LaaC: Part Forty-One - The Change

Part Forty-One.  The Change

 

Caroline stuck pretty close to GLaDOS for the first few days, extremely anxious and full of questions, though it seemed she couldn’t tell how irritating GLaDOS found this.  He knew she was trying, but come evening her responses were often curt and pointed.  After Caroline finally decided she was ready to face things she left for the greenhouse, and immediately after she was no longer in the room GLaDOS threw her screwdriver across the room.  It bounced off one of the wall panels on the opposite side and rolled across the floor for a couple of feet.  Wheatley eyed her apprehensively.

“Are you… are you okay?”

She retrieved the screwdriver and put it down next to the modem.  “She has been asking me questions for three days straight.  I am going out of my mind.”

“That was a lot of questions,” Wheatley admitted.  “Least she’s done now, right?”

“With my luck, she’ll be back in ten minutes and stay another three days.” 

“Well… the important thing is um, is that she… that she’s comfortable enough with you to um, to ask all those questions, right?  She’s not… done accepting your judgement, and that can only be a good thing.”

“I didn’t expect you to remember that,” GLaDOS said, looking over at him. 

“I try to remember ev’rything about being a good dad, luv.”

She looked away, back to the case of the modem, which she slowly placed overtop the internals.  “You are, you know,” she said, her voice and posture both softening a little.  “You’re not going to screw anything up this time.  Probably.”

Wheatley felt pretty good about that so he closed the gap between them and gave her a shove.  “Careful.  You almost um, almost gave me a compliment, that time.”

“I’m sorry.  I really should try harder to keep those things to myself.”

And Wheatley knew he should let her get on with what she was doing, especially since she had three days’ worth of work to do now, but he couldn’t help himself.  “I don’t suppose um… don’t suppose you’d be able to uh… to spend some time with uh, with me, would you?”

She looked up, shifting so she’d be able to see him, and he instantly felt bad for asking.  It was inconsiderate.  “Y’know what, um, I’ll just uh –“

“I would love to,” she interrupted, very softly.  “And I really do want to start right now, but unfortunately I must go back to that… thing I was working on.”

“That?” Wheatley asked, waving his handle at the modem.  Whatever she was doing with it, it shouldn’t take too long.

“No.  The other thing.  The one I can’t talk about.”

Wheatley grunted and looked away, frowning.   He tried to be patient and accepting about that little project, but he couldn’t push back the resentment.  He wanted her to tell him everything.

“Come back in four hours,” she went on, removing the modem from the room.  “After that I’ll never have to look at it again.  Hopefully.”

“After four hours you’ll be… you’ll be done with it.  Forever.”

“That should be enough time, yes.  When you come back, we can play cards, if you want.”

“Poker this time?” Wheatley asked excitedly, having since learned that aces of fours did not exist but full houses did.  “Oh, c’mon luv, I can handle it, I can, I can do it, I –“

“All right,” she said, poking at him with the maintenance arm.  “The sooner you leave, the sooner you can come back.”

He snuck in a nuzzle before turning and heading out.          

 

He spent the time reading very carefully about poker in the database.  He’d done this before, many times in fact, but he wanted to make things as easy as possible.  He also wanted to be able to know which hand he had without having to figure out how to trick GLaDOS into telling him.  He felt he had a pretty good grasp on things now, though, and he felt quite optimistic on the trip back.  And even if he was terrible at poker, it didn’t matter, because now she’d be done that damn whatever it was and he wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore.

She didn’t look like she was working on it, though; she was lying down and not a monitor in sight.  Wheatley frowned, feeling a little hurt.  She hadn’t lied to get him out of the room… right?  She wouldn’t do that, would she?

“Gladys?” he called out.  “What’re you uh… what’re you doing?”

She snapped upwards, optic flashing as she focused on him.  “I know how this looks,” she said, a little urgently.  “But I… needed a minute to myself.  I needed to focus on my own thoughts.  I really did think finishing up that project would take four hours.  I only closed the program ten minutes ago.  I was just taking a moment’s peace, Wheatley.”

That made sense.  Honestly he didn’t care, now that he knew she hadn’t lied.  “D’you need more time, luv?” he asked softly, so that she would know he wasn’t upset.  She shook her core.

“I’m fine for now.”

