Portal: Love as a Construct

Part Eighty-Seven. The Compatibility

Part Eighty-Seven. The Compatibility

GLaDOS seemed to have some free time that afternoon, so they went back to the Monopoly game they still had not finished and, honestly, probably never would, not if they kept swapping every time Wheatley started losing. He was sitting on a panel in front of the board, opposite her, frowning at his cards and wondering how, exactly, GLaDOS managed to keep tipping the game in her favour with the paltry collection of properties she got from him every time they switched places.

"Hey Gladys," he said, once he'd remembered, "you've uh... you've got a bit of an odd name for the door mainframe, haven't you?"

"Hm?" was all she had to that, though to be fair she'd mentioned having to do several different things in several different rooms so she probably wasn't paying too much attention to him at the moment.

"The door mainframe. You called it uh... the... the..." he couldn't even remember the name, it was so ridiculous.

"Oh. The Aperture Science Intradimensional Access Service."

"Yeah. Yeah, that."

"Copyright," she answered simply. "I named it that way for copyright purposes."

"What's that mean?"

"It means that, if I ever need to license the software out, everyone will know it's mine and will be unable to distribute it without my permission."

He frowned. None of her explanation made anything any clearer. "And... and license it out means..."

"Sell it to other people so they can use it."

Well, that would be quite nice of her, he decided.

"Hey Momma!" Caroline announced, coming into the room with a suspicious amount of enthusiasm, and GLaDOS indeed seemed suspicious about it when she moved up to see her better and said,

"What have you done."

"Nothing! Except that I did find that stuff you moved."

"Oh no," GLaDOS said, and if Wheatley was not mistaken her chassis actually dropped a little. He eyed Caroline in trepidation, who seemed not to have noticed.

"Mmhm. I found it."

"What did you find?" demanded Claptrap, and all three of them looked down to see that he had also just entered the room.

"Momma likes to write music sometimes. And she said she would let me listen to it and then she moved it. So I had to look for it aaaall over again."

"Sugar-bits!" Claptrap declared dramatically, posing his hand indignantly midway down his chassis. "The things you keep from me!"

"Who invited you?" GLaDOS demanded.

"Baby, I invite myself," he said, performing the gesture known as 'finger guns' complete with the noise that went along with it. GLaDOS tried very hard not to laugh but she didn't quite make it.

"That's all I wanted!" Caroline cut back in. "To let you know you didn't hide them from me after all!"

"Now you can tell me where they are!" Claptrap said, and Caroline fairly spun around to look at him.

"Oh sure! It's not dubstep, but you'll probably like some of it."

"Lead on, my tiny guide!"

"Caroline!" GLaDOS said, exasperated, but Caroline just smiled at her and left with Claptrap. Once GLaDOS had come back down, Wheatley smiled at her.