Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine

Alyx was stunned by his reaction when Wheatley grabbed her hands, a huge smile on his face.  Of course now she couldn't get a word in as he babbled.

"I have to see her, I have to tell her I'm sorry that I was bossy and monstrous and stupid.  The programming, it confused me, I didn't have the right mind, the Brain to cope with it.  I can tell her all sorts of stuff now.  Has she got better from the gels?  I didn't hurt her with the mashy spike plates did I?  Oh, and she's not fat, well I don't think she's fat, not that it matters, and I can tell her I remember all sorts now,"

His colour was hectic, he was pacing as Gordon, the Proctor and Dr Cross entered.

He turned to them, "I can talk to her, tell her everything, say I'm sorry,"

"Wheatley, please be calm,"

"I need to see her.  Please let me see her! I have to talk,"

Two orderlies came into the room.  Alyx glared at them as they advanced. Dr Cross began,

"Please Wheatley, you must calm yourself. Let's sit down and ta-"

"No, let me see her, let me find her.  She's all I thought about in space, please." That last a drawn out plea.

"Please sit Wheatley," The Proctor motioned to the orderlies, who walked and took each of his arms.

"No," a thrashing of long limbs that threatened to catch them off guard.

"Hold him, please. Wheatley, please listen." The Proctor leant over as Alyx backed off, sick to her stomach.  

"Please!"  The needle nearer now. Wheatley was thrown into a panic.

"No! No.no.no.no...no......please.....plea,"

The orderlies lay him on the floor, gentle now the drug had taken effect.  Tears were still drying on his face as they placed him on the gurney and wheeled him back to his room.

"Why?  Why did you do that?" Alyx shouted.  Gordon walked over to her and took her arm.

"I'm sorry that you are upset Miss Vance, however, as you have seen Wheatley was in a very emotionally fragile state.  He has only regained all of his mental facility – any undue mental trama could endanger him and cause a relapse or breakdown.  We are always aiming for improvement."

The Proctor sat down and motioned for them to sit, but Alyx was too restless to comply.

"All he wanted to do was see Chell.  You said yourself – " addressing Dr Cross "-that she was the only thing he talked about."

Dr Cross rubbed the bridge of her nose.  "And how do you think he'd react when she rejects him?"

"You don't know that!"

"Miss Vance, you saw her reaction in her apartment." Dr Cross stated.

"Yes, but if they met-" started Alyx but the Proctor raised a hand.

"Both of these individuals have been through an incredible amount of physical and mental trauma.  You have seen two emotional reactions from them today, with regards to the mere mention of them to each other.  Emotionally, Wheatley has the mind of a child, an innocent, and needs time to adapt to this new life.  He was only healed by a Vortigaunt this morning, remember?   Chell was healed today too.  You cannot rush healing in these type of cases, where quite frankly, we have not dealt with this sort of situation before.  We have refined treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in  the cases thrown up by war, but this testing situation is new.  The isolation, the daily threat of death – it leaves its mark on the psyche."

"You'd be suprised how strong people can be," stated Alyx defiantly, but the Proctor smiled at her.

"Miss Vance, I see it every day."

Chell wandered through the corridors, looking for a canteen, a vendi-mat, anything really, trying to fight off the deja-vu of white tiles and endless linoelum.  She had passed two orderlies wheeling an incredibly tall man, unconcious on a gurney, very pale, thin.  She overheard one of the orderlies mention "outpatient" to the other and assumed they must be talking about her.  She needed to eat and entered a canteen where four chairs were askew, far from the counter.  She must have just missed someone but the food smelled good and she was hungry.  Her offer of money was waved away and she sat and savoured a good meal.


Alyx knew the Proctor was right, but it didn't take away the anger she had felt when Wheatley was sedated.  But she had to concentrate now on the security recordings Gordon had downloaded, with the help of the nano-bots.
She ran through the the security recordings...
"Welcome to Aperture Science!  If you are old, feeble minded or in any other way incapacitated that the future shouldn't start with you..."

"I don't want your damn lemons!"

"Say, just casually walk over to me and we'll mosey on out! Run, Run, I don't need to do the voice – Run!"
Alyx smiled – Sweet Wheatly, thinking that a bad accent would work.  That was .. misguided .. oh alright pretty dumb, but then he had guided her through ... oh smelly humans, Wheatley, really, and now the turrets and the neurotoxin.

Why would you put neurotoxin next to the Employee Daycare Centre?

And here is the Core Transfer, with Glados trying to kill Chell with turrets, and Wheatley bouncing down a redundant neurotoxin tube.

Substitute Core Ready!  "Exactly how painful are we talking....?"

And then Wheatley changed and, oh, he had been right to say evil, he was guilt-ridden for a reason.  He did put Glados in a potato, although it could be argued that was for self defence, but the knowledge that he was an Intelligence Dampening Sphere had sent him completely over the edge.

"COULD A MORON PUNCH YOU INTO THIS PIT? Hah? Could a MORON do that?"

Oh Wheatley, why Wheatley?

Alyx examined the files relating to the mainframe.  There must have been something corrupting the entire system...

She found Caroline's file and read through the data from Cave instructing the engineers to download her brain into the computer, a side product of the Personality Core development Programme.  Wheatley had not been involved with the transfer and his name did not appear in the record again.  The compilers hadn't even bothered to record his first name. Glados's first act when switched on was to activate the neurotoxin and kill the scientists.  That was with a Morality core. But, at some point, the Morality Core that affected Glados had been removed – by who?

Gordon moved his monitor next to hers as they compared plans about Aperture.  But Alyx noticed something else on Caroline's file and scrolled down to double-check the entry.  

A file, much later than the others opened to reveal two sentences:-

SAVE THEM.  DELETE ME.