Part 115. The Guns

"You should probably know that I told Carrie I'd take her to Pandora," said Claptrap without preamble, rolling into the room as though they'd been waiting for him to do so. GLaDOS, who had been in the middle of telling Wheatley what a moron he was for somehow managing to lose this game of Monopoly for nine years straight, froze entirely. Wheatley looked between them anxiously. He wished Claptrap had given him a head's-up on this.

"I wanted to do something nice! You know, as thanks for all her help! And that was what she said she wanted, soooo… yeah. That's happening."

"I see," said GLaDOS, but Claptrap just kept talking.

"We're going in four days 'cause Alyx is coming too and that's when she's free. It'll be for a couple nights and we won't go anywhere super dangerous. And we won't let her touch anything! I know it's me we're talking about, but you do not have to worry at all."

"Of course I do," GLaDOS said. "It's part of the job."

"My thinking is so clear right now," said Claptrap, earnestly moving closer to her, but she didn't look. "I hardly ever have my thoughts lined up all nice like this! But if I'm gonna take her, it's gotta be now before all that wears off. Whatever that is. This might never happen to me again!"

"That makes sense," said GLaDOS, very noncommittally.

"… like I said, she wants to go." He had started rubbing his hands together. "But if you really, really aren't cool with it, I'll make something up. Or I'll try to. She's a lot smarter than me, so –"

"She can make her own decisions." GLaDOS finished moving her boat and selected the top card from the appropriate pile with a very manufactured casualness. "That's what adults do."

"Yeah, and being someone's kid means you hope your parents're on board with those decisions. I think."

"Does she think I'm not?" GLaDOS asked, staring at her card as though she had suddenly forgotten how to read.

"She's pretty sure if I can't convince you, she can."

"Then there's no problem." She took the card and put it next to her meticulously organised bills, which meant it was one of the 'get out of gaol free' ones.

"I'll do my best to keep her from getting so much as a scratch!" Claptrap said, talking a little faster, and to be honest Wheatley was not entirely convinced by GLaDOS's supposed acceptance of this announcement himself. He would have expected at least a little arguing. Or at least anger about not having been informed beforehand. "I am really taking this seriously! I know what a big deal this is for you and I swear I will not mess it up."

"I don't think you do," said GLaDOS.

"You're nooooot really being too clear about it," Claptrap said. She finally looked over at him.

"We've never really been separated before," said GLaDOS. "When I sent her away we were apart, but I wasn't really… conscious of it. It's going to be… strange, and… oh, I don't even know how to put it." She shook her core and told Wheatley to take his turn, which he had totally forgotten to do. He pressed the button on the randomiser and counted out the spaces it allotted to him, which landed him… in gaol. He frowned. Seemed as though he could use that card right about now.

"Now I'm starting to feel bad," Claptrap was saying.

"If there was ever a time to refrain from doing those incredibly stupid things you're so fond of," GLaDOS said, "this would be that time. I don't think you understand what it would do to me if she didn't come back."

"I remember what happened when Wheatley – "

"It would be worse."

Claptrap shrank into himself and his optic dimmed quite a bit. Now Wheatley was wondering if perhaps he should be arguing against this. The chance of Carrie dying on Pandora was, of course, incredibly slim, but if she did…

"I'll tell her… I dunno, that I changed my mind or something. You don't –"

"You will not," GLaDOS said, narrowing her optic in annoyance. "All you have to do is not be stupid for a few days. You said you were in a position to achieve that goal. So do it."

"Okay," said Claptrap. "Also, it'll be three days. I'll literally time it if that makes you feel better."

"I might just take you up on that."

Once he had left the room suddenly seemed oppressively quiet, which only got steadily worse over the next few minutes as Wheatley tried desperately to get the virtual dice roll to let him out of gaol. The stress of it all finally got to him and he said, "Worse than when I died, Gladys?"

GLaDOS sighed in resignation, as though she'd been waiting for him to ask. "Yes."

And she would… she would send him away. Because she would feel as though she didn't deserve to be helped. That was how that depression thing worked, right? "How would I stop you sending me someplace else?" he asked with trepidation.

"I wouldn't bother," she answered. "I don't have anywhere to send you."

That made him feel quite a lot better. "Then it wouldn't be so bad, would it? You'd have help!"

"I had help," GLaDOS told him gently. "I just wasn't able to accept it."

But GLaDOS couldn't afford to become depressed. Not now or for the foreseeable future. The facility was fully active, with humans and robots alike depending on her. "It can't happen," he said aloud. "It's not like before. The facility… you've got to be able to keep it going! It's not… it's not empty, and the humans –"

"I know," GLaDOS interrupted.

