Blue Sky - Chapter 10 - The Broadcast [2/2]
“-aah! Was- okay, no, okay, I'm getting something! I'm- I can actually hear- oh, that is spooky- not sure I... um... hello!”
No reply. He cringed, expecting with each passing moment to feel that overwhelming surge of rage, a violent firestorm attack that would crush him like a fly, burn him out of existence. He felt intensely vulnerable, small and clueless and clinging up here like a tick on a huge half-dormant creature, and he stammered on, trying to delay the inevitable storm, his right hand spidering out and gripping desperately on to the metal by his knees.
“Don't- don't mind me, I've just- I've just got a few questions for you, if you're- up to that, understand you've just woken up, probably thinking 'rrghh, what's going on, who's this getting all up in my- my grille first thing in the morning?' so, so if you want to take a few minutes to compose yourself, um, put your face on, that sort of thing, absolutely no problem, I'll just-”
[repeat... query: admin access?]
He shivered. The lights of Foxglove's interested investigation were all around him now, flaring points of activity, brushing his mind through the connection with a looming, ambivalent sort of curiosity, like something very big trying gently to work out if its food is still alive or not before it has a go at eating it. He tried very hard not to move.
“Er- Garret, Garret, she's- she's going on about admin access, not sure what she's driving at there-”
Garret frowned, fingers dancing double-time across the keyboard of the little laptop. “Try it now.”
[password]
“Not- no, it's not working, it's not working, she's after a password!”
“I didn't set any password, Wheatley! Damn it, it keeps doing this, there must be some cache in there from- I dunno, maybe the transponder, I knew those sharks over in Depot were ripping me off on that thing-”
“Er, alright, alright, listen, um, Foxglove- very pretty name, incidentally, if you don't mind me saying- you don't actually need a password. Garret here- you probably know him, he did sort of make you- well, he doesn't want you to bother with a password, so um, whatever you've got set in there, if you could just sort of... unset it, please?”
[password]
“Right, I can see where you're coming from, it's not much of a security measure if you just unset it the moment someone asks you to, obviously, logic, but I assure you, I am totally legit. Here's my credentials, got admin access and everything, I am an administrator, that's my job, and I sort of need to... administrate, get on with administrating things, not trying to rush you, but it'd be nice if we could get the formalities out the way as soon as possible. How's that sound?”
[password]
“I don't have a password! How many times! I-I'm- I'm sorry, I'm sorry, that was uncalled for, I'm just a bit on edge. Is there... anything I can look at that's not passworded? Anything?”
[password]
“Man alive, talk about a one-track-mind! Alright, fine! Fine, you want a password, have a flaming password! Take your pick! Apple! Bagel! Unicron!”
[password set]
“...sorry?”
[password set]
“Nononono, wait, wait, I didn't mean- oh. Ohh, you have got to be kidding me- you were asking for- you just wanted me to set a- oh, God, what did I say? Which- which one was it? Um, apple? Bagel? Unicron?”
[password confirmed: apple_bagel_unicron. admin identity created. 00004/[F]AS[IV]IDPC241105/AS[I]HRAD]
Wheatley made a small, astonished huffing sound. He was slowly starting to feel less intimidated by the looming presence enveloping him. As horribly familiar as it had seemed at first, it was a simple question of intent. She had, almost from the moment She had gained consciousness, wanted to annihilate him. Her intentions had been very clear, very concise, and executed- an unfortunate but very apt word- with Her usual razor efficiency.
All Foxglove's giant, slow-moving presence wanted to do, on the other hand, was investigate him, classify him, and- that done- get on with the task she'd been built for. Of course, she was lucky enough to know exactly what that task was supposed to be.
“Oh! That's me, I recognise that, it's me! You- you know, you can just call me Wheatley, if- if you want- it's less of a mouthful, for a start.”
[user identity set: 00004/[F]AS[IV]IDPC241105/AS[I]HRAD]
“No? Alright, well, it's your choice. Up to you, I'm not going to argue. Al-although, you know, you could just shorten it, bit of a nickname, maybe, '00004' or something, still not exactly snappy but it would be a lot less hassle...”
“Holy God,” said Garret, who had taken both of his hands off of the keyboard and was staring at the screen, his expression wavering rapidly between excitement and disbelief. “Whatever you're doing, keep doing it.”
