Like the clumsiest game of tug-o-war, the moment the core was released his desperate attempts at retracting his extension arm came full swing. There was a hearty clang as he bashed himself up into his own rail, an indignant yelp attached.

“Ohhh, ow, okay. What?” Wheatley rattled himself, his interior gyroscope doing a full independent revolution before he seemed willing to focus on the doe-eyed human now squinting at him. He blinked rapidly, then cautiously, peering back as he kept up an armless hug against his rail.

“Can’t-can’t really blame…” He sputtered back slowly, fully prepared to lay blame were it not for the human speaking again. It was an observation so blatant that it should’ve had Wheatley’s stamp of approval, stumping him into silence as he sized up the strange arrival.

He… really needed to re-evaluate his standard for identifying brain damage.

“Yes, yes, spot on. Got it in one mate, good job. Not a human. Never been! Shockingly, I’d imagine. I’m being sarcastic, I realise that, but to be fair you did just assault me soooo. We’re even, and I’m really taking a hit saying that.” Wheatley had bounced back by this point and was already hitching up a shutter back into a smile, albeit a nervous and fairly condescending one.

“Wheatley, also. The third question you asked there: who are you? Answer: Wheatley. Hello. Do, uh, do you have a name? …. do you remember your name?” The half-sized iris, a baseball’s width of cracked blue, flitted up and down the man’s body doubtfully.

Is he making fun of me?

It was remarkable. Whenever this little robot spoke, he seemed to completely desecrate and obliterate the English language with no effort. Words were spoken, yes, but they were near incomprehensible under all the mad gibberish. Harold tried desperately to catch up, managing to catch onto a few words.

“Why wouldn’t I remember my name?” He blinked, but it appeared like a nervous tic for a moment. “I’m Harold. I’m… well, a person. Harold Clyde–”

Out of instinct, Harold held out his hand, then retracted when he remembered Wheatley didn’t possess proper hands–or a body.

“…. Sorry. Habit.”

The man shook his head and cleared his throat. He tasted faint metal in his mouth, from the air.

A hand popped out, which he blinked at before it retracted.

“Ha, well, thought that counts. Think we’ve had enough personal contact for one day, you and me. Basically covered that entire spectrum of human relations: physically touched? Tic! Tick that box right out.” If he had any clue the human was struggling to keep up, he gave no mercy, cheerily blathering on while he closely observed this Harold character. He honestly expected him to croak at any moment, just right there, mid-conversation.

“Yes well, picked it me self.” The core eased from crunching himself on the rail, freeing up the needed space to give a smug wiggle. “Would imagine it’d give that impression. Of fitting. And Harold! That’s... well, that’s a name. Basically. Haven’t much to say on that, probably French, good on you. For... having that. Somehow.”

An awkward pause put a hollow space after the not-a-compliment.

… clearly this human was broken.

“Noooo, no, I don’t think religion has anything to do wit— AAH!”

It was touching him, it was touching him!

“OK! OK sure! INCREDIBLE mate, I was rooting for you the whole way, bloody miraclegetoffofmenowoffoffoff.” Wheatley was taken aback to be grabbed, initially frozen on the spot in blank horror, a tiny condensed speck of an iris gawking back at the elated human. Then he regained his faculty enough to force the most anxious attempt at a cheerful smile, his lower shutter squeaking with a shudder when it tried to lift. At the same time his motor began short, jerky attempts at reversing, as though trying to shake free the extra weight holding it down.

Disregard the fact that he already knew those hands hand been on the floor. They had been in another dimension. Who knew what they had done there. They could’ve touched bread for all he knew.

Harold flinched back, body hunched and hands brought up to his chest. There was something about his eyes, a glassiness to them that always made him look like he was about to cry at any moment, no matter the occasion. And they were wide now, wide and fearing.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he squawked. “I got—got excited. I’m sorry! …. You can’t really blame me for getting a little nuts…”

His eyes focused once more, information reaching his brain. His brows narrowed considerably as he observed his companion. He was confused, yes, but he had a look that indicated that he was searching a part of his brain for something familiar.

“Ohhh, ow, okay. What?” Wheatley rattled himself, his interior gyroscope doing a full independent revolution before he seemed willing to focus on the doe-eyed human now squinting at him. He blinked rapidly, then cautiously, peering back as he kept up an armless hug against his rail.

“Can’t-can’t really blame...” He sputtered back slowly, fully prepared to lay blame were it not for the human speaking again. It was an observation so blatant that it should’ve had Wheatley’s stamp of approval, stumping him into silence as he sized up the strange arrival.

He... really needed to re-evaluate his standard for identifying brain damage.

“Yes, yes, spot on. Got it in one mate, good job. Not a human. Never been! Shockingly, I’d imagine. I’m being sarcastic, I realise that, but to be fair you did just assault me soooo. We’re even, and I’m really taking a hit saying that.” Wheatley had bounced back by this point and was already hitching up a shutter back into a smile, albeit a nervous and fairly condescending one.

As familiar as Wheatley was with being ignored, he still pulled his shutters into a flat stare the longer the human seemed too preoccupied to answer. Maybe he needed to run a quick diagnostic, some sort of audio check to be certain he was broadcasting his voice rather than just sending the command file in loops inside his vocal processor—

Or he could just give a second go of it because a human plopping out of his portal was the height of distracting. Under the core’s watchful gaze the stranger plunged an arm, then his entire body across the dimensional rift until fetal on a floor the core categorised as not sanitary for sleeping.

Am I still alive?

“… um.” The robot pivoted on it’s connector, tilting it’s chassis one way and it’s free-floating faceplate another, like a puzzled dog trying to examine something foreign from a new angle. One squint later and he pulled a nervous smile, hitching up a lower shutter and nodding enthusiastically. “Yes, I’d go with yes. Looking at it! Talking, mate, it’s a dead give-away. Sorry, that– not my best choice of words, dead– it’s a live give-away. You, um. You don’t have allergies, do you? Y’know, get the sniffles sometimes if around dirt, fungus, arsenic, lead poisoning? Because, heh, because I’d probably sit up. In that case. Just a suggestion.”

The human scrambled to his feet, gray dust already coating half of his body. He wobbled in place like a fawn learning how to walk–if a fawn could survive being coated in fungus arsenic dust.

“Oh my god,” was all Harold could say. “Oh my god. Oh my god…”

He turned, gaping at the portal he had traveled through. It glitched horribly on the inside, the other world dark and barely visible.

“I’m alive!”

Harold grabbed Wheatley by the sides of his chassis, not having absorbed the fact that he’s manhandling a robot that is talking to him.

“Noooo, no, I don’t think religion has anything to do wit— AAH!”

It was touching him, it was touching him!

“OK! OK sure! INCREDIBLE mate, I was rooting for you the whole way, bloody miraclegetoffofmenowoffoffoff.” Wheatley was taken aback to be grabbed, initially frozen on the spot in blank horror, a tiny condensed speck of an iris gawking back at the elated human. Then he regained his faculty enough to force the most anxious attempt at a cheerful smile, his lower shutter squeaking with a shudder when it tried to lift. At the same time his motor began short, jerky attempts at reversing, as though trying to shake free the extra weight holding it down.

Such as this one.

“…?” Wheatley had been trucking along the rusted management rail through the corridors of his self-proclaimed department, struggling over a particularly nasty fracture that left a small gap between the rails, when a tell-tale womp caught his attention. It took some reversing back over the split— *clak-clak* went the rail guide unhappily— for him to spy it.

In a bathroom.

“Huh.” The core pivoted on his extension arm, facing down the broken ajar doorway of what once upon a time had been the ladies room. The small, tile-lined washroom was dark and grungy, the lights long broken and the toilets inside their sheltered stalls no doubt growing new sentient life-forms out of the fungus likely thriving from the humid bowls. There, on the far wall directly opposite of the gaping doorway, glowed the rippling outline of a neon orange portal. He could only just glimpse the new dimension through the oval passage, straining and pulling tight his shutters into a studious squint.

Where was that? Was that indoors somewhere? Somewhere much nicer than a mildewed, decaying employee restroom. Unfortunately nobody ever thought to equip the loo with a branch of management rail, apparently having robots interrupt your personal business was an invasion of privacy, so Wheatley had only one choice in a situation like this.

Shouting.

“HELLO?! Is- Is anybody there? It’s me, a talking hole on your wall! Sounds crazy, I know, and you might be! You might be an absolute nutter, I have no idea, never met you before, but in THIS particular instance, you are not. Insane. Because the wall is definitely talking to you and you definitely want to come check that out!

“Ooo.. spooky..” They purred a bit, chuckling as they followed him along. The light grew a bit brighter to make up for the change in light, and they were surprised at the state of dilapidation this place was in.

“What kinda places have ya seen? Maybe ya’ve seen my dimension without realizin’ it! They were intregued at the idea, laughing.

"Well, it starts by making rune stones, but unfocused ones. ’S a bit like trying to tune into a particular dimension, but at random, so ya have to adjust til ya can get the right frequency.. like a radio!”

“Ohh, all kinds. Seen snow! Seen that one. Not sure if you’re familiar with it. Frozen water, it turns out. Nightmarish, right? Annnd... uh. Trees. Seen a place that had absolutely nothing at all, just a red dusty floor for miles. Any of these ringing a bell?” Now that Wheatley thought about it, he really hadn’t a particularly stunning portal story to crack out whenever the rare visitor popped by. He’d have to work on that. Take some creative licenses with his surplus of interdimensional gateways that ultimately all seemed to lead to empty wilderness of one kind or another.

