My Little Moron

Chapter 7

There was a loud clanking noise and Wheatley could soon see what she had been doing. She had been doing maintenance on one of the monitors in her chamber, and was now reattaching it to the wall. "I didn't."

Wheatley realised his mistake as soon as he tried to imagine being bored while you were off. He didn't think it was possible, not even for Gladys, who seemed to be able to do everything but stop the earth from turning. Which she could probably do if she had enough time to figure out the physics behind it. "D'you... d'you want to talk about it?"

"Not really. I don't feel like singing, and you don't seem to care anyway." She was doing her best to sound neutral, but Wheatley was well used to detecting the faint strains of bitterness that would sneak into her voice every now and again.

Wheatley rolled his optic a little in hopes it would shake his brains up enough to make him think better, and said as reassuringly as he could, "I do care, luv, it's just that... well, I've just, I've been here all this time and uh, and we've not been talking, and, uh, I thought you were gonna torture me, or something, and um..."

"You thought I woke you up in the middle of the night to kill you in secret?"

"Well, uh, yeah, uh, I did, um, I was afraid of, that is, I thought you might, um – "

"You moron," she said, laughing, "if I was going to kill you I'd just do it, no matter who was in the room. You'd be gone already. And I certainly wouldn't use a screwdriver or a drill. I don't really care for physical torture."

That was encouraging. She had actually laughed, too, which was an even better sign. That was very, very rare. "Well, that's good news. I'm uh, I'm glad to hear it. Well uh, why didn't you, um, didn't you talk to me? I was waiting, um, for you, y'know, but you didn't, ah, you just stayed silent. Absolutely quiet. Well not absolutely, because I heard all your processors and your fans and when you talked to the scientists, and I think you were, you were humming just now, but uh, to me, you were quiet towards me."

"Because," she answered.

Wheatley blinked.

"That's not a proper sentence, luv," he told her. "I think you forgot to tack on the end of it, there."

"I've thought of a new game," she said as if she hadn't heard. "You'll need to turn your flashlight on."

"You said you didn't want to kill me!" he exclaimed, horrified.

"I don't. What does your flashlight have to do with me killing you?"

"Greg told me," he whispered, not wanting Greg to hear, if that were even possible, but with those sneaky scientists you never really knew, "that if I turned my flashlight on, I would die. "

"And you believed that why?"

"Well... why wouldn't I?"

"Because it's stupid," Gladys remarked bluntly. "It's stupid to think you'll die if you turn the flashlight on."

"Are you... are you quite sure?"

"I am one hundred percent sure," she answered seriously, and he knew he could trust her. When Gladys, the scientist, was able to give a hundred percent certainty to something, it was absolutely true.

"Alright then... here goes..." He closed his optic plates, hard, and activated the circuit.

"Hm. It's not blue."

"I'm... I'm not dead?"

"Of course not." Gladys shook her head. "As if that would initiate shutdown. Via overheat, perhaps, but you've got a good long while before that happens, if ever."