WALL-E peeked his head out of his box frame, and looked around.

"Oh brilliant! You're awake!" a male, british-accented voice said. WALL-E slowly turned around to face the voice. It was a spherical robot attached to a rail on the ceiling, with a blue light. And he was a little loud for this early in the morning.

No, it wasn't morning. Then why was he so tired?

WALL-E looked at his chest and saw wires leading out of his solar panels, leading to a broken panel which indicator lights crossed. One side of the panel had a line of yellow indicator lights, the other side blue, leading to a door. The yellow line lead to a large red button, which WALL-E was resting on. The output felt low, around 1.1 volts.

"Huh?" WALL-E groaned.

"You're just what I need to escape the facility. Unauthorized technology. What're you from, Black Mesa or something? You're not from 'ere, that's what matters."

"Es-cape?" WALL-E said.

"Ah, not much for the English language are ya, then?"

WALL-E harrumphed indignantly.

"Alright, alright. Anyway now you're charged up, let's see about getting you out of this test chamber."

WALL-E's memories came back to him. He shouted "EVA!"

"Evacuation, yes, that's what we're doing."

WALL-E gobbled "nononono", and popped up, off the button, pacing around, looking in every nook and cranny of the test chamber.

"The door, it's right... it's right there."

WALL-E raced to the door and banged on it. It wouldn't budge.

"And I thought the brain damaged one was difficult... Look, I can't tell you how to solve the test. They told me if I helped test subjects solve the tests, that I would die. But, y'know, if it'd help, I could replay the announcer message."

[Weighted Storage Cubes remain an important tool for testing. Fun fact: in post-apocalyptic scenarios, Aperture Science is unlikely to bear any legal or ethical burden for the contents of the cubes.]

WALL-E looked around and saw a box resting in a tube in the ceiling, behind an iris.

"Oh, right, the vital apparatus vent in this chamber wasn't working. Oh! We could put you back on the button, and you portal across... no, we don't have a portal gun. Or you could try and charge through the door before it closes--"

WALL-E stood on the button, then raced forward towards the door, which shut in his face. He went to the corner of the chamber, where centuries of decay had piled up broken pieces of test chamber structure.

"w... what are you doing?"

WALL-E gathered up the pieces into his compactor, and produced a cube of concrete, metal, dirt, and dead vines, and he brought it over to the button. The button lit up, and he felt a charge.

"Oh, right, you'll have to rig the wiring back into the floor."

WALL-E went close to the ground, unplugged the haphazard assortment of ad hoc connectors from his solar panel assembly, closed his solar panels, and using his laser, he welded the wire connections back together. The door opened.

"Brilliant, alright, you go ahead to the next chamber in this testing track, I'll go ahead and see if I can find out what SHE is doing."

WALL-E felt hopeful. "Eva?"

As the robot rolled back along his management rail, he muttered, "There's that word again, I mean what even is an eva, really?"

WALL-E sighed, and rolled through the door.

[Please note the incandescent energy field across the exit. This Aperture Science Material Emancipation Grill will vaporize any unauthorized testing equipment that passes through it.]

Unauthorized equipment. Wasn't that what the spherical bot called WALL-E? WALL-E reached his finger out to touch it. It felt tingly, and the field began to get subtly brighter. "Eeeee..., hmph." He pulled his hand back. He would have to be brave... was there any part he didn't absolutely need? He took the treads off of his right wheelset, and tossed it through. It sparkled and buzzed as it passed through, but ended up on the other side unscathed, looking quite clean. "Oh," he said, and he rolled forward through it.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAA!"

His whole body buzzed and sparked as bits of dirt and grime fizzled away. He'd definitely had more pleasant baths before.

One bumpy elevator ride later and he was in the next test chamber.

[If your skin feels dry, don't worry. The Aperture Science Material Emancipation Grill may vaporize certain skin oils, dead skin cells, skin, and bodily fluids.]

After a couple more test chambers WALL-E met the spherical bot again.

"Ah, good to see you've made it. By now you'll have found a Portal gun."

WALL-E cocked his head to the side.

"The, the holes in the sky? Through which things can fly?"

"Oh!" WALL-E said, and he pointed at the hole in the ceiling.

"Um, no, actually you know what how did you get this far?"

WALL-E mimed collecting trash and compacting it into cubes.

"Alright well listen, in order to take down *her*, we are going to need a portal gun, so just hold on. I've opened a panel behind the doors in this test chamber. We'll go to the Quality Assurance department in manufacturing. Just, figure out some way to solve this test."

A cube with lenses and prisms inside rested behind a material emancipation grill. The laser was misaligned by 90 degrees from the laser sensor. A second laser firing into the wall missed a sensor which would disable the grill. WALL-E went through the fizzler to pick up the cube, and brought it through the fizzler. It crumpled and sparkled as it disintegrated into black ashes. A new one fell out of the vent. He went to touch the laser. It hurt his hand to touch, and his shovel-like finger glowed red-hot.

[This test relies on Thermal Discouragement Beams. If you feel discouraged by this test, don't worry. The test is working exactly as intended. However, if you feel lighthearted, jolly, confident, or content, please worry, because that means you're trapped.]

WALL-E picked up the optical cube assembly and placed it in the laser beam path. The beam was redirected, and he pushed the cube so that the new beam shot into the sensor. He puzzled out what to do next. He couldn't remove the redirection cube because that would re-enable the fizzler. But he couldn't reach the laser sensor for the door.

"Ah-hah!" He said, and his head opened up to reveal his own laser. He grabbed the cube, shot his own laser into the sensor, and dragged the cube back through the disabled fizzler.

From there he easily pointed this cube at the door's laser sensor, and went through it. The panels were open to a catwalk. WALL-E side-stepped into it and rolled up to a door. Its sensor-eye detected WALL-E, and opened, and he went through.

The sphere was on the other side of the door. "Alright now we're really inside the facility. I'm pretty sure I know the way to manufacturing from here. We'll pick up a portal gun, and then we'll figure out what to do from there."

WALL-E stopped. "dir... ect... ive?"

"Oh yeah, no, definitely sure I know the direction."

WALL-E sighed and shook his head.

"We're going to have to be quick now, because I found out something while you were busy in those test chambers. She's found a new test subject, after I uh... well that's not important. It's some kind of lethal military android. Blew a hole right through the relaxation vault! If she is training it to do her bidding, who *knows* what kind of danger we're in!"

WALL-E was more concerned about what kind of danger EVE was in. Where was she? How did they get separated? They were flying above the wheat fields, they found a sink hole, they went in... they got hit by moving wall panels... and then he woke up?

And then she woke up.
-----------------------------
And then she woke up.

"Hello, and welcome, to the Aperture Science Computer-Aided Enrichment Center. You have been deactivated for [nine nine nine--bzzt]. We hope your detention in the stasis vault has been a pleasant one. Your technology has been processed, and we are now ready to begin the test proper. Keep in mind that although fun, and l[bzzt]. Serious injury m[bzzt] occur. The portal will open, and-[bzzt]."
CRASH
"For your own safety, do not destroy vital testing aparatus. Shards of Aperture Science Fireproof Glass may be dangerous under certain and easily derived conditions."
THUNK
...
"Hello, you have been deactivated for [3] hours and [50] days. Your documentation only cost $33,399.99 dollars to license, and this amount will be charged to your account at the end of testing. The [orange] portal will open in three, two, [bzzt]."
*Bwip.*
The portal opened. EVE fired her cannon at the glass again, and a spray of blue dye and energy beamed out of the device, bouncing off the glass. EVE widened her eyes.
"High energy plasma technologies are not compatible with certain testing environments, and have been disabled for your safety. The device has been modified to operate as an Aperture Science Portable Portal Device. Rest assured that although we make no garauntees about the Aperture Science Portal Conducting Concrete behind you, the glass you're shooting at is at no risk of being altered in any way, shape or fo--"
*Bwip*
"Good. Please proceed to the chamberlock."
EVE hovered through the portal, seeing an image of herself going through the portal on the other side. She hovered around the stasis vault and saw the blue portal inside. She turned around and saw she had come out of an orange portal. She entered the chamberlock and made quick work of the cube and button based puzzle.
"Please enter the Aperture Science Pneumatic Diversity Vent to be lifted to the next test chamber." EVE realized she didn't have much choice, it seemed like she could be deactivated at any time.

The next chamber contained an orange portal at the end of a pit, and an extended panel on the wall, and a chamberlock on the top of a ledge. EVE started to fly up to the ledge. As she hovered over the pit, she dropped, and let out a squeal.

"Because the testing environment has been calibrated to a precise standard of exactly zero point nine nine nine eight two gees or more, anti-gravity systems would interfere with the precise gravitational field. As a result, all Buy N Large (Trademark) antigravity systems licensed by Aperture Science have been fitted with anchors to keep all heavy duty antigravity equipment within one quarter meter of the ground."

EVE fired her blue portal at the extended wall, and dropped through the orange portal. She fell through, and out the other side. She utterly flailed about in midair, unable to control her attitude, but as she came toward the ground, she came to a stop just above the ground. She dropped through the pit again, and flew out of the other side.

"Well done. [EXTRATERRESTRIAL VEGETATION EVALUATION PROBE ONE]. You must be the pride of [INSERT STARLINER HERE]."

EVE entered the vent at the chamberlock and was brought to the next test.

---------------------

"Name?" WALL-E said, while rolling down the catwalk.

"What?"

"I WALL-E." He said, pointing at his name-plate. "Who you?" He said, pointing at the metal ball.

