GLaDOS and Me

Chapter One

Portal: GLaDOS and Me

Indiana

Setting: Pre-Portal

Characters: Wheatley, GLaDOS

Synopsis: Wheatley, hacker under the employ of Aperture Laboratories, somehow ends up on the GLaDOS Project. His job: To teach her until she's able to learn on her own. But as happens with the best students, Wheatley ends up being the one learning the lessons...

Chapter One

"There it is."

"Why've you brought me here, anyway? I thought... I don't have clearance for this project, Henry. We could both be in, well, things could go um, very badly for both of us."

Henry slapped an arm around his shoulders and led him into the room. "You've got clearance today, Wheatley. Let's go."

Out of the corner of his eye, Wheatley noticed droves of scientists rushing back and forth, connecting and disconnecting long spools of wire, marking down notes on what seemed to be far too many clipboards, but what drew most of his attention was the... the... well, he wasn't sure what to call it, but it was huge, upwards of forty feet long. It reminded him of a sleeping giant. Just hanging there, upside-down, waiting for... Wheatley swallowed hard, remembering the story about giants and Englishmen. That story ended well for the boy, he was pretty sure, but seeing as he was actually from South Wales, well, he'd best keep out of the way.

"Why's it so big? Wouldn't a computer've done?"

"Oh, there's a computer in there," Henry answered, scribbling across a clipboard he'd procured from someplace, "but we figured... well, Caroline's used to having a body, and all."

"So... she made it?" Wheatley whispered, having nowhere near the clearance to even know about that part of the experiment, but Henry had been happy to oblige Wheatley's interrogation after one too many free drinks.

"We don't know yet."

"You didn't do it while the computer was on?"

Henry shook his head. "It's like surgery. You don't add a new organ while the body's awake, right?"

"But... where're you going to put a new organ?" Wheatley asked, confused. "There's no place in us to add more of them."

"That's not what the guys down in Human Physio tell me," Henry said, winking, and Wheatley blanched. He did not need to hear that. He had never done well with the nastier side of things, and even the thought of someone cramming an extra organ into him made his stomach turn.

"So uh," he said hurriedly, "so you decided to let me see the um, the whole, uh..."

"Yes, you get to see if the experiment worked," Henry droned, chewing on the end of his pen. He was well used to guessing the ends of Wheatley's sentences. "You're the impartial observer."

"The what?"

"We're all going to be noting what happens, right?" Henry answered, waving in the general direction of the clipboard-wielding scientists. "But we've all got a stake in this. We're going to say whatever makes us look good. But you have nothing to do with this. This has got nothing to do with hacking into Black Mesa's mainframe. You're the control group for the experiment, really. Just note down what you see," and here he shoved a clipboard into Wheatley's chest, "and turn it into us after you've written it up nicely."

Wheatley grimaced and grasped the clipboard reluctantly, rubbing at his chest. His handwriting was so bad not even his mother could decipher it, let alone Wheatley. He hated it when he had to take notes.