Blue Sky - Chapter 14 - The Terrible Idea [2/3]
“Good question,” said Wheatley, and the manic flippancy in his voice dropped a little, becoming his version of sotto-voce-confidential, which meant that he was still more or less shouting, but in a tone that at least sounded like he was trying to whisper. “Very good question, answer- well, actually, you know what, I'm going to tell you a little story, to answer that question. Deserves it, I think. Hope you like stories, 'cause this one's a cracker, it really is. You might want to sit down for this one- well, if there's anything load-bearing enough for you to park that quite frankly massive chassis of yours on up there, that is, you might want to do that. Right, here goes. Beginning storyyyy.... now.”
He made a throat-clearing sound.
“Once upon a time, there was a human. Good start, right? Bit of human interest, always a winner. Now, this human, he was a decent enough sort, didn't want much out of life, really. Nothing showstopping, nothing special. He just did what he was paid to do, never asked for any big reward, just took pride in a job well-done. 'Course, he had big dreams, this human did, dreams of making it big with all these brilliant ideas he had, dreams of maybe even asking that pretty girl he fancied out for a drink one day. You know, just your basic regular ordinary human sorts of dreams. But he never got round to them, did he? Because the scientists he was working for ripped his mind right out of his body and stuck it in a computer. Yeah. That's what you call a twist. They messed around with it a bit, first, of course, trimmed off all those fiddly human-y bits that didn't fit, that kind of thing. And they stuck a whole lot of other stuff in there, too, while they were at it. Just things they happened to have lying around, bits and pieces- and by the time they'd finished, you know what they'd done? Know what they'd done? They'd turned that human... into me.”
Wheatley's voice rose, oh-so-cheery and quite terrible. It was the sound of someone who has finally, finally got the joke, and has realised that the whole time, it has been on them.
“How're you liking this story so far? Page-turner, right? Well, we haven't even got to the best part yet. Best part is- brace yourself, this is good stuff, it really is- best part is, all of this is because of you. I'm this, because of you, Your Royal Foul-Temperedness. You had 'em so scared that the best idea they had was to make me. Because every time they turned you on you came in there like the bloody Ride of the Valkyries and tried to bite their heads off in three-quarters-of-a-second flat, they got so desperate that I'm what they thought they needed to distract you. I only exist because you couldn't keep yourself from losing your rag for more than five minutes at a time, and you know what? I'm pretty bloody annoyed about that, as it happens. You called me a tumour, well, Miss-High-And-Mighty, thanks to you, I'm worse than that. I'm the world's most perfect generator of terrible ideas and I've got your number.”
“Okay, that's enough.” snarled Her Voice, slamming down with deadly force, and this wasn't just a figure of speech, it was actual, tangible force, making the new walls shudder and the lights dip and sputter like guttering candles. Chell ducked and dashed for the reconstituted chamber's only exit, a dark gash in the panels twenty feet up in the direction the elevator had been before. She shot a portal into the opening of it and heard it connect, fired at her own feet, tumbled through into the mouth of the elevator chamber. The complete inversion of circumstances since she had limped out of here, weary and heartsick, hardly five minutes ago, was enough to make her head spin.
“You're actually inside the mainframe, aren't you? I don't know how you got past the security system, but believe me, I will find out. You're not going to be able to pull this off. I don't even know what it is you're trying to do, but I can already tell you, you're not going to be able to do it.”
“Oh, really? Sure about that, are you? Watch me.”
“I can see that spending all that time out there with her has had a bad influence on you. You were the dumbest thing in the entire facility before, but this is just embarrassing. What are you trying to do? Save her? Or are you just trying to prove you're human? Please. You're not human. You're not even a functional machine. You're just an experiment that went horribly, horribly wrong. Let's face it, around here, that doesn't exactly make you unique.”
“You know what?” said Wheatley. “You know what, you, are absolutely right. What was it you said, when me and her were escaping last time? Don't blame you if you don't remember, we were all under a bit of pressure at the time, what with you trying to get us shot and everything, but it did sort of stick with me. You know, that part where you said I was specifically programmed to have terrible ideas and I’ll never be capable of anything else. Yeah. Well, turns out I could have saved everyone a lot of hassle, myself included, if I'd just taken that on board right then and there. 'Cause you nailed that, you did. Hit the nail right on the head, there, hammered it right in to the... the plank. Of... of truth. I mean, it's not like I didn't try. Least I can say that- it's not much, in the scheme of things, but I really did, really did try. Learned from the best, you could say, took my best shot at it, the whole being-human... thing, but just couldn't hack it, really, at the- at the end of the day. Shame, but...”