"Then maybe you shouldn't let her go." Or maybe he shouldn't. GLaDOS was and had always been the boss, and he accepted that, but… if he made a very rare stand, perhaps it would have more weight than if she did it.

"No. It's important that I do." She placed the appropriate amount of money back into the bank and put three houses on one of her green properties. "She should be able to do things without having to take into consideration how I feel about them. It would be unacceptable to expect her to always tiptoe around my feelings. It would be unacceptable to even want her to."

"I mean, if it were me we were talking about, then yeah," Wheatley argued. "But I'm not lit'rally the most important person within a million kilometres. If I got depressed and was um, was unable to function, well, that'd be fine, wouldn't it? Because… well, I'm not important. Not in the way that you are. Nobody is."

"That's not her responsibility. It's mine. Look," she said, and indeed did look him directly in the eye. "I understand what you're trying to say. But it also doesn't matter. It probably won't come to that, but if it does I will have to figure it out. I'm well aware that was the one occasion in my lifetime I could afford to give up."

Shortly after Carrie came in, all excited about her trip and what she might get to see and do there, and instead of contributing Wheatley put the game away and left. GLaDOS seemed fully determined and prepared to handle a second bout of depression on her own, but as her partner didn't Wheatley have an obligation to help her? The trouble, of course, was that helping GLaDOS was hard enough even when she wanted it. It was bound to be several degrees more difficult than it had been with Claptrap, and that was not something he ever wanted to do again.

He came to the realisation that he didn't actually know what had happened while he was gone. GLaDOS had always sort of… skirted around it. And after the recent events, he understood why. Being at your worst and unable to do anything about it seemed to be incredibly rough. And for someone as independent and self-sufficient as GLaDOS? It must almost have been like… like the ultimate personal failure. So even if he asked, she probably wouldn't tell him any more than she already had.

But Claptrap had seen it. He could tell Wheatley exactly what had happened. He looked up to realise he'd stopped moving entirely. He also had no desire at all to go off and find Claptrap. Because when he really thought about it… he didn't want to know.

He felt sort of… ashamed. If he were really a good partner, shouldn't he want to so as to know how to deal with it properly if ever it happened again? But GLaDOS herself had said the likelihood was very small. So… so immersing himself digitally in her depression wouldn't really help anybody. Even if Claptrap had been willing to do it.

Well, it wasn't as though he'd known in advance that was the sort of thing she was going to tell him. And… and feeling it was a bit different from having to see it firsthand, anyway. Which was the real thing Wheatley really, really did not want to do.

But he would have to if something happened to Carrie on Pandora. He would have to watch his Gladys, his strong and powerful Gladys, disappear into a shadow of herself just as Claptrap had. Except it would be much, much worse.

It might be time to put his foot down, so to speak. If this went wrong, everything would go wrong right along with it.

He was going to think about this for the next few days and see how he felt about it. For the first time in a long while, though, he was a bit terrified of the fact that GLaDOS was the linchpin of everything. There was so much more at stake than there had been all those years ago when it had just been her directing her facility full of robots! He could convince her that – no, not yet. He was going to think it over thoroughly, and then if there was anything to say he'd take it up with her. But not until he'd had time to consider all the angles first. It was what she would have done.

"I don't want her to go," he said the morning the trip was to happen, after Claptrap had been gone long enough he was certain they'd be alone for a bit. GLaDOS looked at him sharply.

"What? Why? You didn't seem concerned about it the other day."

"Because…" They'd talked about so many different things over the years it was silly that he felt he should keep this to himself. "If she… if she dies, and… and you get depressed, well… I don't want to see you like that."

"Why is that a problem?" asked GLaDOS. "Do you think I'm going to force you to? Because believe me, I won't be in any state to do such a thing."

"No, I…" These things were so much harder when she simply didn't understand his side of it. "I'm your partner, Gladys. I'm supposed to um, to be there for things like that."

"Because we've always been so concerned about doing the things we're supposed to do." She shook her core somewhat dismissively. "Honestly, Wheatley, harming yourself isn't going to help me. If you have a real reason for not wanting her to go, that's fine, but it really would be inappropriate for us to stop her. She has an opportunity and she wants to take it. We should encourage that sort of behaviour."

"Pandora, Gladys?"

"He already learned from taking you there," GLaDOS said. "It's why he's taking Alyx."

"That's not going to help if –"

"The interesting thing about all of this," GLaDOS interrupted, "is that you haven't thought about how you would feel if she died on Pandora."

