Portal: Love as a Construct

Part Seven: The Competition

Part Seven. The Competition

When Wheatley finally screwed up the courage to return to GLaDOS's chamber a few hours later, GLaDOS glanced at him and said nothing. Well. That didn't mean she was upset, not really. She often did that. Although she'd been doing it less often as of late. Hm. Maybe she was upset. He hoped not. She was hard to deal with when she was upset. Harder to deal with than usual, anyway.

"Hullo," he said nervously. "How've you been getting on?"

"Fine," she said, and her voice was decidedly less friendly than usual. She was definitely mad at him for something, but for what he didn't know. "What do you want?"

"Well uh... I was tired of... of being by, by myself," he mumbled. Out of the corner of his optic he thought he saw her chassis relax a bit, but that was probably his imagination. He wasn't looking at her, anyway, not really, and if he'd wanted her to do anything (other than touch him again, that was) it would be what his imagination had just imagined she'd done.

"I'm about to start a new project," she told him. "My availability will be limited in the next few days. It's going to be very consuming for me, both in terms of resources and time."

"Oh," Wheatley said lamely. He wouldn't be able to spend time with GLaDOS for the next few days? It sounded like... like torture. He was already dreading it. Not be able to hang out with his most favourite snarky supercomputer for an extended period of time? Ohhh no, this was not going to be fun. "Uh... what's it... what's your project about?"

"It's very technical," she answered, in one of her more official voices. "I'm not going to be able to explain it to you. I've said about all you'd be able to understand."

Wheatley frowned, suddenly angry. "I'm not that big of an idiot."

"Debatable."

"GLaDOS!"

"What? I'm only preventing you from trying to get your processors around something you won't be able to understand. You should be thanking me. You could blow your primary CPU trying to think about things that I think about."

"I suppose it'd kill you to help me understand, would it?"

"It might," GLaDOS said tightly, and Wheatley winced when he realised just what might have happened had he been a little more proficient in his running of the facility. Oh, that damnable Incident. When was he going to live it down?

"Sorry," Wheatley mumbled. "Forgot about that."

"Lucky you," GLaDOS remarked. "I remember it every day."

Wow. Every day? "Seriously?" Wheatley choked out.

"Oh yes," GLaDOS answered. "Every day."

"That sounds... lovely," Wheatley said in a small voice. GLaDOS looked him over for a few seconds.

"Oh, relax," she said, shaking her head, "I'm only teasing. I don't hold it against you. I do remember it every day, and I have to admit I sometimes wonder why I keep you around, but you don't have to worry about it influencing anything I do."

"Oh!" Wheatley exclaimed in relief. "Oh, I see. I uh... I knew that. I uh... was just going along with it. Because. That's. Better. For you. Not for me, obviously, since I have to uh, act all nervous, and all that."

"Mmhm," GLaDOS agreed. "I'm sure that's exactly what you were thinking."

"Oi, are you busy now?" Wheatley asked hurriedly, more to get off the subject than anything. She was so all-knowing, she was.