Pause.
“Anyway- anyway, point is... you were right. Clever old you, hey? Can't deny my primary programming, you said, and yep, you were right on the money with that one, so you know what? I'm not even going to bother. I'm just going to do exactly what I'm supposed to do. To the letter. I'm going to have as many terrible ideas as I possibly can and this time, love, you're going to listen to me.”
Wheatley's voice lowered. Chell, who was backed up against the wall of the stationary elevator with her spine pressed hard to the cold metal, could nearly hear the grin in it, stretching wide across every gleeful syllable.
“Whether you like it or not.”
There was a nasty, tinny, staccato noise. It scratched at Chell's eardrums like a snagging fish-hook, leaving a queasy chill in her stomach, and it took her several seconds to realise that the sound was supposed to be laughter.
“Oh, my god, you really are corrupted. Listen to you? I can promise you that the only thing I'm going to be hearing from you after I take care of this is you begging me to shut you down, and I'll probably get tired of that after a few decades. I should have fried that pathetic little flea-circus you call a brain the first time they stuck you on me. Oh well, I guess there's no time like the present.”
“Commencing full system purge,” said the smooth voice of the announcer.
“Goodbye, moron. If you've got anything else to say, now would be the best time.”
“Well, yes, since you mention it, I have,” said Wheatley. “Few things, actually. Firstly, right, shut that thing off. Totally surplus to requirements, trust me on this.”
“System purge terminated.”
Her Voice faltered, furious and bewildered and clawing for control. The effect, to Chell's mind, was a bit like watching an enraged jaguar with a clothes-peg fixed to the end of its tail- frightening, and really bad news if you got within range, but also more than a little hilarious.
“How- how did you do that- no, wait- how did you make me do that? How did you even make me want to do that? It was- it was almost as if I- I felt like-”
“Oh oh oh, let me guess, let me guess! Just for a second, you felt like it was the best, most absolutely amazing idea ever in the history of absolutely everything?”
“Yes!”
“HAhahahah haaa! Welcome to my world!”
“I don't understand! You're just a Personality Core! You didn't even work in the first place! I'm the central core of this entire facility- why- why can't I ignore you?”
“Oh, well, don't know that one, just conjecture on my part really, although, just might have something to do with a certain friend of mine, a particularly... foxy lady... you might know her actually, you could say you two were... close. Little, little in-joke, there- anyway, there's her, she's got my back, and then you've got the- the four hundred and seventy-two global high-range repeater feeds, plus six- no, wait, tell a lie, seven- seven communications satellites- ooh! Nearly forgot, and a certain little Aperture Science Recovery Facilitation Signal bobbing around somewhere up there still, thank you very much. So possibly all that lot had something to do with it too. Again, sheer conjecture, guesswork, at this point. Who knows, maybe I'm just a very persuasive motivational speaker.”
“Stop it! I'm serious! You don't know what you're doing!”
“Well, that's the beauty of it, really, I'm not doing anything! It's all you! Incidentally, ohh, you'll like this one, have you ever thought, right, of ripping out a few of these chambers and making 'em into a giant squash court? Because a, a big old space like this would be ideal, for that! And- best bit- with all that gel and stuff you've got lying around, you wouldn't even have to use balls, you could use- tiny little cubes! Much better for your traditional racket-type games, tiny little cubes. Much more challenging, for a start- not to mention humane.”
“What-”
“Wait, wait, never mind that, hold that one for a second, nearly forgot- Chell's been twiddling her thumbs in that elevator down there for ages, now, probably feeling a bit left out, if I know her. Tell you what would be a brilliant idea right now, why not take her up to the Relaxation Centre?”
“No-”
“Come on, it's only a few dozen levels up, nice and easy, why don't you just do it?”
“Because it's a terrible idea, you little imbecile! I am the- ultimate pinnacle- of perfectly-engineered artificial intelligence and I- zzIzttt chhhh i i iiiiiI DON'T HAVE TERRIBLE IDEAS-”
Chell dropped the portal gun and braced herself with both hands against the curved wall of the elevator as the doors clattered, jerked once, and then shuddered closed. The car turned and began to rise on the spitting blue cable of energy that controlled it, slowly at first, and then with increasing speed. She saw level after level flash past the glass- dim glimpses of chambers, walkways, shadowy inbetween areas full of endless rolling part-strewn conveyors and spiralling pneumatic tubes, the flickering red glares of turret-sights far off in the charcoal-blue haze.