“... ‘course, ha, that- that makes complete sense. I’m following. Rock-based dimensional radio passports. Basic. And these...... let you.... hear things? No, wait, that wasn’t the top-- travel, right, they let you.... get past government officials on sentient rock planets?” What began with arrogance quickly, and quite shamelessly, hedged into throw-a-dart-at-the-wall guesses.

Now and again the cracked optic, bright and blue in the dim corridor, zipped away from Hecate to re-evaluate their destination. Whatever the core concluded, it continued onward with confidence. After nearly fifteen years predominantly stuck in only one department, he was maybe possibly getting his directions right.

It had been another uneventful day on the Lor. Or maybe another uneventful night. It was hard to tell the difference, being so far from any discernible star system. Magolor was growing bored out of his mind, with not much to do outside of floating around space. He had definitely thought about going back to Planet Pop Star or Halcandra, but after everything that had happened, there wasn’t much need for him in either of those places. For all he knew, he might have even been an outlaw. So for the time being, he was just going as far as his ship and resources could take him.

A few moments later, something showed up with a ping on the radar. Jumping back, Magolor looked up to see that a small, metal object had been spotted near the ship.

“Probably just more space junk…” he said to himself.

Nonetheless, he took a closer look at it. Upon further inspection, the object appeared to be a small white sphere, with two handles above and below what appeared to be an electric yellow-orange eyeball. Confused, yet intrigued, Magolor decided to take it into the ship to see what it was for himself.

After bringing the sphere into the Lor, Magolor was almost starting to wish he hadn’t. It was capable of talking, which he didn’t expect. However, it only seemed to be capable of talking about the same thing over and over and over again, in the same mile-a-minute monotone robot voice, occasionally changing pitch to emphasize the urgency of what it was saying.

“Ship. On a ship. Going on a ship.” said the sphere, for maybe the 6th time.

“Yeah, I got that.” Magolor responded.

“Wanna go home. Wanna go to Earth. Don’t like space.”

“Got that, too.”

“Hey. Hey mister. Where we goin’? Earth. Gotta go to Earth. Gotta go home.”

“Well, we weren’t going anywhere until-”

“Earth. Trees. Mountains. Dirt. Mount Everest. Grand Canyon.”

“What even are you? And where IS Earth, anyway?!” Magolor was getting impatient, but at the same time this did present a possible destination for the two of them. Which was something, and better than floating around aimlessly, Magolor supposed.

Just as suddenly as the sphere had popped up, another notification appeared on the radar. This time, though, it seemed to be a portal. The portal must have shown up sometime after the Earth-obsessed sphere came aboard. Magolor was getting ready to jump away, as random portals were generally bad news. Before he did, however, he decided to at least check where it would lead. As soon as the exit coordinates came up on screen…

“Wait. WAAAAIT. Wait. Wait. Wait. Earth. Coordinates. Earth. Home. Wanna go home. Gonna go to Earth. Gonna go home.”

“Is… Is it really…? Those coordinates, that’s your home?”

“Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.” The sphere kept repeating the word for a while, then moved back to Earth, and Home, and how desperately it wanted to go there.

After happening upon this sphere by pure chance, and now this portal that seemed to lead exactly where it wanted to go, the entire universe seemed to be pushing Magolor to go inside at this point. Looking up the coordinates, they seemed to be a spot on a relatively small planet in a relatively small galaxy in a very remote part of the universe. At the very least, there wouldn’t be anything that could attack him. And, he might be able to get rid of the sphere. If something went wrong, he could always turn around and head back with the ship’s own portal devices. But he had to make a decision fast. The new portal wouldn’t be open much longer.

“Portal. Heading home. Heading through a portal.”

“Pure poetry.” Magolor muttered.

Now it was obvious. The portal really was the only way out of this mess, and they were going straight through it. And if Magolor ever came to regret this decision? Well… Worse things had happened.

The Lor Starcutter sailed through the portal into the unknown.

Now it was a wreckage of bent, twisted remains.

It had been pure bad luck that the core had been near enough to see it all unfold. When at his most bored, the little robot dared to trek the more shoddy lines of management rail across the low-end of the facility in pursuit of entertainment. Decay was rampant through the dying facility, the tracks no exception, and he had been muttering little pieces of encouragement to the rusted metal line when the portal opened up.

It reminded him of space. Without a proper angle to see where the portal could’ve led, all Wheatley was left to witness was a great vacuum trying to suck up everything that lay beneath it. Bits and pieces of probably important metal bric-a-brac went flying, suctioned away by an invisible tornado whose reach was just shy of pulling the core itself. That didn’t stop him from screaming, motor slurrying on the rotten track as he desperately tried to reverse. He went nowhere, impulsively slamming on the brakes to grip his shabby little strip of mobility when something crashed.

Then it all stopped. The whooshing, the flying parts, the crushing air pressure. Only a cacophony of falling metal remained, twisted debris once suspended by the pull of displaced air now swinging down or snapping off as gravity took control of the situation. It took a moment for scarred shutters, squeezed suffocatingly tight against the mayhem, to crack open and peek at the outcome.

Space had left a present.

A metal something was wedged between the beams, crunched into a catwalk and seemingly stuck fast against a strip of concrete that sided the start of the offices for R&D. It wasn’t going anywhere. In the next few minutes, the core ever-so delicately picked his way along an alternate branch of suspended management rail, the cables shaky under his weight but holding as he came near. Under closer inspection, he… still hadn’t the foggiest what he was looking at.

Two options came to mind as the little robot initiated it’s inner flashlight, a pitifully sputtering beam spotlighting the metal contraption and regularly shuttered by darkness whenever the optic blinked.

This was either a meteor…

….or he was the proud new father of an alien space egg.

“Um. Hullo? Are- Are you alive? Or, I don’t know, radioactive, maybe? That’s probably a concern. Radioactivity. Here’s an idea, just to start us off: if you aren’t alive, but are radioactive, just, uh, just give a click. A couple clicks. That sound that means oi beware radioactivity mate. Not sure where it comes from, sure you know what I’m talking about. OR, or if you ARE alive, then… well. Then just tell me. Verbally.”

He squinted at the immense something, or immense from the standards of a robotic basketball, with growing doubt regarding this first contact.

The sphere rattled on quite excitedly about Earth and Home and the ship, and as Magolor headed to the door to see what new disaster he had just gotten himself into, he heard a voice that sounded like it was nearby.

“… or if you ARE alive, then… Well. Then just tell me. Verbally.”

Oh. Not only had they crashed into an unknown building, they seemed to have crashed directly into someone’s home. Perhaps this person owned the sphere?

“… what am I doing. I’m talking to a bloody rock.”

As soon as Magolor opened the door and let down the ramp (though it wasn’t much use, as the ship was tilted quite far upwards), he saw what was most likely the source of the voice- another sphere. It looked identical to the first, except it had a bright blue eye instead of yellowy-orange. Magolor didn’t know if it was possible for a robot to look fearful or apprehensive, but this one was doing a very good job of showing both- he almost felt bad for it. At the very least, Magolor felt he should introduce himself.

“Ah… Hello! I don’t suppose you happen to know where we are, currently? My name’s Magolor, and I think I found a friend of yours! Wait here, I’ll go get him.” He dove back into the ship to grab the first sphere, which promptly asked where they were going as soon as he picked it up.

“Listen, we’re going wherever we ended up, ok? Now SHUSH.” he whisper-yelled to the sphere in response.

Magolor hurried back out of the ship, sphere in hand.

Good news: whatever came out did not immediately imprint on him. Neutral news: what even was that thing? It wasn’t a human, that was obvious, but that was about all he understood.

“UM.” The little robot’s voice cracked, raising an octave in distressed confusion, adding to the shockingly human quality to what was essentially a vocal processor boxed inside a dirty metal ball. He watched the thing disappear back inside, so incredibly unthreatening in it’s strangeness that the core had creaked further along the rail by the time it emerged again. It was poised closer to the ship, peering warily down as something was presented to him.

He recognised the fellow core immediately.

“… nope! No, ha, never seen him before in my life.” Wheatley laughed nervously, his optic darting away sketchily as he lied, though it quickly came full circle back onto the probably-not-an-alien-baby-thing.

Yeah, can’t imagine why… Magolor thought to himself.

Still, was it worth pointing out the lie? Honestly, it’d probably just lead to some argument over who has to take the orangey sphere, which Magolor wasn’t sure he’d be able to win. For now, he had come up with an easier way out, which he knew the blue sphere wouldn’t be able to do much about, being attached to a rail and all.

“Well, besides that, it’s a shame you don’t know this guy. A real shame. But, uh, he seems pretty happy to be here- guess this must be the “home” he kept telling me about on the way here, haha! So, for now, I’m just gonna, leave him. Here. On the ground.” With that, Magolor gently set the little sphere down on the floor, with a couple of pats for good measure.

Seemed a pretty safe way to go about this.

The happily tilt to his optic declined into something of a blank stare as his attention flitted back and forth during the process of Magolor abandoning the Space Core there on some kinked bit of cat-walk. Wow. That would’ve been a nightmare for him, absolutely terrifying, just dumped in the middle of nowhere to maybe roll to his doom—

Bloody lucky not to be in his metaphorical shoes then, eh?

“Sure, sure, he looks... happy. There. Sure he’ll be fine.” He gave a nervous laugh and was actually quite happy to not talk about it either. Maybe if he echoed a bit too much, caused some sort-of space related PTSD, he’d fuss at Mister Floaty Hands to take him away. But how often did he come around these parts really? It’d be fine.