“Um- right, look, here's the thing,” said Wheatley. He wasn't quite relaxed enough to let go of the girder he was clinging to for dear life, yet, but he was almost on the verge of considering it as an option. The slow tidal surge of Foxglove's circuits eddied around him, immense strength and complexity curbed by something completely new to him, when it came to massive, complicated machines- a total lack of malice. All her systems- all of the programs that made up the heart of her, Garret's careful digital signature on almost every one, things reused and re-appropriated, clean blank walls of data painted with crude, patchwork murals of new code, beautiful in their ragged ingenuity- all of it nearly-almost-sort-of added up to something like sentience, but it was a gentle, formless kind of sentience, without emotion or judgement.
“Here's the thing, just going to give you a bit of a heads-up, bring you up to speed on the situation, if that's all right with you- here's the thing... Garret here, and all those people standing around down there- see them? Don't actually know if you've got any sort of visual processing system in there, any.... cameras... no, I'm guessing, probably not, but if you do, if you can see all those little humans down there, well, this may come as a bit of a surprise, but... they're waiting for you. To.. work, they're waiting for you to start working. Properly. Because I can see you're on, you're all powered up, yep, ticked that box, got power coming out of your ears- if- if you had ears, there would be power just crackling out of there by the gigawatt- but here's the thing.”
He took a deep breath.
“You're a communications tower. That's what you're built for, that's your- your primary function, and- and don't panic about it, there's no pressure, absolutely no press- well, maybe a tiny bit, I won't lie, um, there's a tiny bit of expectation mounting here. On a, a scale of one to ten- one being like, pff, whatever, nobody's bothered, and ten being, uh, urgent action is needed right now this second to prevent, um, some kind of world-shattering, apocalyptic catastrophe- I'm going to rate this as... as a five. Fairly urgent, but nobody's going to die or anything, so... That said, five, it is getting up there, in, in maths a five is actually closer to ten than zero, that's been proven by... by statistics, so no rush, but given that you are a bloody great big communications tower, you've got that going for you, if you could get on and communicate, that would be brilliant. I for one would be over the moon about it, if you did that.”
Wheatley paused. The lights of Foxglove's mind sparked and swirled along their unhurried paths, curling above and around his small, anxious presence. He suddenly found himself thinking of Chell's home, how in the evenings the sleepy pockets of darkness clung to the low whitewashed ceilings and the worn cleanswept corners, pushed back by the mismatched clusters of lights she grouped on tables and shelves and sills, small warm constellations that didn't so much cancel out the shadows as simply make them benign. The thought was sharp and bittersweet, catching him by surprise, making him blink and swallow and stammer back to the task in hand.
“Uh- so! Thoughts?”
[request authorisation:]
[run full systems calibration? y/n]
“I- oh, um, that sounds fairly major, going to have to get back to you on that- Garret? She wants-”
“Yeah, I see it,” said Garret, who had started to bite the nails of his non-typing hand, a habit (unbeknown to Wheatley) he believed he'd successfully conquered at the age of six and a half. “I see it, but I don't know, your guess is as good as mine. It- she's asking to do things I didn't even write.”
“Oh. Well, maybe we should let her get on with it, then. I-I mean, it is her brain- and- and having people poke around in your brain when it isn't even necessary is no stroll in the park, let me tell you. It's enough to put anyone out of sorts, and I really would prefer it if she didn't get out of sorts. Really would, because it's amazing in here, it is amazing, but if she gets a mood on, I am in a corner and a half.”
“It's not that simple. I've spent six months manually calibrating every one of those dishes. If even one of them gets even a micron out of whack, I'll have to start all over again.”
[request authorisation:]
[run full systems calibration? y/n]
Wheatley flinched and glanced sideways at Garret, who was tapping frantically away on the keyboard, chewing a thumbnail and frowning a baffled, intent frown which made him look like someone trying to work out why their paycheck was about half of what it should have been.
This is a terrible idea.
The thought struck him with arresting clarity, set in stone and derailing everything else, and a twist of disappointment lurched a familiar cold, leaden path through him. It was a terrible idea, and the best he could do at this point was try to limit the damage, make something up, pretend to be in control so maybe Garret and everyone below wouldn't think he was a complete idiot-
But then, something else dawned, close behind. It was simple and wistful and painful, it was if it was her, up here, if she could see this, she wouldn't give up. She wouldn't just chuck it all in just because someone else was telling her it could be a bit dicey. Alright, she'd take it on board, but at least she'd still try.
