GLaDOS and Me

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Seventeen

Though his days at Aperture were numbered and his time with GLaDOS ending, Wheatley was beginning to feel a strange sense of peace settling over him. He wished he understood it. Was it from being with her? Was that something that happened when you lived with someone you loved? Or was it just him becoming numb to his impending sacking? He wished he knew, but at the same time was okay with not knowing. The feeling was new, so it was a bit off-putting, but it was extremely pleasant at the same time. It never really went away, just lessened a bit sometimes. He felt it most when he was waiting to fall asleep at night, GLaDOS's core nestled into his stomach and his fingers tracing through the scratches embedded in the ceramic. Beyond that was the rumbling of her other hard drives and the occasional twitching of a panel here and there. If GLaDOS's brain was particularly quiet he imagined he could hear the whooshing of the supercooled air being sent into her chamber through vents he'd never located. Sometimes he couldn't sleep for a while because he would become hyperaware of the loud humming her brain generated and the subtle vibration spreading out of her core and into him. He would begin to get frustrated at his sleeplessness and contemplate getting out from under her, but before he did he would take a breath, force himself to calm down, and remember how this could be the last time he ever slept with her, and that would solve his problem soon enough. He was thinking about such times one evening, waiting for her to finish up something or another, when he suddenly realised perhaps he did things in his sleep that kept her up at night. As a matter of fact... he probably did.

"Oi, GLaDOS," he began, not really wanting to bring it up because honestly it was a bit embarrassing, "I never um... I never keep you up, do I?"

"Keep me up? I was under the impression my wiring did that. So no. You don't." She shook her core. "Of all the strange questions you've asked, that has to take the cake."

"No, not... I didn't mean that," Wheatley protested, mentally smacking himself for forgetting that GLaDOS's grasp of idiom was limited. "I meant at night. I meant... I never wake you up."

"Have you been trying to?"

"By mistake?"

"I don't understand." She came down directly in front of him, lens narrowing. "How could you possibly wake me up by mistake? That sounds like an interesting concept, but not one you would ever master."

Wheatley supposed he was going to have to actually ask.

"I was just... wond'ring if my um... my... if I kept you up with my uh, my snoring."

"Oh." She backed away, returning to her former position. "I don't know why you'd think that, but no."

Wheatley's forehead creased as he leaned forward. "What d'you mean, you don't know why I think that?"

"You're making it sound as though it's some sort of problem. You don't have health problems. You just snore."

"And it doesn't bother you?"

"What is with all the ridiculous questions?" GLaDOS demanded, looking at him again. "Why in the hell would it bother me?"

He stared at her for a good handful of seconds. "It uh... usually it bothers people. Keeps them awake. Or wakes them up."

"It doesn't bother me. Quite the opposite."

He raised his brows, his eyes going wide. "You like it?"

She twitched a little in what he thought might've been a shrug. "I told you about never really being off, right? I'm always aware of what's going on. That includes what you're doing. When I hear it, it reminds me that you're still here. Sometimes I forget. It's a nice thing to remember."