“Have an interest, do you? Bit of a-a science major? Well, you’re in luck! Best bloody place to crash into! They did.... uh, things. Primarily. Sounds vague, I know, almost like I don’t know what I’m talking about, but no, just- just adding a bit of suspense. Getting you on the edge of your seat....” By this point the core had pivoted on it’s connector and was almost frantically scanning the darkness around them, the maintenance gully pocked with flickering spotlights that unanimously illuminated nothing of any value.

“Oh!” He jolted, swinging his cracked optic back down to the odd stranger eagerly, “Like portals! Bit of an old hat ‘round here, portals, almost dull, honestly. Talking about it. But you did just pop in through one, probably should bring it up. Or, er, flew. Flew in one. That was one of mine, being humble about it. Portals across dimensions—” Insert dramatic handle pump here, his best equivalent of waving a hand dramatically at a magic show, “— oooo. But, uh, there’s a gun around here. Somewhere. That does less impressive ones. Just... takes you across a room, really.”

“Are you kidding?! This is amazing! Hullo!” It was remarkable how much of an armful the small core could become when it really wanted to. Without the slightest bit of shame to hold him back, Wheatley gushed openly from the attention. How had this ever been such a big deal in the past? Had he just found all the worst humans, lying about some supposed dangerous government that would be out to get him, when in actuality they just didn’t like to play sidekick to a one-foot-tall robot? Alright, perhaps sidekick was jumping the gun, they were just being stared at was all.

… was what someone with a more reasonable mindset would have thought. Wheatley, however, seemed to think this short walk was about the best highlight the Outside had to offer. He was squirming, waggling that creaky old upper handle in cheery how-do-you-dos, and generally trying to figure out how to observe twelve different locations at once. It wasn’t even that they had gathered any sort of significant crowd— but by that same token, being in the same room as more than two humans was a novel experience that Wheatley only had once every four or five years it felt like. This place was like a- a feral human zoo, where they were all wandering free in their habitat while he was safe in the safari truck that was Bruce’s arms.

“Is that it? Just: Oi, stop the presses, a robot? I mean, I knew the Outside was inferior in the ol’ technology aspect of… well, ha, everything. But- but, well, I guess I didn’t believe them! Sounds mental, y’know? A whole bleedin’ planet, no robots. Real robots, not that funny toy thing we’ve- you’ve- you’ve got in the box there. Sure, said it before, I’m basically the highest mark of artificial intelligence out there, the line doesn’t get any- any toppy-ier than me, absolute top of the line, but still, I thought there’d be… something. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind it, don’t mind it at all. Basically doing them all a favour, really.” Wheatley was seamless in his juggling of both being in awe and smug. It was almost a shame Bruce wasn’t stopping, letting him get a chance to quiz these onlookers, but it was fine. Another day.

They had a birthday party to attend, after all.

“Just be sure not to roll ‘round too much, aye? Don’t wanna accidentally drop ye ‘ere, ‘specially in this kind ‘f busy crowd.”

For once, Bruce found himself heavily gratuitous at the fact that Wheatley lacked the orthodox form of a limb, for if he did, the little robot would have been flailing about even more so than he did with his handles. With the robot’s eye plate whirling back and forth, and sometimes going as far as to pop a few inches outside of Wheatley’s outer casing at his excitement, the core proved quite a handful, and Bruce had to roll the handle of the present bag onto his wrist in order to keep both hands on the enthused robot. 

Which, Bruce imagined, proved better Wheatley excited than terrified. For most animals, the sight of people staring or gawking at them might cause discomfort in the least, and terror at most. Then again, Wheatley was no animal, and perhaps beyond the metal parts, contained no organic materials. But Bruce decided it best to not let his mind wander on the mechanics behind what made Wheatley…well, Wheatley but instead just simply focus on the task at hand. 

A part of Bruce worried- ah, Marlin’s anxiety was rubbing onto him, wasn’t it?- about the bigger picture of Wheatley’s presence. Of the fictional telly shows of aliens arriving to a kind human and both of them having to evade the authorities. Part of that worry caused Bruce to wonder if he, instead, should have kept Wheatley hidden, or at least in a more discrete transport. 

And another part of Bruce- the part just beginning to try and figure humans out- realized that many humans contained both a short attention span for most things in their everyday lives and were also heavily skeptical. He had seen videos of magicians and such, and surely no government agencies were going after them! Perhaps most of the humans they would come across would simply regard Wheatley as a prop, or a remarkably engineered puppet. But not an actual, living robot. 

“Right. No, don’t, ha, don’t do that. Message received. I’ll just, uh. Buckle in here. Safety first.” The core clenched it’s haggard handles over its faceplate once it centred itself, it’s shutters likewise narrowing into an expression it must’ve fancied to be serious.

He noticed someone looking from the warped corner of his optic.

“Hullo!” Wheatley immediately punched out his handle again with a cheerful, jostling little wave before seizing up, giving a blink, and snailing back into himself again. “Safety, yes. That’s fine, can’t- can’t let them get too good a look, right? ‘Course not. Still need to walk back later! That’s how you get famous anyway, bit of a fun fact for you: in small increments.”

Almost there. Wheatley managed to wrangle himself together now with that news on the horizon, though his once again pinched handles timidly began to part enough for a peer of cracked blue to be seen. He hadn’t any idea what he was looking for, where this almost there was. Whatever it was, he’d somehow expected it to stand out, like something related to them should’ve been distinct. Like the monochrome of real city life around them was just a background to the more important matter of things involving him.

“It wasn’t exactly my job, if we’re being honest about all this.” Wheatley continued to chatter, always eager to showcase the one topic in which he genuinely was an expert– at least compared to Bruce; Aperture. “I definitely wasn’t a daycare robot. Ha, no, that’d be- that’s just demeaning.” The core gave a shiver in his arm as though physically repelled by the idea of being assigned the role of child keeper.

“No, it was more of a favour, one that went a bit tits up, though no fault of my own! They’re nothing like adults- the little humans, that is- they’re a completely different species.” His upper handle pumped with emphasis, still traumatised by the day. The glue, glitter, sticky fingers, snort and paint and a whole chassis full of rattling plastic beads. Not only were little humans filthy, they also didn’t appear to have a rhyme nor reason to their actions– a lot like him, actually, though he didn’t recognise the similarity at all.

At some point he became aware of the fact that they were getting attention. It had slipped past the radar for a while, his attention caught on bigger and often stationary things. Skimming his stare to the shop window to their right finally snagged onto a stare, requiring him to double-take and confirm a nameless young man was gawking at them. Then another. He squinted at one that fiddled with their phone in their direction, half-wondering if it was trying to communicate but failing to summon any sort of Wi-Fi capability just by thinking really really really hard.

“… wa-wait, are they looking at ME? I thought they were looking at YOU, I mean, you’re bloody enormous, who wouldn’t be AMAZED by that! I-I’m tiny, how can they even SEE me– th-they see me?” The thought took a moment to really hit him. For a machine that considered size to relate to importance, the sheer fact that all of Bruce didn’t change the fact that the little metal ball with the glowing blue lens existed. He didn’t melt away into his shadow, quite the contrary. Everyone was mystified, or at least a fair number of them.

“Oh. Ohhh, this is great, this is– Hello! Hi! Hi there!” Wheatley perked up and handled the attention with all the grace expected of him– none at all. He merrily greeted anyone that looked in their attention, thriving under the spotlight with every ounce of bravado he kept stored up in that little shell.

Bruce glanced about, seeing the growing number of people catching sight of the core nestled in the giant’s grasp. Lucky for both Wheatley and Bruce, the chances of somebody eyeing up the opportunity to snatch the robot from the giant were slim, thanks to Bruce’s massive build and intimidating stature. If it was one thing Bruce was proud to have which could be decidedly scary towards strangers or those who didn’t know him better, it was his overwhelming and towering size. 

“Oh, I reckon most people’ve seen me b’fore, ‘specially the commuters,” Bruce explained, glancing back down to the core, the robot’s blue eye swirling left, right, and all directions at the number of heads who turned and eyes growing wide with fascination at the sight of the core. “But you on the other hand. Don’t think many people ‘ere ‘ave seen a real-life robot b’fore. ‘specially not one with a personality,” the giant added. 

Using his overshadowing demeanor, Bruce pushed through the crowd with ease, though the groups of people weren’t too overwhelming to overpower. Really, it was just a few individuals here and there who stayed behind and gaped with opened mouths and bugged eyes in shock at the robot. Even they, upon losing sight of Wheatley, went back to their routine or showed a picture of the robot to their companion standing beside them.

A little girl waved shyly at the blue-eyed core, other hand wrapped tightly around her father’s coat and she whispered timidly but excitedly to her parent ‘Look daddy a robot!’. The father in question seemed a bit less contained than the child and gave the similar expression of the crowd; a dumbfounded gawk, though the man in particular froze in place. 

... was what someone with a more reasonable mindset would have thought. Wheatley, however, seemed to think this short walk was about the best highlight the Outside had to offer. He was squirming, waggling that creaky old upper handle in cheery how-do-you-dos, and generally trying to figure out how to observe twelve different locations at once. It wasn’t even that they had gathered any sort of significant crowd— but by that same token, being in the same room as more than two humans was a novel experience that Wheatley only had once every four or five years it felt like. This place was like a- a feral human zoo, where they were all wandering free in their habitat while he was safe in the safari truck that was Bruce’s arms.

