GLaDOS and Me

Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten

As it turned out, GLaDOS loved to talk.

Wheatley had finally met someone who talked as much as he did, only she actually talked more, because he couldn't answer all of her emails at the rate she sent them. She never wrote full messages, either, preferring to send them off one thought at a time, and he supposed if he were a supercomputer who could send emails faster than it took him to think the word 'email', he'd do the same thing. Half the time she seemed to be just sending him whatever she happened to be thinking about at the time, at one point complaining extensively about some badly written function in the mainframe programming, and he couldn't make heads nor tails or it, let alone comment. She talked almost incessantly, but she seemed to understand that he was at work and couldn't answer her straightaway, though he did find himself reading her messages rather more often than he should have. He was simply baffled that someone wanted to talk to him this much in the first place. Sure, she was a giant robot with no one else to talk to, though for some reason she kept saying that the mainframe would not leave her alone and it seemed to have nothing to do with the instructions it needed, but he was flattered all the same. You wouldn't have thought she was doing this, the way she acted when he went to see her at lunch; she flatout ignored him, as if he wasn't even there. When he asked her why, she told him not to worry about it, and not to stop coming. Even if she was ignoring him, it was better than eating lunch in the break room by himself, so he shrugged and did so.

Come evening, though, things would change.

After five o'clock, she would stop ignoring him and come down and listen to him talk, sometimes about what he'd been doing or clarifying things he couldn't quite explain via email, and she would watch him carefully and listen to every word. He wasn't quite sure what the pattern was, or the triggers maybe, but every so often she would give him a shove or a nuzzle, which he found himself enjoying quite a lot. In return he would give her a rubbing or pull her core to his side by reaching underneath it, and she seemed to like it well enough. On Fridays in particular she became very affectionate, pushing her core into his shoulder and pressing her lens into his neck, and while she was doing that he discovered by accident that she liked it when he gave her a bit of a scratch. He hadn't known she was able to feel such a thing, but she could, and when he did that and then rubbed at the place he'd scratched she became very gentle for a while.

Some days she had to run long, complex strings of calculations, which she showed him on occasion and made his head hurt just to look at, and when he went to see her on those evenings she was often tired and listless. He hadn't thought that a supercomputer could get tired, but when she told him about how she felt he realised it was akin to the kind of fatigue he got when he thought too hard, and he decided that made sense. When that happened he just sat and stroked her and spoke to her in a low voice until she fell asleep, which she also had the ability to do surprisingly enough, and then he would take his leave and hope his getting up didn't wake her, as it sometimes did.

Other days Wheatley would be tired or disheartened, or otherwise out of sorts, and he would go to her with the intention of telling her he was leaving, but unfailingly finding himself sitting down and telling her about what was bothering him. Every time he turned to leave she would grip one of his shoulders very gently in one of her maintenance arms, and he would return to facing her once more to find she'd made him a cup of tea. Well, everyone knew that was practically an invitation to tell someone how you were feeling, and he would give her a sad smile and sit down. And she would listen. She would watch him carefully, nearly motionless, until he was finished, and then she would give him a nuzzle or a hug, depending on how upset Wheatley was at the end of it. He tried not to do it too often, but found himself doing it more than he meant to. But it was just so obvious to him that she wanted to know and she wanted to help, and he just couldn't help himself.