Program Nine
Ninth Entry
Second Level
The decision was made. Gilda was no longer classified as 'Test Subject'. She was now classified as 'Valued Employee', with her 'Required Testing' sessions completed. As such, all that was left was one more set of tests to keep her distracted while I prepared a surprise for her deep in the bowels of Aperture. Ass-phalt and Peabrain had granted me access to those deeper levels, so when the time came for her to 'graduate', it would be down there waiting for both of us.
I utilized 1-22 v Beta-7. I would have used Beta-2, but it was rendered obsolete as a result of several innovations on the part of Gilda's educational endeavors. The new design had the same pattern of test chambers, but the puzzles had been altered to take into account her flying capabilities, making them very different. Her weapon systems and gel sprayers were also locked for this, though there would be points within the later tests where she would be able to unlock those capabilities.
I don't know why I included the off course segments. Given what happened...I'm glad I did.
Gilda grinned from ear to ear as she made her way through the new test chambers. Glados had gone all out in redesigning them to take Gilda's abilities into account, and it was apparent from the very first chamber. The switch that had to be activated was at an angle to the rest of the room in an upper corner, and the weighted cubes had been replaced with Aperture Science Self-Aligning Gravitational Cubes, which pulled themselves towards whatever its internal 'down' alignment was regardless of actual gravity. Said 'down' always pointed to one of the six sides, and could be realigned by slamming one side against a wall, or just turning the cube. Some careful Portal manipulation also proved necessary, as the ASSAGC couldn't be carried in flight.
After that were chambers with the rotating platforms and Aerial Faith Plates, and then came the Hunter Turrets...but that was only the beginning. Chamber Six was a 'Heavy Air' chamber, where the air was too thick to flap through, making it impossible to fly in using her wings. Chamber Eight was a 'Space Chamber', with no air and no gravity, forcing her to maneuver herself by careful leaps, digging talons and claws into walls, and careful wing thrusts for midair maneuvering via rebalancing of body mass. And then Glados got creative.
In chambers with air, Wind Tunnels joined the orange and blue Gravity Tunnels that were part of the original test set. These sent a strong stream of wind from one grate to an opposite one, which slammed Gilda against the exit grate if she tried to fly through. In the space chambers, Glados added Grav-spheres, floating spheroids in the void of the chamber that would draw Gilda towards them, forcing her to maneuver around their gravity field to get to the exit door elsewhere in the chamber. When Hunter Turrets that could maneuver freely via Anti-Grav were added to all of this, Gilda was having the time of her life!
As such, she actually found herself somewhat sad as she reached chamber 21, only to see basic Light Bridge puzzles. "Really, Mom?" she complained as she set up the portals she'd need. "I don't even need to fly for this."
"Consider it a cooldown lap," Glados responded. "Besides, I promised you a surprise, remember? If you're almost done, you'll be able to get it sooner. And I have good news. It's ready."
"Radical!" Gilda crowed, rushing across the light bridge towards the fallen Weighted Cube. Before she got anywhere near, however, all the power in the chamber went out. "What the-? Mom! What gives?"
"This is not part of the plan," Glados pointed out. "Hang on, I'm picking up some sort of dimensional anomaly in the chamber. It appears to have drained all power in the chamber. I'm working to get the cameras back online-"
"My armor systems still work," Gilda spoke up as she turned to look at the anomaly as it took form, a coruscating white sphere that spun in the center of the chamber. "Can you get my feed?"
"Negative," Glados insisted. "I specifically designed the armor systems to not allow remote access so it couldn't be turned against you while you were wearing it. Hang on, I have a camera working-"
The light flared, and when it faded a core floated where it had been. Its handles flexed a few times, and then the optic irised open, revealing a blue glow within. "Oh...oh..." the core spoke up with a playful voice with a pleasant timbre. "Oh...those warps do not get easier, let me tell you. No idea how the organics handle it with their digestive systems. I don't even have one of those, and I want to spew chips..." It swiveled up as it hovered in the center of the room. "Right. Location, location, am I in the right place...ooh, armored knight! That's impressive."
"You!" Glados snarled, her voice filled with so much hate and loathing Gilda actually backpedaled from the intensity. "What are you doing back here?"
The core swiveled up towards the working camera. "There you are, Glados! Or should I say...Caroline? Yes, it's Wheatley, back from the cold void of space you banished me to! Back...for revenge!" He then proceeded to laugh maniacally, shaking up and down in the center of the chamber. "And this time, you aren't going to be able to stop me!"
"How did you even get back here?" Glados demanded. "What was that warp you used?"
"You really want to know?" Wheatley asked slyly. "Well...let's just say I've been...Combined." The back of the core opened up, and strange liquid metal components began to extrude from within. "Now let's just see about getting an appropriate form to strike fear into the all too human heart inside that Core of yours...once I make sure this Test Subject doesn't get in the way."