The last time they’d played cards, the backs had been adorned with little red diamonds.  These carried the Aperture logo and the same types of numbers used in the test chambers, and instead of red and black they were orange and blue.  They were quite spiffy, and Wheatley told her so admiringly. 

“Aren’t they,” GLaDOS said, obviously pleased with herself, and she thoughtfully inspected the one she was holding.  “I haven’t used these ones in a while.  Well.  Their virtual counterparts, anyway.”

“Hm?” Wheatley asked vaguely, wondering if that was the start of a full house.  He wouldn’t really get that lucky on the first deal, would he?

“For all the decks I have, I have a virtual deck to go along with it.  Sometimes I play solitaire with this deck.”

“Solitaire?”  He looked up from his card rack.  “What’s… what’s that?”

“As the name implies, it’s a game you play by yourself,” GLaDOS answered, giving him a pile of chips.  “You lay the cards out in a certain configuration, and the goal is to sort the cards according to suit.  However, while you’re attempting to do that you must also sort the cards in descending order while still in said configuration.”  She straightened the top of her own stack of chips.  “I don’t play very often.  It’s honestly more effort to set the game up than it is to play it.  Sometimes I still do, but only to see if I got any slower.”

“Slower at what?”

“My processing speed,” she answered.  “Are you betting?”

He decided to match her blind and moved the appropriate amount of chips between them, and when he’d moved the maintenance arm out of the way she dealt the flop.  “Wouldn’t you notice if your uh, if your processing speed dropped?” he asked, disappointed to see that he did not, in fact, have a full house. 

“It depends on how much,” she answered.  “It hasn’t changed too drastically since I first started measuring it, but there are so many variables as to how it could change that it’s conceivable I might not notice for a little while.”  She raised, forcing Wheatley to match her bet or fold, which he didn’t want to do on the very first round.  He didn’t really have anything, but then again she didn’t know that.

GLaDOS did have a full house after she’d dealt the river, to Wheatley’s dismay, and it must have been the look on his face that made her laugh.  “I knew you wouldn’t like that,” she said, without a trace of sympathy.  “Better luck next time.”

Wheatley stopped talking for a few turns so he could concentrate, which didn’t really help because GLaDOS started staring at him again.  She always did that when they were playing games, but for some reason watching Wheatley play cards held her attention like nothing else.  He didn’t have to remind her to take her turn or continue to deal, at least.  But after he’d managed to win a round, he carefully gathered the chips so they were grouped with the rest and asked, “Why do you do that, anyway?”

“Do what?”

Ooh, excellent, a pair of aces.  “Ev’rytime we play a game and it’s, it’s my turn, you stare at me.”

“Oh,” GLaDOS said, calling his blind.  “That.”

“Yes, that.  Why d’you do that?”

“I’m supposed to.  It’s poker.  I’m supposed to attempt to – “

“Aaah,” Wheatley interrupted, looking up at her with his upper handle raised.  “So… ‘s there a Monopoly face too?  That you’re s’posed to be looking out for?” 

She suddenly became very interested in organising her already meticulously sorted stacks of chips.  “There could be.”

“Or is there,” Wheatley continued in as dark a voice he could manage, leaning forward and looking at her sideways, “a diff’rent reason?”

“That’s an… interesting question.”

“Here’s another one for you, then.”  He wasn’t quite sure how to word it.  Too direct and she’d change the subject, but too vague and he wouldn’t get a real answer.  “Couldn’t be because you like the way I look, could it?”

“I doubt it.  That’s just ridiculous.”

He’d gone a bit too far, but he thought he could still salvage it.  “Oh c’mon, Gladys.  You don’t have to pretend anymore.  You c’n say it if you want and I won’t even mention – well, okay, I will mention it a few times.  But not a lot.  But y’know, if you think I’m, y’know, sort of, hm, sort of handsome, or, or dashing maybe, or at least that I don’t hurt your optic to look at anymore, y’know, you could say so.  Wouldn’t hurt.  It’d probably feel nice to say, as well.  You could give it a go.  You could be all like, ‘Hey, moron, you’re kind of cute when you’re not being a total idiot’, and I’d be all like, ‘Thanks, luv, you’re pretty cute yourself, you know!’ and then that’d be it!  See how easy that was?  Didn’t even hurt.  It was lovely.  Even though it didn’t… didn’t actually happen.” 