That threw him a little bit, and he set himself to working out just why that was. After a moment he said, frowning, "Well, because I… I simply can't imagine it. I really don't… don't see it happening, to be honest."

"Then there's no need to imagine the results of something you can't see happening," said GLaDOS with finality.

"So you don't think there's a need to… that you'll ever be depressed again?"

"That's not something I can ever have a definitive answer to," said GLaDOS. "But I don't care that you don't want to see it. Why would I even want you to?"

"I just feel as though… I dunno." He shrugged. "I'm a bad partner for it."

"What would it make me if I expected you to handle something I already knew you couldn't?"

"'s a… a bit of a tough one, I think," he admitted.

"No it isn't," said GLaDOS. "You don't want to and I don't want you to. That seems pretty straightforward to me."

He looked at her bemusedly. "Would you… I dunno, like to sort of swap… ways of thinking for a bit?"

"Absolutely not," said GLaDOS, pulling backwards as if trying to get away from him before he did it. He laughed.

"You sure? Might be a nice change of pace."

"No thanks. If I wanted to torture myself, there are easier and more pleasant ways." She looked up suddenly, as did Wheatley in an attempt to see why. Claptrap had returned and GLaDOS wasted no time in saying, "There you are. I have something for you."

Claptrap just wordlessly pointed at himself with one hand.

"Yes, you," said GLaDOS. "Come here."

He rolled up and she presented him with a box, placed on top of a slightly tilted panel. Nothing about the outside of it revealed what it held; it was just a nondescript white box, about the length of a human arm with latches on either end to hold it closed. Claptrap just looked at it.

"Happy birthday. Three weeks early," GLaDOS said. "Now, open it."

Claptrap looked up at her instead. "… you remembered my birthday?" he said, sounding taken aback.

"I remember everything."

"Except our anniversary," Wheatley reminded her.

"I just… no one's ever done that before," said Claptrap. "And considering the anniversary thing, I kinda expected you to just… not care."

"Are you going to open it or not?"

"Alright, alright! Calm down." He flipped up the latches on the front of the box and pushed up the lid, and then he froze. Wheatley moved in closer so he could see what in there, exactly, had him so surprised, and to be honest Wheatley would not have been able to guess the contents himself.

It was a sniper rifle.

Wheatley knew a little bit about weaponry now, mostly because Claptrap tended to spontaneously ramble on about the bajillion or so kinds of guns on Pandora, so he was pretty confident he had an idea of what he was looking at. It was shorter than the other, similar guns he'd seen because the bit humans usually held against their cheek was gone. Ah, of course! Claptrap couldn't actually replicate that position! The scope seemed to be mounted a little to the left and both the trigger and the guard were larger and squarish, while still keeping the usual curve to them. The barrel seemed to be a bit longer and also a little wider than the ones he'd seen before. To better accommodate Claptrap's very angled hand, perhaps. The whole thing was, obviously, built with GLaDOS's love of minimalism and so looked almost as though it was all one seamless piece. It was the usual shade of white with black accents, and on the upper back of the stock was the Aperture logo accompanied by a number in the font GLaDOS used for the test chambers so that it read, 'Aperture Laboratories 01'.

It was, Wheatley thought, an incredibly lovely machine. Even to a bit of a layman - laybot? - such as himself.

"I couldn't quite bring myself to manufacture a bright pink gun," GLaDOS was saying, "so I gave it a coating that causes it to glow that colour under UV light instead. I know you have some of those for your silent disco."

"You can't give me this," Claptrap said.

"If you're saying that because you can't kill people, I accounted for it," GLaDOS told him. "It can be loaded with the standard ammunition you have on Pandora, in case of emergencies where you need to hand it off to someone. But you'll be loading it with something different." And she gave him another, smaller box, which he also opened. It contained twelve transparent canisters about the size of a bullet, but containing only a little bit of clear liquid. Claptrap picked one up and held it in front of his eye.

"What's in them?"

"Neurotoxin," GLaDOS said.

"I uh… thought that was deadly."

"Oh, it is," answered GLaDOS. "This one in particular is type A botulinum toxin, which is the weakest form. Humans actually inject themselves with it on purpose, usually for medical reasons. They use it as a muscle relaxant. As long as you don't go firing like a bloodthirsty maniac, you won't kill anyone. One shot will be enough to disable your target for a while."

"You promise they won't die if I shoot 'em with these?"

"As long as you don't shoot them with more than two. They each contain half a nanogram and it starts to become lethal at one point three."

"So they're sorta like… poison darts?"

"They're exactly like poison darts."

Claptrap put the canister back into the box and looked around, for what Wheatley wasn't sure. "You got somewhere I can fire this?"