“You do now,” crowed Wheatley, with so much smug satisfaction that it went right through ridiculous and out the other side, and at the sound of it something gave way inside her chest, the numbness fled at last and she put her head down against her knees and laughed until she cried.
-
-
-
()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()
-
-
-
“Chell?”
Wiping her face on the back of her hand, Chell looked up towards the elevator's trembling ceiling.
“Yeah- little to the left, down, should be a- little squarish sort of red thingummy, warmer... there! Ding, you're looking right at it. That's the camera.”
The grid of red lights in the small illuminated square flickered in time with the sound of Wheatley's voice, rising and falling in quick, uneven bursts.
“Yes! Hey! It's me. Sorry, it took me a while to find the right feed. Don't worry, She can't hear us, I told Her to switch her audial input off for a bit, in this section. Which She did. Ohh... you have no idea what it's like, doing this. It's like- it's like I'm not in charge, per se, obviously, but I've got so much sort of oomph behind me that I can tell Her to do anything, literally anything, and She'll do it! I was going to get Her to shut down the whole security system, just in case, but it doesn't actually seem to be causing us much trouble right now, for some reason. Seems to be... singing, is mostly what it seems to be doing. Not the greatest singer, if I'm honest, would not advise it to give up its day-job, but hey, whatever floats its boat, if its happy, I'm happy. Not going to knock it. Apart from anything else, it is really winding Her up. Fancies Herself a bit of a music critic, She does, for some reason. Are you- how are you holding up in there, by the way, are you alright? Don't have to say anything, just- jump, or something- cough-”
Chell, who had taken a moment to turn away and scrape her tangled ponytail tighter back from her face, lifted her eyes to the illuminated square. Wheatley fell quiet, the red lights dropping to a blank, black level.
Carefully, deliberately, she reached up and spread her palm gently against the dark square. There was a single, tiny sound from the hidden speaker as her fingers made contact, a choked little noise that could easily have been mistaken for a crackle of static, a faint hitch in the elevator's humming motor.
The pause lasted for a good few seconds, silent but indescribably full, before the lights climbed unsteadily back into motion.
“Uh- uh, okay, right, right, back to business, um, here's the thing. I- I know I'm making this look easy, but it is in fact quite complicated, quite a major thing I am trying to pull off here. While, um, while it turns out, that terrible ideas for Her are actually generally speaking pretty good ideas for us- little loophole there, fortunate, to say the least- it's getting Her to swallow them that's the tricky bit. For example, I am actually having to tell Her, several times a minute, to keep making this thing go up. And to not kill me- that as well- having to keep those two ideas at the fore, as it were; the continuous vertical travel for you, and the not murdering me, for me. Which is a bit of a hassle, to say the least. So... we are not out of hot water yet. Although, looking on the bright side, let's say we're- we are more than halfway out of hot water, that's- that's about down to our- your shins, water-level-wise, and you've got wellies on, so the water is less of a concern than it would've otherwise been. Uh- the wellies represent me, incidentally. Oh- oh, alright, we're here, anyway, door opening- just keep going, I'll keep you posted, don't worry.”
The doors cycled smoothly open. Gun slung over her shoulder, Chell stepped out of the elevator and onto a long walkway. A great stepped structure like an arched, skeletal spine in a cage of scaffolding, it stretched out easily two hundred metres across a murky clustered space, crowded with strange hard-angled hanging shapes on all sides. She shivered, brought her elbows tight in to her sides, her breath condensing in silver streams in front of her. It was as cold as the grave.
“Alright, listen,” said Her Voice, through tinny speakers somewhere far above her head. “I'll admit that that joke I made about killing all your friends was in pretty poor taste, but it was just a joke, you know that, right? On the other hand, if we don't put a stop to this pretty soon, he's going to make me do something we're all going to regret. All hundred and seventeen of us. I don't know if you remember this or not, but he's got a pretty poor track record when it comes to keeping humans in cryosleep alive. In fact, the probability of him managing it is nine thousand, nine hundred, and ninety-nine to one against. That's nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine reasons why this is heading towards a very, very unhappy ending. For you.”
Chell kept walking, steadily, climbing the arch of steps.
“You know, I tried to do this your way. I invited you back. I asked you to stay. I hoped that you might come to your senses and realise that this is the only place you really belong, but no, you had to turn it into a fight. Again. I guess my mistake was trying to appeal to your higher nature, when- as we both know- you don’t have one."