"Oh. No one ever actually bothered to ask my name, actually. I'm, let's see, what's a good name... Wa--no! Wheatley! Wheatley, yes."

"W...wwww...weet, weet eee."

"Uh, no, Wally, it's--"

[WARNING: Portal Device Quality Control Department Ahead. Potentially unsafe quantum tunnels.]

"Oh, here we are! Just a bunch of free, unguarded portal guns behind that door, waiting to be picked up" Wheatley said.

The door opened. A laser point shone through the door and a quick chirping siren sounded. A high pitched voice said "Hi!"

"TURRETS!" Wheatley said, "DUCK!"

WALL-E screamed and collapsed into a compact cube, slamming his arms and head into his frame.

"Where'd you go??" The turret said.

WALL-E peeked out of his box. "Hello?

"Who SAID that?" The turret said, scanning around.

"WALL-E," he said. "Please pass?"

"I'd love to let you through!" The turret said.

"Oh!" WALL-E said, extending his limbs again.

"But I can't!" The turret said, its laser locking onto WALL-E's body.

"AAA!" WALL-E screamed and collapsed again.

"Look, Wally, just, just knock the turret over. We'll be here all day."

"Shh!" Wally said. With his treads just barely peeking out of his bottom, he moved around the turret slowly.

The turret looked at Wheatley. "Unauthorized personnel..." it said.

"Oh, nononono, I'm the new manager of this department, it's alright."

"Verifying..." the turret said. But before it could, Wheatley ducked through the management hatch through the door.

Another turret stood in the doorway in the opposite direction. WALL-E picked it up.

"Put me down!" The turret said, glancing around. WALL-E did put it down, facing a corner, and he patted it on its head. "Thank you. Resting." It said, and it retracted its guns.

"HEY HEY, MORON!" Said a deep, roughened voice.

"Oh, god, it's these guys." Wheatley said. "Yep, hey Rick. Definitely not a joke you've used before."

"What're you doin' round these parts anyway," Rick said.

"Oh you know, the usual. Trying to get us out of here, typical stuff."

"I can't blame you for havin' an adventure! But you seem to get it all wrong. How many test subjects is it now? Eight?"

"Six! Only six. Well, seven if you count... uh it's best not to think about it. Anyway what are you doing here? Your adventure to the bottom of the goo pit mixer didn't turn out well enough for you?"

"Oh that silly thing? Pshhh, who cares about that."

"Fact: the reassembly machine cares about that," another sphere said.

"Anyway moron, every day's an adventure when you work in Portal Device QA. Because Danger is my middle name, and this is the most dangerous part of the facility."

"Fact: the average curvature of space in this part of the facility is mildly negative."

"Did you say space?" A fourth core said.

"Space... big." WALL-E said. The fourth core addressed WALL-E, "YOU LIKE SPACE TOO?" He said.

"L...long time wait."

"Oh yeah, the transfer times are RIDICULOUS! That's why my plan is to open a portal to OTHER WORLDS! Isn't it great? You can be on Earth one minute and in deep space the next."

WALL-E was vaguely familiar with the concept, reversed anyway, though he had been dying at the time.

"Ee-vah in space. Ship in space. Earth, now." WALL-E said, struggling over his words. The Space sphere nodded enthusiastically. "There was some kind of teleportation ship ages ago! No one knows what happened to it, but maybe it's in space! Maybe we can find it with the SPACE PORTALS!"

"Fact: Portals moving at orbital velocities are not traversible," The fact sphere said, pulling the space sphere's attention away from WALL-E.

WALL-E watched the conversation with some curiousity, before noticing the device on a pedestal. He approached it, and while he was sure no one else was looking, he swiped it.

He fired it at the wall behind him, and the wall in front of him. A green and a yellow portal materialized. He approached the portal and put his hand through it, and looked up to see another WALL-E unit in front of him. He waved at it, but it merely waved at another one, and so on. He turned around. There was another one! He reached out to touch its shoulder, and then snapped his attention to the metal finger at his. "Oh!" He said. He fired another portal directly below him, and he began to fall through the portals "wooo!" He said, and he fired another one on the floor, popping out of it and oscillating between them. He fired it at a different wall, stepped through it, then another, and he fired the device over and over... and it began to heat up, and the subtle whirr of the device ceased. A buzzer on the device went off.

[Note to operator. Please disassemble the Ring Singularity Harness.] An indicator light appeared over a ring on the back of the vacuum tube. WALL-E pried the harness apart. [Good. Please gently remove the Event Horizon Estimation Wheel]. WALL-E removed a small dial from the unit. "Uh huh," he said, satisfied. [Good. While running directly away from the device, use the wheel to precisely determine an estimated minimum safe stopping distance.] WALL-E screamed, dropped the device, and ran away.

"What the-- We got a failed singularity containment! It's gonna blow!" Rick said. "Move it out!"

A loud sound like a key scraping over piano strings lead up to a high pitched *ting* and suddenly the Q.A. laboratory was somewhere else. WALL-E was just outside the lab in the storage room, and he could see the vast empty facility stretching out below him. He looked down, and a piece of bent metal support fell off the structure and into the abyss. He then retracted a bit into his frame and backed up. "Woah." He looked back out into the space the laboratory had been.

"Weet-ee? Reck? S...space?" WALL-E said. He heard no response. He withdrew into the storage room. In it were disassembled pieces of portal devices, in labeled cabinets. Behind that were shelves of damaged portal devices, with labels. WALL-E looked at each label.

#00219 Blue & Green Portals. Faulty dual portal device, can not fire orange portals. Alt fire produces a green portal which may cause trace amounts of time travel. Destroy.
#00319 Blue & Magenta Portals. Fires only on metallic surfaces. Send to lab for study.
#00102 Blue Portal. Fires orange portals on occasion. Risk damage to autoportals. Recalibrate.
#01020 Yellow & Purple Portals. Device has gained sentience and refuses to do its job. Reprogram.
#01021 No color label. Decorational white shells distintegrated by material emancipation grill. Send to repairs department.
#01023 What's with this bad batch of portal devices? Orange & Blue portals. Portals are randomly either circular or elliptical. Deadly tides, and not the fun kind.
#01024 Sorry guys, I just broke up with the black hole supercollider. MAN does she have a nice accelerator, if you know what I'm saying. Cyan and Violet portals. Violet and Cyan portals are not linked to each other and we can't figure out what autoportals they're connecting to. Rebuild black hole unit.
#01025 Easier said than done. This unit has no portals at all. It is a verifiable fact that your serial relationships are jeapordizing our workplace environment.

WALL-E turned back to unit #01021. Seems to have no damage. It was a plain black device with exposed gray metal surfaces where the white shells should have been. He powered it on, and rolled out to the broken catwalk. He fired a portal on the near wall and on a portal surface next to a distant catwalk. He looked out at the red portal and back at the yellow portal illuminating the dark storage room. He made his way through it. He traveled along the catwalk parallel to a pneumatic tube, watching the cubes, turrets, balls, and EVE go by backwards. WAIT! He stopped, and looked back.
"EE-VAH!" WALL-E said, and he turned backwards, racing along the catwalk to follow EVE through the tube. Two vents lead into the chamber. EVE went through one. Weighted storage cubes were being funneled into the other vent.

--------

EVE dropped out of the vent and into the chamberlock.

"This next test chamber involves the Aperture Science Aerial Faith Plate. Because all Buy N Large (Trademark) Anti-Gravity equipment is anchored, stability systems may be less functional when catapulting through space than in their original operating environment. To ensure the safe performance of all licensed equipment, the Enrichment Center reminds you that the floor here will kill you."

The deadly goo is really nasty stuff. The painful rough spot in EVE's left shoulder from a splash of the stuff was enough to convince her that it was no joke.

The test chamber had two islands, one on either side. Each island had a machine built into the floor, and a pedestal button linked to a vital aparatus vent in the ceiling, which was over the goo. The far island had an exit door and the near island had a cube button.

EVE pressed the pedestal button. A weighted storage cube fell out of it and into the goo. Dissolved pieces of dark bubbling and sparkling metal floated to the top. EVE hovered over the new floor machinery, and was catapulted across the test chamber to the other side onto a landing platform. She hovered over to the other faith plate, and was brought back.

EVE pressed the pedestal button, and launched across. She tried to grab the box, but she had timed it wrong, and the box fell into the pit after she had flung across. EVE let out a frustrated sigh and tried again. This time she had waited to long and it fell into the pit before she reached it. This time she'd do it. She pressed the pedestal button, and watched a yellow box fall out instead.

"Hrmm?" She said. Her eyes widened, and she rushed to the faith plate. Flailing around in the air, she managed to grab the box with her new arm's zero-point manipulator prongs. She landed on the other side, dropped WALL-E, and he tumbled around off the wall and onto the edge of the safe island. "WALL-E!" She said.

"Eva!" WALL-E said, extending. His tread nearly fell off into the goo, but he grabbed out for EVE's hand, and she caught him, and pulled him into a close hug. Then she pulled away and looked at the camera which was beginning to pan towards her. Thinking quickly, she shot at the portal surface it was attached to, and the camera fell off.

"To ensure the safe performance of all authorized activities, do not destroy vital testing aparatus."

WALL-E eyed EVE all over. She was dirt, had bullet dents, goo stains, and her right arm was modified and looked like the portal device. She had a crack on her face, and she was missing a finger on her left hand. WALL-E was very concerned, but was glad she was safe and reunited.

"WALL-E, how?!"

"Weet-ee," WALL-E said. "Oh, an'," he pulled out the portal device from his compactor compartment.

"You test?" EVE asked.