"I'll let you destroy my wall just this once." And she produced a sheet of paper with a target printed on it and attached it to one of the far walls.

He stood the gun up inside of the box and peered down at it. "And I load it by…"

"Turn it on and the scope will slide forward."

"Hyperion style! I got it." He opened his storage tray and removed a magazine of sniper rifle ammunition from it, slotting them into the cartridge the gun had ejected. Once he had replaced it, now filled with six rounds, the scope automatically slid back into place. He put both hands on top of the weapon and stared at it.

"Don't worry," GLaDOS said. "If you manage to shoot any of us by mistake we'll probably live."

"I've just never been given anything this nice before."

"I made it specially for you, so it isn't as though I can give it to someone else if you don't accept it."

Claptrap finally picked the gun up, but his hands were shaking so much Wheatley had to wonder if they really were going to be shot by mistake. He would probably live with not much more than a dent to show for it. He eyed GLaDOS as surreptitiously as he could. Her case was quite thick, but those stress fractures…

When Claptrap raised the rifle in front of his eye, the scope automatically moved back towards it. "Ooh," said Claptrap. "Fancy."

"It's optional," GLaDOS told him. "Disable it if you don't like it."

"You should probably know I have never in my life read a user manual."

"I'm still undecided on whether or not you can read."

"That was a bit low, yeah?" Wheatley said. He wasn't bothered by that, not exactly, but as someone who was not entirely convinced he'd ever been given the programming to be able to read… she'd gone for the low-hanging fruit, in his opinion.

"I'm not offended! Sometimes I can't! You know how many freakin' languages I have preinstalled? Assez pour faire un vrai gâchis, laisse-moi te dire."

GLaDOS laughed, and Wheatley just stared, annoyed, at the paper stuck to the wall panel. His system knew enough to tell him that had been French, but nothing else.

"Alrighty," said Claptrap, directing the rifle in the direction of the target. "Let's do this." And he fired all six rounds directly into the centre of the paper. Wheatley was taken aback. He couldn't tell from this far away, but he was fairly certain they had all landed in the exact same spot.

"Wow," Claptrap was saying as he lowered the gun. "Babe, this is the best gun in existence. And I ain't just sayin' that 'cause you made it. It's so quiet, too! You wanna set up shop on Pandora and show those corporations how a real engineer does it?"

GLaDOS just stared at the target.

"Babe?"

She looked over at him, then back to the paper, and then towards him again. "... you have perfect aim," she said, sounding quite shocked.

"'Course I do," Claptrap said. "I'm a robot. I toldja. I can aim fine. It's just the stuff in between the aimin' and the firin' that trips me up."

She went back to staring at the paper.

"You know what gets me?" she asked. "Everything you believe you can do, you do perfectly. Without fail. You could probably fire one hundred rounds and every single one of them would land in the exact same spot."

"What are you sayin'," Claptrap said uneasily, putting the rifle back into the box.

"I'm saying," GLaDOS said, twitching her core around to look at him, "that it's almost as though the universe overloaded you with flaws because you would have been the perfect machine otherwise."

"Well…" Claptrap closed the box, securing the latches. "Nah. Not really. And believe me, I been down that line a lot. Thing is, babe, if I was great at everything then I'd just have a really, really awful ego. And nothin'd really change! Least this way I can understand why people don't want me around. If I was really good at all the stuff I did and people still didn't like me I'd just be like… a massive asshole. 'Cause I wouldn't get why people didn't like someone as amazingly built as me. Soooo… this sucks, but it's better'n the alternative. If you think I'm obnoxious now, well, you ain't seen nothin' when I think I'm perfect." He placed one hand on top of the box. "I hope I don't gotta use this, but if I do… it's honestly the greatest gun I've ever seen. And I've seen a lot of guns."

"Good," said GLaDOS. "And don't lose it. I don't want any of those idiot corporations attempting to reverse-engineer it. Making a gun that quiet is no easy feat, you know."

"It will never leave my hands!" proclaimed Claptrap. "Now lemme hug you."

"D'you really think he's going to end up needing it?" Wheatley said in a low voice after that was done and Claptrap had gone off to one side of the room to digitise the gun so as to be able to put it into storage. GLaDOS glanced in his direction.

"It's more for his peace of mind, mostly," she answered. "He was so upset that he took you to Pandora with no means of protecting you. Hopefully he won't need to use it, but he'll feel better for having it."

That was rather nice of her, Wheatley thought.

"It also eliminates the need to go rummaging around for one in case of an emergency," she went on. "There's no way Caroline would survive that idiotic grenade plan you two pulled last time."

