#jigowatt

Victor jumped away as a red light skittered over his chest, courtesy of the large white turret sitting in front of his friend. "You could have warned me you were working on one of those!" he said, ducking behind Doc for safety.

"Oh, relax," Doc said, opening one of the side "wings." "It's completely unloaded, see? I've made sure of that ever since the, ah, incident on the fifth."

"Incident?" Victor repeated suspiciously.

"Wheatley."

"Ah." Victor swallowed as the laser found his body again. "I-I thought you were done with testing the effects of time displacement on turrets. I heard the explosions from the last test all the way over in the biology wing."

"Actively moving them through the time stream has ceased, yes," Doc said, looking just a touch embarrassed. "I really had no idea an artificial intelligence would take seeing itself at a different point in time so poorly. . .no, I'm just studying the circuitry of this particular misfit. It had a very -- unique reaction to the temporal displacement."

Victor eyed the laser, then the turret. "Unique?"

"Sleeping Beauty was cursed to sleep for a hundred years until a prince came to wake her up."

Victor started, dropping his papers. "What the--"

"Rather odd to hear them say things other than 'There you are' and 'Target acquired,' huh?" Doc said, smiling a little at his friend's surprise. "But this one's been spouting things like that ever since I sent it five minutes into the future." He peered into the wing, squinting past the rows of gun barrels, then loped his way over to the computer in the corner. "I'm hoping to figure out why."

"Hasn't this happened before?" Victor asked, crouching to gather up his designs. "You said something about turrets having existential crises before when moved through time."

"Yes, but usually that just ends with them screaming until they explode, or repeating a single nonsense phrase like 'purpose defines existence but existence defines purpose' over and over. Until they explode." Doc pulled out a bundle of wires. "This one. . .as far as I can tell, it's a standard-issue turret. No defects or parts out of line. But it's like -- something happened during its trip that altered its programming. Something that -- made it thoughtful. Reminds me of that Fact Core they're working on."

"Blue, yellow, green, pink. Remember that."

"Sure thing." Doc dragged the bundle over to the turret. "Victor, you've got slender fingers -- help me hook this thing into the computer, will you? Then we'll look at your drawings while I take my readings."

"All right," Victor said, though he didn't really fancy shoving his hands into one of Aperture's more lethal designs. He leaned over the turret as Doc untangled the wires and got some temporary solder putty ready. "Um -- d-did you like your trip through time?" he asked it, then felt like an idiot. Even if it talked more than your average turret, it wasn't like it --

The laser shrunk. "Don't bring your daughter to work."

". . .why did that sound vaguely omnious?"