Portal: Love as a Construct

Part 109. The Insult

Part 109. The Insult

"GLaDOS, I have a confession to make," said Claptrap the next afternoon. Wheatley looked up, hoping it was that thing he had been refusing to talk about. GLaDOS's turn to look at him was a bit more on the confused side.

"What?" she asked.

Claptrap clasped his hands together and bounced up and down a few times. "I posted your music on the ECHONet."

"What?!" GLaDOS cried out, and as she moved towards him all of the lights in the room brightened momentarily. "Why?"

"Wait! Wait wait wait!" Claptrap protested, backing away and throwing up his arms defensively. "Look, I know I messed up and I am gonna delete it. I just forgot the password to get into the account! And also I forgot the email that the reset got sent to. But I'm working on it, I swear!"

"Why did you do it in the first place?" demanded GLaDOS, seeming on the verge of snatching him up and smashing him to pieces right then and there.

"Because I thought it would be, like, inspirational!"

"To whom?"

"Other robots," said Claptrap, spreading his hands apart. "The ones that're like you."

GLaDOS drew back, optic narrowing. "What are you talking about?"

"It's like this," Claptrap said, pressing his palms together in front of him. "Not all robots on Pandora are like me. In fact, most of them aren't! There are tons of 'em who can't hear music or can just hear a little bit, like you. And I thought it'd be nice if they knew there was an admin bot who had the same kinda hard time as they did! And that you went on to make your own music anyway! Also, I didn't really think about how you'd feel about it until this morning, and then I had a panic attack. You know how much that sucks when you literally can't breathe? I'm all good now, though. Anyway, I was just gonna delete 'em without telling you, but that woulda been like lying! So what I'm trying to say is, it's totally cool if you're mad - and why wouldn't you be? I did something incredibly stupid! - but I'm kinda hoping coming clean about it'll get me some points. In the not-mad column, I mean."

That sounded reasonable to Wheatley. He looked at GLaDOS, but she gave him nothing to gauge her with. Not even when she said, "And was it?"

"Was it what?"

"Did posting it do all those things you were hoping for?"

"Kinda," said Claptrap, folding his arms up thoughtfully. "Most of 'em think it's someone faking a disability for attention. A lotta people do that. It's competitive out there! But an admin bot being short on features seems to be mostly unbelievable. And also you gotta take into account that you guys're kinda backwards compared to over there, and that it's a side account I'm running, and - it doesn't matter. I gotta go look through my ECHONet history to find that email address. And you know that's gonna take me a long-ass time."

"There's more," GLaDOS said before he'd quite left. He paused and turned around halfway.

"More... what?"

"The files Caroline found and showed you were a decoy. I actually keep most of it somewhere else."

Wheatley almost laughed. Carrie really should have thought of that before she'd come in all triumphant about finding it.

"Uh... okay?"

"For when you can get into the account again, I mean."

"You... want me to keep posting it?" He perked up suddenly. "So does that mean you're not mad?"