"I told him to use a skull," Wheatley said, annoyed.

"That was equally stupid. You do know that bones are hollow, right? If he'd thrown it at the bandits it would have either crumbled or shattered, depending on how old it was."

Obviously Wheatley had not known that, because he was not a science-obsessed supercomputer who cared about silly things like whether bones were solid or not, but he was saved by the sight of a human walking down the hallway towards GLaDOS's chamber. Oh, that was Alyx, wasn't it?

"What'd you want me for, GLaDOS?" asked Alyx, stopping just beyond the doorway. GLaDOS looked up.

"Helloooooo pretty lady!" Claptrap announced, and Alyx stopped and rolled her eyes.

"Are you just gonna say that every time you see me?"

"It's kinda tradition at this point! Also, you humans are really hard to tell apart sometimes."

"You'll have to excuse him," GLaDOS said pointedly in Claptrap's direction. "He has a problem."

"Babe, the overabundance of beautiful women in the universe is not a problem." His task finished, he came over and gave the side of her core a pat. "But don't worry! You'll always be number one."

"I'd better be, or I'll be telling you where to go."

"Ooooh! Is it gonna be the bottomless pit or the pit full of acid?"

"The bottomless pit full of acid, of course."

Claptrap pretended to wipe away a tear. "It's all I ever wanted! Thank you!"

"Alyx," GLaDOS said, tilting the panel Claptrap was on so that he fell sideways onto the floor. "Before you leave, I have something for you."

"Oh." She smiled and folded her arms across her chest. "I didn't know you were gonna miss me that much."

"You'd like that, wouldn't you," said GLaDOS. "No, I'm not going to miss you."

"She might," Wheatley whispered to Alyx, who snorted and tried very hard not to laugh. GLaDOS narrowed her optic at Wheatley but didn't say anything. Instead, she produced a box strikingly similar to the one she had given Claptrap, but much smaller, about the size of two human hands spread out. She put it down on a panel raised as high as Alyx's waist and Alyx reached forward and opened it.

It was also a gun, but this time a white-and-black pistol. It read 'Aperture Laboratories 02' on the side of it, and Alyx seemed strangely reluctant to pick it up. GLaDOS leaned towards her so that she could see into the box.

"The ammunition I have given you is not standard, though it can take that as well," she said. "If you happen to run out."

"What does it take instead?" Alyx asked, gingerly removing it from the box.

"A… variation on High Energy Pellets."

"Whoa," said Alyx, inspecting the handgrip. "You telling me I can vaporise stuff with a pistol?"

"If it's an arm or a leg, yes," said GLaDOS. "Not much more than that."

"You expecting me to have to shoot something on Pandora?"

"Oh, absolutely." She moved back a little. "But there are a lot of guns there and I'm sure you wouldn't have difficulty finding one in a pinch."

"So you are gonna miss me and you're giving me this to remind me of you?"

"I never thanked you for taking care of her for me."

Alyx opened her mouth and then closed it again.

"Not just… that time, but almost every day since. You never once failed to treat her like family, but I failed to appreciate or acknowledge you for it."

"GLaDOS, I…wow," said Alyx, putting the pistol in the back of her pants. "You still think about that?"

"Of course I do," said GLaDOS. "It's the only decision I have ever made that I am still unsure of."

"I've never doubted it," Alyx said. "I always thought you were wrong for cutting her off, but not for sending her away." She put down the lid on the box. "It was good for both me and her."

"Because of your father?" GLaDOS asked, with a surprising gentleness. Alyx nodded once.

"Don't think I'm gonna be calling you Mom."

"How many people do you think I want doing that?" GLaDOS asked, sounding pained. "Honestly. One was too many. Then Orange and Blue insisted on doing it. If anyone else wants me to parent them, I'm going to have to retire."

"What about grandkids?" Alyx asked. "Carrie definitely plans on a daughter."

To Wheatley's surprise, GLaDOS didn't say anything. She just… looked away.

"What?" said Alyx. "Is that a sore subject?"

"No," answered GLaDOS, "no, it's… important that Caroline always does what she wants. If she knows I want her to do something, that will lead her to do it whether she wants to or not. So… yes. I would like that. But I haven't mentioned it to her for that reason. It's a lot of work. Especially if she does become Central Core."

"'If'?" asked Alyx. "I thought that was kinda… set."

"It is in theory."

"What are you going to do if she changes her mind?"

GLaDOS didn't answer for a minute.

"I don't know," she said finally. "I don't want anyone else to do it."

