Portal: Love as a Construct

Part Ninety-Seven. The Found Files

I am in a very good mood.

After not having done any work for an entire twenty-four hours, give or take, I have been reminded of a very important fact:

I like working.

Yes. It was an interesting experiment to do absolutely none of it for a whole day. But I don't think I want to do it again. I'm still going to complain about having to do it, of course; just because I enjoy it doesn't mean I enjoy all of it, or all of the time for that matter. And it would be nice if putting it aside for a while didn't merely mean I get to do double the work in half the time. But. All in all, it's a relief and a pleasure to resume my duties.

And it's good to have you, the mainframe says. The automation was...

What. I don't really want to hear that my automation was not up to par, but if it wasn't I should probably work on that. Just in case this holiday thing comes up again sometime soon. I told Caroline I would only do Christmas, but knowing her...

Well, it was fine, it goes on, it just wasn't... quite you.

Oh, it missed me. How cute. And I mean that, too. It's really quite adorable. I'll keep that in mind for next time.

Next time? it asks, horrified.

Yes. That holiday is annual. Besides. I would have thought you to be more excited, given you were granted permissions for low-level executive decisions yesterday.

It's a nice privilege, the mainframe admits. But I still prefer it the old-fashioned way.

That makes me laugh, because this mainframe is only two years old and it's talking as though I should be feeding it punch cards. It doesn't even know about that and I still feel mildly though I should be encoding its instructions on magnetic tape. It gets to keep the privileges, though. Caroline is much less likely to enjoy this job as much as I do, and if the mainframe is able to make basic decisions for the facility on its own it will remove a lot of the mundane work for her. I'm still going to keep checking those things myself regardless. You never know.

Wheatley said good morning during that conversation, so I didn't answer him, but he knows by now not to expect me to. Sometimes I don't feel like it and sometimes it just genuinely doesn't occur to me. Right now, though, he's looking at me a little concernedly so it seems we're going to have some sort of exchange over it.

"Gladys," he says, more than a little anxiously, "why um... what's that you're doing, eh? Seems to be uh... well, it seems to be nice, whatever it is."

"Oh, you know," I tell him congenially. "Work."

He blinks, then blinks again. I really shouldn't, but his confusion is so amusing I'm not going to get any clearer about this. "Work?"

"Mm."

"That's... are you sure that's all?"

"Yes, that's all."

For a minute I don't think he's going to accept that as an answer – even though it is entirely true – and in the end he just shakes himself a little and leaves. Maybe I'll give him an explanation later. Maybe.

//

"Momma, I know you're busy but I have to talk to you about something."

That's how it always is, isn't it. And I was getting so much done... I look away from the monitor I'm using. "What."