Why Not Marry Safe Science If You Love It So Much

“I don’t think that’s the right button,” Christophe said.

Wout huffed through his gritted teeth. It felt weird, but everything about this whole situation felt weird, so he didn’t think much about it. He slammed the button with his fist.

As Christophe said, the door refused to open. Wout’s stomach sank. He had been hoping that this time…

A personality core dropped from the ceiling. “Howdy, pardner,” it said. “I see you’re trying to make an escape, but that there is the wrong door.” Despite the fact that it talked like it was out of an old Western, the core had an inexplicable Australian accent.

Wout, already in a foul mood, snapped, “You’re not going to tell us which one is the one that will get us out of this godforsaken place?”

The personality core blinked its one, large electronic eye at him. “Can’t help you there,” it said. “You know how she gets.”

Wout turned towards Christophe for help, but Christophe just shrugged. “We’ll try again tomorrow.” Wout had no idea how he could be so calm while trapped in some horrifying laboratory run by psychotic robots, and yet he always seemed remarkably unbothered by everything. Wout sometimes suspected he’d convinced one of the robots to become his weed dealer, but Wout didn’t have any proof he even had any.

“Just so you know,” Wout told the personality core. “I fucking hate you all.”

The personality core shook from side to side in a gesture designed to imitate disappointment. “Well, isn’t that a gosh darn shame,” it said.

And then a couple mechanical arms joined the personality core to drag them back to their cell.

The story of how Wout ended up at the Aperture Science Enrichment Center - European Branch was not interesting or dramatic. He hadn’t been abducted at a cafe while looking through their pastry options or desperate to get an experimental lab-grown kidney for his ailing sister. (His sister was fine, at least she had been when Wout had seen her last. Probably doing much better than Wout was.)

No, what had happened was much stupider and much simpler: he had seen an advertisement at the bus stop, and he thought he could use the extra cash to buy himself a new road bike.

He’d even read over the contract before signing it. Perhaps he’d been naive for believing that when it said “length of the experiment” that had only meant for a weekend. Not for– whatever this was.

Maybe he should have had a lawyer look it over before he signed. But hindsight was always twenty-twenty, wasn’t it?

Wout gripped the edge of the wall, trying to lever himself up onto it. His foot dug into Christophe’s shoulder. Beneath him, Christophe grunted. “A little higher,” Wout said. Most of the walls were a dull gray, some kind of bland-colored paint most likely used because it was the cheapest on the market. To be honest, Wout could go the rest of his life without seeing another gray wall. On the other hand, he had to admit the painted walls had slightly better grip underneath his shoes.

“I’m already standing up,” Christophe grumbled, but he still managed to get Wout a couple centimeters higher.

It was enough. Wout heaved himself over the edge, hoping to find another door, or maybe a useful tool. He would even take another one of those stupid cubes. Unfortunately, he came face-to-face with a turret instead.

“Ah, shit,” he said.

He scrambled backwards to dodge the spray of bullets and ended up careening back over the lip. He crashed down on top of Christophe, sending them both sprawling.

Wout took a moment to catch his breath, make sure he wasn’t shot, and figure out how to get his head to stop spinning. Then he realized that he was still on top of Christophe, their bodies pressed together. He could feel the rise and fall of Christophe’s breath. He could smell Christophe’s sweat. It felt ridiculous that they hadn’t ever hugged before. That was probably because they spent most of their time running from room to room, towards any sign of escape and away from a multitude of killer robots.

“You’re heavier than you look,” Christophe complained. Despite having just had all of Wout’s weight crashing against his solar plexus, his lips were pulled into a toothy smile.

Wout felt his chest tighten at the sight of it. Though that might have been the fall damage talking. “Hey,” he protested.

He didn’t get to say much else, because two robots ambled up to them as they staggered to their feet, put bags over their heads, and then dragged them away.

Wout spent the first week at the Enrichment Center alone. Well, he had some of the personality cores drop in and out to check in on him. And the robotic AI voice over the loudspeakers would occasionally insult his intelligence and then tell him his life was a hopeless waste of carbon. But those didn’t count. Obviously.

