Another chance ch. 1

Wheatley floated there. He sat there waiting . . . hoping . . . praying for a being . . . a voice . . . a sign. Something telling him that it was all going to be okay. It seemed like there was no hope. Every hour seemed like a life age for his grief. As he stared out into the voide of pure nothingness, granted the stars, and a few space clouds, and the solar system that was slowly starting to drift away, he felt so stupid. For the first time in his programming, when he was cast out into this horrid space, for once he had felt genuinely hatefull of himself. All that there was for Wheatley to do was to save her. He was practically hard wired to take care of humans. The very thing he was trying to kill. But not just that. He was so envious of them for some reason. They were so pure, so complex. When one of their kind made mistakes, they would say to one another. "Hey, you are just human." He was so jealous of such bliss. He could not make mistakes. The only mistakes he ever made were seriously hard wired into him. He was made to be a moron, so in general, they were not mistakes at all. He would never make mistakes, no matter how many things he did, it was technically perfected into him to do it. He should have told her, from the very moment he opened the door, that he was such a fool. Then perhaps she wouldn't have had to go through the trouble of nearly killing herself, to get out alive. She would never had plugged him into the computer, or allowed him to wake GLaDOS up. What a monster he was. Why couldn't he have just tried to help her, without getting involved. Upon every fifty years or so, he would try to replay the momentin his mind. Try to figure out when the best moment would have been to let her take care of things on her own, then possibly she could have survived easier. He even remembered that final moment he saw her. He was just sucked out into the vacum. He had told her to let go. What a hideous thing he had said. He wondered, all the time. Who won? Did GLaDOS win? Did she ultimately kill Chell off, like she always wanted to do? Or did she find a way to reanimate Chell, and keep her in the facility? Was she still testing even as he whisped around, in the cosmos? Such a horrid idea. Or did she make it? He honestly hoped she did. Did she have to kill the insane robot, or did she manage to escape without having to kill the crazed thing? Well, it didn't matter, because he would never see her again. If he could just go back, and find her again, he would try to make it up to her. Try to find some way show her how sorry he was. He would have even settled for somebody related to her. Any human for that matter. Either the most innocent little child, or the most deranged pathetic excuse for a human. it didn't matter. Just some human being to say "Hey, my name is Wheatley, and I will never harm you." Of course such things were merely fantasy.

As he drifted into a state of pure emptiness as he had done every decade or so, he looked out upon the void of nothing. Without any humans to look after, as he was given the job to do on Earth, his programming of conciousness seemed useless. There was nothing to look at, but the void of space. But it wasn't nothing. There was definitely something. He looked in the distance. suddenly, a white little orb appeared. At first it hovered in place for a second, then it slightly shrank a bit, then just fanned out. It looked so strange. An astrological phenomenon, perhaps? It was a mixture of white, and a very bright blue, mixed with some purple. The whole thing seemed to be in a spiral motion, twirling about, like a tunnel. Nothing was comming out. He saw a few things being pulled into it, though. Was it a black hole? It couldn't be. Black hole did suck things in yes, but it would be much stronger, sucking in more powerfull, larger, and faster things, such as light, planets, and stars. It was sucking in weak things. A few traces of space dust, and even a few asteroids, though it didn't seem to be strong enough to pull in a whole planet. Maybe a one story house at the biggest. He on the other hand was ideal size, and could fit right in.

AND THAT WAS EXACTLY WHAT WAS HAPPENING! As he watched the wormhole turn towards him, all he could think of was of why this was happening. Was the universe punishing him for what he had done on Earth? "I'M SORRY!" He shouted into the void of space "I'M SORRY. I'M SORRY I HURT HER. I'M SORRY SHE DIDN'T MAKE IT OUT! I'M SORRY I COST HER HER LIFE. I'MMMM SOOOOORRRRRYYYYYY!" He shouted. His cries fell upon no ears as he was finally sucked into the opening. His could feel his heavy metalic body morphing it's width, as the wormhole pulled him in. Finally as he was fully pulled in, he started screaming from pure technologic adrenaline. As the loops of the walls in the wormhole twisted and twirled around him, he knew it would lead to nothing good. As his screams were filling inside the hole, he swished through the vast hole so fast, that he knew the wormhole was traveling faster than the speed of light. It had to be, at how swifitly he was going through the worm hole. Fear was griping his systems. Never had an example of intelligance been in a wormhole. The speed had been confirmed, when he saw through the walls to reveal Saturn in view. He was traveling back to the solar system. Then off in the distance, he saw a planet that he had recognized all too easily. One he thought he would never see again. It was the Earth. The very thing that he had prayed for the first three hundred years he was in space. As it grew in size, he felt like it was a blessing. His lense grew wide with the astonishment. The world had looked different though. What used to be beautiful continents were now a bit more submerged than the last time he saw it, and not only that, but the ice caps were somehow larger, and more vastly spread. He could only guess that humans were right in predicting that the ice caps had melted. it only proved now that the waters must have flooded the globe, and submerged most of the continents shores. But how to explain the snowy poles, he guessed that the water was more widespread, and that the planet cooled itself down, and when it got again, the caps were most widespread, and froze even further. Still the United States looked pretty okay. It was simply more beautiful than he ever imagined. Spinning ever so slowly. If he had the proper body he would be crying from pure happiness.