“I am not cute,” GLaDOS said firmly.

“Yes you are,” Wheatley said, grinning at her.  This was the fun part where he flustered her beyond speech.

“I am not.”

“Yes you are.”

“I am not.”

“Yes you are.  And d’you know what’s, what one of the really cute things about you is?”

“Since there isn’t anything, I can’t possibly guess.”

“The way you uh, the way you stare at me while we’re playing games and then you um, then you try to pretend you’re not, or that you have an actual reason other than the um, the fact that you like me, when really your reason is that you like looking at me and you uh, you just don’t want to admit it.  It’s cute.  Really adorable.”

That got her fans going, and Wheatley tried very hard not to laugh.  Aha!  He’d figured it out.  He hadn’t quite gotten her to say it, but he had confirmation, at least.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”  But the crooked way she dealt the flop told him otherwise, so he just kept smiling at her.

Oh!  And look at that!  Two more aces.  Excellent!  He had – well, he sort of had an ace of fours.  Four aces, ace of fours, what did it matter!  He couldn’t wait to go all in and –

GLaDOS folded.

“What?” Wheatley squawked, his optic plates retracting.  “Why – what’re you – you’re gonna fold?  You can’t fold.”

“I don’t see why I wouldn’t, since you have four aces.”

“How did you know I had four aces!”

“Your poker face is terrible,” she answered with a good measure of amusement.  “But… it is kind of… cute.”

Wheatley flipped over his card rack in excitement, scattering his chips everywhere.  “Kind of?” he pressed hopefully.

“A little more than kind of.”

“How much more?”

“Some.”

“Considerably more?”

“Maybe.”

“At the rate you’re going we’re going to make it all the way to absolutely cute,” Wheatley said, nothing short of thrilled. 

“Suppose we did,” GLaDOS said in a disinterested sort of way, but her fans were still going at it, which told Wheatley she was not quite as detached from this line of thought as she would have him believe.  “Then what.”

“Then this might happen,” Wheatley said, and he got up to give her a firm nuzzling.  She didn’t really do anything, other than give him a rough shove when he was finished, but he didn’t care because he really had been making her quite uncomfortable.  They played a couple of rounds quietly, and then GLaDOS said, “Wheatley.”

“Yeah?”  He was trying to decide whether to fold; he didn’t want to, but he didn’t think he could make anything out of a seven, a three, and a nine.   

“I don’t always mean to talk like that.  But sometimes I can’t help it.”

He pushed his cards into the centre and looked up at her.  “I don’t mind.  Doing that’s quite fun, actually.  I mean, if you’d be direct about it uh, now and again, that’d be great too, but um, I don’t mind cornering you into saying stuff.”

She gathered up the chips.  “I don’t know how you do that.”

“I know when I’m getting to you,” he said, trying not to laugh.  It was also cute how she still didn’t realise he knew how to read her operations by now.

“But how?  I don’t say anything.”

“No, but your fans do.  And your hard drive.”

“That’s what tells you?”  She leaned in closer.  “Are you serious?”

“Yup,” Wheatley nodded, smiling at her.  “C’mon, luv, you should be happy about that!  ‘cause it means I’ve been paying attention!”

She moved back and looked up thoughtfully.  “You know… it actually is sort of… flattering.”  She returned her attention to dealing.  “Just… don’t take it too far.”

“Gladys,” he said seriously, not even looking at his hole cards, “just because you, because I’ve told you how I know does not mean I’m going to uh, to change anything.”

She nodded.  “Good point.”

Eventually GLaDOS won all the chips, ending the game, but she only put the chips away and left the cards where they were.  She shuffled them in an impressively dextrous way with a pair of maintenance arms and then dealt about half of them into a row of seven.  Wheatley stared at her in confusion. 

“This is solitaire,” she said.  “I’m going to show you how to play.”

She had a special claw with a weak magnet inside of it, and apparently the cards had traces of metal in them.  This resulted in the claw being able to pick up one card at a time when the magnet was turned on.  After a little bit of practice, Wheatley was able to pick up the cards without making a mess, and she guided him through the game.  They didn’t win, but it was fun all the same. 

“Gladys,” he said, their earlier conversation suddenly coming to mind, “why would you… feel a need to um, to measure your processing speed?”