The thought had to struggle, because the other thought -the thought that this was the worst idea that anyone had had in the entire history of thinking- was still there, huge and unbudging and undeniable, but-
“You- you know what? You know what, fine, go on then, run it. Yes. Y. Going to go with Y. Knock yourself out.”
Garret nearly swallowed a chunk of his own thumbnail. “No, wait-”
It was too late. Wheatley knew it was too late, just from the deep, satisfied flare of lights around him, filling the dim coded otherworld behind his eyes, the feeling of calm acceleration, the deep shifting rumble beneath, stripping away the brief feeling of certainty that this had been anywhere near the right thing to do. He jammed his hands over his ears and cringed.
“I'msorryI'msorryI'msorryI'msorry-”
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“Daddy, Daddy, look, it's moving!”
Ellie Otten was the first to notice, squeaking in surprise from her perch atop her father's shoulders. A murmur spread through the small crowd, people shading their eyes against the sunrise with hands and hats and arms, staring up at the great structure with a curiosity progressively shot with excitement.
Ellie was right. The tower was moving. Not in the most obvious sense, of course- the three immense shell-like hooves stayed firmly embedded in the sandy soil- but all over, shifting like great pale flowers seeking the light, the dozens of satellite dishes that covered the tower started to turn in a slow staggered wave. An epidemic of motion spread from dish to dish, while the many-pitched whine of dozens of servos and motors humming into life swelled louder and layered itself over the throb of the generator beneath.
The dishes turned like eager ears, some by tiny increments, almost too minute to register, some so far that it seemed they were about to twist themselves off their shuddering, protesting brackets entirely- although none of them did. The sturdy structure of the tower creaked and groaned under so much unprecedented activity, but by some small miracle everything held. Bunches of plaited rainbow wires, brushed out of place by the moving dishes like an obtrusive fringe, swayed slowly to a stop.
Chell, still standing by the generator like a statue, became aware of a growing tightness in her throat and realised that she had been holding her breath. She let it out in an even, controlled exhale, choosing to ignore the rapid beat of her own heart, her hands rolled into tight, white-knuckled fists by her sides.
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()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()
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“Wheatley!”
Wheatley became aware that someone was hitting him in the shoulder. It was a little hard to tell who, at first, because the tidal wave of motion and power and activity that had broken over him when Foxglove had started to calibrate every one of her several-dozen satellite dishes at once had been so intense and unexpected that he'd switched off his frantic little litany of apology and instead opted for hugging the nearest girder and screaming.
“Wheatley, shut up, it's over!”
He shut up. Garret scrambled past him, swept the dislodged remains of an old bird's nest out of his hair, and made a dive for the laptop, breathing a fervent prayer of his own.
“Magnusson please please just let it work-”
He typed, stared, typed again, then dug down into one of the many pockets of the tool-belt at his hip and came up with something small and grey and rounded, something with a hatched grille of mesh at the front and a long, extendable aerial which snapped out with a ratcheting snick. As Wheatley watched, bewildered, Garret scrambled to his feet on the narrow girder and held it up, two-handed, towards the sky-
click
Half a mile away, on the windowsill of Chell’s empty, sunwashed front room, the little digital radio hissed and flickered, the single LED sputtering on and off like a faulty stoplight. Unheralded, entirely unwitnessed, it hiccuped a final time and burst into steady, triumphant green, the signal coming through clear as a bell from New Detroit, some two hundred miles away.
“-ain't a cloud in sight
It's stopped rainin', everybody's in the lane
And don't you know
It's a beautiful new day, hey-hey-”
click
“-was just a fastball in, and probably the highest fly ball I've ever seen in my life. Probably came close to hitting that ball out of the park. We’re in the fifth inning here at Turner Field and the Chicago Bullsquids are showing their true colours- Mark, what are the Squids gonna have to do here to square this one away?”
Aaron dropped the keys to the store’s ancient truck on the counter, on top of the hastily-handwritten sign Garret had taped there.
GONE TO OTTEN'S FIELD, MONEY IN JAR
Next to the sign, a rinsed-out jamjar a quarter-full of assorted change and crumpled bills suggested that the few early-bird townsfolk who had already been and gone that morning had, at least, adhered to Garret’s advice. Usually, Aaron would have had something to say about this particular business model being implemented in his absence, but right now he was too taken aback to do much besides stare across the counter at the big old radio set, which was still chattering cheerfully away to itself about the good ol' Squids and their chances in the sixth inning. The sound was crisp and clear, for the first time in the entirety of the ten years it had been sitting there on the counter between the register and the goldfish.