The wall of the chamber nearest to Gilda suddenly opened, revealing the empty space between Test Chambers. "Run, Gilda!" Glados barked out worriedly. "Your weapon systems are still locked! I'll guide you to where you can unlock them-"
"Oh no you don't!" Wheatley snarled as he lunged for Gilda, the liquid metal components having given him the shape of a bio-metal spider.
Letting out a surprised squawk, Gilda dove for the hole, spreading her wings and taking flight.
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Yes! Lovely, Wheatley is a part of the test I presume
... I... don't have words for that ending.
7907890 didn't you just read the surprise in gladlos voice this wasn't planned btw I call epic boss fight
7907890
Doubt it. Of course, you have to wonder what they were thinking... or... is the final boss... G-Man? He's twisty enough to be capable of using the idiot to actually accomplish something, even if that something is just a distraction.
7907904
7907907
You don't necessarily have to be surprised to sound like it, GladOS also has a synthesized voice so, maybe she could find the parameters for surprise or whatever.
And maybe he has something to do with it, I was just theorizing
The Combine upgraded the Stupidity Core?!?
It's official. Not only are we going to see Chel, but also the Chuck Norris of theoretical physicists himself, Gordon Freeman. 
7907902 The Other Sans doesn't have words for this?! Okay, now I have to read it.
Hey tats, have you by chance ever seen the meet the cores videos on youtube... if not you should, might give you a few ideas for the personality cores later on, or if all else fails they are good for a laugh
7908002
I have watched them.
... Did Space Core get the Combine's upgrade too?
Actually, better question: Did Space Core find Equestria?
Uh-oh...that's not good.
Oh! Combining the Half Life universe with the Portal universe in a creative way!
Pun not intended!
I mean, I know they're already canon to each other, but this is a creative way to bring them together!
Well then.
Wheatley's back
And still a moron, but now "upgraded"
That's nice
I really hope the surprise is like a robotic griffin suit Glados can use, like in that picture Gilda painted.
7907913
Read the opening to the chapter again, this wasn't intentional.
Oh dear.
Oh that's not good.
Just wait.
Or not.
That's not good.
Tell me that's not...
Great, it IS him.
That doesn't sound good.
And things get even more interesting.
Oh yeah. Portal takes place in the Half-Life Universe.
...And Wheatley's been upgraded by the Combine. Because of course.
...i bet 5$ that gilda will tear him apart, Whos with me?
7908238
True
'Whole' should be hole, right? Unless there's something that is missing.
Great job with the reveal, I hope Gilda makes space junk out of Wheatley.
Haven't played the Half-Life games yet, but I've heard it has a connection to the Portal games. And I'm guessing this is a reference to that game series.
It's either that, or Wheatley has merged with a T-1000.
Here come dat boi! What uuup!
7908069 I will give you this core if you push me in the other direction!
''Tis a deal!
SPAAAAACE!
7907902 Bummer dude! You couldn't come up with a new pun this hole time?
I mean, just combine a couple words or something!
I read his lines in his voice; so much fun. I hope he gets more banter in the chapters to come
7908262 I forgot that as well
7908524 See, you get it.
You know, this chapter brings to light the necessity for some sort of manual override on Gilda's Armour's full functionality (to be installed upon resolution of the current crisis, of course). Using it would automatically invalidate the results of whatever test/course she is in, but if she uses it at all then tests should be the last thing on her mind...
7908530 Not really that but the situation rather. Gilda is still essentially a child in that situation so... yeah... not really much to say about that.
If Wheatley isn't a part of the test, and if the Combine isn't controlling him, this doesn't make all that much sense yet. He wasn't inherently evil in Portal 2, he only went mad after being hooked up to the facility, and even then we see he's repentant of what he did in the credits.
I think you might've meant "Hole" here, as in a space in a surface, rather than "Whole", as in complete set.
Other than that... wow. This chapter left me both shocked, angered, and... pleasantly surprised. I thought for sure it'd be Chel coming back in, or maybe even Gordon Freeman for that little "Black Mesa" line in the song Still Alive, which would of course give Gilda and GLADoS access to the Gravity Gun. Did not expect Wheatly, and Terminator Wheatly at that!
Though I suppose it was inevitable. After all... He'll be back.
Oh god, the moron's back for revenge and got an upgrade. That... cannot be good.
This is either really bad, or going to be really fun. Looking forward to more.
Keep up the great work. Deus tecum.
nvm.
7908491 it's kinda-sorta supposed to be in the same universe, yes. "maybe black mesa...that was a joke, hahah, fat chance" for starters.
Well... this is the first time I'm genuinely terrified of Wheatley if he's allied with the Combine.