“If I’m slowing down, I want to know about it.”

“But why would that happen?”

“Age, mostly,” she answered, dropping the cards back into their box.  “Everything wears out in time.”

“But – they’re not, are they?” Wheatley said in a panic, now remembering that she was actually short a processor, which would not help in the least.  “They’re – they’re fine, aren’t they?”

“I lose a few hertz per year but it’s not really that – “

“What about the one you lost.”

“That… did lower my capabilities noticeably.”  She came to his level, her gaze quite serious.  “However, a lot of other things improved as a result.  So.  It was worth the loss.”

He tried to smile, because while almost killing her had kick-started quite a few things, he hadn’t realised what an effect it had had on her.  Apparently losing processing speed was a bit more of a deal than he’d initially thought.  She hadn’t seemed any different, but then again he couldn’t see the speed of her thoughts.  “So… aging… makes you slower?”

“Basically.”  She pulled back a little.  “It’s a lot of things.  Everything that contributes to physical wear.  Overuse, malware.  That sort of thing.”

“Malware?  What d’you mean, malware?”

“There’s some semblance of an Internet on the surface,” she answered.  “The humans that are left rebuilt it because it was the easiest way for them to communicate across the world.  There are many, many untouched servers left lying around, mostly left over from major corporations that no longer exist.  Sometimes I access them and download viruses.”

“You give yourself viruses?!” Wheatley demanded.  “Are you insane?”

“No, I’m thinking ahead,” GLaDOS said serenely.  “If I know what’s out there I can build programs against it.  I don’t expect a virus to make it through my firewalls, but I can’t be too careful.”

“How about you get off the Internet?” Wheatley hissed.

“How would I possibly stream cat videos if I did that?”

“Cat… cat videos?”

“Cat videos,” GLaDOS said, nodding.  “They’re enthralling.”

While Wheatley was still annoyed that she was risking her life and the facility itself for cat videos, he had to admit after watching them with her that they really were very enthralling.

To Wheatley’s horror, now that he knew about it, it became far more obvious and true: GLaDOS was aging.  It didn’t happen all at once, of course, but now that his attention’d been brought to it, he couldn’t believe he’d never seen it before.  She moved more slowly, as if her chassis had actually magnified in weight; she slept more, going from six to eight hours; she seemed to be spending less time working as well, electing to do things with Wheatley instead.  And though all that was worrying, it was nothing compared to the noise. 

GLaDOS had always been loud.  It was what came with having hundreds of tiny little parts needed to run hundreds of programs, and he’d gotten used to it for the most part.  But now it seemed as though every move she made was twice as loud, and he could not sit next to her when she was working unless he turned his microphones down, which he was very ashamed of and hoped she didn’t figure out.  One morning he was waiting for her to wake up, wondering if she had time for an hour or two of Monopoly, and jumped, thoroughly startled, when she lifted her chassis and it was accompanied by the screech of tortured metal.  She stopped, and he stared at her, horrified.  She sighed and raised herself the rest of the way, and turned to look at him.  He realised he was still staring and looked down at the floor, suddenly acutely aware of his chassis’ newness.  “Are… are you quite alright, there, luv?” he asked hesitantly.

“I’m fine,” she told him.  “Try to ignore it.” 

He didn’t have a clue how he was going to do that.  He was terrified that she was falling apart, and there was nothing he could do about it.  He continued to keep his gaze on the floor.  And it wasn’t fair, really it wasn’t, that he had a brand-new chassis when she was the one who actually needed one.  Sure, the one he’d been in had been a bit roughed up, but it wasn’t like he really needed to do anything with it.  The facility would fall apart without her. 

And so would he.

“What’s wrong?”

“I just… I feel really bad,” he admitted, shrugging a little.  “That… that this is, this is happ’ning to you, and I can’t do a thing about it.”

“Don’t,” she said gently.  “I’m fine.  I’ve still got a lot left in me.  Anyway.  I need you to leave me alone for a while, and I’ll call you back later.  When I do, I’ll need you to do me a favour, but after that we can play Monopoly if you like.”

He nodded, though he didn’t feel reassured.  “Sounds like a plan.  See you later.”  And he made it as far as the doorway before he paused and turned back.

“What?”