“Is that it? Just: Oi, stop the presses, a robot? I mean, I knew the Outside was inferior in the ol’ technology aspect of... well, ha, everything. But- but, well, I guess I didn’t believe them! Sounds mental, y’know? A whole bleedin’ planet, no robots. Real robots, not that funny toy thing we’ve- you’ve- you’ve got in the box there. Sure, said it before, I’m basically the highest mark of artificial intelligence out there, the line doesn’t get any- any toppy-ier than me, absolute top of the line, but still, I thought there’d be... something. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind it, don’t mind it at all. Basically doing them all a favour, really.” Wheatley was seamless in his juggling of both being in awe and smug. It was almost a shame Bruce wasn’t stopping, letting him get a chance to quiz these onlookers, but it was fine. Another day.

Such as this one.

“…?” Wheatley had been trucking along the rusted management rail through the corridors of his self-proclaimed department, struggling over a particularly nasty fracture that left a small gap between the rails, when a tell-tale womp caught his attention. It took some reversing back over the split— *clak-clak* went the rail guide unhappily— for him to spy it.

In a bathroom.

“Huh.” The core pivoted on his extension arm, facing down the broken ajar doorway of what once upon a time had been the ladies room. The small, tile-lined washroom was dark and grungy, the lights long broken and the toilets inside their sheltered stalls no doubt growing new sentient life-forms out of the fungus likely thriving from the humid bowls. There, on the far wall directly opposite of the gaping doorway, glowed the rippling outline of a neon orange portal. He could only just glimpse the new dimension through the oval passage, straining and pulling tight his shutters into a studious squint.

Where was that? Was that indoors somewhere? Somewhere much nicer than a mildewed, decaying employee restroom. Unfortunately nobody ever thought to equip the loo with a branch of management rail, apparently having robots interrupt your personal business was an invasion of privacy, so Wheatley had only one choice in a situation like this.

Shouting.

“HELLO?! Is- Is anybody there? It’s me, a talking hole on your wall! Sounds crazy, I know, and you might be! You might be an absolute nutter, I have no idea, never met you before, but in THIS particular instance, you are not. Insane. Because the wall is definitely talking to you and you definitely want to come check that out!

No fights, hunts, cases, anything. One day. That was it! They were a generally good person! Yet the Fae was walking through their own home with a containment sigil floating in their hand, ready to hurt something for disturbing their one day off.

The voice was metallic, echoing, and they were either sure it was some sort of Android, or the ghost of Steven Hawking.

Hecate found the… portal… based on the blue glow from the spare bedroom, cursing and peering into the pathway. The other side was dark, dreary, and looked faintly like a.. bathroom?

They clambered through, their staff forming once they stepped into the dilapidated stall. It smelled of decay and abandonment, and Hecate recoiled before switching the containment sigil to one of light, murmuring. “Solas.” White light lit up the area before dimming to a comfortable glow, like a candle.

“AH!” And yet the core squawked anyway, surprised by something he expected, as a human-esque figure emerged out of the loo with what seemed to be a long stick and a glowy hand. And an extra glowy eye. It was ideal that they came with their own light source; the corridor was in no better state than the restroom, darkened by sludgy growths and sporadically spotlighted by fluorescent lights with a tendency to strobe.

It spoke. Funny accent. Not that he was one to talk.

“Umm, yes! Yes. To both. Hello, also, how do you do.” The machine gave a nervous laugh and an even more nervous smile, provided by hitching up a scarred lower shutter to partially snuff out the bright blue optic that was scanning the figure up and down. “You’re in Aperture! … which would’ve sounded much grander had you any idea what I’m talking about. And if I had a janitor. But, trust me, it’s a bloody amazing place! If you watch your step. No, seriously, watch your step, I have no idea what that thing next to your foot is.”

The little device waggled it’s battered lower handle as a means to unhelpfully gesture to a reddish wet, pooling mould dominating a crevice created by a rupture in the floor tiles.

At the mention of watching out they glanced down, grimacing. “That’s.. unsanitary.” A few steps around it brought them closer. The light seemed to float around their shoulder, focusing its beam on the ground and walls as they looked around. Some sort of lab?

“Aperture? Isn’t that just a fancy name fer a shutta’?” Musing out loud it seemed. They pulled a small notepad out of a vest pocket, along with a pen, scribbling down a few things as the other talked.

“Anotha’ dimension ya say? Well that’s bloody brilliant! I’ll have ta stay and do some research.. create a rune stone so I can travel back and forth..” They trailed off, thinking as they wrote quickly.

Huh. That was neat. He could use one of those.

“… is it? Er, yes, I mean yes. It’s a fancy name for a shutter. Clever you, you’re two for two! Irrelevant though, sadly. Not a shutter factory. Sure I could find you some shutters if- if your heart is set on it, but uh, but not exactly the highlight…” His blathering began to trail as his glance flitted down and, with a double-take, he began to realise the person was writing.

I’ll have to stay and do some research.

“Sorry? Are- you’re writing- are you a scientist? A, what’s it, a… stone scientist? You study stones?” With a timid sort of bravery, and the electronic whine of struggling parts, the core gunned it’s motor and scooted forward another foot along the rail in a futile effort to spy the notepad.

“Oh? No, I jus’ talk out loud a bit. The shutters don’t really interest me.” They hummed a bit, placing the pen back into their pocket, letting him talk.

As he scooted forward that was kinda cute how he did that Hecate shook their head. “Not a scientist, ’m afraid. I am, however, a lawyer! Prosecutor, actually.” They chuckled softly, watching him try to peek at their notes.

At the mention of his name, they pulled their pen back out and wrote it down, making sure to underline it. “A pleasure ta meet ya Wheatley.” He seemed to ramble a bit.. a lot. Constantly. But hey, he seemed like he had good intentions!

The notepad popped back out and while he couldn’t pin down what exactly they wrote– literacy not guaranteed– he did notice, with a swell of satisfaction, that it involved underlining.

“Ha, yes, well, it isn’t every day, is it? Meeting an incredible piece of technology such as myself. VERY expensive, top of the line manufacturing, who wouldn’t find it a pleasu— oh, oh, you didn’t mean it like th- Right. Er. Pleasure to meet you too!” His optic skittered sheepishly sideways but came back around by the end of his prattle, the beaten lower shutter drawn up into a cheery grin as he nodded energetically through the pleasantries.

They couldn’t help the chuckle that came from them, looking up at him as he talked over their shoulder. They made a few more notes about him, his personality, anything they could think of before closing the notebook, humming in thought.

“Right, I knew that, it was in my top five of- of obvious definitions. For that job. Top three, even, I thought– I told myself: Wheatley, that word definitely sounds like a branch of the justice system. Just needed a bit of confirmation. Which I have. So. We’re on the same page.” This was a tiny bit uncomfortable; a criminal and somebody that punished criminals. But it’d be fine. That was over thirty years ago, what were the chances of it coming up? He’d just have to put on his best good citizen face and he’d have his own prosecutor-by-proxy badge in no time. Then he’d be exempt of being prosecuted! You can’t prosecute a prosecutor, right? ‘Course not. Sounded mental.

Just play it cool.

“Hexagon. That’s it. A close relative, I suspect. Have a lot of mathematicians on the family tree, maybe?” Wheatley peeked back at them curiously, his spontaneous nerves rather safely bottled at the news that they were here as an unofficial explorer. No prosecuting. Excellent.

“Brilliant! Sounds fair, big letters. You’d basically never be able to write it without me! So, ha, credit where it’s due. Step one then: finding a rock. Good news. Us? We’re only underground right now! Popular place, dirt, for rocks and we’ve got miles of it! ‘Course usually the dirt is, uh, is supposed to stay on the outside. A bit of a truce between the facility and the…. planet. Hasn’t been going well, you might’ve noticed— oh! Hang about, I know just the place! C’mon, on we go, don’t forget what I told you about watching your step! This is definitely an at your own risk tour.”

With that rush of dialogue, the little robot’s motor hummed to life. It took a moment for him to get going, gears slurrying on a spot of mildew that slicked up the rail, but eventually it latched and off the core went. It began reversing down the hazardous corridor, leading the charge, optic still on the newcomer as it went.

“Not that I.. remember..” They seemed to grow quiet as he brought up family, climbing over a broken rift in the floor as they did. “I never really knew them.. it was a very long time ago.”

“We’re underground? Fascinating! Buildin, underground is quite difficult, risk of stuff collapsin’ and such.. but even though it seems abandoned ’s holdin’ up quite well!” At the mention of risk Hecate laughed, following him. “I live fer danger!”

They walked alongside him, looking around with their Fae-light as they went. At the question they nodded, climbing over a bit of debris as they did.

Rooms passed them by, some housing long rectangular windows-- or at least the glassless frames-- peeking into old, abandoned laboratories. Decay had decimated most of the projects, only dustily neglect oddities left standing. Not that the core had any interest in those. It continued to putter along the rail, jamming now and again temporarily on uneven fractures in the rail.

“Ha, well, let’s not hope for danger. Like to- to keep those numbers low, down in the single digits, the teens. We can just call it... natural hazards! For you. Mostly. But don’t worry! It’s not far, just uh... huh. Where are we.” The core faltered to a stop at an intersection, electronic part whining as it pivoted this way and that. The direction it picked next seemed at random, and it busily zipped off in the lead once more.

