GLaDOS and Me

Chapter Five

Chapter Five

Wheatley staggered into her chamber that morning, barely awake, eyes still sticky with sleep. He hadn't been able to sleep that night, since there was some sort of irritating noise somewhere or another, and when he'd gone downstairs to get a glass of water he discovered he'd left the television on. He'd slept after that, but it had been far too late at night for him to get any real rest. He stumbled up the stairs and nearly dropped his box, but he managed to catch his balance and make it onto the glass.

GLaDOS was watching one of the monitors mounted on the wall of her chamber, which displayed a constantly updated system log. Each of the monitors displayed a different log, and he wasn't sure which one was which. He wondered if she did.

"G'morning, luv," he said, his voice thick and hoarse, and he cleared his throat self-consciously. "Can I talk to you, please?"

She glanced at him but did not move. He grimaced, not wanting to fight with her today because he really was not in the mood, but it was his own fault. It really was.

"I want to apologise for what I said yesterday. That's all. I just want to do it to, to tell you directly. You can go back to that when I'm finished, if you like. I know you don't owe me anything, but... please, GLaDOS. Just give me a minute."

She obliged, coming down to his level and looking him calmly in the eye, and he flinched but didn't look away. "I'm sorry," he told her, twisting his fingers together. "I... it was wrong of me to say that... that I was brought low by uh... by talking to you, instead of, I dunno, someone else. If I'm honest, I... I don't want to talk to anyone else. What I said earlier, there, that was true. You listen, and I appreciate that, I really do. I don't know why I said that bit about robots. I'm sorry."

She shifted around him and bent over his box, inspecting the latches closely, and he frowned. "What're you doing?"

She looked at him and nudged the box.

"That... that's it? We're fine, now? You're not upset?"

She shook her core and moved towards him again, giving him a shove, and he jumped back. He stared at her in confusion, but she'd already gone back to the box.

Huh. Okay. That was... easier than he'd expected.

He ducked underneath her and unlatched the box, pushing up the lid, and she poked her lens inside of it, the yellow glow from her optic creating highlights against the dark wood, and one of her maintenance arms dropped out of the ceiling and hit the floor. She snapped around to look at it, and to his surprise she generated a noise that he took to mean she was annoyed. She pulled the claw across the tiles and up the stairs, eventually getting it back into the box and pulling out the truck. She bent over the back of it, poking at the rear door with her lens, and Wheatley pushed on her core with his index finger and opened it for her. She tipped it backwards and pushed it out of the way after all of the cars had spilled out. "You like the cars?" he asked, but she didn't answer, instead beginning to push at them with her claw. He reached out to help her line them up, but whenever he did so she would push his hand away. He folded his hands in his lap and tried to be patient.

It took her half an hour to get them lined up to her satisfaction, if it could be called that; she seemed unhappy with the way they were arranged and kept trying to make the line straighter, which she couldn't do because her control of the arm wasn't yet dextrous enough. Finally she looked at him and tapped at the glass in front of the cars.

"Good job," he said, without enthusiasm. He was simply too tired to really acknowledge her accomplishment. She shook her head and tapped the glass again.