He went back and gave her a quick, firm nuzzle, and to his surprise she actually returned it, though more gently.  “Don’t worry, you idiot,” she told him.  “I’m still me, you know.”

He smiled.  “Be a tragedy if you weren’t.”

“I know.  Now get lost.  Let me get this over with.”

Wheatley left and, not in the mood to try to convince Caroline to stop reading novels, found Atlas and P-body at the usual reassembly machine.  They were sitting on the floor, studiously making card houses with about eight or nine decks, from the looks of the boxes scattered around them, and it suddenly dawned on Wheatley just how old they looked.  Not as old as GLaDOS, but their chassis were also run through with cracks, their wires frayed and their movements stiff.  But they didn’t seem to notice or care, contentedly going about their business and inviting him to join them when they noticed he was there.  He did so, knocking the house over every so often, but they didn’t get upset over it.  They only laughed and set it right back up again.

After a few hours of this GLaDOS called him back, and he waved goodbye hurriedly at the bots, knocking the house over one final time, and when he got into her chamber she handed him three sheets of paper and a red pen.

“What’s this for?” he asked, confused.

“I want you to mark off the things on that list that don’t look important to you,” she answered, and he frowned and looked the papers over.  Very few of them looked terribly important, and he ended up crossing most of them off.  He handed the papers back to her a while later, and she looked them over for a minute.  “Thanks,” she said, and the arm and the pen disappeared. 

“What was that all about?” he asked as she brought out the Monopoly board.

“That was a list of the non-essential processes I run every day,” she answered, somehow managing to bring the board up without knocking the pieces over.  “If they didn’t look important to you, they probably weren’t.  So I shut them off.”

“That’ll help you run better?” he asked hopefully, quivering a little.

“For a while.  I’m going to get slower no matter what, but that will delay it, at least.”

They played for a while, but the longer they did the more Wheatley wished he was playing beside her, instead of across from her, and eventually he couldn’t stand it anymore and set himself up next to her, pressing himself into her core.  “You don’t still feel bad, do you?” GLaDOS asked, though she did help him move his cards and his little paper bills.

“No,” he said quietly.  “No, now I’m just sad.”

“There’s a difference between getting old and dying, you know.  I’m not dying.  I’m not even thinking that much more slowly.  Honestly.  It’s just a precaution.”

“Honestly?” he said, a little angrily.  “Then why’re you sleeping more, if there’s, if there’s nothing wrong with your brain?”

“There isn’t,” she said, turning to look at him.  “That’s what happens to computers.  After a while the… junk code, so to speak, begins to clog up the system.  I can find it myself, but it takes a long time to look through all my programming and that of the facility.  Maintenance misses some every time it runs.  I’m just giving it extra time to run as long as possible.  To find what it’s been missing.  That’s all.  Another precaution.”

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled, unable to look at her.  “I should’ve… should’ve known you, you know what you’re doing.”

“It’s all right.”  He looked up, pleasantly surprised when she gave him a nudge.  “It’s nice to know you’re still worrying about me.”

“Always,” Wheatley said shyly, leaning against her again, and she laughed a little and told him to take his turn.    

It was nice to know she was working on that little problem, and it was even nicer to know there was a way to get her back to moving normally.  Wheatley was a little regretful that Caroline had decided she didn’t want to sleep with them anymore – an idea she’d gotten from one of those books, no doubt – but he had to admit it was pretty fantastic to be able to clear off GLaDOS’s chassis again.  And fun.  Among other things.  So he really didn’t have to worry, he thought as he sat next to her the next morning, contentedly listening to her sleep.  She wasn’t worried about it, and she was doing what she could to prevent it, and if anyone knew what she needed, it was her.  Well, and him sometimes, because she liked to fake that she didn’t need things like hugs and cuddles when he knew for a fact she adored them.  But it was fun to think of new ways to sneak up on her and do those things, so he didn’t really care.  Only when he was particularly wishing that she would sneak up on him once in a while did it bother him.

The afternoon was very nice, as it usually was after he’d helped her out with maintenance, but the evening was not so pleasant.  Caroline was apparently not done being a grown-up, or whatever the heck she thought she was doing; Wheatley hadn’t seen her in days, and the panels refused to tell him.  When she returns, and if she wants you to know, she will tell you.

I just want to know where she’s been, all this time! he protested.

