"Of course, I did actually have it all under control," said Wheatley.
They were walking back across the main square, the late-afternoon light throwing long, crisp black shadows from their feet, from the buildings on the sunset side of the square and the people walking here and there around them, crossing the wide, earthy space on errands of their own. Like a puppet against an illuminated curtain of golden dust, the shadow-Chell walked purposefully ahead, the black rectangle of Garret's laptop held in her crossed arms, and the shadow-Wheatley loped anxiously along behind her.
"And anyway it's- it's like he said, it could have gone at any time, definitely structurally unsound to begin with, that thing. Balanced on a knife-edge. Hanging by- by a thread. On a- uh- it was balanced on the edge of a knife, and the knife that it was balanced on was, itself, hanging by a thread. Accident waiting to happen, is what I'm driving at, practically a miracle it hadn't come down on anyone before. Lucky I flagged it up for you, really, I mean, I'm not suggesting negligence or anything, not pointing blame in any one direction, but someone could have been seriously hurt. Like that little kid, whatsername-"
"Ellie."
"That's the one, yeah, with the wellies... we had a bit of a chat, while you and old cleverclogs back there were fixing the shelf. Told me all about these things, vortigaunts, I think they're called. Amazing! Did you know, right, they can talk to each other over miles? Entire bloody continents, sometimes, and- here's the unbelievable bit- they only do it with their brains! I know! Incredible!"
He waggled his fingers, presumably to indicate the mysterious, awe-inspiring properties of telepathic communication.
"Plus, plus, she gave me a thing, look."
Chell looked. The 'thing' was a hairclip, and with some difficulty, and some tentative help from Ellie's far smaller (and far less clumsy) fingers, he'd managed to wedge it across his tie like a tie-pin.
It had a frog on it.
"It's funny, that, isn't it? That thing where you feel like you'd be proper cut up about it if a, a shelf fell on someone, like you get a bit sort of queasy just thinking about it, even though you don't exactly need them for anything, or hardly know them, even."
Chell slowed a little. It was funny, but not exactly for the reason he meant. The feeling he was describing- empathy, natural concern without a particular motive, call it what you wanted- was not normal, not for anything out of That Place, anyway. No other Aperture device she'd had anything to do with had been capable of trying to express genuine concern- even exhibiting the appearance of it had been beyond them, in most cases.
She'd encountered other personality cores, although she hadn't had the chance to study them in any great detail- on the two occasions when she'd stumbled across them she'd been under a bit too much pressure to start taking notes. On the surface, they'd been just like him- but then that was exactly it, that was all they'd been- surface. They'd all been equipped with one primary function, one ever-repeating obsessive program cycling around their single-layered artificial minds; cake, dubious facts, curiosity, space. They'd barely seemed self-aware. Wheatley's primary function was just as clearly-defined- or at least, it was supposed to be- but where was this simple human depth, this half-crippled complexity, in any of the others?
She stopped, one foot on the first step up to her own front door.
"Wheatley?"
"Yep?" He was still grinning down at the frog-clip.
"What's... your first memory?"
He looked up, startled. "Er- sorry, what?"
She raised her eyebrows at him. He blinked, worry beginning to overlay the surprise.