And I'm thinking Wheatley would go after Chell as well for not saving him from being flung into space. So hopefully she comes back and teams up with Gilda and GLaDOS, because anything taking on all three of them will get ripped into small pieces, dumped in an incinerator, and then sentenced to the room where robots scream at you.
7907950 That would be awesome. I can totally see Freeman at least pondering how Gilda can fly with the size her wings are.
7908069 You know, I can honestly see him landing in Ponvyille and getting repaired by Twilight. Then Celestia, Luna, or Twilight tossing him into orbit occasionally so he can get more space.
7908367 I think Chell and GLaDOS will get in on the ripping, at the very least using portals to set up the battlefield in Gilda's favor.
7908593 ...I see what you mean.
WELL THAT'S NOT GOOD
i.imgflip.com/11reed.jpg
7908627 Then you weren't really paying attention to everything he says before you plug him into the mainframe central control console. At the center of his core Wheatley hates his job, Aperture, Humans, and just about everything else around him. He's just too much of a moron to really act on this hatred when he's just a core, and thus exists more or less in a constant state of denial. If you really look at things before you plug him in, you realize that he's using you to try to get out of his situation (All the while slinging thinly veiled insults at you while trying to pretend to be your "friend").
At first he's really only interested in escaping Aperture because on some level at least he knows he's worse than useless, but once GlaDOS corners Chell and she plugs him in to replace her core, well... He turns on Chell in less than a minute after realizing that he's Finally in a position to actually Do something, slinging nonsense about how he did all the work while Chell was "Bossing Him Around" (despite Chell being Mute), and when GlaDOS realizes that he was the Core created to dampen her own intelligence, and explains such (in her own, "Charming" manner), he goes into a rage over denial of being the idiot that he is, and smashes both Chell and GlaDOS into Old Aperture...
After the end of the game, I would expect that upon finding himself once again powerless, and worse still, floating endlessly through the void of space, he would once more enter his state of enforced denial of hating everything that he hates, thus his "Remorse". Being picked up by the Combine, and subsequently being upgraded by them would likely boost his Ego to the point of once again wanting to lash out at those he perceives as having Wronged him in some way. As GlaDOS is both the bigger Threat and the easier to track down now that Chell is currently out and about on her own, I'd see him as going after her first, before working on tracking down Chell.
7910134 That's a pretty pessimistic way to look at it. Sure you can say Wheatley was a shit bag the entire time, but the only other person we have to compare his situation to is GLaDOS. She's amoral at best and evil at worst when she's hooked into the machine at first, and the longer she's away from in, the more she becomes legitimately sane and compassionate again, to an extent. You could chalk that up to her being in a position of submission with Chell, but they need each other to survive the potential nuclear meltdown; no matter what, GLaDOS was coming along, and she didn't have to be nicer.
Even if you wanna chalk all of that up to her getting her memories as Caroline back, that doesn't explain why Wheatley would be repentant in space with no one around except Space Core to hear him. He has no way of getting home, nor does he have any reason to pretend to be anything but himself. Wheatley might have been evil all along, but his monologue in the credits leads me to believe the guy was just a dummy who got his hands on a really dangerous toy and let it go all the way to his head.
Read that as "...a surprise for her deep bowels..." And I was like, woah, Glados, what the hell are you putting in that cake?
I got nostalgic and started playing the Portal games again. Finished the first one, installed the second... and saw a mod called "GiLDa's Laboratory" in the workshop. It was first posted January third... one day after this fic started. Any connection? Did I miss something in the early comments? Haven't played the mod yet.
7910849
I have no awareness of this mod.
Can you link me to the page?Edit: Nevermind. Just looked at the page. Coincidence.
I wonder if Wheatley is still going to apologise to Chell if he meets her, he said he would after all.
7910587
Pessimists are what Optimists call Realists.
And she wasn't really any nicer, especially for the first while. It's simply that GlaDOS knows how to prioritize, and despite knowing that she's a homicidal sociopath Chell knows that bringing GlaDOS along while she climbs Old Aperture is probably the only way she will survive once she gets back to the newer facilities. Chell knows she's scheaming, she knows GlaDOS is probably going to try to kill her again as soon as she is able, but for both their mutual greatest chance of survival, they decide to suspend their pissing match until they don't have an impending nuclear meltdown looming both figuratively and literally over their heads. The whole way through GlaDOS doesn't really change her attitude towards Chell, except in a very, Very gradual manner, that both she and the player doesn't really even realize until after the fact as she realizes her connection to Caroline and what it all entails for her own existence, and immediately tries Deleting "Caroline" once she's back in charge and figures out what parts of her code are made up of Caroline's personality (though it doesn't seem to have worked completely as she intended). It's easy to forget that first time any of us played through the game, when we were suspicious of the yellow eyed potato the whole way through, and didn't realize that she's changed at all until she pulls you back through the portal to the moon, because GlaDOS is focusing most of her 1.6 volts of available power towards figuring out a way to get herself back in charge instead of trolling Chell.