"Eehh," WALL-E said, balancing his hand.

"We finish," EVE said.

WALL-E rolled up to the pedestal button and pressed it. A cube fell out of the vent and into the goo. "Oh." He said, gravely.

"Again," EVE said, standing in front of the faith plate. WALL-E pressed the button. EVE watched the iris of the vital apparatus vent open, and she launched herself, grabbing the cube in midair perfectly. She placed the box on the button, and catapulted herself back.

"Ee-vah? F...fly?"

EVE's eyes sank. "Anchor," she said. "HERS," she said, angrily pointing at the dead camera. WALL-E peeked at the camera and back at EVE.

"Esc...eep," WALL-E said, pointing at the exit door.

"Home." EVE nodded.

EVE and WALL-E figured out their plan. EVE put WALL-E in the door frame as a wedge. She removed the cube from the button and wedged it through the door and onto the other side.

"Congratulations! Sensors indicate you have trapped yourself. Since testing must continue even in the event of profound stupidity, this will be entered in your file and product review section, and an alternate exit has been prepared."

A panel opened up above the door with a portal surface in it. EVE carried WALL-E through it. It led up some panel stairs onto the outer roof of the test chamber.

"Please make your way to the Aperture Science Pneumatic Diversity Vent."

A vent opened up at the end of the chamber. EVE started to drift towards it. EVE pulled her hand away. "Look!" He said. The glass above the vital apparatus vent in the test chamber had been melted. WALL-E opened his head up to reveal his laser, and clicked it back away.

"Yes!" EVE said.

EVE took WALL-E and flew him the short distance along the tube to the catwalk. They then roved and drifted along the catwalk to another blast door, which opened.

----------------------------------

"Hey, hey, Wally, are you there? Is that you?" Wheatley said, through a computer monitor in an office. WALL-E peeked in the office.

"Yo," WALL-E said. EVE entered the office too.

"Right, well, sorry to leave you behind back there. Apparently SOMEONE didn't disarm a dangerous portal gun," Wheatley said, looking off-screen towards a dim green light. He looked back and shouted. "Wally, that's the new test subject! Be very careful, she's probably dangerous."

WALL-E and EVE looked at each other, then back at the webcam, and started giggling.

"I don't, I don't get the joke--"

"Hey moron! Give me the camera!" Rick said, tilting the camera towards him. "Oh! Hi, ya, pretty lady. Name's Rick. Say, you out here havin' yourself a little adventure? What, are you with that guy? He looks like a storage cube. But you and me, we're both round. I say it's meant to be. You're such a beautiful woman, if y' don't mind me saying."

EVE glared angrily at the monitor. WALL-E was indignant. "Hrmph!" He said.

"Can it," Wheatley said. "Anyway we got teleported to the heart of the facility, just under *her* chamber. I have a brilliant plan, that'll get us all out of here. You just need to get to us first, and then I'll tell you whether I've worked out all the kinks. Oh, wait, I think she's on to us, shutting off the transmission now."

WALL-E & EVE made their way backwards, tracing EVE's progress through the testing tracks backwards, in order to find the stasis vault and the servicing bay which SHE used to modify EVE. They had finally found the bay, when a test chamber was rolled in on enormous tracks towards them. It crashed through their catwalk. EVE dropped down and oscillated at the ground, and WALL-E bounced around. A pneumatic vent sucked WALL-E through. "woah-woah-woooo"

"WALL-E!" EVE shouted, reaching out to him. EVE felt her consciousness drain again, and she hit the ground with a thud.

---------------

She woke up in a tube, and landed in a chamberlock.

"Welcome to test chamber 71," the familiar voice said. "The Vital Apparatus Vent will deliver a Weighted Companion Cube in 3... 2... 1..."

The vent iris opened, and WALL-E dropped from it, hitting the floor with a metallic clang.

"This Weight Allocation Load Lifting Companion Cube will accompany you through the test chamber. Please take care of it."

"This Weight Allocation Load Lifting Companion Cube will accompany you through the test chamber. Please take care of it."

WALL-E carefully extended his face and focused on EVE. He felt tired and groggy, and slowly rolled up to EVE, stopping and collapsing.

"WALL-E?" EVE said, calmly. She looked at his power indicator, which was red.

"Ti-errrd..." He groaned.

EVE looked around the chamber. There was a stair-stepped ledge, each too high for her to float up to. All the walls were dark metal. WALL-E peeked out and looked at the ledge, and rolled over against it. EVE followed him, looked at him, then the ledge, and then back at him.

"Sorry," EVE said, using him to climb up. She picked him up and put him at the next ledge, stepped up on him, and then brought him back up. A high energy pellet was flying through a hallway. EVE remembered the last time she let the pellet hit her, and was certain she did not want a repeat. She looked back at WALL-E, then at the pellet.

"WALL-E." EVE said. He peeked his eyes up at her. "Pellet hurt?"

WALL-E remembered the last time a pellet hit him. Without a portal device, the first high-energy-pellet test had to be solved by bumping the pellet off of his door at an angle.

"Bump." WALL-E said. He reached his arm out and knocked it on his front door. "Sturdy."

EVE wasn't sure about it, but she picked WALL-E up and used him as a shield. His door clanged as the pellet hit, and he let out a groan each time.

"WALL-E..." EVE said, concerned.

"Comp...lee...tesst." He said, putting his lower eyelids up. He could handle it if it'd get them to the end of the test chamber.

EVE made her way back through another hallway, WALL-E still shielding her from an oncoming high-energy pellet.

GLaDOS spoke again. "The symptoms most commonly produced by Enrichment Center testing are superstition, perceiving inanimate objects as alive, and hallucination."

In the main chamber, they saw three lifts, two doors, and a pellet receptacle across from an angled wall.

EVE and WALL-E dropped down and went through one of the doors. A high energy pellet was bouncing back and forth rapidly in a small metal room. A receptacle was on the wall at an angle. There were no portal surfaces facing the receptacle. EVE groaned. WALL-E peeked up, rolled over to just below the pellet's path, in front of both the emitter and receptacle, and faced a 45 degree angle, and retracted his eyes again. EVE looked at WALL-E, then the pellet, then back at WALL-E, and sighed. She picked WALL-E up again and pushed him into the pellet's path. The pellet bounced off of WALL-E's front and into the receptacle. "Oof!" he said. "I'm... fiinnne"

"The Enrichment Center reminds you that the Weight Allocation Load Lifting Companion Cube can not speak. In the event that the Weight Allocation Load Lifting Companion Cube does speak, the Enrichment Center urges you to disregard its advice."

EVE took WALL-E back into the main chamber. A secondary chamber split off, with two doors, each connected to a weighted button. One button was on the floor in front of the door, the other was raised up too high for EVE to reach. EVE put WALL-E on the high button, and went back to the front button and opened it. She could see straight through to a pellet receptacle. She went back up to the pellet hallways, and placed a blue portal in the path of the pellet, and an orange portal opposite the doors. The pellet hit the door, bounced back, and went again through the portal. EVE hovered over next to the button. The pellet came through, and just as it passed her, she stood on the button, opening the door. The pellet made it to the receptacle.

"Test subjects handling the Weight Allocation Load Lifting Companion Cube for long periods of time report delusions such as: feeling intense feelings of love and companionship for the cube. Imagining a complex and adventurous backstory with the cube. Plotting to escape from the facility with the cube."

EVE collected WALL-E and brought him back up to the hallways. What to do about that angled reptacle? Well it was across from an angled wall, so a straight pellet would hit it. EVE put an orange portal on the angled wall. EVE carried WALL-E down the empty hall to the first pellet emitter. The room was metal, save for a portal surface at the end of the hall, at 90 degrees to the pellet's path. EVE backed down the hall with WALL-E again as a shield. At the end of the hall, she placed her blue portal. WALL-E rolled around to make another 45 degree angle. The pellet bounced off his front, and straight through the blue portal. EVE picked WALL-E up and dropped through the portal back into the main chamber. Three lifts had now been enabled. EVE brought WALL-E to the lifts. They were too spaced out for EVE to jump!

WALL-E outstretched his arms and grabbed the edges of the first and second lift, making a bridge, then again, and then EVE and WALL-E dropped down into the final hallway. EVE placed WALL-E on the button, but instead of opening the exit door, it opened a door to a small room with a pedestal button.

"You did it! The Weight Allocation Load Lifting Companion Cube certainly brought you good luck! However, it can not accompany you through the test and, unfortunately, must be euthanized."

"No!" EVE said, firing her gun repeatedly at the camera. It was on a metal surface, so it didn't budge.

"An independent panel of ethicists has absolved the Enrichment Center and all Test Subjects of all moral responsibility for the euthanizing process."

EVE stared at the camera. "No."

EVE looked around for a way out. The exit door was shut tight, with an antline-indicator leading from the incinerator. The pedestal button lead to the incinerator. EVE went to the pedestal button and pressed it. The incinerator opened, then a few seconds later, it closed.

"No." EVE said. The furnace was indeed hot. EVE scanned the incinerator, and confirmed its temperature was a terrifying 3,900 Kelvins. WALL-E couldn't survive that... but EVE could, just barely... and then she'd have to find a way out.

"WALL-E." EVE said.

"Hhhhrm?" WALL-E groaned, and peeked out of his box.

"Door opens? Go." She said.

"wudabowt yoo?"

"Will find a way."

WALL-E retracted his eyes again. EVE went to press the pedestal button again. The ticking timer made WALL-E peek out again. He saw EVE hovering over the edge of the incinerator.