Somewhere around the second week, the robotic AI voice announced, “We here at Aperture Science understand that socialization is a vital part of human enrichment. And because of that, we have provided you with a human companion from–” voice fritzed out in static before coming back “–subject home country here.”

The door to Wout’s cell popped open, and a robotic arm shoved a man inside. He was tall — as tall as Wout was — and lanky, with dark hair and the scruffy beginnings of facial hair on his chin and cheeks. In a moment of paranoia, Wout wondered if this was just another robot in disguise before writing the idea off. For one thing, this man didn’t have any of the robots’ distinguishing singular glowing LED eyes. For another, he wasn’t trying to shove Wout into a vat of acid.

“Hello,” Wout said in Dutch, “are you Belgian too?”

The man shook his head. “I don’t speak Dutch,” he said in French-accented English.

“Wallonian, then?” Wout tried again, this time in French.

“No,” the man replied, also in French. “I’m from the south of France.” His accent was smooth and fluent, and it was obvious he was telling the truth.

Wout blinked at him. “Why do they think you’re Belgian, then?” He had learned that asking questions about Aperture Laboratories and the Enrichment Center usually led to more questions than answers, but for some reason, he kept asking them.

Christophe shrugged. He did not seem half as bothered by this as Wout was. “They probably don’t know the difference. One of those eyeballs thought I was German yesterday.”

“They’ve never mistaken me for a German,” Wout said. He considered being offended, but then decided he was more grateful to be granted the human companionship.

“Guess I’m just lucky.” The man held out a hand. “Christophe.”

Wout shook it. “Wout,” he replied.

“I think we should try going through test chamber twelve again,” Wout said. He lay back on the shitty carpet and stared up at the gray plaster of the ceiling. The cells were made up to look like mediocre hotel rooms in an attempt to disguise the fact that it was actually a prison. One of the robots had even called it a “relaxation vault.” They put up wallpaper and a desk and even bland landscape art as a replacement for never being able to see the sun. Over the course of the day, some poor robot came by to do turn-down service while Wout and Christophe were busy running test gauntlets. If they did very well that day, sometimes they even got a piece of chocolate.

After their introductions, the Enrichment Center AI moved Christophe into Wout’s cell, adding a second bed to the room. As much as Wout hated to admit when the AI was right about anything, he did like having Christophe around more often.

Christophe was on his twin, legs kicked out in front of him. “Was that the one with the giant mechanical spider or that one robot who could only recite the Wikipedia pages of 80s American sitcoms?” His eyes were closed, almost giving the impression that he wasn’t paying attention, but Wout knew better.

“Spider,” Wout said.

“That thing was really mean,” Christophe pointed out. He let out a mock shudder. To be fair to him, the last time they had tried to escape out of test chamber twelve, Christophe ended up with some nasty bruised ribs and a black eye that made him look half-raccoon.

“They’re all really mean.” Honestly, they were in a facility run by an evil AI. The closest they’d gotten to ‘nice’ was ‘just hapless enough to be mildly harmless in its malevolence.’

Christophe blinked his eyes open to look at Wout. The lighting in the room was soft compared to the harsh, cold blue of the rest of the facility, and here, they almost seemed to glitter green. “I don’t know,” Christophe said. “I liked learning more about Mork and Mindy.”

Wout took a deep breath and counted to ten in his head. It wasn’t Christophe’s fault he was trapped in here. Wout was not going to murder the only other human he had seen in months, just because he liked to crack a few jokes from time to time.

Then Christophe said, “Yeah, let’s try the spider again tomorrow.” His lips curled up into a small, warm smile “But this time, you’re the one who throws himself in front of the weird pincher thing if it catches us again.”

Wout found himself smiling back. “Deal,” he said.

Wout made his first attempt to escape about four days into his captivity. Sure, he knew things were a little sketchy from the beginning, but he still had a glimmer of hope that they would let him go after he did just one more room, if he just lasted for one more test.

