chased after them but they disappeared into an invisible hole in the wall, leaving him to grumble in annoyance about the lack of invisible holes for behavioural cores. Summoning his almighty, infallible sense of direction, he descended three floors and resolved to inspect this new location thoroughly.

Within an hour or two (his sense of time being slightly less than terribly not infallible), he stumbled across a panel that seemed to have been removed from the wall. Excited, Wheatley told the ceiling panels to extend his management rail so that he could get inside. He hoped GLaDOS was too busy to pay attention to any information she might be getting from them. He still wasn't sure if she kept an eye on him during his adventures or not.

It was very dark and, with a hesitation borne of years of misinformation, Wheatley turned on his flashlight. He spread the beam around the room, and what he saw in there was quite puzzling indeed.

It honestly looked like the junk someone might keep in their attic. Wheatley's optic plates narrowed in disappointment. This could not possibly be the room GLaDOS was hiding from him, it couldn't! And if it was... well, maybe GLaDOS was a little bit crazy, after all.

Wheatley began making a little mental list of what was there, just in case he could maybe bring some of this stuff up in casual conversation and get her to tell him what it was all about. A pen... a couple of paper tests of some kind... a grimy old Companion Cube... a cake, which must have been quite old but looked rather fresh... some books, lined neatly up on a shelf by height... a potato, which he only looked at for a second before nervously looking away... a deck of playing cards... an ancient laptop with what must have been three inches of dust on it... a little roll of blueprints... hm. He took a minute to look at those. To his surprise, Atlas and P-body were drawn on the papers in various shapes and forms. He had only rarely seen GLaDOS write, given that it was a lot easier and faster for her just to make a mental note of something, but he was confident that it was her handwriting. Going over the papers again he watched the handwriting change ever so slightly, becoming cleaner and more precise as time went on. He was looking at GLaDOS learning to write! Oh, she really could be quite adorable, sometimes, though he didn't know if he'd ever dare tell her that. For a minute he daydreamed about a younger GLaDOS, who would not have looked younger, of course, but she would have talked differently, maybe, and possibly could have moved a bit more eagerly, more like he did, actually... he had no doubt she'd been like that, once - everyone was, even very powerful supercomputers - and he wondered if she still could be. That would be interesting to find out. Probably quite a lot of fun, as well.