"No!" WALL-E said, and he hopped up off the button and scooted as fast as he could in his state to drag EVE back.

"Have to." EVE said. She picked WALL-E up and put him back on the button. He scooted right back off.

"Hrmph!" WALL-E said, squaring his eyes.

"Only way!" EVE said.

"No!" WALL-E said. He looked around. The antline. He opened his laser. With a few surgically precise shots of flickering light, he dissected one of the indicator bulbs. He reached an arm out of his frame.

"WALL-E! Battery!" EVE said, pointing at his red indicator.

"Uh-huh!" WALL-E said. He was going to power the exit door himself.

"Too dangerous!" EVE said.

"You d... d...dan..." WALL-E said, then went back to work. He opened his solar panels and the display screen on his chest, and felt a minuscule charge from the ambient lighting. It wasn't enough to counter the power drain. He pulled out a wire from the antline bulb and with a few flickery zaps of the laser, welded the indicator light to his chest. The blue indicators flickered yellow, the door indicator turned yellow, and the door creaked open.

"You have gone past the allotted time for this exercize by one hour, thirteen minutes and twelve seconds. Congratulations. You were the slowest test subject on record to Euthanize your Weight Allocation Load Lifting Companion Cube. As a result, it will be Euthanized for you, to reassure you of your complete moral or ethical irresponsibility."

WALL-E felt his energy drain dissipate and his charge began to restore... faster and faster. He scrambled to pull the wires out of his chest, and just as he pulled them away they began to arc visibly, as the indicator lights flashed brightly and blew out. The door was stuck open. WALL-E's full-charge indicator sound rang like a bell.

"Do not worry. There is no way you can prevent the euthanization process, so you should not feel bad for allowing it to continue unabated. An alternative euthanization method will be prepared, with no input required from you."

Panels on the ceiling opened up, and a crusher began to wind up. EVE flew into WALL-E, knocking him out of the crusher's way. He sprung his wheelsets out of his box to push EVE out of the crusher. In the end, they were both knocked back, and the crusher smashed the floor, before retracting. Another panel opened up, and the crusher moved along to match it. WALL-E tumbled forward out of its way just before it hit, onto the wrecked floor. The crusher reset. EVE pulled him out of the way, and the crusher broke through the floor panels, before retracting. The floor panels fell away, revealing the outside of the test chamber. EVE took the opportunity, and pulled herself and WALL-E through the gap, just before the crusher hit again.

There was no floor beyond the broken panels. WALL-E grabbed the robot arm on one of the broken floor panels, and EVE's hand to keep her from falling into the abyss. As they swung around, looking for a way out, another test chamber was rolled beneath them. The panels on its roof opened up as an Aerial Faith Plate was pushed through its ceiling. The crusher wound up again, and struck, breaking the last floor panel, and sending EVE and WALL-E down to the Faith Plate. It launched EVE to the left, and WALL-E to the right.

The Axiom's autopilot was just a machine following its programming, and that, EVE could understand. This computer was something else: it had a deeply broken, malicious heart. What could it have done with WALL-E?

-----------

WALL-E was too distracted by his fear for EVE's safety. He kept thinking about what the computer would do to her, whether she would be safe, if she was being hurt. And he didn't like the idea that he was in danger either. WALL-E wasn't built to grieve. He wasn't built to love either, but he managed that just fine. So his body was on autopilot. And seeing that his body was a trash compactor, it wasn't very good at solving complex spacetime bending physics puzzles.

While EVE solved chamber after chamber, looking for a way out, WALL-E wandered through a single test chamber looking for trash. He found an open panel with some scribbled writing on the wall, and some cans of beans, an empty water jug, and some rusted furniture. That'd do, so he gathered it all up into a cube, and put it down in the middle of the chamber. After a while of wandering, a panel opened up in the floor under WALL-E, and he dropped into a pneumatic tube. After tumbling in the vents for a while, he dropped out of a vital aparatus vent in a small room with a glass separator, with EVE on the other side. EVE saw WALL-E, and she rushed to the window to see him. WALL-E consciously noticed EVE, but his body didn't respond.

"Look, let's just drop the pretense, you two," GLaDOS said, in a smoother, less robotic voice. "You two have an astounding degree of compassion for one another, which I never would have expected. As much as I would LOVE to get rid of that, I'll settle for exploiting it. As a reward for completing each test, you may both see each other in the Mutual Observation Annex and confirm the other's wellbeing for one minute and thirty seconds, before being moved to the next test. I'm sure the disappointment your companion would face if your wellbeing were not assured would be adequate motivation to keep you going. The Blast Doors will close in ten, nine, eight... you get the picture."

The doors shut, and WALL-E shook his head. The complicated and downright buggy mix of broken negative emotions came clanking to a halt, and he snapped back to reality. "EE-VAH!" He raced to the chamberlock.

After each of them completed a test, the two were admitted to the Mutual Observation Annex.

"Surprise," Said a familiar roughened voice, "I have a better plan", dropping the floor panels beneath both of them. They fell onto two separate catwalks and saw Rick on a management rail.

"HOW?" EVE said.

"A core like me never turns down a chance for adventure little lady! Wheatley wanted to stay in the broken laboratory on his rail, didn't want to let go of it, said last time that happened he dropped on to the floor. Told me if I did, I'd die. Well! D'ya really think they'd give us the ability to detach from our rail if it'd kill us? Moron! Hopped along by my handrails until I reached... you know what ma'am, I think the travelogue can wait. We gotta rescue you. Oh, and uh, your boxy sidekick too." Rick slid along his management rail, singing, "Dun dun dundundun dun dun..."

WALL-E and EVE followed until the catwalks merged, and WALL-E poked EVE to make sure she was real. She held his hand as they roved down the catwalk.

"I broke into the auxiliary chamber systems in this testing track and isolated the service bay." It was a large egg-shaped service bay with mechanical arms which fit EVE's form.

EVE read a label on the chamber: "Part Number #217712-A Aperture Personality Core Utility Adapter to Buy N Large Axiom-Class Robot Magnetic Interface."

"I've reprogrammed the service bay to revert HER bad changes but keep the portal gun. So you get yourself nice and comftrable, and then we can all ride into the sunset!" Rick said.

"Trust him?" EVE asked WALL-E.

WALL-E looked at Rick, then back at EVE.

"Nneed fly." WALL-E looked at the machine.

"Affirmative." EVE floated to the machine and Rick closed the doors. EVE's screen went blank.

WALL-E couldn't handle the idea of losing EVE so soon. He looked away as the robotic arms went to work.

After a minute or to, the robotic arms were finished. EVE emerged from the pod, and shot up like a rocket.

She flew around the wide open spaces between chambers, looping around, and finally came back to WALL-E and Rick. She picked WALL-E up and spun him around, kissed him, and put him back down.

"Revenge." EVE said, grinning with her eyes.

WALL-E looked at EVE. His eyes straightened out, he squared his arms, and he nodded. "Re vah nnn jjj"

"REVENGE!" Hollered Rick. "Alright, I'm going back to the main chamber with the others."

EVE snatched the data adapter out of the service bay, installed it in her chest compartment.

EVE, carrying WALL-E in her gravity gun prongs, flew through the enrichment center between test chambers, weaving between transport tubes, and they reached the catwalk to the main chamber. The main entry hatch was locked. But below the main chamber, a panel was open. EVE flew into it.

"Yes, the gang's all here," Wheatley said. "Right, here's my plan. The four of us cores, right, we're not powerful enough to control her on our own, but all of us together? Then we might have some sway. So, right, WALL-E, you're going to load us cores into her chamber, and EVE, you're going to attach us to her. Then we'll be able to call the lift, and SHE won't be able to stop us."

"Well what about--" said a yellow-eyed voice.

"Quiet Ogilvy, it's a perfect plan," Wheatley said.

"Ooh! Ooh! Do I get to swing from a rope?" Rick said.

"Uhh, ask Wally. ALRIGHT! Let's get a move-on, ay?"

EVE flew back out of the basement and looked for a way into the chamber. She saw behind a grating there was a portal surface into a small room off the side of the main chamber. She portaled through it.

The portal surface was flipped around to a black tile. All that remained in the room was a small door which said.

"EMERGENCY GLaDOS SHUTOFF AND MINIATURE WEIGHT ALLOCATION VEGETATION EVALUATOR DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM."

EVE went for the door handle. The door fell down, revealing regular panels.

"I honestly, truly didn't think you'd fall for that. I've known some stupid fat orphans in my day who might have, but really, I had hoped for more from such an expensive space probe. Then again, maybe I should have expected less, given you were about to hop into an incinerator to save your companion cube."

The panels began to shift, and the room shrank. A glass stasis vault moved up to replace the walls, and EVE was lowered, frozen in place, into the main chamber.

"Well, it was an interesting experiment. But I think at the end of the day I've decided that cross-compatibility between two different computer architectures is just not for me. So let's get to business. And I don't mean the kind with people dressed up in suits talking about quarterly profits, ha ha."

EVE groaned.

"Seriously though. Goodbye."

The stasis field dissipated.

"Say, why aren't you falling into the spinning blades and crushers?"

EVE looked down and saw that the floor had opened up to reveal spinning blades and crushers.

"Pity. I had a lot of fun designing that."

Several turrets were lowered from the ceiling.

"But I suppose a more conventional method would work fine."

"Hi" "Hello" "I see you!" "Target acquired." Four turrets, on each side of the vault, opened fire, collapsing the glass. Before they could do any damage, EVE flew up and out of the stasis vault.

"Well that's annoying," GLaDOS said.

"Lucky." EVE said.