The arch creaked grudgingly underneath her as she reached the highest point, started to descend. She wasn't altogether sure where she was going, or what she was meant to do when she got there, but she did have a pretty good idea what was inside all these familiar boxy, cratelike shapes. It was maddening, stomach-turning, to know that they were all here, so close, that she was literally feet away from them in their hanging time-stopped prisons, that she was so close but still unable to do a thing to help them.
“Do you think I want your friends to die? I mean really, what kind of person do you think I am? Just because humans are disgusting, incredibly stupid, pointless animals, it doesn't mean I want their deaths on my conscience. I'm not a monster. Unlike some people-”
“Keep going,” said Wheatley's voice, cutting through the speakers, “just up here. Oh, flipping heck, what has She done to this place? Barely half the size, if that. Talk about cutbacks. Still, it's alright, if She's kept more or less the same basic layout there should be a little sort of office-y, office-like boxy sort of thing just up the far end of this catwalk here- oh, look, there you go, that's it! Hop on up in there, and we'll sort this out.”
“What are you doing now?” snapped the Voice, sharp and agitated, but Chell ignored it and jogged up the last few steps into the small, featureless unit at the end of the walkway. On the outside, it was nearly identical to the cryo-units themselves, blocky and barcoded, and it was nothing much to write home about on the inside, either- a smeary window, a narrow, dust-shrouded desk with a bank of corroded controls, a single wheeled chair. Above the desk, a bank of screens- all functioning- filling the small space with a harsh, phantom-white glow. The images on them were fixed, running feeds, the screens split to a dozen each, the same view she'd been shown back in the first elevator chamber- in every one, a bed, a form, a face.
“So... here we are,” said Wheatley. His voice was now coming from a small intercom speaker bolted into one cobwebby corner, and it had acquired a slightly embarrassed edge. “Um... funny story, this here might not look like much, but it is actually the main Relaxation Centre Control Station. Yep. This little place. So, you know, welcome to my... don't know what to call it, really, now. My place. My... crib.”
Chell, tearing her eyes away from the slow-panning screens, stared up into the corner.
“You know, when I wasn't patrolling- did a lot of that, before you showed up, lot of patrolling- this is where I'd hang out, literally, there's my rail up there, and... Course, the actual computer in charge of the Relaxation Centre- big old thing, not exactly what you'd call communicative- that's not in here, no, ha, wouldn't fit. Anyway, you- you'll like this- this place, right, was originally made for a human. You know, when they still thought it was going to be humans running the facility, instead of Her. So that's why it's got the chair, and the desk, and... oh, sorry, should have said, make yourself at home. Have a seat. On the chair, that's what it's there for.”
She gave the chair's dusty backrest a dubious nudge with the barrel of her gun. The decayed fabric disintegrated at a touch, spilling yellow foam-rubber dust to the floor.
“Always wondered, actually, what it was like, that chair,” continued Wheatley's voice, desperately cheerful. “If it was comfy- looked quite comfy, I thought, was not an expert on chairs, back then, obviously, being somewhat lacking in the limbs department- sorry, sorry, we're getting sidetracked. Let me give you the tour. You've got the chair, and... and the desk, and the screens, obviously, and all the little flat bits, and the biosignal readouts down there- got this tendency to get stuck on green, those bits, which can lead to some pretty hilarious misunderstandings- well, when I say 'hilarious'... but they're alright for the moment, anyway. And then there's all these buttons and switches and what have you- don't know what they do, to be honest, never did-”
“Look,” snapped Her Voice, suddenly, cutting Wheatley off in a burst of static, making Chell start and back off from the console, her wary eyes fixed on the speaker. “I've got a pretty good idea of what he's got planned, and I just wanted to let you know, in case it isn't obvious enough already, that it's complete lunacy. You can't seriously be planning to wake them all up. Have you any idea how many safety hazards there are in this part of the facility alone? Not to mention your distance from the nearest serviceable exit. They're not like you. They're not insane. They won't survive.”
The Voice tightened like a claw. It had shed all pretence of civility now, thrown it aside like a flimsy Halloween mask, and the thing that paced and clawed at the bars beneath the thin layer of restraint was not civilised in the slightest. It was blazing and furious, frozen razor-sharp crazy and as dangerous as a stripped wire.
“I'll make sure of it.”
“Or!” said Wheatley's voice, brightly, “or, while keeping that in mind- keeping your options open, always a good plan- here's an alternate idea, how about... taking them up to the surface! All of them.”
