GLaDOS and Me

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

Wheatley sat up, gasping, and tried to untangle the sheet from around his legs, promptly spilling himself over the side of the bed and onto the floor. Happily, his nighttime thrashing had knocked most of his pillows on the floor and the landing wasn't too hard, though there was a sharp, jarring pain through his right hip that made him clench his teeth. Annoyed, he struggled with the sheet a few moments longer, eventually rolling free and standing up, one hand feeling across the nightstand for his glasses. Once he'd gotten them on his face he sat down on the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees and hands folded together, staring pensively at the floor.

They'd missed something. Something very, very important. He'd managed to forget about the whole thing once he'd dropped his car keys into the register, tripped over his shoes, and left the front door wide open, but so far as he could tell the nightmare had been a vivid memory of what had happened. And that noise... it sounded almost like –

Wait.

He frowned, unlacing his fingers and rubbing at the crease next to his left eye, almost knocking his glasses off in the process. They'd been trying to build AI, right? And AI was... a computer that could think for itself, right? So... maybe this computer had thought for itself. That noise meant something, and that whole movement business meant something. He still wasn't sure what the latter had been trying to achieve, but he did know what a scream sounded like. And that was exactly what the noise reminded him of.

Okay, so... if the computer was trying to scream... but why would it do such a thing? He tried to think of when it had started. It had started when... when the scientists had begun to celebrate. It was then that the construct had started to behave so violently. He rubbed his forehead with his left thumb and index finger and tried to think. What had changed in the room to cause that? Well... there'd been a lot of noise, suddenly, and a lot of movement. And he'd been startled, he remembered that.

That was it.

He lifted his head suddenly, staring through the open door into the darkened hallway, where he could just barely make out the stairs that he regularly tripped down entirely, and tried to hash out his idea. Maybe... maybe the computer had been startled too. No, not startled... it had looked almost... afraid.

His right hand gripped the edge of the mattress, and he looked to his right for no reason in particular as the idea grew inside his head. Yes. Yes, that made... well, it almost made sense. But if the computer was alive, as the scientists had wanted it to be... and it had been scared, and it had been screaming, and... and... his eyes travelled up the edge of his headboard, a combination of nervousness and sadness in his chest.

Could it have been trying to run away?

The more he thought about it, the more it made sense. It had clearly been throwing itself, but the only reason for it do to that would to be to try to get itself out of the ceiling. And... crazy thought!... maybe it didn't actually know it was connected to the ceiling.

Maybe... maybe it didn't know anything.

And they'd just... shut it off. And they were going to poke around inside of it in the morning.

Wheatley's eyes darted over the darkened room, and he stood up quickly. He rummaged around under the pile of pillows and unearthed his t-shirt, then ran out of the room, tripping over the top stair and only saving himself with an extended, stiffened arm reaching out in front of him and gripping the handrail. Oi, you'd think he'd be able to walk down a set of stairs by now!

He stuffed his bare feet into his shoes and threw his coat over his shoulders, keys in his mouth. He barely remembered to shut the door before he left, let alone lock it, but when he'd finally got that sorted he ran out to his car and put it in gear. He'd reversed a good twenty feet before he realised that hydro poles did not try to run into cars and hurriedly put the car in drive. Ohh, this was going to be a long trip.