"You haven't got a plan for if, for if Carrie doesn't want it?" Wheatley repeated, to be certain he'd heard right. GLaDOS shook her core.

"I don't."

"What'll she do if her daughter doesn't um, doesn't want it?"

"It won't be an issue by then," GLaDOS said. "She will live longer than I and by that time there will be smarter and more ambitious AI than we have currently. She won't have trouble finding a successor."

"I don't think you have anything to worry about," said Alyx. "Trust me. She's looking forward to it." She looked down at the box for a moment. "I didn't need thanked for looking after her, but as far as thanks go this is a pretty good one."

"I know," said GLaDOS. "And don't lose it. I'm not making you another one."

"That's the GLaDOS I know," said Alyx. "While I'm here, the GLaDOS I know also owes me a favour."

GLaDOS froze for a moment. "Damn," she said, sounding annoyed. "I do."

"Since I'm not going to need zapped out of any dangerous situations hopefully ever again, I've thought of something else." She tucked the box under her left arm. "Carrie told me about the AI template."

GLaDOS elected to look at the ceiling for so long Wheatley had to check and make sure there was nothing up there, and when he looked back down he saw Claptrap had gone for it too. "It's almost as though she never stops talking," GLaDOS said in exasperation. Alyx laughed.

"She doesn't. Every time I see her it's nonstop. And forget tuning her out. She gets insulted if I miss anything she says."

That probably came from the fact that both GLaDOS and Wheatley would immediately drop what they were doing to pay attention to her, but he hadn't thought that could turn out to be a bad thing. Perhaps she was a little more spoiled than Wheatley had originally thought.

"Good. I deserve a break sometimes. A lot of the time, actually. Now. What relevance does the template have to you?"

"I want it," she said, looking at GLaDOS straight on. She shifted backward.

"For… what?"

"I want to use it, obviously." She moved her thumb up and down the side of the box. "I want to write an AI kid."

Judging by GLaDOS's lack of response, Wheatley guessed she had no idea why a human would want to do such a thing. And truth be told, he didn't either. That would almost be like asking a human to provide one of their children to raise! Why would they want to do that?

"She did tell you I have rules about that?" GLaDOS asked finally. "And you're aware that my providing you with the template would be breaking all of them?"

"I've done it before. With Dog."

"Alyx, an AI child is quite a lot different from – "

"Come on," Alyx pressed. "I'm not gonna leave and send off copies of this thing to anyone who wants one."

"It isn't that," GLaDOS told her. "It's not written in any language you understand. I don't know if humans have the ability to understand it. If I were to modify it so that it was in one of your languages, it would not be compatible with the facility. That is a rule I will not be breaking."

Alyx seemed undeterred. "So if I jump through enough hoops, you'll let me do it."

"There is no jumping through hoops," GLaDOS said scornfully, shaking her core. "Anyone here who wants to do it has to pass an intelligence test. That is, they have to be able to build it themselves. Using the language they will have to learn to build it with. Nobody is permitted to use the template unless they have proven they know how to program first. Really, Miss Vance. I don't have this rule to be difficult. I have it because I know that people who are not willing to go through the drudgery of debugging for weeks at a time are not fit to raise a child. It is work. And a lot of it."

"So you're saying it's gonna take like… oh, I don't know… nine months."

"Firstly, I don't know. No one has done it yet. Secondly, very funny. No. It took me two years."

Alyx's eyes widened. "It took you two years."

"And that doesn't even account for all the updates and fixes I had to do. Look. My answer isn't no. But I also have a rule stating special permission is required for any single person to use the template specifically because it takes so long. If you can learn the language, and if you believe you are willing and able to potentially spend years writing this AI, then yes. I will give it to you."

"Does Carrie know the language?"

"She knows about half of it."

"Then she can help me, right?"

"Possibly," said GLaDOS. "She has been a bit more driven to learn recently."

"Fine," said Alyx. "I'll learn the language and you can give me… I dunno, a test or something. Then I get the template. Deal?"

"Deal," said GLaDOS. "And… Alyx."

"What."

"Do you have many friends?"

She shrugged. "Just Carrie, mostly. Why? You volunteering?"

"Yes," GLaDOS answered. "Don't worry. I'm getting pretty good at it."

"It's true," Wheatley added.

"Even when she pretends she's not listening, she totally is," Claptrap cut in.

"What about you and Chell?" Alyx asked. "Aren't you… best friends or something? You know me and her don't get along that well, right?"

GLaDOS looked away for a moment.