“This way! Definitely this way. Just down this loooong, dark, spooky hallway.” Which the hallway kindly obliged to match the description; it stretched into pure darkness, any lighting having long since given up. Much like the floor tiles which grew more irregular, dipping or rising according to whether the ground underneath sunk or ruptured upward.

Such as this one.

“…?” Wheatley had been trucking along the rusted management rail through the corridors of his self-proclaimed department, struggling over a particularly nasty fracture that left a small gap between the rails, when a tell-tale womp caught his attention. It took some reversing back over the split— *clak-clak* went the rail guide unhappily— for him to spy it.

In a bathroom.

“Huh.” The core pivoted on his extension arm, facing down the broken ajar doorway of what once upon a time had been the ladies room. The small, tile-lined washroom was dark and grungy, the lights long broken and the toilets inside their sheltered stalls no doubt growing new sentient life-forms out of the fungus likely thriving from the humid bowls. There, on the far wall directly opposite of the gaping doorway, glowed the rippling outline of a neon orange portal. He could only just glimpse the new dimension through the oval passage, straining and pulling tight his shutters into a studious squint.

Where was that? Was that indoors somewhere? Somewhere much nicer than a mildewed, decaying employee restroom. Unfortunately nobody ever thought to equip the loo with a branch of management rail, apparently having robots interrupt your personal business was an invasion of privacy, so Wheatley had only one choice in a situation like this.

Shouting.

“HELLO?! Is- Is anybody there? It’s me, a talking hole on your wall! Sounds crazy, I know, and you might be! You might be an absolute nutter, I have no idea, never met you before, but in THIS particular instance, you are not. Insane. Because the wall is definitely talking to you and you definitely want to come check that out!

No fights, hunts, cases, anything. One day. That was it! They were a generally good person! Yet the Fae was walking through their own home with a containment sigil floating in their hand, ready to hurt something for disturbing their one day off.

The voice was metallic, echoing, and they were either sure it was some sort of Android, or the ghost of Steven Hawking.

Hecate found the… portal… based on the blue glow from the spare bedroom, cursing and peering into the pathway. The other side was dark, dreary, and looked faintly like a.. bathroom?

They clambered through, their staff forming once they stepped into the dilapidated stall. It smelled of decay and abandonment, and Hecate recoiled before switching the containment sigil to one of light, murmuring. “Solas.” White light lit up the area before dimming to a comfortable glow, like a candle.

“AH!” And yet the core squawked anyway, surprised by something he expected, as a human-esque figure emerged out of the loo with what seemed to be a long stick and a glowy hand. And an extra glowy eye. It was ideal that they came with their own light source; the corridor was in no better state than the restroom, darkened by sludgy growths and sporadically spotlighted by fluorescent lights with a tendency to strobe.

It spoke. Funny accent. Not that he was one to talk.

“Umm, yes! Yes. To both. Hello, also, how do you do.” The machine gave a nervous laugh and an even more nervous smile, provided by hitching up a scarred lower shutter to partially snuff out the bright blue optic that was scanning the figure up and down. “You’re in Aperture! … which would’ve sounded much grander had you any idea what I’m talking about. And if I had a janitor. But, trust me, it’s a bloody amazing place! If you watch your step. No, seriously, watch your step, I have no idea what that thing next to your foot is.”

The little device waggled it’s battered lower handle as a means to unhelpfully gesture to a reddish wet, pooling mould dominating a crevice created by a rupture in the floor tiles.

At the mention of watching out they glanced down, grimacing. “That’s.. unsanitary.” A few steps around it brought them closer. The light seemed to float around their shoulder, focusing its beam on the ground and walls as they looked around. Some sort of lab?

“Aperture? Isn’t that just a fancy name fer a shutta’?” Musing out loud it seemed. They pulled a small notepad out of a vest pocket, along with a pen, scribbling down a few things as the other talked.

“Anotha’ dimension ya say? Well that’s bloody brilliant! I’ll have ta stay and do some research.. create a rune stone so I can travel back and forth..” They trailed off, thinking as they wrote quickly.

Huh. That was neat. He could use one of those.

“… is it? Er, yes, I mean yes. It’s a fancy name for a shutter. Clever you, you’re two for two! Irrelevant though, sadly. Not a shutter factory. Sure I could find you some shutters if- if your heart is set on it, but uh, but not exactly the highlight…” His blathering began to trail as his glance flitted down and, with a double-take, he began to realise the person was writing.

I’ll have to stay and do some research.

“Sorry? Are- you’re writing- are you a scientist? A, what’s it, a… stone scientist? You study stones?” With a timid sort of bravery, and the electronic whine of struggling parts, the core gunned it’s motor and scooted forward another foot along the rail in a futile effort to spy the notepad.

“Oh? No, I jus’ talk out loud a bit. The shutters don’t really interest me.” They hummed a bit, placing the pen back into their pocket, letting him talk.

As he scooted forward that was kinda cute how he did that Hecate shook their head. “Not a scientist, ’m afraid. I am, however, a lawyer! Prosecutor, actually.” They chuckled softly, watching him try to peek at their notes.

At the mention of his name, they pulled their pen back out and wrote it down, making sure to underline it. “A pleasure ta meet ya Wheatley.” He seemed to ramble a bit.. a lot. Constantly. But hey, he seemed like he had good intentions!

The notepad popped back out and while he couldn’t pin down what exactly they wrote– literacy not guaranteed– he did notice, with a swell of satisfaction, that it involved underlining.

“Ha, yes, well, it isn’t every day, is it? Meeting an incredible piece of technology such as myself. VERY expensive, top of the line manufacturing, who wouldn’t find it a pleasu— oh, oh, you didn’t mean it like th- Right. Er. Pleasure to meet you too!” His optic skittered sheepishly sideways but came back around by the end of his prattle, the beaten lower shutter drawn up into a cheery grin as he nodded energetically through the pleasantries.

They couldn’t help the chuckle that came from them, looking up at him as he talked over their shoulder. They made a few more notes about him, his personality, anything they could think of before closing the notebook, humming in thought.

“Right, I knew that, it was in my top five of- of obvious definitions. For that job. Top three, even, I thought-- I told myself: Wheatley, that word definitely sounds like a branch of the justice system. Just needed a bit of confirmation. Which I have. So. We’re on the same page.” This was a tiny bit uncomfortable; a criminal and somebody that punished criminals. But it’d be fine. That was over thirty years ago, what were the chances of it coming up? He’d just have to put on his best good citizen face and he’d have his own prosecutor-by-proxy badge in no time. Then he’d be exempt of being prosecuted! You can’t prosecute a prosecutor, right? ‘Course not. Sounded mental.

Just play it cool.

“Hexagon. That’s it. A close relative, I suspect. Have a lot of mathematicians on the family tree, maybe?” Wheatley peeked back at them curiously, his spontaneous nerves rather safely bottled at the news that they were here as an unofficial explorer. No prosecuting. Excellent.

“Brilliant! Sounds fair, big letters. You’d basically never be able to write it without me! So, ha, credit where it’s due. Step one then: finding a rock. Good news. Us? We’re only underground right now! Popular place, dirt, for rocks and we’ve got miles of it! ‘Course usually the dirt is, uh, is supposed to stay on the outside. A bit of a truce between the facility and the.... planet. Hasn’t been going well, you might’ve noticed— oh! Hang about, I know just the place! C’mon, on we go, don’t forget what I told you about watching your step! This is definitely an at your own risk tour.”

With that rush of dialogue, the little robot’s motor hummed to life. It took a moment for him to get going, gears slurrying on a spot of mildew that slicked up the rail, but eventually it latched and off the core went. It began reversing down the hazardous corridor, leading the charge, optic still on the newcomer as it went.

Everything had started with a single, innocent observation.

“Wow, that’s a big portal.”

Now it had taken five minutes for Wheatley to stop screaming.

The day had begun like any other. The core wandered the steadily decaying corridors of Aperture’s Research and Development wing, always coming full circle back to the immense chamber he called home. When he returned today, however, he had a small surprise. Well, a large one, as it turned out. Usually the sporadic portals created by his multiverse generator were standard size— ovals no larger than a household door, scattered by the dozens up and down any available surface of the laboratory. The portal he found today was ten times that size and had absorbed many of it’s smaller siblings, creating a portal akin to a warehouse door devouring the western wall like a neon-trimmed portrait.

Then something came barrelling through and turned his world upside-down.

Wheatley was only able to absorb the aftermath now. The cacophony of destruction that came alongside a large object smashing into his humble abode had been carrying on for some time, but when it dimmed enough for him to realise he had been screaming for so long, he finally choked his vocal processor out into a frightened whimper. It took some courage to crack open his scarred shutters, acutely aware of the stuttering shake plaguing his system, and drink in the destruction beneath him.

He had no idea what he was looking at. It was like a giant rusted heap stitched together, dominating most of the floor space and thankfully wedged to a stop inches from smashing the precious generator console in the glass booth tucked in the corner. Thick electrical cables had been cut– by the thing, by the metal rafters now snapped helter-skelter amongst chunks of shaken free concrete walls– and snapped like angry vipers, arcing bright bursts of live power between one another. There were a few hollow clunks still ringing out as the last of the rubble fell from somewhere in the featureless darkness that was the extended ceiling of the chamber, bouncing off the top of the metal intruder.

It took some courage, but gradually the shaken core began to inch down the wobbling management rail that once wrapped the entire chamber. He’d lost half of it now, snapped by the metal thing. He was stranded on the wrong side, his access to the door lost, and he could only coast down a crumpled line of rail a few yards. The track had broken off its cables after that and hung so low that it brushed the floor before it broke off entirely into sad, scattered remains.