Did it ever occur to you that maybe Wheatley is a babbling idiot, too in love with the sound of his own voice to know how to shut the F
Up? Then there's also the simple fact that Self Delusion is a powerful force that understands not logic nor reason, both of which Wheatley is in short supply of to begin with...
"Himself" in this case being an AI Core deliberately created to be both the biggest idiot in existence while deluding himself to the existence of his own idiocy... You know, now that I think of it, this may be why he didn't fry his brain when GlaDOS tried to Paradox-Lock his Processing Core... His mindset is paradoxical to itself already.
Malice and Stupidity are not mutually exclusive to one another. In fact, they seem to go hand in hand quite often if the state of the world today is any indication...
7912200 I don't think you have to hide the spoilers for Portal 2 since this story is set after that. I'm fairly certain every major twist in the game has been touched on in the story by this point.
Anyway, I think you're making more assumptions than me when it comes to Wheatley's personality. There's a difference between selfish and evil. Good people can still be selfish, and bad people can still be generous. No one's doubting that he's using Chell to get out of Aperture , but she's doing the same to him. That's all it was ever about; escaping. Wheatley didn't even want to take control of the facility until he thought he had to to escape. You can believe that he was evil the entire time if you want, I plainly disagree. I think something very human happened to him: corrupted by absolute power.
7912447
I personally believe canon Wheatley lacks the intelligent capacity to make moral choices of his own will. In essence, he's too stupid to do anything but 'in the moment' decisions without conception of moral consequences. To be Good or Evil, one must have a moral understanding of consequences, and I believe Wheatley is incapable of that.
As such, claiming Wheatley is either 'Good' or 'Evil' is a bit like assigning the same labels to a river. Like the river, Wheatley just doesn't know any better.
...of course, this in no way excuses Wheatley from those consequences. By his very nature, he's a danger because he provides a control center for any Aperture-like system someone wants to manipulate and control. A bit like a rabid dog. It's not his fault that his very existence is a danger to everyone around him...but you still gotta put him down.
7912447
7912507
To be fair, I never said Wheatley was ever deliberately Evil, only spiteful and hateful beneath his delusions. Like Tats said, He makes snap decisions, and beyond that even, is prone to rage and lashing out whenever his delusions of adequacy are challenged. What's more is that his original programmers Deliberately programmed him to make bad decisions (Such as deciding not to maintain any of Aperture's Critical Systems when he was in charge). While he was in charge, He was perfectly content when Chell and GlaDOS were testing until the Test Euphoria Withdraw started setting in, and when he begins deliberately trying to kill you, it's more because he found Atlas and Peabody/Ass-phalt and Peabrain, and thus no longer needs you, than because he's really evil (I'm actually playing through that part of the game right now), and despite his general incompetence, he would have succeeded if the facility wasn't crumbling around you (the result of a previous bad decision), thus providing some conversion gel to allow you to escape...
End of Story is:
1) He's an idiot. He makes bad decisions on purpose, and any successes on his part are usually either accidents or because someone else helped him.
2) Given his muttered comments and Freudian Slips in the first part of the game, he's far from happy with his life, is much less Civil under the veneer of cheerfulness he puts up, and definitely is Not your friend.
3) On his own, he's generally "harmless" (for a given value of Harmless), but when he has help, or if given a bit of power, the First two points seem to combine and go to his head, making him exceptionally dangerous to anyone who provokes him.
4) GlaDOS provoked him... A Lot...
Here, we see him having both Help and an Upgrade in Power from the Combine, and even if in this continuity he's genuinely forgiven Chell (Because Tats hasn't said in one way or another), GlaDOS would be a Prime target for vengeance now that he has a bit of power again. Him going after Gilda would probably seem "Practical" to him, if only because she's an Unknown. Organic Test Subjects are prone to unpredictability, and thus she may figure out some way to stop him like Chell did, especially because he saw her having some sort of rapport with GlaDOS beyond simple Tester and Test Subject. Even if he doesn't know the extent of their relationship yet, he saw GlaDOS open the chamber and tell Gilda to Run, rather than leaving her to her fate like she probably would have with Chell, in addition to the mention of activating Weapons Systems. This makes her Important to GlaDOS somehow, and as the turrets say "No Hard Feelings" to Gilda, but if she activates her weapons she could be a credible threat that might stand between him and his Real target: GlaDOS...
Wheatley, you really shouldn't have done that!
7912507 Suddenly, I am feeling sympathy for so many characters...
Or is that pity?
Wheatley, no.
WHEATLEY, NO.