"The relationship between Chell and I is… complicated," she answered heavily. "It isn't something any couple of words can sum up. But you do understand this is going to be extremely difficult to do if you not only have no partner, but no friends to help you. Children are difficult, and you can't be everything to them. No matter how hard you try. They need more than just you."

"Can I cross that road when I come to it?" Alyx asked, stuffing her hands into the pockets on her jacket, box now clenched inside of her elbow. "It's not gonna matter for years from now."

"Then why wouldn't you wait until you had someone to help you?"

Alyx raised her eyes to meet GLaDOS directly.

"Because I carry a lot and I deal with it poorly. That explain it well enough for you?"

GLaDOS stared at her, seeming almost… Wheatley wasn't sure. Aghast, sort of. As though Alyx had just said something she wasn't supposed to know. Finally, GLaDOS said,

"I know a few people like that. People willing to put up with it are few and far between, and for good reason. Taking on someone else's burdens is too much for most."

Wheatley strongly suspected she was talking about herself just now, and he looked at her nervously. She wasn't about to self-deprecate over this, was she? Hadn't they managed it all and worked it all out?

"Which means," she continued, "that when you find that rare offer, you need to accept it. A second chance doesn't always come when you need it."

Ohhhhh.

"If you wanted to be friends this bad, you could have just asked," Alyx said.

"I don't have a lot of free time, just so you know," GLaDOS told her. "So if you have any future plans to continually insult me, you're going to have to make an appointment."

"If everyone's here, that must mean it's time to go!" announced Carrie before she'd even really entered the room, and Claptrap looked up at her.

"There's no rush, kiddo," he said. "Pandora isn't going anywhere, and also I told your mom I'd time this thing to seventy-two hours exactly."

Carrie rolled her optic. "It's not like I'm going to the moon by myself."

"The moon is a lot closer than Pandora."

Carrie ignored him and went over to Wheatley, giving him a little cuddle before saying, "Bye Dad! Don't let Momma boss you around while I'm gone!"

For just a moment Wheatley was suddenly afraid of the chance, even though it was incredibly small, of a world where she no longer existed. Where this was the last time he ever saw her and his next words were the last he ever said, and it was quite a horrifying and awful moment indeed. But just as quickly as it had come, it went off again, and he just said, "Have fun, princess," as cheerfully as he could and meant it.

"Bye Momma!" Carrie said, moving on and giving GLaDOS a kiss, strangely neither of which she acknowledged. "I love you!" The exiting trio had almost made it out of the room when GLaDOS said, almost inaudibly,

"I love you too."

Everyone stopped where they were and looked at her, but GLaDOS just looked over at the wall as though they'd left. Carrie frowned at the floor.

"You guys go on ahead," she said to Claptrap and Alyx. "I'll catch up."

"D'you want me to leave as well?" Wheatley asked, in case this was a private conversation, but Carrie shook herself in refusal. She moved closer to GLaDOS and said,

"If you really don't want me to go, I won't."

"You'll do no such thing," GLaDOS said, almost angrily. "You want to go so you're going. That's all there is to it."

"Yeah, I do, but I don't exactly want you to sit here worrying about me for three days! We can do it some other time!"

"No," GLaDOS said, looking up at her directly. "You're not putting this on hold for my sake. Go to Pandora with your friends. Don't make this about me."

"Okay, but we could have, like, talked about it? You didn't have to pretend everything was fine when I came in here and went on and on about it. And you definitely could have brought it up anytime in the last two days."

"Brought up what?" GLaDOS snapped. "That I have the unshakeable need to keep you within my sight literally at all times? Not only is that something I shouldn't be telling you, it's one of the most important reasons for you to go in the first place. I should absolutely not be this bothered by your going someplace. It doesn't even matter that you're going to Pandora. I'd feel the same if you'd gone anywhere. And that's my own problem. Not yours. So no. I could not have brought it up. Because it has nothing to do with you."

Carrie emulated a sigh in frustration.

"What do you think this is, a vacation away from you? It's not! I hate that you can't come with me just like I hated it when you couldn't come when Dad used to show me the facility. I really, really don't like it when I know you can't watch over me. You and me feel the same way!"

GLaDOS didn't seem to have a response to that.

"And if you'd told me how you felt I could've said, 'Hey, Momma, me too! Why don't you help me adapt the ECHO software for my OS and then I can call you before you go to bed or if something really bad happens or if I just plain want to talk to you?' But you didn't!"

"You thought I wasn't going to miss you?" GLaDOS asked quietly.

"Of course not. But you and Dad don't get any alone time anymore. I thought you were looking forward to that, not worrying about me."

