Chapter Text
Things in Aperture had turned absolutely sideways... Again. On top of the facility still recovering from decades of decay and then being taken over by a rogue personality sphere, the damage continued to pile up from the shenanigans of a Maintenance Core and the Olympian test subject that had blown through Aperture like a storm. It had been about a week since Virgil returned to the facility, having had some initial trouble with running his vehicle but he had the files necessary for driving and had been paying close attention to Mel when she'd been in charge of the car, so he had straightened his skills out fairly quickly. Other than that, he had no trouble returning to Aperture and finding his way back underground.
Where does one go after seeing the outside world for the first time in their long, immortal life? In his case, he went straight back to his repair wing. Aperture's chambers would be malfunctioning after the Mainframe had gone haywire. He had a small part of the facility he was dedicated to where he would go in, repair whatever the issue was, and then go back to the workshop to see if there were any robots in need of fixing. Basically, all the same stuff. Only this time he had set himself up with a project to fix his own core body. He planned to return to it at some point, if he could manage to on his own. He was adamant about the core being functional and not damaged like he'd left it. It had taken Virgil a while to get used to working on fixing his own shell, but nothing could compare to having to take it apart in order to get at his Wifi router. The memory of it still gave him chills, and the assist droid briefly shivered. Best not to think about it anymore.
“Virgil?”
“Yeah?” The Maintenance Core hadn't looked up from where he was poking around at the inside of his core hull with a screwdriver, but he knew the voice to be Glitchy's. “What can I do for you today, Glitch? Did you spontaneously combust again?”
“No, nothing like that.” Glitchy rode in on the workshop rail, seeing that Virgil was busy with something and grew uncertain of his presence. “Is this a bad time? I can come back.”
“Nope! Not bad at all, I can take a break.” Virgil hadn't meant to be rude by not looking up at Glitchy, but realizing he was coming off as uninterested he made eye contact. He searched the other core over, looking for whatever it was he came in for but not finding anything out of the ordinary. “What's up?”
“Nothing's really up. I was just wondering if you needed any help. You seem very busy, lately.”
Virgil stared. The offer had never been established before, and now that he had one he didn't know what to do with it. It was a very basic system. Broken core comes in. Fixed core goes out. There was never anything in between, except maybe saving a human from the mechanical claws of death.
“Oh! Uh...yeah, sure. I could use a hand... In a manner of speaking. I was just about to go down by the core line, actually.” He motioned for Glitchy to slide in closer, raising a small black box up to him that was the size of a grape. “This is our voice byte processor. Mine is broken. It got knocked around in a bad fall. If you can find me one of these undamaged I can change it so that it picks up on my speech pattern. It would be a huge help.”
“I'll see what I can do. Won't be long.” Glitchy nodded at Virgil before turning around and sliding back out of the room.
“Thank you!” Virgil almost missed calling after him, staring at the hatch in the wall where Glitchy disappeared and letting the moment sink in. It had been strange, but a nice gesture. Virgil had been using a weighted storage cube as a chair, considering he had none in there to speak of from when he was still just a ball. The android pushed it across the floor so he could get up from his work bench. He stared at the empty hull of his old body and sighed. There was a part of him that wondered what the point was. Maybe it would just be better to stay in the assist droid. It certainly had its perks. He didn't need to string along a management rail, but useless quirks like strumming his fingers on the table while he was thinking had become very distracting. It was a toss up. He'd decide when he was done fixing his core self.
Now that Glitchy had gone, silence returned to the repair wing. Virgil lifted the cube and moved it over to the computer just behind him on the opposite wall to the work bench. Mel's boots sat on the floor against the computer and pasted to the bottom left corner of the monitor with scotch tape was the last pink sticky note he'd kept that she had given him. He hadn't trusted the adhesive on the back to stick for long, so he'd found something else to keep it there.
'There's you.'
Virgil rested his cheek in a hand and propped his elbow onto the desk. Yeah, there had been him. There had been her. He thought about the night their car broke down and how bright the stars had been. Even if he didn't want to leave Aperture, maybe he would take a quick trip up to see the sky again. Just to see how it is. Just to see if it was still there. Maybe it would rain again and he could catch another glimpse at that lightning and thunder business.
He had come over to the computer monitor for something, but once he had been distracted with his own daydreaming he absolutely forgot what it had been. The Maintenance Core was annoyed with himself for his own negligence and he tapped a finger on the dash as he stared at the screen and tried to remember what it was. There's that pesky quirk again.
“Oh, right. Solar power installation. That's important.” He put his fingers to the keys and was about to bring up the instructions he needed when he noticed there was an icon faintly flashing at him. He'd always been aware of this app, its icon the shape of a little paper envelope, but had only ever needed to use it once. Now it was telling him that it had received a single item in its inbox. He eyed the icon warily, slowly moving his mouse to click on it and pull the message up.
“What the...A-are you kidding me?! Ahahahaha!”
His laugh was hysterical. Logistics lay out before him, and nothing seemed to match. He had gotten a vague, out of context message from an outside source that had absolutely nothing to do with Aperture. Through the confusion and just the sheer improbability of it all, Virgil was not an unhappy core in that moment. Just a dozen words on the screen and the robot was absolutely brimming with excitement. He could hardly contain himself. His fingers tapped over the letters of his keyboard and replied to the message. He didn't know how she'd managed to do it, but this was incredible!
>The moon landing happened in 1969. I missed it by seventeen years!
-That is correct! Thanks for reminding me!
>Hi, Virgil! ✿
-Hello, Mel! :)