“What? No, I-”
“Just like that story, the one with the bloke and the mountain, where for some reason he decided he didn't want to go trekking all the way over to the mountain- not sure why, lazy, probably, or, or, bit of a gammy leg, touch of asthma, there might have been mitigating circumstances- anyway, didn't want to go all the way to the mountain, so the mountain did the decent thing and popped over to see him. And- and on a more practical note, one thing I happen to know about all these cryo-chambers- bit of a pro on the subject, not to brag- one thing I happen to know is that if they're in good shape- field's active, all the old long-fall-tech shock absorbers in 'em are up and running- you can throw anything at them and it doesn't matter. Bombproof. Literally, actually, you could chuck a bomb at- we're not going to do that, definitely not going to be doing that, never mind. Also, another thing I know- again, bit of experience- is this whole place is one big box. I know you've shifted it about a bit, made it smaller, but it's still just one massive great big box, full of little boxes. So, theoretically speaking, you could just move it right up, all the way up, plonk it right on the surface!”
Wheatley giggled, the giddy punch-drunk giggle of someone who can't believe they are getting away with what they are doing, but who is determined to enjoy every second of it, nevertheless.
“Go on, tell you what, since we're all so keen on experimenting down here, why don't you give it a try? Purely for Science, obviously. Just give it a go.”
The floor shuddered. Chell, hardly able to believe her ears, but definitely unwilling to chance it either way, lunged for the heavy door of the unit with both hands and dragged it closed, letting it seal with a heavy, hissing ka-CHUNK. A red light flared on the console behind her, blinking blearily through the dust- then another- and another-
“No-” Her Voice, its usual cold composure in horrified shreds. “No! I can't- I can't bring it up from there! It's two hundred feet across- a modular unit that size would rip a hole straight through the middle of the facility! That's completely insane! It's a-”
“-terrible idea?”
“Yes!- I mean, no! No! NO!! NOOOOOOOOOOOOO-”
A blaring, repeating alarm began to sound, bleating through the freezing air of the Relaxation Centre. A deep, low-level rumbling began, somewhere far beneath, working its way up into a steady bass pound that rattled Chell's teeth and left her gripping the edge of the desk- and then a massive lurch knocked her off her feet altogether.
“Oh, God,” yelled Wheatley, over the racket. “She's- She's turned the bloody shock absorbers off! Oh, that is not playing fair- right- can't back out now- look, unless you're, um, really good at putting lots of little bits of people back together, unless that's a- a skill you've been hiding under a bushel this whole time, we're going to need those back on sharpish.”
The alarm got louder, driving Wheatley's voice up by another panicky octave.
“Ahh! Alright, don't panic! Stop panicking, I-I-I know this system like the back of my hand, there's got to be some sort of, of manual control- not, not finding anything yet, but-”
Chell dragged herself up on the edge of the desk, fighting the mammoth tremors rising from underneath, scrabbled across the dust-gritty surface to the faded Dynotaped label that read MANUAL CONTROLS.
In the space between seconds, her face dropped into a perfect, calculating mask of unnatural peace. The wailing alarm, the rattling tons of metal and glass shaking themselves apart around her, Wheatley's terrified voice, it all faded into the background as she scanned with quiet, mechanical focus left-to-right along the line of buttons, mind clear, eyes calm- then smacked the flat of her hand down stingingly hard on the one underneath the little black-and-white graphic of a single barcoded cryosleep unit, bouncing cartoonishly in midair.
Wheatley's voice, awed and breathless, in the last moment of silence.
“Ohhh. I never would have thought of that.”
A shattering tremor knocked Chell sideways. The alarm died, the lights flared in a blessed tidal wave of green across the shuddering desk.
“Yes! Get in! You did it! You did it, they're safe, they're- oh, except- um- you might want to hang on to something- just a thought-”
Chell hit the floor in a rain of dust and debris, tasted blood, rolled with her shoulder and tucked as tightly as she could into the narrow, cobwebby space under the desk, and then-
-and then Her terrible scream rose above the racket like a tidal wave, flanged and warped, and the pounding roar became a battering ram, undercut by a deep, thundering cracking sound like an entire forest of brittle trees being brutally torn apart all at once.
The next moment, a second lurch even more catastrophically violent than the first shook Chell in the narrow space like a dice in a box. She curled, trying to shield herself, but then the whole world bounced and the back of her head cracked hard against the underside of the desk, a sharp ringing tone burst in her ears, and the world went dark.
-
-
-
()~~~~~~~~ click for part 3/3~~~~~~~~()