“… um. Hello?” A hesitant Bristol accent crackled out as the metal ball cautiously examined the thing from above, his iris contracted half-sized, creating an intense ball of blue centred in the cracked lens. A quick glance flitted to the massive portal still up on the wall; an alien world stretched as far as his zoom could see, the turf churned up like whatever this thing was that crashed, it must’ve skidded over the ground almost a mile until it hit the facility. He had no idea what the portal must’ve been stuck to on the planet; the side of a building? A boulder? An entire bloody mountain?

Usually he marvelled his rare glimpses of the Outside, let alone one so large, but he dismissed it to pivot his optic down onto the metal wreckage again. Was it alive? A massive robot [or at least massive in comparison to a basket-ball sized metal ball stuck on a broken rail] of some kind? It looked in worse condition than him, and he was a neglected mess.

He’d have to be careful. Make first contact diplomatically.

“You don’t happen to have insurance, do you? Because, wow, you’ve absolutely destroyed my room. It’s, ha, it’s… actually pretty serious. I know, getting into civil matters right off the bat might seem callous, but if we get it out of the way NOW, maybe get some sort of-of paperwork started, throw around some numbers, if we do that NOW then we… we, uh…

The initial impact had sent everything inside the ship including herself flying, slamming her first into the main console and then jostling her into several other things along the way. She became vaguely aware as the ship had gone from scraping ground to what sounded like metal and what she could see of the surroundings out her window had suddenly changed, but the strange observation was cut short as the ship finally came to a halt.

With a groan, she grabbed onto the nearest stable object for support and slowly tried to stand up… Only for her fake leg to click loudly and repeatedly in protest, apparently jammed and refusing to hold her weight. The leg had been expensive and was sturdy enough, but it was still sensitive tech and wasn’t really made to go through crashes like that without issue. She cursed under her breath, then paused… There was a lot of screaming outside, then finally somebody talking. Oh, this wasn’t good… She had gone careening into somebody’s home, hadn’t she? Odd, though, since she hadn’t seen any buildings on the way down.

She grabbed a nearby stray metal rod to use as a makeshift cane for now, making her way to the door and forcing it open.

Her surroundings were definitely different now as she limped out… Where was she? She looked up now, finding the source of the voice she had heard, some sort of spherical little one-eyed robot on a track above here.

“Uh… Hey! I am alive.” she called. “Sorry about that… Engine failure, didn’t think I saw anything in my way, but… Well, clearly there was.”

She gave an apologetic, sheepish little half-smile, or at least the closest she could get to that with her beak and pointed teeth.

It looked like a bird. A lot like a bird. A bird with teeth.

His iris constricted significantly into a nervous, gawking dot.

“Oh, it’s fine, it didn’t hit much. Just, uh... everything I own...” The robot gave an antsy laugh, his glance skittering over the wreckage of not only his chamber but his precious rail. A rail that no longer connected him to the door and his ability to leave said chamber. Then the bird, Acrim apparently, spoke again and wrangled his short attention span down once more.

“Yes! I am. Spot on. Astute.” A cheery smile appeared as he pulled up the bottom shutter, absolutely dripping with condescension. The expression thinned just a moment later as he grew perplexed by the question, the dollop of blue in his optic jerkily jumping to a lower spot in the optic as he squinted at the birds legs.

It’s fine. Everything is fine. Just a half-robotic talking bird.

Such as this one.

“…?” Wheatley had been trucking along the rusted management rail through the corridors of his self-proclaimed department, struggling over a particularly nasty fracture that left a small gap between the rails, when a tell-tale womp caught his attention. It took some reversing back over the split— *clak-clak* went the rail guide unhappily— for him to spy it.

In a bathroom.

“Huh.” The core pivoted on his extension arm, facing down the broken ajar doorway of what once upon a time had been the ladies room. The small, tile-lined washroom was dark and grungy, the lights long broken and the toilets inside their sheltered stalls no doubt growing new sentient life-forms out of the fungus likely thriving from the humid bowls. There, on the far wall directly opposite of the gaping doorway, glowed the rippling outline of a neon orange portal. He could only just glimpse the new dimension through the oval passage, straining and pulling tight his shutters into a studious squint.

Where was that? Was that indoors somewhere? Somewhere much nicer than a mildewed, decaying employee restroom. Unfortunately nobody ever thought to equip the loo with a branch of management rail, apparently having robots interrupt your personal business was an invasion of privacy, so Wheatley had only one choice in a situation like this.

Shouting.

“HELLO?! Is- Is anybody there? It’s me, a talking hole on your wall! Sounds crazy, I know, and you might be! You might be an absolute nutter, I have no idea, never met you before, but in THIS particular instance, you are not. Insane. Because the wall is definitely talking to you and you definitely want to come check that out!

No fights, hunts, cases, anything. One day. That was it! They were a generally good person! Yet the Fae was walking through their own home with a containment sigil floating in their hand, ready to hurt something for disturbing their one day off.

The voice was metallic, echoing, and they were either sure it was some sort of Android, or the ghost of Steven Hawking.

Hecate found the… portal… based on the blue glow from the spare bedroom, cursing and peering into the pathway. The other side was dark, dreary, and looked faintly like a.. bathroom?

They clambered through, their staff forming once they stepped into the dilapidated stall. It smelled of decay and abandonment, and Hecate recoiled before switching the containment sigil to one of light, murmuring. “Solas.” White light lit up the area before dimming to a comfortable glow, like a candle.

“AH!” And yet the core squawked anyway, surprised by something he expected, as a human-esque figure emerged out of the loo with what seemed to be a long stick and a glowy hand. And an extra glowy eye. It was ideal that they came with their own light source; the corridor was in no better state than the restroom, darkened by sludgy growths and sporadically spotlighted by fluorescent lights with a tendency to strobe.

It spoke. Funny accent. Not that he was one to talk.

“Umm, yes! Yes. To both. Hello, also, how do you do.” The machine gave a nervous laugh and an even more nervous smile, provided by hitching up a scarred lower shutter to partially snuff out the bright blue optic that was scanning the figure up and down. “You’re in Aperture! … which would’ve sounded much grander had you any idea what I’m talking about. And if I had a janitor. But, trust me, it’s a bloody amazing place! If you watch your step. No, seriously, watch your step, I have no idea what that thing next to your foot is.”

The little device waggled it’s battered lower handle as a means to unhelpfully gesture to a reddish wet, pooling mould dominating a crevice created by a rupture in the floor tiles.

At the mention of watching out they glanced down, grimacing. “That’s.. unsanitary.” A few steps around it brought them closer. The light seemed to float around their shoulder, focusing its beam on the ground and walls as they looked around. Some sort of lab?

“Aperture? Isn’t that just a fancy name fer a shutta’?” Musing out loud it seemed. They pulled a small notepad out of a vest pocket, along with a pen, scribbling down a few things as the other talked.

“Anotha’ dimension ya say? Well that’s bloody brilliant! I’ll have ta stay and do some research.. create a rune stone so I can travel back and forth..” They trailed off, thinking as they wrote quickly.

Huh. That was neat. He could use one of those.

“… is it? Er, yes, I mean yes. It’s a fancy name for a shutter. Clever you, you’re two for two! Irrelevant though, sadly. Not a shutter factory. Sure I could find you some shutters if- if your heart is set on it, but uh, but not exactly the highlight…” His blathering began to trail as his glance flitted down and, with a double-take, he began to realise the person was writing.

I’ll have to stay and do some research.

“Sorry? Are- you’re writing- are you a scientist? A, what’s it, a… stone scientist? You study stones?” With a timid sort of bravery, and the electronic whine of struggling parts, the core gunned it’s motor and scooted forward another foot along the rail in a futile effort to spy the notepad.

“Oh? No, I jus’ talk out loud a bit. The shutters don’t really interest me.” They hummed a bit, placing the pen back into their pocket, letting him talk.

As he scooted forward that was kinda cute how he did that Hecate shook their head. “Not a scientist, ’m afraid. I am, however, a lawyer! Prosecutor, actually.” They chuckled softly, watching him try to peek at their notes.

At the mention of his name, they pulled their pen back out and wrote it down, making sure to underline it. “A pleasure ta meet ya Wheatley.” He seemed to ramble a bit.. a lot. Constantly. But hey, he seemed like he had good intentions!

The notepad popped back out and while he couldn’t pin down what exactly they wrote-- literacy not guaranteed-- he did notice, with a swell of satisfaction, that it involved underlining.

“Ha, yes, well, it isn’t every day, is it? Meeting an incredible piece of technology such as myself. VERY expensive, top of the line manufacturing, who wouldn’t find it a pleasu— oh, oh, you didn’t mean it like th- Right. Er. Pleasure to meet you too!” His optic skittered sheepishly sideways but came back around by the end of his prattle, the beaten lower shutter drawn up into a cheery grin as he nodded energetically through the pleasantries.

@bluewheatfields

Opportunities for Harold rarely came around, and whenever they did, he rarely took them. After all, he never thought he was deserving of them. He found some contentment in his life sentence, knowing that he was currently repenting for what was committed decades ago. He never liked change or testing boundaries—but this, this was new.

Wait, sorry, what?

