Test Chamber 032: Repulsion Gel

[super_astute]

Wheatley did eventually make it back to Chelldon, though his form was a little less android like and a bit more spherical.  Tyler brought him in with a smile at Chelldon and the fantastic drawings he did around his room before he deposited the blue 'eyed' core in Chelldon's arms.

"Well?" Tyler asked, eyebrows arching.

"No, doesn't seem to...  I'm not, you can go now, get to work on fixing my bodies, just standing there like a lump won't do any good!"

The door opened and closed as Tyler exitted the Relaxation Chamber and Wheatley turned in his orbital socket towards Chelldon.  "Well then!  Who's excited to test today?"

Comments

[stubbornsubject.livejournal.com]

No more cake? Now that was cruel!

Chelldon sighed and picked up the cord, he knew which one it was, he was just pausing to look at the sighs above the door. Why were their warning signs in here... were they specifically just because Handy was a bit useless? Because that was harsh but kind of fair.

He carried Wheatley out of the room and dodged past the cameras just to avoid getting them into further trouble. For all he knew, they could of been monitoring Wheatley. He wasn't totally aware yet that his 'friend' was a laughing stock and not only he considered the man a moron.

"Where to?"

[super-astute.livejournal.com]

"Left, right, straight on, straight on, straight-- Oh, no, left!" He actually meant right, and luckily, Chelldon pretty much had learned to do the opposite of what was asked of him. But Wheatley didn't notice. He didn't mind. He was much too busy going over how one makes tea.

Molecule by molecule. And incorrectly at that. They passed Tyler again, who gave them a double look and opened his mouth to say something before thinking better of it.

Tyler was a core that worked with all sorts of humans. He didn't have a Test Subject, he helped out with the guards. But seeing a human like Chelldon was still strange.

[stubbornsubject.livejournal.com]

Chelldon never made it easier on confused cores, thanks to Wheatleys terrible social advise, he nodded a bit too long in Sams direction before turning back to Wheatley and listening to him jabber on and on about tea. How was he going to measure the exact amount of milk and how much fat?

He didn't have those sort of instruments. When he got to the staff bay where the tea machine was, it was just hot water, tea bag, some milk that had been standing and two packets of sugar left over. No precise measurements or molecules.

He filled the cup with all the ingredients, added water and the frowned. How was Wheatley going to drink it? Or was it just for him?

How oddly lonely, he was used to sharing his treats now, it was strange.

[super-astute.livejournal.com]

"Oh, no no, you did it wrong," Wheatley murmured but he noticed the way that Chelldon seemed to enjoy the tea. Hm. Maybe he had seen Wheatley make the tea so many times he just knew how to make it by muscle memory. Now that just made him feel pretty great! Chelldon was such a good little learner!

And soon...soon he'd beat the monkey and--

Oh. Wheatley frowned.

Well, he tried to frown. And when that didn't work, he tried to roll around in distress. "We need to find my body. My real body."

[stubbornsubject.livejournal.com]

"Broken," Chelldon reminded Wheatley as he sipped his tea and watched the ball roll around, what was he to do what it was out of use, he hardly broke it and he could hardly be blamed for something like that going wrong. He didn't know what the perfume did but still... "Sorry."

Taking several gulps of tea, he held it in his mouth making his cheeks poke right out but he had a feeling he had to drink his tea fast or risk losing it. Much like the cake.

Crouching on the floor by where he set Wheatley, he frowned swiftly.

What exactly did the core want this time?

[super-astute.livejournal.com]

"No. No, I mean, yes, I know, but it's a risk I'll need to take. Listen. No, actually, put down the tea, step away from the tea, pretend the tea is just bloody awful and take me into the cupboard." There were no cameras in there and though Wheatley did not have a doctor assigned to him, that didn't mean that they weren't being monitored.

Once they were stuffed in with the barrels upon barrels of sugar -- why so much? Were they testing diabetes in office workers? Oh, this place, always doing science! -- Wheatley could actually explain himself, poorly, in private.

"We need to get you out of here. Before you beat the monkey!"

[stubbornsubject.livejournal.com]

Chelldon spat out the tea as requested, pulling a face before picking up Wheatley and into the rather small cupboard they went, stuffed up against sugar and he was probably standing on something because his height had weirdly increased somehow. This was definitely odd.

"Out? Where to?"

Where did he have to go? He fought and survived, there was no way he was going back into the outside world as science wouldn't let him. He did dream of it but it didn't seem very likely at all, he knew he was trapped.

"There's a monkey?"

[super-astute.livejournal.com]

All of these were very good questions indeed but Wheatley was a bit loathed to have to talk about them. It wasn't that he felt an attachment to Chelldon, not in that way, but having to start over again, or being reassigned somewhere potentially lethal was just something that Wheatley didn't want to have happen to him.

Chelldon was like his meal ticket. Not that he ate anything. Or used tickets. Unless they were punch card like. And even then, he wanted the excellents ticked off.

"The monkey is your enemy, Chelldon! Just because it seems like a good thing to be, trust me, you don't want to tangle with the monkey. Or any of the doctors... Or actually any of the scientists either... And anything to do with moon rocks. Very bad. Just got the memo and it says: 'Moon rocks are very bad.' So you see, we need to find our way out of..."

Wheatley went still for a moment.

"Oh. Seems that the neurotoxins are online. Well, you know what they say, can't manage a secret laboratory without a good stock of neurotoxins. Can we go and find my body now?"