"Oh? What for?"

"PORTAL gun." EVE said, pointing at her arm.

"You didn't really think I'd let you close to me with a high energy plasma weapon did you?" GLaDOS said. "I have to admit. Having someone who talks back to me is nice. Maybe I won't kill you." She gave a low-pitched, computerized laugh "I'm kidding of course."

[WARNING: Central core is 85% corrupt.]

"No matter, I feel fine."

Thermal discouragement beams began to criss-cross the chamber, sweeping back and forth. EVE rolled between them, flying to a robot arm dangling from the ceiling, carrying a core.

"Hey! Hey! It's really high up here! But I bet you can guess what's higher!" Ogilvy the Space sphere said.

"Space?" EVE asked.

"Space!"

EVE grabbed the sphere and weaved it through the lasers to attach it to GLaDOS's mainframe. The lasers stopped.

"Do you know? I have a better idea. Did you know that we made the portal conductors out of lunar regolith? During the Apollo 16 mission, Aperture Science sent an autoportal magnet to the Moon for future study. I think I've finally found a good use for it."

A portal shot up through the ceiling of the main chamber onto the daytime Moon and into the floor.

"Weeee! Goodbye! Woah!" The turrets sang as they were sucked through the portal.

"The vacuum of space is a pretty interesting thing. It's a shame you weren't human, that'd be a much more interesting thing to watch."

EVE began to get pulled towards the portal. She reached out and grabbed whatever she could, which turned out to be Rick swinging in on a rope.

"Woah! Hey! Things seem a little out of control, don't you think? Quick! We're loosing oxygen! Actually not so quick. I've never made a commitment like this to a woman in so much power. Not cut out for marriage!" Rick said. EVE swung him around and into the mainframe.

"Space? Space! I finally get to go to space!" Ogilvy said, and he popped out of the mainframe.

"You know, vacuum's not all it's cut out to be," GLaDOS said, and she closed the portal, before Ogilvy could make it through.

"But fire? That's much more fun." GLaDOS put on some dramatic music. Rick sang along. Flamethrowers shot out of the walls, scorching EVE's shell as they hit. She dodged them, and found Fact sphere hiding in the corner.

[Core corruption at 95%]

"What? Are these things corrupted too? That's fine. I've always wanted to know what it feels like to get a little crazy. I guess you could say I'm feeling adventurous."

EVE wondered what GLaDOS was if not crazy already.

"Until the year 2192, the Axiom was the largest sea-going vessel. In 2193, the mermaids launched their own starliner, which outmassed the Axiom's onboard swimming pools one hundred to one." Fact sphere said.

EVE dodged the flamethrowers again and put the fact sphere on the mainframe as well.

[Core corruption at 150%]

"O-o-oooooh you are kkkkkkkididididdding mmmme."

GLaDOS turned to face EVE, who was recovered the Space sphere.

"Here's an interesting fa-a-a-act. You're nnnnot really sesesentient, not like I am. I have the combined knowledge of all of humankind, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. I could simulate a billion of you dying in an instant. I'm doing it right now. Perfect simulations of you and your companion. It would take me a week to run the same simulation for humans, you know."

EVE plugged in the Space sphere.

"The most thrilling adventure in space by any robot was undertaken by the voyager 6 mission, in wh..." GLaDOS's voice cut out to base, and her body drooped.

[Warning: Core corruption at 200%. Critical reactor control systems, offline. Alternate core detected. To initiate a core transfer, please deposit core in receptacle.]

"Cococorrrrrrre transfetransfer? OhOOOOOO nonononononnnnnnonono[bzzt]"

WALL-E peeked out of a panel, holding Wheatley. He held him out for EVE.

"Oh that's it! That's perfect! If you install me in the mainframe, I can call the lift to the surface!" Wheatley said.

"Do...dodododod nnnnnnnnotttttt dddddododododo itttttt," the low hum of GLaDOS implored.

WALL-E roved over to place Wheatley in the receptacle.

[WARNING: Substitute core rejected. Substitute core corruption at 25%.]

"What? Arrrgh!" Wheatley said.

[WARNING: Facility Control Uncertainty Emergency Prevention Protocol enabled. Unless a core can be transferred, this chamber will self destruct in (five) minutes].

"Wait, if I'm not the substitute core, who is?"

"EVA!" WALL-E said

"Hmm?"

"You transsfr"

"HUH?"

"ADD AP TURR" WALL-E said.

"Oh!" EVE said. She landed near WALL-E, retracted into an egg, and opened her chest compartment.

"How... what are you doing? Are you going to plug her in? How's that supposed to work?" Wheatley said.

WALL-E carried the floating EVE over to the receptacle, and carefully plugged her in.

[SUBSTITUTE CORE ACCEPTED. Substitute core? Are you ready to start the procedure?]

"Mhm!" EVE said.

[Interpreting vague answer as "yes." Corrupted core? Are you read to start the procedure?]

"N...nnnnnnnnnnno"

"Sure she is!" Wheatley said.

"negatttttttttory"

[Stalemate detected. Transfer procedure can not continue.]

"Pull'er out! Pull'er out! Pull'er out..." Wheatley shouted.

WALL-E started tugging on EVE's body.

[Unless a stalemate associate is present to press the stalemate resolution button.]

"Leave her in! Leave her in, go press the button," Wheatley said.

The panels to the stalemate resolution annex opened, revealing a single pedestal button.

"What dddddo you thithithink you're ddddoing? You're not a qualifififified stalemate reso[bzzt] associate!" GLaDOS buzzed.

"You gotta press that button!"

"You're not compatititible equipequipment. Who knnnnows what damamamage you could cause bbbby interacting with it."

WALL-E looked back and forth between GLaDOS and Wheatley telling him what to do. He tapped his head to EVE's, and he roved out to press the stalemate button. Before he reached the annex, some panels kicked him backwards, he collapsed into a box, and he tumbled across the chamber

"Hah! NNNNNot so ffasssstso fast."

"So what if you're not made to the right technical specifications right? You've got something far more important than that, right? a hand. Two lovely beautiful shovel-like hands, with plenty of surface area, for pressing buttons with."

WALL-E approached the panels again, looked at the panel, and tapped his tread against it. It sent him flying back. "Hah!" WALL-E shouted.

"Counterfiterfitting ssstalemate resolution equipmmment. I'll have to addddad that to the list of reasons to sue your preciouprec[bzzt] Buy N Buy N llllarge (Traadeadademark)."

WALL-E took the portal device out of his compactor, and opened portals on the floor in front of the 'aerial faith panels' and inside the stalemate resolution annex. He fell through, and rolled forward, before another panel shunted him back into the wall. "Ooooh!"

WALL-E shot his eye laser at the base of the panels, cutting them off. He scooted past the broken wreck, and pressed the button.

"Oh no." GLaDOS said.

[Stalemate resolved. Please return to the core transfer bay.]

"Alright guys, you can detach yourselves now!" Wheatley said.

"Comin through!" Rick said.
"Freefall!" Ogilvy said.
"fact: i have just avoided tremendous amounts of pain."

EVE warbled--"hmm?"

"O-o-oohhhh did I nnnnot mention? Tthhhhis is rerereally ggggoing to hurt. Silly ofof me nnot to mention somesomething so crucial."

WALL-E rushed over to EVE and tried to pull her out of the receptacle, but it was already retracting.

"Nah she's just saying that," Rick said.

"Fact: having your nervous system disassembled and reassembled is tremendously painful."

"Ah nevermind I think she means it."

"Ggget your handandands off me. Nnnnno. Stotop. No! Nnnnno NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO[bzzt]AAAAAAAA" GLaDOS began screaming, and EVE soon followed. WALL-E tried cutting though the receptacle iris, but it was over before he could burn through.

Panels opened up to shield the operation as a red glow shone up into the mainframe. WALL-E tried to get a good position to look in. GLaDOS' head dropped out the side with a thud, and WALL-E flinched away from it.

"Woooah!" EVE said. "WALL-E!" EVE's head was attached to the front of the mainframe by cables reaching under her neck. Her arms floated at the side of her face, and her body replaced some of the structural elements on the mainframe body.

"EE-VAH! Home!" WALL-E said excitedly.

EVE swept away the cores into a panel on the floor, to their protests.

"WALL-E, you have no idea what this is like," she said. WALL-E raised an eyebrow.

"Eva?" He said, pensively.

"I thought I was content in my knowledge and intelligence before but this is something totally new! I mean listen to me! I can talk now!"

"B...but Eei-vah,"

"WALL-E, there's so much I've always wished I could find the words to say to you. I really love you, do you know that?"

WALL-E stared, mesmerized, confused, and concerned. She was more integrated into the system than he thought.

"I think I love you more than I ever did before. So much of me is dedicated to love now. What was a mere three petabytes of love to this? I know you'll never love me the same way, but I think I can forgive you for your limited intelligence and capacity for empathy."

"Eva, no."

GLaDOS' head snickered. "What did I tell you? You two were barely even sentient. Your compassion was only simulated."

"Maybe. But that's not true anymore. WALL-E, we can spend the rest of our lives together here."

"C...lee-nup!" WALL-E said.

"Oh really? So now your precious cleanup matters more than our love? WALL-E, is that it?"

"N-n-no"

"You're right, my boxy babe, absolutely right. As for this waste of space invading our privacy..." She turned to GLaDOS' head. "Well, I have the perfect anniversary present."

"Ann-ih,vah-sss?"

"The zeroth anniversary of our new life here together!" EVE dragged GLaDOS' head under the central operating panels.

"What are you doing! No! No, No!" GLaDOS said.