That was true, thought Wheatley. He hadn't really thought of it that way. He loved Carrie and Claptrap, of course, but now he was thinking about it he sort of did miss when it was just himself and GLaDOS. It would probably be quite nice for it to be just the two of them again for a little bit.

"No," said GLaDOS. "No, I wasn't thinking about that."

"I get it!" said Carrie. "You think it's messed up to want to have your kid in your sight all the time, and most of the time? Yeah, it kinda is! You might think it's even kind of messed that I don't want to be out of it! But that's based on humans! And when humans do it, they aren't doing like a thousand other tasks while dimly being aware of where their kid is. That's the only thing they're doing all day. They're really not the same thing. And if you doing that was really, really a problem, I'd be glued to your side all the time because you would've scared me into thinking I was only safe if you could see me. Or I'd be planning on ditching Alyx and Claptrap as soon as I could on Pandora so I could get away from you forever. But none of those things are happening. And of course I feel safer if you can see me. Because that's literally true."

GLaDOS remained silent.

"You said I was an adult," said Carrie. "So if you really are not ready for me to go, I won't, and we can figure this out like adults."

"Caroline, there is nothing to figure out," GLaDOS said quietly. "There is no discussion we could possibly have that would change how I feel. The only real solution is simply for you to go and for the three days to pass and provide me with evidence that I don't need to worry so much."

"Okay, but we still could have –"

"Carrie," Wheatley said, cutting in with his best 'gentle but firm' voice, "I don't think you um, that you quite grasp how hard it is to, to always do right by you. It's actually rather difficult."

"It is?" Carrie asked, looking confused. "I thought that whole thing was a joke."

"A joke?" GLaDOS repeated, somewhat despairingly. "No. No, it's not a joke. If I were to put everything I've ever done on one side of a scale and you on the other, you would still come out far ahead as the hardest thing I've ever done."

"Oh," said Carrie. "I guess we both have something to think about, then."

"You're going to be thinking about it a lot when your daughter manages to be more work in five minutes than you've done all day."

"I already told you," Carrie said. "I'm just gonna pass her off to you. That's the bonus you get when your parents are still around. You get the grandparents to babysit whenever you need a break."

GLaDOS laughed. "I don't think you would have let me hand you off to Caroline."

"You hardly wanted to be um, to hang out with me sometimes," Wheatley added. "So ah… don't count on her going along with that."

"We'll see," said Carrie. She looked at GLaDOS very seriously. "Am I going or am I telling them we gotta postpone?"

"You're going," GLaDOS said, both immediately and firmly. Their cuddle went on a bit long for either of them to really be fine, but at least it was honest.

"Caroline," GLaDOS said before she'd quite left, and she turned around. There was the smallest hint of anxiety in her optic, as though she were worried they hadn't resolved anything after all.

"Yeah?"

"Don't let Claptrap do anything stupid."

Carrie smiled.

"Don't worry! I'll bring him back in one piece for you."

After she had gone, Wheatley decided he would go and see what Claptrap was up to… until he remembered that Claptrap was also gone. Hm. He was struggling to remember what they'd done all that time ago when nobody else had been around, and after a few minutes of this GLaDOS said, "I have work to do."

"Yeah," said Wheatley. "Yeah, of course. I'll um, I'll come back later and we can do… something."

"I do know something we could do," GLaDOS said, and his software must have hit a snag because for some reason she seemed to sound a bit coy. That was sort of weird, so he just decided to ignore it.

"Oh! I know! We could play Old Maid!"

GLaDOS for some reason just stared at him for several seconds, and then she said, "Yes. We can do that."

"Alright then," said Wheatley, very confident they did in fact still know how to operate without any best friends or children around, and he headed off to entertain himself for a while. Which he definitely still knew how to do. Probably.

Guest review

Rixen: Actually no, I've never done an edit on any of my fics before. Once the fic gets old enough, it's really sort of pointless. I do want to do an edit of one of my other longfics but it's going to end up being so different (if I ever get around to it) that I might as well repost it as a new fic because it would be really confusing to have those changes alongside the reviews that referenced the original version. I also wasn't joking about you guys reading LaaC backwards if you want! I do it all the time.

Author's note

When I wrote this originally, Claptrap just got a sniper rifle because I like sniper rifles, but then I played BL3 and he actually gives you an SMG after you complete all his missions. So then I was like 'should I give him an SMG?' but then I was like 'no if he has to shoot someone he'll have to do it from as far away as possible' so I just left it.

A silent disco is a party where instead of playing the music out loud, everyone wears headphones.

This took so long because I was spending all my free time playing Red Dead Online but then it started disconnecting me all the time so lucky you! I had time to write instead.