[stubbornsubject.livejournal.com]

Chelldon had no idea what this monkey was or what it represented but apparently he was working to beat it. He also had no idea what neurotoxins were but he didn't like the sound of them either, they were not something that gave someone warm fuzzy feelings and for a good reason.

They had 'leaked' in one of the labs before, no one could explain it, things like that happen all the time.

Chelldon moved them out of the sugar cupboard and frowned at the little core before nodding. Wheatley wanted his body? Fine, Chelldon could do that, Chelldon was good at that sort of thing. He may not of been smart or verbally impressive but he was great at any task he was set.

So off he went, trying not to draw attention as they headed down the hall.

"Where is it?"

[super-astute.livejournal.com]

"Weeeeell. See, that's just the thing. Android testing rooms are in the lower levels. About thirty or so levels down. Now, now, don't get too excited, you can't just jump down there. And technically, the portal gun hasn't been tested outside of the testing chambers..."

Wheatley extolled Chelldon on the reasons for this for the next two minutes as they made their way back to the main hallway. It really was fortunate that their CEO decided not to hire back the personnel positions that were lost in the uprising two weeks ago. It meant that they were more or less ignored and the hallways were more or less empty.

"But hey! I don't see why we can't test it out here! Stop off at the labs first and we'll snag one."

[stubbornsubject.livejournal.com]

Wheatley ordered and Chelldon did, it was just how it worked. Wheatley said fetch and he did, Wheatley said jump and he did, Wheatley said wait and he jumped... good enough. Of course, he wasn't stupid, sometimes Wheatley did some very stupid things that had to be ignored but overall he wasn't awful. More clumsy and stupid.

What sort of moron tried to hack an opened door?

Chelldon soon got down the elevator and into the testing lab, he took what was known as his favourite gun and adjusted all the settings before lifting up Wheatley with it and grinning at the core. What? It always amused him, it was like having a pocket Wheatley!

"Test?"

[super-astute.livejournal.com]

"A test, no--Ooooh!" Wheatley took on that tone of voice as if he was trying to be subtle but so very obviously was not. "Ooooh, ho, yes, yes we're going to test! We just won't consider it a test number and there will be no marks because this is a special test."

Who needed Aperture Laboratories when you could have Wheatley Laboratories? Oh, just imagine it! It would be so amazing if he was allowed to run this place! The science he would do would be brilliant!

"So yes, take your gun, there you are, and apply the grip-- Excellent! And off we go!"

[stubbornsubject.livejournal.com]

It didn't take a genius to know that something was a bit wrong but Chelldon left it be, Wheatley was too much of a moron to be a threat and the worst that could happen would be being caught sneaking around the place and getting a pretty stern telling off. They didn't get rid of test subjects any more.

They'd recently had a massive shortage and it kept getting lower what with Adventure core and Space core constantly killing their subjects.

He shot several portals downwards and cheated a bit, skipping the steps and just going right to the end.

[super-astute.livejournal.com]

Wheatley's suggestions were mostly ignored, but as it should be. He kept wanting Chelldon to set portals at very inconvenient places for going down, like, oh, the ceiling. It didn't seem to occur to him that it would induce a whole lot of falling of that happened and while he was safe so long as Chelldon had his boots on and had the grip applied, it was likely for the best that there was no falling involved in this descent. It generally was accompanied by a whole lot of screaming and that might alert too many people.

"Oh, fun fact," Wheatley said as they headed across a cat walk, one technician applauding Chelldon's twist in the air as he jumped to the landing below him. "Today, it seems, is take your daughter to work day. So, yes, your file was started on take your son to work ten years ago. It's like full cicle! If...well if you know, you were a girl. But what am I to say of human biology?"

They came to the end of the catwalk and Wheatley whirred a bit. There didn't seem to be any surfaces to shoot portal on!

[stubbornsubject.livejournal.com]

Sadly he couldn't remember much of his youth, the damage and all caused a lot of spots in his mind and a lot of confusion but he remembered his clock potato well. He remembered his first test, he remembered being unable to find his parents and he remembered a robotic voice explaining to him his first test.

It glitches half way through and he got an apology and a lolly from the scientists. He never heard that voice again, he often wondered if he'd broken it but clearly it wasn't him. As he had been told many times, he wasn't smart enough to do anything like that. He was the best of the best when it came to test fodder.

Peering around, he eyed up the ground below and hmmed under his breath. There was one very small patch but it was under the staircase and he wasn't sure how he could get the other portal open either. He was officially stumped.

"Moon dust?"

[super-astute.livejournal.com]

"Absolutely, hideously deadly in it's powder form," Wheatley said immediately. "But good for painting asebestos laden walls evidently." He had to carefully access the files, the main computer seemed to be... Alive. Strange. He had been told two months ago that the new operating disc system wasn't suppose to be getting an AI. It was just going to learn to run the place and then when it was ready, Cave Johnson's, rest in peace, assistant was going to have her memory imprinted on it.

Unless testing had started early? He didn't have time to go through and hack all of the pass codes, though he was a brilliant hacker! He had no idea that testing had not just been moved up, but Caroline's personality had already been implanted into the new operating system along with everything they managed to save of Cave Johnson from the floppy disks they transferred his brain onto.

"Besides, where are we going to get moon dust at?" Nevermind that they were standing at one of the valves marked 'liquified moon rocks.'