Wheatley was doing his rounds— literally, the management track looped in one endless circle around the chamber that housed broken multiverse portals like a peculiar art museum— when he happened across a rare event. A portal with active signs of life. As many as he had, and as frequently as they cycled, it was unusual to find more than peeks of nature he’d never reach or blank brick walls in places he would never see. Today, however? Today he got himself a human.

“Ahh! OH, oh, you bloody scar— hello??”

Paradise did not sit on the other side of this mysterious portal. It was like a glimpse into technological apocalypse; mildew encrusted panel walls sat in varying degrees of detachment, old wiring drooped loose from a high featureless ceiling of rusted girders, and underneath the unreliable sputtering light sources were streams of questionable liquid dribbling from fractured piping. It was a large, oval space that seemed ridiculously sized given that it housed only a tiny glass booth at the far end. It looked uninhabitable, abandoned, aside from what spoke to the stranger now.

A dented, dirty little metal ball dangling from a metal track that encircled the room on suspended cables. With such a filthy chassis, the machine might’ve just blended into the muted, dilapidated background around it, but the neon electric blue optic stood out starkly from the monochrome surroundings. This bright, pixel iris was peering down into the poral, freshly arrived and trying to emote an expression it must’ve seen as friendly given that it had hoisted up a scarred lower shutter into a strange, smiling eye appearance.

Truth be told, he hadn’t seen sunlight since the VHS was still in its prime…

Harold’s hand lingered over the divide between his world and that one. There was something so familiar about all of this, something that screamed for him to take a closer look. He wanted to. He desperately wanted to.

But He’d catch wind of it, Harold thought abruptly. His Narrator would know, and then there would be hell to pay.

But there’s always hell to pay with him, hell that Harold was already accustomed to. He couldn’t have been more tempted to pass though.

He reached through it, and it felt like pressing through thick gelatin. His arm seemed to contort and glitch as the universe cataloged him. Then with a push, Harold fell through the portal, his whole body fizzling out like a faulty signal until everything just…. settled. He felt naked here, crumpled on the ground underneath this babbling machine. He never thought his body would survive leaving the Office.

The human remained on the ground, curled into a sideways fetal position, horribly confused and not wanting to get up just yet.

Or he could just give a second go of it because a human plopping out of his portal was the height of distracting. Under the core’s watchful gaze the stranger plunged an arm, then his entire body across the dimensional rift until fetal on a floor the core categorised as not sanitary for sleeping.

Am I still alive?

Such as this one.

“…?” Wheatley had been trucking along the rusted management rail through the corridors of his self-proclaimed department, struggling over a particularly nasty fracture that left a small gap between the rails, when a tell-tale womp caught his attention. It took some reversing back over the split— *clak-clak* went the rail guide unhappily— for him to spy it.

In a bathroom.

“Huh.” The core pivoted on his extension arm, facing down the broken ajar doorway of what once upon a time had been the ladies room. The small, tile-lined washroom was dark and grungy, the lights long broken and the toilets inside their sheltered stalls no doubt growing new sentient life-forms out of the fungus likely thriving from the humid bowls. There, on the far wall directly opposite of the gaping doorway, glowed the rippling outline of a neon orange portal. He could only just glimpse the new dimension through the oval passage, straining and pulling tight his shutters into a studious squint.

Where was that? Was that indoors somewhere? Somewhere much nicer than a mildewed, decaying employee restroom. Unfortunately nobody ever thought to equip the loo with a branch of management rail, apparently having robots interrupt your personal business was an invasion of privacy, so Wheatley had only one choice in a situation like this.

Shouting.

“HELLO?! Is- Is anybody there? It’s me, a talking hole on your wall! Sounds crazy, I know, and you might be! You might be an absolute nutter, I have no idea, never met you before, but in THIS particular instance, you are not. Insane. Because the wall is definitely talking to you and you definitely want to come check that out!

No fights, hunts, cases, anything. One day. That was it! They were a generally good person! Yet the Fae was walking through their own home with a containment sigil floating in their hand, ready to hurt something for disturbing their one day off.

The voice was metallic, echoing, and they were either sure it was some sort of Android, or the ghost of Steven Hawking.

Hecate found the… portal… based on the blue glow from the spare bedroom, cursing and peering into the pathway. The other side was dark, dreary, and looked faintly like a.. bathroom?

They clambered through, their staff forming once they stepped into the dilapidated stall. It smelled of decay and abandonment, and Hecate recoiled before switching the containment sigil to one of light, murmuring. “Solas.” White light lit up the area before dimming to a comfortable glow, like a candle.

“AH!” And yet the core squawked anyway, surprised by something he expected, as a human-esque figure emerged out of the loo with what seemed to be a long stick and a glowy hand. And an extra glowy eye. It was ideal that they came with their own light source; the corridor was in no better state than the restroom, darkened by sludgy growths and sporadically spotlighted by fluorescent lights with a tendency to strobe.

It spoke. Funny accent. Not that he was one to talk.

“Umm, yes! Yes. To both. Hello, also, how do you do.” The machine gave a nervous laugh and an even more nervous smile, provided by hitching up a scarred lower shutter to partially snuff out the bright blue optic that was scanning the figure up and down. “You’re in Aperture! … which would’ve sounded much grander had you any idea what I’m talking about. And if I had a janitor. But, trust me, it’s a bloody amazing place! If you watch your step. No, seriously, watch your step, I have no idea what that thing next to your foot is.”

The little device waggled it’s battered lower handle as a means to unhelpfully gesture to a reddish wet, pooling mould dominating a crevice created by a rupture in the floor tiles.

At the mention of watching out they glanced down, grimacing. “That’s.. unsanitary.” A few steps around it brought them closer. The light seemed to float around their shoulder, focusing its beam on the ground and walls as they looked around. Some sort of lab?

“Aperture? Isn’t that just a fancy name fer a shutta’?” Musing out loud it seemed. They pulled a small notepad out of a vest pocket, along with a pen, scribbling down a few things as the other talked.

“Anotha’ dimension ya say? Well that’s bloody brilliant! I’ll have ta stay and do some research.. create a rune stone so I can travel back and forth..” They trailed off, thinking as they wrote quickly.

Huh. That was neat. He could use one of those.

“... is it? Er, yes, I mean yes. It’s a fancy name for a shutter. Clever you, you’re two for two! Irrelevant though, sadly. Not a shutter factory. Sure I could find you some shutters if- if your heart is set on it, but uh, but not exactly the highlight...” His blathering began to trail as his glance flitted down and, with a double-take, he began to realise the person was writing.

I’ll have to stay and do some research.

“Sorry? Are- you’re writing- are you a scientist? A, what’s it, a... stone scientist? You study stones?” With a timid sort of bravery, and the electronic whine of struggling parts, the core gunned it’s motor and scooted forward another foot along the rail in a futile effort to spy the notepad.

Such as this one.

“…?” Wheatley had been trucking along the rusted management rail through the corridors of his self-proclaimed department, struggling over a particularly nasty fracture that left a small gap between the rails, when a tell-tale womp caught his attention. It took some reversing back over the split— *clak-clak* went the rail guide unhappily— for him to spy it.

In a bathroom.

“Huh.” The core pivoted on his extension arm, facing down the broken ajar doorway of what once upon a time had been the ladies room. The small, tile-lined washroom was dark and grungy, the lights long broken and the toilets inside their sheltered stalls no doubt growing new sentient life-forms out of the fungus likely thriving from the humid bowls. There, on the far wall directly opposite of the gaping doorway, glowed the rippling outline of a neon orange portal. He could only just glimpse the new dimension through the oval passage, straining and pulling tight his shutters into a studious squint.

Where was that? Was that indoors somewhere? Somewhere much nicer than a mildewed, decaying employee restroom. Unfortunately nobody ever thought to equip the loo with a branch of management rail, apparently having robots interrupt your personal business was an invasion of privacy, so Wheatley had only one choice in a situation like this.

Shouting.

“HELLO?! Is- Is anybody there? It’s me, a talking hole on your wall! Sounds crazy, I know, and you might be! You might be an absolute nutter, I have no idea, never met you before, but in THIS particular instance, you are not. Insane. Because the wall is definitely talking to you and you definitely want to come check that out!

No fights, hunts, cases, anything. One day. That was it! They were a generally good person! Yet the Fae was walking through their own home with a containment sigil floating in their hand, ready to hurt something for disturbing their one day off.

The voice was metallic, echoing, and they were either sure it was some sort of Android, or the ghost of Steven Hawking.

Hecate found the… portal… based on the blue glow from the spare bedroom, cursing and peering into the pathway. The other side was dark, dreary, and looked faintly like a.. bathroom?

They clambered through, their staff forming once they stepped into the dilapidated stall. It smelled of decay and abandonment, and Hecate recoiled before switching the containment sigil to one of light, murmuring. “Solas.” White light lit up the area before dimming to a comfortable glow, like a candle.

“AH!” And yet the core squawked anyway, surprised by something he expected, as a human-esque figure emerged out of the loo with what seemed to be a long stick and a glowy hand. And an extra glowy eye. It was ideal that they came with their own light source; the corridor was in no better state than the restroom, darkened by sludgy growths and sporadically spotlighted by fluorescent lights with a tendency to strobe.

It spoke. Funny accent. Not that he was one to talk.

“Umm, yes! Yes. To both. Hello, also, how do you do.” The machine gave a nervous laugh and an even more nervous smile, provided by hitching up a scarred lower shutter to partially snuff out the bright blue optic that was scanning the figure up and down. “You’re in Aperture! ... which would’ve sounded much grander had you any idea what I’m talking about. And if I had a janitor. But, trust me, it’s a bloody amazing place! If you watch your step. No, seriously, watch your step, I have no idea what that thing next to your foot is.”