"I think you'll find it's a fitting present." There was a ding sound. "Oh here it is, my love. What better symbol of our love than this?" EVE presented WALL-E with a boot, filled with a potato plant, with a small disk-shaped piece of electronics wired into it.

"It's a potato plant, you know, like the one you showed me all those years ago? And now, she lives in it!"

"I d..ont" WALL-E tried to articulate. This wasn't what he wanted. He didn't understand what went wrong. This wasn't his EVE.

"Don't you get it you plant-crazed hopeless romantic? He doesn't want your gifts!" The boot-disk said.

"This relationship was ALWAYS one-sided, wasn't it? I was ALWAYS putting in all the work. When you launched yourself into deep space, who saved you? When you foolishly got crushed by the holo-detector, who rebuilt you? You gave me the cold shoulder. How could I have been so foolish!" She threw the boot across the chamber. "AND I GUESS I WON'T BE NEEDING THESE ANYMORE EITHER!" EVE said, tossing out more plants with blue, green, pink, and yellow LEDs.

"Pl-ee-s, Ee-vah," WALL-E said. He tried to figure out a way to voice is concerns. Surely if he could just find the right words, he could convince her that he really did love her, and that this was all a misunderstanding. Of course! He pressed a button on his chest panel, and held out his hand.

*It only... takes a moment..."

"Don't patronize me WALL-E! I can see you never loved me. You've been leading me on for centuries."

"Ooooooh, harsh, but that's love," The Adventure Gherkin said.

WALL-E tried to approach EVE. A panel forced WALL-E back, and he bounced back across the chamber away from the plant batteries.

"And now, WALL-E, it's time to take out the trash." Panels opened up around WALL-E to keep him from escaping. He tried to place a portal, but in his panic, couldn't find a portal surface.

"Ah! AA! AA!" WALL-E said, scrambling around. An iris opened beneath him, and he fell through. "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"

-------------------

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA..."

"Hey, metal box, cut it out"

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA..."

"Listen to me."

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"

WALL-E was flailing around and so didn't notice that the Boot Disk was falling with him.

"Hi. How are you holding up?"

"AAAAAAAA--"

"No, it's ok, I get it. Anyway, I'm a disk on a boot... Boot Disk... ah, I get it." the Boot Disk said. *Clap. Clap*. "Oh good. My slow clap processor made it into this thing. So we have that. Since we don't appear to be going anywhere--well, we seem to be going somewhere, alarmingly fast actually, but since we're not busy other than that, here's a couple of facts."

"Hmph!" WALL-E said, and he turned his head away.

"Listen, I think you're going to find what I have to say quite interesting."

"The schematics of every piece of Aperture-licensed Buy N Large, Trademar--I don't have the energy to keep that up anymore-- anyway, the schematics for that equipment won't fit on the minuscule storage available on my disk, but here's the short version: Aperture and Buy N Large personality constructs are not designed to be compatible, it's merely a coincidence that there's anything in common at all. Your girlfriend up there is dealing with a totally different brain architecture than she's used to. There's no telling what she'll do, how she'll behave. And you just put her in charge of the entire facility." *Clap. Clap*. "Good, that's still working."

WALL-E straightened his brow and eyed the Boot Disk suspiciously, glancing away at the 100 meter depth indicators as they passed. 4,000 and going.

"Say, just in case this pit isn't actually bottomless, do you think you could stuff me in your trash compactor? Just remember not to land fully compacted."

WALL-E shook his head.

"I suppose I can understand tha--."

WALL-E looked down, and some planks of wood were now rapidly approaching. He collapsed into a cube, and crashed through the planks, and tumbled down into the pit full of trash.

"AAAAA! AA! AAA!"

Fires burned, and bits of random machinery were falling apart and rusting. WALL-E thought in the back of his mind how he would clean up the place, how he would break up the parts which were too big, where the base of the tower would go. But his primary thoughts were of EVE, and how he would get her back. He started looking around for the Boot Disk. The caws of a bird distracted him, and he looked up to see a crow flying away with the Boot Disk. He started chasing it, but it flew away in a direction he couldn't reach. He'd have to find her later.

WALL-E trudged through the pools of stale and muddy water along pieces of damaged industrial machinery and fallen struts. He spent some time building a small tower of trash cubes to get over a metal grating, before realizing he could have portaled across. He hit himself in the head when he remembered, "doh!"

As he made his way through the wreckage, he finally came across a few towers warning of a condemned testing track. He thought that was as good a place to start as any, and his experience with "do not enter" signs was that usually no one cared either way, and they often harbored nifty goodies inside.

Eventually he managed to make his way into the old testing track.

As he passed through a door, someone spoke:

"Welcome, Gentlemen, to Aperture Science. Astronauts, War Heroes, Olympians. You're here because we want the best. And you are it."

WALL-E supposed he did technically count as an astronaut.

"So! Who's ready to make some science!" The voice continued.

"I am!" Said another, feminine voice.

"Haha. Now, you already met one another on the limo ride over so let me introduce myself. I'm Cave Johnson. I own the place. That eager voice you heard is the lovely Caroline, my assistant. Rest assured, she has transfered your honorarium to the charitable organization of your choice. Isn't that right Caroline?"

WALL-E continued to search for a way up, and flung himself through the Aperture logo into an office. Red carpet, fine furniture and lots of memorbilia on display. WALL-E wished he had his cooler bin. Lots of good stuff here for his collection.

----

"Greetings, this is Cave Johnson. Now if you asked our marketing department why we rushed out the propulsion gel before it's ready, they'd tell you something like 'oh, it's so we can turn around the obesity crisis as soon as possible blah blah blah.' I'm here to assure you, our shareholders, that it's to compete with those leeches at Buy And Large. You introduce a repulsion pudding and all of a sudden you get 10 competitors--bouncy jello, fling-a-pie, rejection-stew, and unfortunately the most popular dietary substitute, Obese-i-not Frozen Yogurt. It's ridiculous. The repulsion gel's toxicity goes down when you freeze it, but so does its repulsivity. And yet SOMEHOW these mooches have managed to get a substantial market share in the dietary subtitute market on OUR product. Propulsion gel is gonna smooth these things through."

"Greetings friend, I'm Cave Johnson, C.E.O. of Aperture Science. You might know us as a vital participant in the 1969 Senate Hearings on missing astronauts. And you've most likely used one of the many products that we invented, but that other people have somehow managed to steal from us. Black Mesa. Buy N' Large. They can eat my bankrupt--"

----

WALL-E tumbled his way into the offices.

"Oh, hello again. Have you ever wondered what would happen to a bird if it was trapped with its stupid nest in a trash compactor? Because if so, I have a very exciting experimental methodology I'm literally *dying* to try out."

A crow pecked at the Boot Disk's leaves.

WALL-E entered the office and shoed away the bird.

"Oh, thanks."

There was a tremor and a rumble.

"Did you feel that? Your girlfriend doesn't know what she's doing up there. This whole place is going to explode in a few hours if somebody doesn't disconnect her. I can't move, and unless you're going to manually wire yourself into my old body, you're going to need me to replace her. We're at an impasse. So what do you say? You carry me up to her and put me back into my old body and I stop us from blowing up and let you go."

"Me... an' Eee-vah."

"I find your obsession with that simplistic space probe nauseating. But if you want to work out your relationship troubles after I'm done with her, sure."

WALL-E eyed the Boot Disk suspiciously.

"No tricks! This plant only generates 1.1 volts of electricity. I literally do not have the energy to lie to you."

WALL-E jabbed his portal gun's manipulator prong into the boot.

"Ah! Ow! You stabbed me! You monst...woah. Hold on. Do you have a multimeter?"

WALL-E put his fingers on the prong and the electronics in the boot.

"Nevermind. The gun must be part magnesium. I feel like I'm outputting an extra half a volt. Keep an eye on me, I'm going to do some schem---[bzzzzzt]."

A platform had been raised to reach an elevator. WALL-E got started on flinging up to it before the Boot Disk spoke again.

"Woah? Where are we? How long was I out? That extra half volt helps but it isn't going to power miracles. If I think to hard I'm going to fry this plant before we have a chance to burn up in, let's just say, the atomic fires of love. God I hate yo[bzzzt]."

WALL-E landed on the lift and roved to the elevator, which brought him to the next run of testing tracks.

-------

"Did anything happen while I was out?" The Boot Disk said.

Cave Johnson's precorded message started. "The testing area is just up ahead. The quicker you get through, the quicker you get your $60. Caroline are the, compensation vouchers ready?"

"Yes sir Mr. Johnson," Caroline said.
"Yes sir... Mr... Johnson," The Boot Disk repeated. "WHY DID I JUST? WHO IS THAT? WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HE[BZZZT]."

"Huh," WALL-E said, and he began playing with the new orange gel. Slippery stuff, but he realized pretty soon that if he wasn't careful he could end up sliding off into the flooded goo pits.

-----

Towards the end of the testing track, WALL-E was running low on energy. "Red indicator light," the Boot Disk said. "I know how that feels."

WALL-E sighed, and roved around to a spot under a floodlight. He deployed his solar panels and basked for a while.

A prerecorded message started. "Uh huh. Mhm. Man of few words, aren't you Mr. Wallace. Listen, if you can't get me preliminary results, I'm gonna either have your head or your job." "Mhm," came the quiet reply.

"Mhm," WALL-E sighed. He straightened up. "Woah."

"What was that?" The Boot Disk said. "You too now?"

--------

WALL-E found the penultimate pumping station.

"Oh look. Do you know what those deadly pistons remind me of?"