“Atlanta,” he murmured, starting to smile. “Well, I'll be.”
click
There were some pitfalls in the path of progress. Emily Kent, who had already suffered more than her fair share of bad luck of late, wasn't a morning person even when her back was in good shape, much less someone who would consider hurrying out at the crack of dawn to stand rubbernecking at a glorified TV aerial in a wet field. As a result, she was peacefully asleep in her bed when the signal came through, and the first she knew about it was when all of a sudden her bedside radio alarm clock started working for the first time in the forty years since her husband had taken his knack of tuning it to exactly the right frequency to the grave with him.
It went off with the volume and shock value of a small bomb, causing her to take a violent, reflexive swing at it through the mists of sleep and the painkiller she'd taken (on doctor's orders) before bed. Something went crunch behind her shoulderblades, and her world exploded into a supernova of pain.
Emily was a sensible woman, not usually given to blaming inanimate objects for her own mistakes. Having said that, when her back went off like the Fourth of July, she screamed with impressive volume and proceeded to curse the radio six ways from Sunday, swearing an absolute blue streak up at the ceiling while the damn thing continued to play merrily away to itself over her head (with beautiful clarity, had Emily been in any state to care.)
“Para bailar la bamba
Se necesita una poca de gracia
Una poca de gracia pa mi pa ti-”
click
The Hatfield house- two rickety floors teetering over the one-room diner Romy ran with cheerful inefficiency whenever she happened to feel like it- was empty of human life that morning. Romy and her boys had been among the first congregates at the bottom of Mart's field, but Duke the collie had been exiled to the shed in the backyard for the duration. In the past he'd tended to be more of a hindrance than a help where Foxglove was involved, being a champion at chasing rabbits (there were plenty in the field) tripping people up, chewing and burying vital tools, and answering the call of nature on important pieces of technology.
The shed was big and warm and doubled as not-so-secret clubhouse, adult-free sanctuary, and all-purpose war-zone for most of the under-twelve population of Eaden. The corrugated-tin walls were covered with crayon and paint. The gritty floor was littered with the carnage of old games, stubs of chalk, sweet wrappers, and a mysterious stain, either the site of a horrific murder or an accident involving a lot of strawberry juice.
In the corner, an ancient cathode-ray television set sat with its four sagging legs on the floor like an exhausted carthorse. The screen had a hairline crack in it and half the knobs were missing, but the twins had begged Romy to let them keep it for one reason- sometimes, if it was a clear day and you stuck a coat hangar up on the roof and held still and held your breath and hoped, it picked up snowy fragments of the one independent television channel in Upper Michigan which showed old Archive cartoons on Saturday mornings.
Duke abandoned the squeaky toy he'd been mauling and backed off, barking his head off at the ancient machine as it sputtered crankily into life. The screen was dusty and smeared with something that looked like two-year-old pudding, but the picture was steady, brilliantly-coloured, and perfectly focused.
“-a genius, the other's insane
They're laboratory mice
Their genes have been spliced-”
click
All over Eaden, in kitchens and bedrooms, in dens and vehicles and halls, machines received the signal. Radios and televisions, computers and modems and aerials and satellite dishes, every machine left on and awake by its users out of habit or optimism or just plain forgetfulness, buzzing flocks of signals flickered back and forth across the town and far, far beyond at the speed of electricity, guided and directed by the great shepherding presence at the bottom of Otten's Field.
“-what time it is, folks? It's-”
“-second in a series of ground-breaking documentaries, chronicling the rise of the Resistance in the aftermath of the Seven-Hour War-”
“-to me is what sums up people from the older generation, the forties and fifties, and-”
“-at the third stroke, it will be-”
“-a chaque fois j’y crois, et j’y croirait toujours-”
“And now over to Eric for the weather-”
“-se agrega el huevo y la nata, se forman una masa suave y consistente-”
“-for a limited time only-”
“Base Station Nineteen, come in Nineteen, we've got some crazy signals coming out of the northern sector here-”
click
“It WORKS!”
Something heavy and powerful hit Wheatley hard in the chest, a solid impact that would have knocked the breath out of him if he'd had any. It turned out to be Garret, who planted both hands on his shoulders and yelled incoherent glee into his face and thumped him heavily on the back, leaving him rattled and bewildered, gulping small rabbity unnecessary breaths. Nobody had ever squeezed him that hard before without intending murder.