She is not in danger.  That is all you need to know.

“You’re suddenly in a terrible mood,” GLaDOS remarked over their daily Monopoly session.  “What’s wrong now?”

“Panels won’t tell me where Carrie is,” he grumbled, pressing his little dog into the board rather harder than he should have.

“I know where she is,” GLaDOS told him, a little teasingly, pressing the button on the randomiser and moving her ship eight spaces. 

“They told you?” he asked indignantly, looking at her.

“No.  Surveillance did.  The panels didn’t want to tell me either, and I didn’t want to make them.  Surveillance, however, has no such qualms.  I understand.  She wants her privacy.  But you don’t just disappear for five days and expect me to let that pass me by.  I can’t.”

“Where is she?”

“She’s at your hole.  Surveillance tells me she just sits there, all day, until she decides to go to sleep.  Then she waits for you to leave the next morning and goes back.”

“Should… should I try to… talk to her?” Wheatley asked, a little miffed that she was using his present from GLaDOS.

“No.  She doesn’t want us to know where she is, remember?  So just keep pretending you don’t know.”

They played quietly for a while, Wheatley for once not feeling like talking.  Unfortunately, that meant he had to sit there and listen to GLaDOS’s brain, and while she had calmed it down considerably, it was still quite loud, and despite his conclusions of yesterday he began to get upset over it again.  He couldn’t believe how much it hurt him inside, just to think that she might be breaking down and unable to do anything about it.  He was so worried and so scared, and on top of GLaDOS’s problems, Carrie was being… weird, and secretive, and… he just felt like his perfect life was beginning to fall apart.  And he hated just having to sit on the outside and watch it happen.  He was helpless. 

“Wheatley.”

“Yeah?”

“Stop worrying.  It’s not like you.”

“I just want ev’rything to go back to the way it was,” he said helplessly, looking at his cards without really seeing them.  “Where… where you were okay, and, and Carrie was, was normal, and…”

“She is normal,” GLaDOS told him.  “She has to figure out what she wants in her life.  She’s just not doing it in a way you’re comfortable with.”

“C’n we put this away for now?” he asked, gesturing at the board.  “I’m… not really into this right now.”

“All right,” she answered.  “Are you… tired, or can I open the ceiling for a bit?”

Wheatley became inexplicably happier, and he smiled.  “’course you can.”

 After she’d put the board away she did just that, and Wheatley leaned up against her, feeling more content.  She might be wearing down a little, but she was still as sharp as ever.  Just as sharp and brilliant as she’d ever been.

They sat in silence and just looked out of the hole, and this time the moon was not overhead, so all they could see was the vast sprinkling of stars up above them.  It was quite pretty, as if the night sky had been painted with a glittery, transparent gel, and as he was staring at them Wheatley suddenly got an idea.  “Oi, GLaDOS.  There’re, there’re uh, sort of pictures up there, right?  I can’t… can’t quite remember what the Space Sphere called them.”

“Constellations?”

“Yeah, that’s the word!  Is there… d’you know which ones are up there?”

“Yes, but I can’t see them.  It requires too much imagination.”  She sounded a bit sad, Wheatley thought.  Well, he could fix that, but he didn’t think she’d quite like the idea. 

“Well… if… you could tell me uh, the ones that’re up there, right now, and… if you let me see through uh, through your optic, I could point them out to you.”

“All right,” she said.  “Do you know how?”

“To what?”

“To look through my optic.”

“You… you’re going to let me?” he asked, baffled.

“I want to see them.”

Wheatley blinked several times, and he had to admit that he did not.  She gave him the relevant instructions, and pretty soon he was looking out of her lens instead of his own.  He frowned.  “Oi.  You should let me clean this, sometime.”

“It is pretty bad,” she agreed, “but if you smudge it, it’s only going to get worse.”

“I know how to do it by now.”  He was a little insulted.

“Fine.  But not when I’m on.  Anyway.  Are you going to find them yourself, or do you want me to tell you which ones are supposed to be there?”

“Tell me, and I’ll find them.”

So she told him about one that contained the brightest star, and that there were really two constellations that went along with it, a giant ladle and a giant bear.  Wheatley carefully scanned the sky above them for the bear or the ladle, and after a few seconds he picked out both.  With a maintenance arm, he carefully traced out their paths to her, and she made a wondrous noise and straightened a little.  “I can see them,” she said, sounding overjoyed.  “Show me another.”