The little device waggled it’s battered lower handle as a means to unhelpfully gesture to a reddish wet, pooling mould dominating a crevice created by a rupture in the floor tiles.

It had been another uneventful day on the Lor. Or maybe another uneventful night. It was hard to tell the difference, being so far from any discernible star system. Magolor was growing bored out of his mind, with not much to do outside of floating around space. He had definitely thought about going back to Planet Pop Star or Halcandra, but after everything that had happened, there wasn’t much need for him in either of those places. For all he knew, he might have even been an outlaw. So for the time being, he was just going as far as his ship and resources could take him.

A few moments later, something showed up with a ping on the radar. Jumping back, Magolor looked up to see that a small, metal object had been spotted near the ship.

“Probably just more space junk…” he said to himself.

Nonetheless, he took a closer look at it. Upon further inspection, the object appeared to be a small white sphere, with two handles above and below what appeared to be an electric yellow-orange eyeball. Confused, yet intrigued, Magolor decided to take it into the ship to see what it was for himself.

After bringing the sphere into the Lor, Magolor was almost starting to wish he hadn’t. It was capable of talking, which he didn’t expect. However, it only seemed to be capable of talking about the same thing over and over and over again, in the same mile-a-minute monotone robot voice, occasionally changing pitch to emphasize the urgency of what it was saying.

“Ship. On a ship. Going on a ship.” said the sphere, for maybe the 6th time.

“Yeah, I got that.” Magolor responded.

“Wanna go home. Wanna go to Earth. Don’t like space.”

“Got that, too.”

“Hey. Hey mister. Where we goin’? Earth. Gotta go to Earth. Gotta go home.”

“Well, we weren’t going anywhere until-”

“Earth. Trees. Mountains. Dirt. Mount Everest. Grand Canyon.”

“What even are you? And where IS Earth, anyway?!” Magolor was getting impatient, but at the same time this did present a possible destination for the two of them. Which was something, and better than floating around aimlessly, Magolor supposed.

Just as suddenly as the sphere had popped up, another notification appeared on the radar. This time, though, it seemed to be a portal. The portal must have shown up sometime after the Earth-obsessed sphere came aboard. Magolor was getting ready to jump away, as random portals were generally bad news. Before he did, however, he decided to at least check where it would lead. As soon as the exit coordinates came up on screen…

“Wait. WAAAAIT. Wait. Wait. Wait. Earth. Coordinates. Earth. Home. Wanna go home. Gonna go to Earth. Gonna go home.”

“Is… Is it really…? Those coordinates, that’s your home?”

“Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.” The sphere kept repeating the word for a while, then moved back to Earth, and Home, and how desperately it wanted to go there.

After happening upon this sphere by pure chance, and now this portal that seemed to lead exactly where it wanted to go, the entire universe seemed to be pushing Magolor to go inside at this point. Looking up the coordinates, they seemed to be a spot on a relatively small planet in a relatively small galaxy in a very remote part of the universe. At the very least, there wouldn’t be anything that could attack him. And, he might be able to get rid of the sphere. If something went wrong, he could always turn around and head back with the ship’s own portal devices. But he had to make a decision fast. The new portal wouldn’t be open much longer.

“Portal. Heading home. Heading through a portal.”

“Pure poetry.” Magolor muttered.

Now it was obvious. The portal really was the only way out of this mess, and they were going straight through it. And if Magolor ever came to regret this decision? Well… Worse things had happened.

The Lor Starcutter sailed through the portal into the unknown.

Now it was a wreckage of bent, twisted remains.

It had been pure bad luck that the core had been near enough to see it all unfold. When at his most bored, the little robot dared to trek the more shoddy lines of management rail across the low-end of the facility in pursuit of entertainment. Decay was rampant through the dying facility, the tracks no exception, and he had been muttering little pieces of encouragement to the rusted metal line when the portal opened up.

It reminded him of space. Without a proper angle to see where the portal could’ve led, all Wheatley was left to witness was a great vacuum trying to suck up everything that lay beneath it. Bits and pieces of probably important metal bric-a-brac went flying, suctioned away by an invisible tornado whose reach was just shy of pulling the core itself. That didn’t stop him from screaming, motor slurrying on the rotten track as he desperately tried to reverse. He went nowhere, impulsively slamming on the brakes to grip his shabby little strip of mobility when something crashed.

Then it all stopped. The whooshing, the flying parts, the crushing air pressure. Only a cacophony of falling metal remained, twisted debris once suspended by the pull of displaced air now swinging down or snapping off as gravity took control of the situation. It took a moment for scarred shutters, squeezed suffocatingly tight against the mayhem, to crack open and peek at the outcome.

Space had left a present.

A metal something was wedged between the beams, crunched into a catwalk and seemingly stuck fast against a strip of concrete that sided the start of the offices for R&D. It wasn’t going anywhere. In the next few minutes, the core ever-so delicately picked his way along an alternate branch of suspended management rail, the cables shaky under his weight but holding as he came near. Under closer inspection, he… still hadn’t the foggiest what he was looking at.

Two options came to mind as the little robot initiated it’s inner flashlight, a pitifully sputtering beam spotlighting the metal contraption and regularly shuttered by darkness whenever the optic blinked.

This was either a meteor…

….or he was the proud new father of an alien space egg.

“Um. Hullo? Are- Are you alive? Or, I don’t know, radioactive, maybe? That’s probably a concern. Radioactivity. Here’s an idea, just to start us off: if you aren’t alive, but are radioactive, just, uh, just give a click. A couple clicks. That sound that means oi beware radioactivity mate. Not sure where it comes from, sure you know what I’m talking about. OR, or if you ARE alive, then… well. Then just tell me. Verbally.”

He squinted at the immense something, or immense from the standards of a robotic basketball, with growing doubt regarding this first contact.

The sphere rattled on quite excitedly about Earth and Home and the ship, and as Magolor headed to the door to see what new disaster he had just gotten himself into, he heard a voice that sounded like it was nearby.

“… or if you ARE alive, then… Well. Then just tell me. Verbally.”

Oh. Not only had they crashed into an unknown building, they seemed to have crashed directly into someone’s home. Perhaps this person owned the sphere?

“… what am I doing. I’m talking to a bloody rock.”

As soon as Magolor opened the door and let down the ramp (though it wasn’t much use, as the ship was tilted quite far upwards), he saw what was most likely the source of the voice- another sphere. It looked identical to the first, except it had a bright blue eye instead of yellowy-orange. Magolor didn’t know if it was possible for a robot to look fearful or apprehensive, but this one was doing a very good job of showing both- he almost felt bad for it. At the very least, Magolor felt he should introduce himself.

“Ah… Hello! I don’t suppose you happen to know where we are, currently? My name’s Magolor, and I think I found a friend of yours! Wait here, I’ll go get him.” He dove back into the ship to grab the first sphere, which promptly asked where they were going as soon as he picked it up.

“Listen, we’re going wherever we ended up, ok? Now SHUSH.” he whisper-yelled to the sphere in response.

Magolor hurried back out of the ship, sphere in hand.

Good news: whatever came out did not immediately imprint on him. Neutral news: what even was that thing? It wasn’t a human, that was obvious, but that was about all he understood.

“UM.” The little robot’s voice cracked, raising an octave in distressed confusion, adding to the shockingly human quality to what was essentially a vocal processor boxed inside a dirty metal ball. He watched the thing disappear back inside, so incredibly unthreatening in it’s strangeness that the core had creaked further along the rail by the time it emerged again. It was poised closer to the ship, peering warily down as something was presented to him.

He recognised the fellow core immediately.

“... nope! No, ha, never seen him before in my life.” Wheatley laughed nervously, his optic darting away sketchily as he lied, though it quickly came full circle back onto the probably-not-an-alien-baby-thing.

@bluewheatfields

Opportunities for Harold rarely came around, and whenever they did, he rarely took them. After all, he never thought he was deserving of them. He found some contentment in his life sentence, knowing that he was currently repenting for what was committed decades ago. He never liked change or testing boundaries—but this, this was new.

Wait, sorry, what?

Wheatley was doing his rounds— literally, the management track looped in one endless circle around the chamber that housed broken multiverse portals like a peculiar art museum— when he happened across a rare event. A portal with active signs of life. As many as he had, and as frequently as they cycled, it was unusual to find more than peeks of nature he’d never reach or blank brick walls in places he would never see. Today, however? Today he got himself a human.

“Ahh! OH, oh, you bloody scar— hello??”

Paradise did not sit on the other side of this mysterious portal. It was like a glimpse into technological apocalypse; mildew encrusted panel walls sat in varying degrees of detachment, old wiring drooped loose from a high featureless ceiling of rusted girders, and underneath the unreliable sputtering light sources were streams of questionable liquid dribbling from fractured piping. It was a large, oval space that seemed ridiculously sized given that it housed only a tiny glass booth at the far end. It looked uninhabitable, abandoned, aside from what spoke to the stranger now.

A dented, dirty little metal ball dangling from a metal track that encircled the room on suspended cables. With such a filthy chassis, the machine might’ve just blended into the muted, dilapidated background around it, but the neon electric blue optic stood out starkly from the monochrome surroundings. This bright, pixel iris was peering down into the poral, freshly arrived and trying to emote an expression it must’ve seen as friendly given that it had hoisted up a scarred lower shutter into a strange, smiling eye appearance.