“I- it- it worked?”
“Listen! Listen to that, that's the- the clearest goddamn- it's perfect, Wheatley, you did it! IT WORKS! She WORKS!”
Wheatley started to grin a very large, very dazed, very disbelieving grin. He absorbed most of the impact of another overjoyed punch to the shoulders- hardly felt it, in fact- and, clinging to the girder, clambered carefully to his feet. All the while, the tiny radio continued to pour out its guts to the crowd below, the sound loud and even and as clear as new-cut glass.
“Hey you with the pretty face
Welcome to the human race
A celebration, mister blue sky's up there waiting
And today is the day we've waited for...”
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“I don't believe it,” said Romy. “It works.”
Chell glanced sideways at her friend. Romy, she knew, had been openly sceptical about Foxglove from the beginning, which would have put Chell’s hackles up on Garret’s behalf if Romy hadn’t also been- in her own cheerfully hypocritical way- one of Foxglove’s most vocal supporters. She had always been happy to label it a giant waste of time, but she was also ready at a second’s notice to turn on anyone who had dared to suggest he should just throw in the towel on the whole thing. As far as Romy was concerned, if Garret Rickey wanted to keep going on his crazy pipe-dream, hurting nobody and providing a fair amount of entertainment into the bargain, it wasn’t anyone else’s business to interfere.
Now, standing by Chell’s side, hand-in-hand with Max and Jason- who were also craning eagerly upwards- she looked nothing short of awed.
“It's playing a song,” Ellie whispered, into the top of her father's head.
“Well, how about that?” said Mart Otten, slightly louder. “It works.”
A murmur ran through the crowd like falling leaves, an excited rattle of voices, growing louder. Another moment, and then- obeying the unstoppable momentum of occasions like this- someone at the back started to clap. One person became several, became a dozen and more, and then everyone was applauding, cheers and catcalls rising beneath the growling generator and the music still spilling out into the early-morning air.
Chell uncurled her tensed-up hands with difficulty, held them crossed loosely before her. Her feelings, usually so orderly and easy to define, were in a gorgeous mess. She was fervently glad that the attention of the crowd was focused firmly away from her, that even Romy was looking elsewhere-
“Chell!”
Her relief was short-lived.
Garret came climbing down through Foxglove's tangling forest of wires, as easily as always, slipping one-handed from girder to girder. He reached the ground and handed the tiny radio- still playing loud and clear- to an awestruck Lindsay Randall, then pushed through a sea of congratulations and celebratory thumps on the back towards her, grinning.
“You sure know how to pick 'em,” he said, reaching her and giving her a hug which would have winded a less-prepared person. “I have no idea what he did up there but-”
He stopped, held her at arm's length, a small frown clouding his elated expression. “You okay?”
She gave him her biggest thumbs-up and he laughed and wheeled her around, pointing a grimy finger back towards the base of the tower.
“Hey, don't look at me!” he yelled. “There's the man of the hour.”
Wheatley had only just managed to make his own way down. Anyone watching would have got the impression that he'd taken it upon himself to test every single girder for weakness as he went, either by slamming bodily into it or grabbing on for dear life while his free limbs flailed for a grip on something else, but he'd made it in the end.
He picked himself up from the base of one of Foxglove's weathered hooves, looked up, and stared back at the sixty-odd humans surrounding him like a very lost migratory swallow might have stared back at the pilots of an oncoming Boeing 747.
Slowly, very uncertainly, he raised a hand.
“Hello...”
A moment of silence, and then the anonymous clapper started up again, and the smattering of applause snowballed into small storm, and Wheatley's face split into a grin so wide it was a wonder one of the shorter humans around him didn't end up wearing the top half of his head like a hat.
“That's Chell's monster,” said Ellie, knowledgeably, to Lindsay Randall, who was still holding Garret's radio in both small hands. “I gave him a froggy.”
“Over here!” called Garret, and Wheatley found that he didn't have much choice, even if he had wanted to go anywhere else- the crowd were all too eager to help, propelling him forwards with friendly hands on his back. Their overwhelming unconditional approval was very nearly too much for him to process, and for a choked, confused moment he found himself really wishing he could take his glasses off properly. This didn't make any sense at all, even though it actually did feel like there was something wrong with his optical processors all of a sudden, because his glasses had absolutely nothing to do with his vision. Still, he wished he could take them off, or even give his nose a sort of sneaky swipe on his sleeve when nobody was looking, although what good that was supposed to do, he couldn't fathom-
-and never did, because the next moment everything concerning glasses, noses or sleeves dropped straight out of his mind like a broken lift.