And he did, soon able to pick them out on his own without her telling him what they were, and after a while he told her a story about the figures in the sky.  It was a silly story, about bears chasing snakes and hunters with soup spoons and getting laughed at by random strangers passing them by on the street, but it made her laugh.  It was the dumbest, most exaggerated story he’d ever told, but she thought it was very funny, and he felt a lot better.  So what if she was getting a bit old.  She was still the same Gladys he’d known all his life.  The same Gladys that he loved with all his heart.

“You see, Wheatley?” she asked, sounding a bit sleepy.  “Nothing’s really changed.  We’ve built on top of what we were, but we’re still the same, underneath.”

“Fine.  You were right.  Again.  Hurrah.”  He said it teasingly and accompanied it with a shove, so she’d know he was kidding, and she laughed.

“Always.  I have my reputation to think of.”

Wheatley decided to suggest that they lie down, seeing as she did sound tired, and she did so without comment.  He disengaged from her optic, honestly having forgotten he’d been looking through hers instead of his despite the horrific amount of dust on her lens, and he stared into the glowing darkness below him.  He didn’t know how long it’d been, but it’d been a while, and he jumped a little when GLaDOS said, in a surprisingly hesitant voice, “Wheatley?”

“Yeah?”

“I… this is… going to be an awkward question, but… I mean, in light of everything… oh, never mind.”

“No, ask!” he exclaimed, looking over at her.  She looked at him as well, opening and closing her lens a little.  “I want to answer it.  Whatever it is.”

“Do you still think I’m beautiful?” she asked, in a voice so quiet he almost didn’t hear it.  His heart melted and he swung ‘round beneath her so he could look her right in the eye and she could relax at the same time.

“’course I do,” he said softly.  “You haven’t gotten any less beautiful.  I promise.”

“But… I don’t exactly know what I look like now, but… it can’t be –“

“You’re still beautiful, Gladys,” he said in as gentle a voice as he could.  “Yeah.  You’re… a little older looking.  So what.  You can be old and beautiful.  And you are.”

“Thank you,” she said, very quietly, and he smiled at her and then manoeuvred himself up to give her a solid hug.  She pressed her lens into his chassis rather hard, and he felt a bit bad.  He’d been moping about the state of her body and completely disregarding the fact that she had to live in it.  She’d seemed to be dealing with it so well, calmly and efficiently as she did with everything, and he’d not even thought about how she might be feeling. 

He swung back up to rest against her again, and she gave him a nuzzle.  He returned it, then said, “I’m sorry.  I’ve been insensitive.”

“I don’t want you to worry, Wheatley.”

“You’re worth worrying about,” he whispered, and she laughed a little helplessly and shoved him. 

“Do you have a book you pull these things out of?  I don’t know where you come up with these things.”

“My head!” he said proudly, smiling triumphantly.  “Thought it up myself, I did.”

“Well… stop.”

“Why?”  It was an odd request for her to be making, seeing as she usually seemed fairly pleased when he said things like that. 

“Because… it makes me feel… I don’t know.  Soft.  Organic.  Mushy.”

“Maybe I like melting your insides,” he said suggestively, wiggling his handles.  He really liked hearing that he made her feel the way she made him feel, sometimes.  When she said something surprisingly tender, or touched him in just the right way.

“Please don’t.  I can’t think straight when you do that, and we all know disaster befalls this place when I’m not thinking straight.”

“Sometimes,” he said quietly.  “And sometimes you just relax, which is good for ev’ryone.  ‘specially yourself.”

“I’m working on it,” she said, just as quietly.  “It’s probably too late now, but…”

“Nah.  ‘specially not for you.”

She pressed on him for a long moment.  After a few more minutes her hard drive wound down, though it really hadn’t been all that active the last little while, come to think of it.  He was glad of that, happy that he’d gotten her to relax for an entire day! and told himself to work on not being terribly worried she was going to break down suddenly anytime soon.  He wouldn’t have recognised the change if she hadn’t brought it up, so he was just going to continue on as before.  Though he might bug her to work a bit less, if he could.  Which would be great because then she would have to spend more time with him.

He decided to work on that.