Portal: Love as a Construct

Part Eighty-Eight: The Update

Part Eighty-Eight. The Update

Note: this chapter is twice as long as usual so just a heads up there.

"Wheatley," GLaDOS told him briskly, "I need you to do me a favour."

"Uh... alright," Wheatley said, unable to imagine a single thing she could possibly ask him to do. Other than something like 'leave me alone so I can work', which was her usual request.

"I need you to run the facility for me for a few days."

Wheatley nearly stopped responding, and as it was he couldn't gather his thoughts for a minute or two. "You want me to what?"

"I've finally had some time to write some updates for myself," GLaDOS said, which did not really answer his question. "But to install them I'm going to have to restart. All of that is going to take a while. You'll also need to make some changes to my BIOS. I obviously can't do that myself."

"You... can't?" Wheatley asked, his scramble to figure out what a BIOS was proving futile.

"Of course not," GLaDOS said disdainfully. "Don't worry. I don't expect you to figure it out on the spot. I've written you some very clear instructions."

"So uh... I'll only need three dictionaries to understand them, then."

She laughed, which was nice, but he wasn't entirely joking. "If you really get stuck, ask Claptrap for help. I'm serious. If you manage to completely screw up my BIOS settings I'm going to be stuck in some obscene pre-boot hell and I will have lots of time to come up with ways to make you regret that."

"Claptrap will know what to do?" Wheatley asked disbelievingly. GLaDOS nodded.

"I know it sounds unlikely, but he actually does know a fair few things about computing. Just don't let him... experiment. That's where he really manages to go wrong."

"So if, if he screws it up, are you going to be um, are you going to torture me or him?"

"Both of you," she answered serenely. "Remember. I'll have lots of time."

"Okay. Alright so, so you're shutting off for... how long, again?"

"About three days."

"Three days!?" Wheatley yelled. "You want me to run the facility for three whole days?"

"I'm asking you to run it, not move it," GLaDOS said in amusement. "I know your limits, Wheatley. I've made preparations that will not exceed them."

"Alright," said Wheatley.

"Additionally, in order to do this you're not going to be able to go very far from this room. Notifications has been set to alert you if you're about to go beyond your boundary. It's more technical than I care to get into with you, but suffice it to say the Core running the facility does have to be somewhat near the Central AI Chamber."

That sounded... not very fun, but okay. He could do that. "Anything else?"

"Yes. Keep this to yourself. I doubt anyone will be wandering in here looking for you, but in case they do, I'm here and fully operational. Who knows what sort of havoc people would get into if they knew I wasn't around to supervise."

"And... when're you planning on doing this?" he asked, because he seemed to have missed that part.

"Right now, ideally."

"Now?"

She nodded once. "Unless there's something you need to do elsewhere first."

"Well there's... there's not, it just... it's kind of sudden, isn't it?"