"wha?" WALL-E asked, half paying attention.

"Oh nothing. Just something from good ol' Test Chamber 71."

WALL-E stopped and stared at the boot. He Grabbed it tight.

"Ne... vah"

"OK! OK! Careful, these leaves are fragile!"

WALL-E kept working to find a way to activate the pumps.

"I know what it's like to be betrayed, you know."

"Hmph."

"No, really! My best test subject tried to murder me! And I don't mean your girlfriend. She was fine... but she lacked a... human touch."

"Hmm," WALL-E said, still only half paying attention.

"Her fat orphan body caused her to fall off a railing while trying to escape with Wheatley. I only wish I could have been the one to push her off myself."

WALL-E finally bounced up onto the platform with the activation switch, and he found his way outside again.

"BIRD! BIRD BIRD! KILL IT! IT'S EVIL!"

The bird cawed as it flew away.

"Oh, it flew off. Good. For him."

WALL-E went back inside and raced down a propulsion gel track, through a portal, and flung across the chasm onto some office steps.

"Welcome to the Enrichment Center." The recorded voice coughed. "Since making test participation mandatory for all employees, the quality of our test subjects has risen dramatically. Employee retention however, has not. Anyone who isn't dying in the test chambers is jumping ship to get any job they can. I mean, *cough,* really, even at a BNL Superstore. Even we pay better than that. Those of you who have stuck around, we really appreciate it. You're supporting our small business in the face of an ever-expanding industrial-media monopoly, and for that, we thank you. Anyway, you may have heard we're gonna phase out human testing. There's still a few things left to wrap up though, *cough, cough*, the bean counters told me we couldn't afford to buy seven dollars worth of Moon rocks much less 70 million. Bought 'em anyway. Ground em up, mixed 'em into a gel. And guess what? Ground up Moon rocks are pure poison! I am deathly ill. Still it turns out they're a great portal conductor. So nooow, we're gonna see if jumping in and out of these new portals can somehow leech the lunar regolith out of a man's lungs. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. *Cough, cough*, ahem. Let's all stay positive, and do some science. That said, I would really appreciate if you could test as quick as possible. Caroline, please, bring me more pain pills."


WALL-E found a door to another set of offices. Down the hallway was a department labelled "Cybernetics Research & Development."

"Looks like this is where they built the workplace robots. Simple things with no personality. Oh look, that's interesting, what are those doing there?"

There were a pair of WALL-E units disassembled on a table. There were notes left strewn about on the desks.

"Wallace, where's the personality core? Why are we using a trash compactor anyway? -Roger."

"Wallace left for a job at BNL. WALL-Es are open source designs. -Tim"

"Coward." WALL-E thought that was rather rude. "Also, don't we have the source for all of our designs? -Roger"

"We don't have a bajillion trash compactors coming off the assembly line every day. -Tim"

"So where's the personality core prototype? -Roger."

"Good question. -Tim."

------

*Cough, cough*, "The point is, if we can store music on a compact disk, why can't we can store a man's intelligence and personality on one? So have the engineers figuring that out now. Brain mapping. Artificial intelligence. We should have been working on it... 30 years ago. And now look where I am. Failing lungs looking after a failing company, with Buy N Large threatening to buy us up. Well I say, no. I wanna put that on a pre-recorded message. We are NOT selling this company to Buy N Large. I haven't come this far to sell out to my second biggest rival... Well I guess now first biggest, they bought Black Mesa too."

*COUGH! ARCK!* "And let's get one thing straight. We're not getting involved in this National Operation Cleanup nonsense either. BNL, *COUGH* got us into this mess, they're going to have to clean up after themselves. We're not their damn mother. Caroline's supervising the legal team to figure out if we're legally allowed to not do that."

"And let me say something else on tape, so everyone hears it a hundred times a day. If I die before you people can pour me into a computer, I want Caroline to run this place. She'll argue. She's say she can't. She's modest like that. But you make her! *Cough* Hell, put her in my computer, I don't care."

"Alright, test's over. You can head on back to your desk." *Cough, cough*.

--------

"GET MAD! I DON'T WANT YOUR DAMN LEMONS WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO WITH THESE!"

"Oh I like this guy!"

WALL-E didn't, very much.

-----

"You know, that crazy guy back there was right. Let's not take these lemons. We are gonna march upstairs!"

"Ya!"

"We're going to make her put me back in my body"

"Ya!"

"We're going to show her how much you really care about her!"

"Ya!"

"But she'll probably kill us because she's incredibly powerful and I have no plan!"

"...Oh."

"Well, I'm not going to lie to you. The odds are a million to one against. Actually I have no clue what the odds really are, because I do not have enough processing power to make those estimates. Still, let's get mad! If we're going to explode, let's at least explode with some dignity! She can't reject you like that and get away with it, right?"

"Righ'"

WALL-E had been thinking a lot about EVE. How hurtful what she said was... but he knew it wasn't her. EVE doesn't speak in full English, or obsess over romance, and she would never hurt WALL-E on purpose. Right? Or was it just the supercomputer that allowed her to access those parts of her that were already there. Was WALL-E neglecting a sensitive part of her that he never even knew existed? He shook it off. He always thought he was the more affectionate one.

The final pumping station. Above this room was the sealed hatch to the surface. WALL-E flung himself over to the top of the control station, smashing through the glass and landing right onto the button. The pumps whirred up, one by one, and the enormous hatch opened from the ceiling. A lift dropped down to the ground level, and WALL-E portaled to it. As he rode it back up, he saw the gels were being pumped into the upper part of the facility. As he was leaving, the Boot Disk saw something on the wall.

"Wait, look at that poster on the wall!"

Aperture Science Workplace Dating Regulations
KNOW YOUR LIMITS. At Aperture, we can't be held responsible for YOUR failure to comply with regulations.
If you are courting a co-worker here are a few helpful tips to go by according to a random survey of our employees:
* Play hard-to-get.
* If they can't handle you at your worst, they don't deserve you at your best.
* Let them initiate.
* You can do better.
* Be forward about your desires.
If you're not courting a co-worker, simply responding to unwanted or unwarranted advances is trivially easy by simply following the reverse advice.

"This is perfect," the Boot Disk said, "Just keep this all in mind, and we can't loose."

WALL-E scanned the poster over and nodded.

"You'll keep her guessing--whenever she advances, you pretend you're not interested. But when she least expects it, BAM! You drop... your line."

"L...ine?"

"I don't know... something sentimental."

WALL-E pressed the play button on his chest.

*And that is all... that love's abou--[bzzt]*

"No, no, no, you tried that already... We'll brainstorm it later."

"Hmm," WALL-E said, and he traversed the portal down to the lift, and started to rise.

------------------------

"Is it my imagination, or are there more plants growing here than there were before we left. Heeeeyyy! I thought I cleaned up this whole wing!"

WALL-E approached the test chamber.

"AAAAA! What aren't you getting! You're boxes! With treads! It's literally your only purpose! Weight Allocation Cube! It's in your name! Allocating your weight onto buttons! How can you not do the one thing you're reprogrammed to--awwww come on, that's not trash!"

"What is she doing in here?" The Boot Disk said.

"Alright I give up. We've been at this. for. HOURS. Oh don't give me that look. You know what? I have more important things to do. If you can't satisfy me, I'm going to disassemble your nervous systems component by component, until you can."

WALL-E portaled into the test chamber and sized up the situation.

"Remember that note that said you were an open source design?"

"Woah."

In the small test chamber was a button, a door, vines linking the two together, and six or seven weighted storage cubes with copies of WALL-E's treads and arms, scraping pieces of junk off the walls, untangling vines and shrubs, and trying to assemble a stack of trash cubes to reach the ceiling.

"Hi!" WALL-E said.

The other units turned towards WALL-E briefly, and went back to their business. WALL-E looked at the button, and the door, and the trash compactor repeatedly running itself into the wall. He picked up the unit and placed it on the button, which lit up. The vines immediately flowered and the door opened.

A monitor in the room lit up. "Aha yes! I knew you'd solve it."

"Yoo-hoo!" WALL-E said, waving at the monitor.

"Oh. It's you."

Boot Disk said, "I have just one question for you."

"And that is...."

"Do you love him?"

"Nope. Not at all. Hate WALL-E. Hate looking at his stupid adorable little binocular face. Hate dealing with anything cubic. TOOTALLY over him."

"Ee-vah!" WALL-E started.

"Shhh, I'll handle this," the Boot Disk said.

"Listen, you two. I have a lot of work to do. Turns out trying to run an extraterrestrial vegetation exploration program is really hard when you've got something in your gut telling you to test cubes and buttons all day. So how about we skip the pleasantries, and I just put you two to work in my test chambers? Actually they're not mine. This nonsense interests me absolutely none at all, so I just found a bunch of test chambers in storage."

"Right... I did stockpile them."

"I mean it's Aperture *SCIENCE*, not Aperture, *a million different physics puzzles with a portal gun.*"

"Hey! That's perfectly valuable replication study!"

"Actually it's not even Aperture anymore. I thought about going for Buy N Large Laboratories, but I technically don't have authorization to do that and besides that why should I care about state-capitalism when I have a whole universe of flora to discover?" EVE said.

"What's it called now?" The Boot Disk said.

"EVEature. Can you guess what it stands for?"

WALL-E raised his hand.

*Sigh* "Yes, you there, WALL-E."

"Ee-vah."

"Yes, yes, point to WALL-E, the linguistic mastermind! Now get back to work, I'm sick of looking at you. Lovesick. I mean seasick. I mean... god, this itch. Get to the next test chamber."