Finally the wormhole's walls were gone. Now he was fully out of the tunnel, and headed to the target that the wormhole was aimed at. He had been gaining speed in the hole, and now it was gone, so here he was. He was now officially an asteroid headed to impact straight for the Earth. He started remembering his screams, and started once again screaming from the epic fear that he was now in fatal danger. There was no way to stop either. Here he was to slam into the very place he wanted to be. If falling off a railing was as painfull as it felt that day, he could only imagine his pain he would be in. Finally he felt the gravitational tractor pull he was in. He started hurtling straight into Earth. It's orbit would not save him at the speed he was going. The fuzzy misted clouds were zooming past him as he was motoring straight for the Earth. He could feel the heat of the atmosphere burning his metal frame. As he was hurtling toward the Eart he noticed that he was headed straight for the United states, or at least what was the United States. He was headed towards the llinois Indiana border. He was extrelmely close to the water of lake Michigan, and he knew he would sink like a boulder. Luckily he went off to thw West only slightly, and that changed his direction slightly. Quickly he was plumetting towards the land. An open field was his target, and he was zooming fast. He tried to stay steady as well as he could. hatever this field was for in the past, it was now growing thick corn. Very tall stalks were growing. It was in the shape of a baseball diamond. Was this an old abandoned baseball diamond?

Meanwhile in the empty parts that use to be seats for the audience, an elderly saggy wrinkled old man was rocking in a steel rocking chair, looking out at the field, that used to be Wrigley field. His ancestors used to play baseball in the fields. Then again, nobody knew how to play the ancient dead game anymore. Such knowledge had been lost. Ever since then, the only set of humans that remained used it to grow food. The human race was quickly starting to repopulate. The tribe of Chicago alone had been growing to five thousand, so their number had been growing. They were currently the twenty ninth largest tribe in the world, just above Beijing. Their numbers would grow if the tribes were not so intolerant of each other. The Dublin tribe had come from Ireland this week and were touring the American tribes for products, since they had been growing slower in bringing their population up. Though they claimed to be allies to the American tribes, everybody knew the Irish tribes were very rude to the American tribes. The farmer had only hoped that he could bring his crop in by tomorrow for the merchants in Ireland. Trade amung tribes was a very quick was to raise your tribe's population. Suddenly there was a strange light coming from space. It was like an asteroid. He stood up, and stared at the sky not quite knowing what he was seeing. The elderly farmer had never seen anything like this before. As it flew it was coming so fast, it almost sounded like it was screaming.

Suddenly, with an Earth trembling crash, The asteroid came slamming down into the middle of the field. He held his arms over his face to protect it from the dirt in the air that the asteroid blew up. It was stirring up alot of dirt and soil. When the dirt had finally settled, it created a crater the sze of a large living room. It was in a perfect bowl shape in the field. When his fear had finally wore off, and his curiosity got the best of im, he took a cautious step towards the hole in the groud, that used to be corn. When he walked through the fields, it looked like his corn was at an angle, from the blow of the impact. Finally he made his way through to the thing that came from outer space. It was in the crate glowing a rich blue. The farmer carefully slid into the hole, and got close to the wonder.

"Daggum! That there must be one o them ufo's!" He said. The metal on the outer part of it was glowing red with heat. He reached in to touch it, and a small sizzling sound came from his hand. "Youwch. Hot dog! I'm gunna be rich! Got me here an alien spaceship!" He said slapping his knee in enjoyment. He probably wouldn't even have to grow corn anymore!

Meanwhile Wheatley was just starting to regain conciousness. He was extremely low on conciousness power, and couldn't move. The voyage throught the wormhole, and the blow from the impact to Earth must have taken more out of him than he had expected. When he opened his eye, the previous crack that was on his lense, had branched out in many more directions. It was now cracked in the center, making many spokes in the glass like a pinwheel. Through the shards of glass he saw movement, and hoped that they would be able to help him. As he groaned trying to roll on his side, he looked up with as much strength as he could, and gasped. "H-he-help . . . m-me . . . please." It wasn't as loud as he had hoped, but it got the farmer's attention.

The farmer jumped back a foot and stared at the little metal ball. "Holy Guacamole. Did you just speak english?'

Wheatley would have tried to make a joke asking him if he spoke english, making fun of his accent, but then again, his accent was no better, so he lamely replied with a scruffy. "U-uh huh." He nodded his head as best he could. "Can you fix me?"

That's when the farmer was completely flabbergasted. "Hmmm, well my oh my. I have never seen a robot ball before. The again, I had never seen one come out of the sky either. You seem pretty advanced." He said looking down at him. Wheatley had been a simple personality core back when he lived on Earth before he was sent to space. If the hundreds of years in orbit was the only way to preserve his body then the Earth must have changed. He had no idea he was the last of his kind. "With a piece of technology as advanced as you, I don't know if anybody will be able to. I know I can't repair you, but I do know of two girls that might."