The reason for this sudden attack of amnesia was simple. Chell was standing next to Garret, looking back at him, and it took him a moment to realise why her face looked so different, why his non-existent stomach gave such a glad, petrified little flip at the sight of her. It would have been easy to explain it by saying that she was looking at him like she'd looked at Aaron, like she looked at Garret or Romy- but although it was close this wasn't quite accurate. This look was something new. It was a look just for him, warm and open and a little wry and simply- proud.
Proud of him.
In that moment he felt deeply ashamed that he'd questioned her motives, that he'd ever thought that she could have been scheming or testing him for her own benefit, that she'd ever been ready to write him off if he didn't come up to her standards. She'd wanted him to succeed, all right, but not for her, out here it had never been for her and he'd been an idiot- oh, stop the presses, big surprise there- to think that it had been. She'd wanted him to succeed- for him.
“Did you- did you see-” he started, but that was as far as he got before she stepped back and pulled him away from the crowd still gathering jubilantly around Garret, took his hand and towed him the few steps around the corner of the barn. He just about had time to remember that she was not a fan of having an audience, and to wonder, for a horrified moment, if she could be angry that he’d caused one, before all of a sudden she let go of his hand and-
“UFff!”
It was possibly the most violent and potentially injurious first hug in the history of physical contact. Caught completely off-guard, Wheatley staggered back a step, his knees automatically trying to help the situation in the only way they knew how, by buckling under him like hard-light spaghetti. If the side of the barn hadn’t been right there behind him, as solid as one of Foxglove's hooves, to keep him upright, things would very probably have ended badly.
Art by Pinalinet
“Blimey, hello- huh, wow, you're- this is- um, can I just check, is this a hug? Are you- are you hugging me, is that what you're doing? Because if you are, ab- absolutely no complaints from this quarter, ha, God no, the, the opposite in fact. Very much the opposite, it’s very nice- well, no, ‘nice’ doesn’t really even begin to cover it to be honest- it's just... I have had occasion, in the past- the fairly recent past, to mistake um, affectionate physical gestures with, with people trying to murder me. So I'm just checking, because if I have got it wrong, think you'll agree it would be pretty embarrassing for both of us, not to mention, um, potentially lethal, for me. Oh, you- can't really answer, can you? No, your face is sort of squashed into my... chest there, like a- a blancmange- tell you what, if this is a hug, just sort of squeeze a bit, just to set the record straight. Is- is this a hug? Answerrrr... now.”
Chell gripped a little harder, her head turned against his chest. He was very slightly warmer than a human would have been, the tamed sunlight he was made from giving him a temperature balanced on the very edge of feverish. She felt him relax, make a quiet noise- very quiet, for him- a sigh that was very nearly a whimper.
“Oh, brilliant,” he said, a little muffled, into her hair. “Won't lie, I was worried.”
She laughed silently into his chest and moved, slipping from tiptoe to plant her feet firmly back on the ground. Her side twinged, and she felt the dressing through her shirt to check it was still in one piece, grinning up into his stunned, beaming face.
“I turn my back for five minutes...”
They turned- Garret arriving, radio tucked under his arm, behind them- to find Aaron leaning out of the cab of his truck, which he'd parked neatly up on the grass by the side of the rumbling generator, one weathered arm propped on the rolled-down window.
Wheatley tensed against Chell’s side, pinned to the spot by the expression in the old man's crinkled, beetle-black eyes. Aaron didn't say a word, but the meaning was as clear as if he and the three of them had been connected by cable. Wheatley, who found it very hard to believe that a look like that from somebody In Charge could possibly be aimed at him, found it as staggering as it was unmistakable.
Good job.
“She works, Aaron,” said Garret, who sounded unusually breathless. Chell had a suspicion that he was going to be repeating himself on this theme quite a lot in the near future, at least until he actually managed to believe what he was saying.
“So I see,” said Aaron, peering through the truck's dusty windscreen at the crowd around the tower. A beat, and then he smiled his slow smile.
“This mean I'm going to get my stockroom back?”
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()~~~~~~~~ Chapter 11 - The Oracle~~~~~~~~()