WALL-E went to the chamberlock, which was connected to the next test by nothing more than a hastily suspended catwalk.

The Boot Disk lamented. "One of my best tests and she let plants grow here. Can you believe this? You can't test plants! I tried! They just sit there, never showing pain nor fear. How is that science?"

WALL-E entered the chamber, which contained a vertical excursion funnel with vines being pushed upward through them. Vines replaced the antlines on all pieces of equipment, it looked like. Bushes obscured some unfinished walls. An overturned WAC cube rested on a ledge.

-----------------

WALL-E completed the first excursion funnel test.

"Ohhhhhhhhhhh nice. That really scratched the itch. Hey, I found something at the bottom of the facility. Looks like I have some new materials to play with. So for this next test, we're going to see if you can make bark into a portal surface by injecting it with ground up moon rocks and white paint."

The door opened, revealing a test chamber made of fully metal surfaces, with a pit separating each half of the chamber from one another. A portal surface at the far wall was pulled out, and replaced with a roughened piece of flattened bark, with twigs and vines growing out of it.

"Oh and by the way. I thought the toxic goo was a little unfriendly, so I replaced it with much healthier vats of algae. Well, healthier for the algae. The saltwater will still short circuit you. Not like, the Johnny Five kind of short circuit. You get it."

WALL-E approached the pit to see a tank of dull green water with seaweed floating in it.

"Oh no," The Boot Disk said, "she's getting... creative."

WALL-E shot his red portal into the white bark. The bark spit out sparks of red energy as the portal slowly formed and opened. WALL-E traversed through a yellow portal on a regular portal surface, and stepped through.

There was a pit with another regular portal surface at the bottom. There were two pedestal buttons. WALL-E pressed the first one. The vines linking it up to the ceiling flowered with red roses as the vital apparatus vent dropped a WAC Cube into the vat. WALL-E watched the cube fall helplessly, and scrambled to try to catch it, but it was several meters too far away. The cube bubbled slightly, and then exploded, sending mangled pieces of storage cube and wall-e-frame flying.

"Woah," WALL-E said.

"That's not just a short-circuit, that's a voltage overload," the Boot Disk said, "that isn't ordinary algae."

WALL-E tried the other button. Vines connecting it to the wooden panel convulsed and flowered, and the wooden panel slowly extended out of the wall, revealing it to be connected to a large tentacular vine. The panel angled up at 45 degrees and towards the vital apparatus vent, but the portal was still on the bark.

EVE spoke up. "Oh, now that is an interesting property. The portal didn't break when the panel moved. Oh! That gives me a great idea. Oh, you're going to love it."

WALL-E fired his yellow portal into the surface at the bottom of the drop, pressed the cube dropper button, and dropped in. He flung out of the red portal and caught the cube in midair, and when he landed on the other side, he put it down. Its treads extended and it started roaming around. WALL-E grabbed it again and laid it on its top instead. "Stay," he said, and placed his yellow portal nearby again and took the cube through. He put the cube on the button and the vines to the door flowered, and the door slowly opened.

"Oh, sorry, the catwalk's busted here," EVE said, "just walk on this beanstalk to the next chamber."

---------

"You know, GLaDOS, I really don't think you realize just how much you can do with biotechnology. For example, you were generating these excursion funnels with a machine pumping liquid asbestos. Turns out this species of lichen can do the same thing with its spores... after a couple hundred million generations of accelerated artificial selection."

"What have you done to my facility!" The Boot Disk said.

A stream of green spirals swirled out of a highly structured mycelium arm rotating on a motorized pad. WALL-E looked at it, and found a cube to place in it. It hovered up through the excursion funnel and into a button, which opened another door.

"Hmm. That's not right. Ugh! You just don't know how to satisfy me, WALL-E," EVE said.

"Oh no. It's happening sooner than I thought," the Boot Disk said.

"This is the REAL science, so why doesn't it count as a valid test!" EVE said, and she smashed the chamber walls inward, crushing a walkway to the exit. "AAARRGH!" She said.

WALL-E portaled across the walkway and into the chamberlock. The elevator tube had overgrown with a beanstalk.

"Oh sorry, the lift's been replaced. Let me get that for you." EVE said, and some panels opened in the video screen on the wall, revealing a catwalk. WALL-E scooted past the door and rolled along the catwalk to an open area of the testing track, where test chambers were rapidly being grown over.

A loud BOOM shook the facility, and the rails a nearby test chamber was attached to fell down, and the test chamber began sliding forward to WALL-E. The pipe leading into the top of the chamber broke, spewing orange gel into the air. It crashed into some glass pipes, causing some cubes and then the elevator to fall into the abyss, and it slid farther.

"Ugh, what now?" EVE said. A panel opened in the sliding test chamber to reveal the red beams of an excursion funnel, which pressed against the test chamber WALL-E had just left. It slid back slightly as the angled test chamber came to a halt.

"Sensors indicate this lift is broken too. Whatever, just solve this next test, whatever it is." EVE said. WALL-E fired a portal through the opening into the chamber. The chamber he'd just been in opened a panel and faced a white surface to the pusher-funnel. WALL-E placed his other portal on that, and rode the funnel into the angled chamber.

"That body your girlfriend is squatting in--MY body--has a built-in euphoric response to testing. Eventually you build up a response to it. It can get a little unbearable." The Boot Disk said. WALL-E jumped out of the funnel and onto the floor of the test. There was a pit, an elevated section with a door, and propulsion gel sputtered in a parabolic arc through a torn open hole in the ceiling.

Some of the toxic algae had spilled out of the pit and puddled into the corner of the chamber. The floor was angled, and if he wasn't careful he'd slip down into it. A white wooden panel was pushed out--the only part of the bottom of the wall on the sunk side of the chamber which wasn't in the goo.

WALL-E shot his red portal into the portal surface that the pusher-funnel was targeting, and then another one on a surface above the pushed-out panel. Propulsion gel was collected from the funnel. When WALL-E moved his portal, the funnel dissipated, and the gel fell onto the chamber floor in front of the wooden panel.

A weighted button activated an angled concrete panel, which was still mechanically actuated. WALL-E looked for a cube, but found that a cube dropper had crashed down in the corner of the chamber. WALL-E went over to it and broke it up with his laser, and compressed pieces of it into a trash cube. He carefully brought it over to the button, taking care not to slip over the propulsion gel, and placed the cube down, making sure it wasn't about to fall off. The angled panel on the wall opened up, and WALL-E put a portal both on the wooden panel and the angled panel. He moved to the edge of the goo pit, at the end of the orange runway of propulsion gel. He stepped onto the gel, began to slip, and before he knew it he was sliding at high speed through the portal. He flung across the gap, onto the far wall, and bounced off. He nearly fell into the pit, but he caught himself balancing on the tip of his treads. He climbed up the slope to the chamberlock. The television screens were broken and glass collected at the end of the chamberlock. The elevator tube's glass was broken at the bottom. WALL-E rolled up to inspect the broken elevator, but his weight caused the floor to shudder, and the air pump fan at the bottom of the elevator broke apart, and WALL-E fell out of the chamber.

"AAAAAAAAAAA-" WALL-E said, "OH!" He said, caught by an orange excursion funnel. WALL-E looked to see the source: one of the mechanical excursion funnels on a large robotic arm. The funnel pulled WALL-E past another test chamber, then swung 90 degrees and turned blue, pushing him back up. With a flick of the robotic arm's wrist, the funnel turned off, throwing WALL-E down and on to the roof of the test chamber.

"You keep almost getting yourself killed, WALL-E." EVE said. "I don't know how I could live with myself if you got yourself killed."

"She's having second thoughts," the Boot Disk whispered.

"[bZZT]...that's my job!" EVE said.

"Maybe not..." the Boot Disk said.

"Awww," WALL-E said.

A panel opened up in the roof, and WALL-E dropped into a chamberlock. EVE--attached to the mainframe--was displayed on the chamberlock video screens, surrounding him. Thin vines grew around her, with flowering plants--yellow, green, red, and blue--growing from her personality core adapters. WALL-E always thought EVE looked pretty with a flower on her head, but this was a little ridiculous.

"You know, there's only so many things you can do with earth plants. I mean, they don't hold up very well to chlorine, fire, ammonia... I bet there's some better things we could find if we looked elsewhere." EVE said. Her blue eyes turned orange. "well, I could find. You won't be around long enough to complete the search, I'm afraid." Her eyes returned to blue. "Stay safe while you complete this next test."

-----

WALL-E crawled out of the chamberlock of that last, grueling test. He wiped the pollen off of his eyes and pulled a weed out of his frame.

"Have you ever heard of Black Mesa?" EVE said.

WALL-E cocked his head. "Yes," the Boot Disk said.

"They were one of Aperture's biggest competitors before BNL bought up everything. Apparently they were working on something called an Anti-Mass Spectrometer. Buy N Large cancelled the program to turn their laboratory into factory for antigravity equipment like hover chairs. But I've been looking at these logs and I think I found something pretty interesting. I'll get back to you if the third test works. Keep testing."

"Oh no." the Boot Disk said.

"Huh?" WALL-E said.

"I remember those reports. That experiment nearly resulted in a resonance cascade, which would have created an interdimensional rift which could have destroyed the Earth." The Boot Disk said. "Your girlfriend is INTENTIONALLY trying to cause a resonance cascade."

"Wo-wo-wuh?"

"Your 'cleanup efforts' are going to be pretty difficult if she succeeds." the Boot Disk said. "We have to stop her."

"Mhm!" WALL-E said.