Day four had been like all the other days. Some soft jazz played over the loudspeakers to wake him up. (The AI claimed the jazz reduced the suicide rate among participants by 0.4%. Wout was convinced someone had cooked the numbers on that particular stat, because nothing about that saxophone line made him less likely to kill himself.)

The tests for that day involved a bicycle-looking device which made balloon animals when pedaled. Halfway through the allotted time for the test (Wout knew because there was a timer placed right in front of him, a cruel taunt), a part of the wall extended outwards and the floor rose up. Behind the harsh gray of the test chamber walls, he could see glimpses of metal grating, a deep orange lighting that promised something else besides the cold, sterile blue of the test chambers and the dingy, yellowing wallpaper of his cell.

Wout didn’t even think it all the way through before he un-clipped and started running for that glimmer of light as fast as he could.

He got all of about five meters before he was smacked in the back by one of the balloon animals. “The purpose of these objects is to entertain and delight,” the AI informed him as he lay sprawled out on the floor. “In our testing, we have discovered it is much funnier when the balloons are filled with cement. Ha. Ha.”

That was how Wout’s first escape attempt ended: with a nasty bruise on his ribcage, and a cement-filled animal (was it a dog? a horse?) on the ground next to him.

Maybe if this place hadn’t systematically destroyed his sense of humor, he’d also find it funny.

“Fuck,” Christophe hissed out. He gingerly slid his arm out of his orange jumpsuit and winced. For whatever else the robots were, they also seemed willing to do laundry. They weren’t offered any variation in their clothing choices, but at least they also kept it all clean.

“Are you okay?” Wout asked. He couldn’t see any visible injuries. No tears or blood on Christophe’s shirt.

Christophe shrugged, feigning nonchalance, then ruined the effect by wincing again. “Think I pulled something in my back.”

Wout nodded. They’d done climbing tests today while they were chased by a different set of robot spiders. This particular model was smaller, but they were also meaner than the big one. And the big one was pretty damn mean. Wout had gotten zapped more than once. “I could take a look,” he offered.

“Okay,” Christophe said. He turned so his back faced Wout. Under his jumpsuit, he wore a plain white undershirt and shorts, same as Wout. Wout could probably pinpoint the exact moment when Christophe had injured himself. They’d been coming down the wall, and Christophe had shoved Wout out of the way of one of the spiders who had been approaching from Wout’s blind spot.

Wout hated the thought that Christophe had gotten hurt while protecting him. He also understood that was just part of the deal here. At least, he could try to make it better.

One of Wout’s ex-boyfriends used to be in construction, so Wout had learned how to give half-decent back rubs. He wasn’t anywhere close to being a professional, but he could find a sore or tight spot. He started with Christophe’s shoulders, working his fingers into the muscles along Christophe’s neck and collarbones. Christophe let out a sigh, and he relaxed into Wout’s hands. His time in the Enrichment Center had built him lean and strong. They were fed in a somewhat perfunctory manner (though there was a persistent promise of cake ‘when testing was complete,’ which sounded about as real as the contract requirements for being released from testing), and their days were filled with plenty of physical activity. It was one thing to see the strength of Christophe’s body every day and another to feel the reality of it underneath his hands.

He drifted lower to the stretch of Christophe’s lats pulled tight over his shoulder blades. Christophe let out a moan when Wout found the right spot. His body tensed against the pressure before giving in and relaxing.

Wout’s mouth went dry. He was glad Christophe wasn’t expecting intelligent conversation. Or any conversation, really. Sex had not been a priority since Wout had landed at the Enrichment Center for the obvious reasons, but even before then, it had been a while since he’d last gotten laid.

Maybe this was just a matter of convenience, the reaction of a body starved for human contact. Wout didn’t quite believe it. He liked Christophe too much. He liked Christophe’s dry sense of humor. He liked Christophe’s awkward, occasionally lopsided smile. He liked Christophe’s bright, clear eyes. He liked Christophe’s steadiness in the face of everything that stupid AI threw at them. He felt sure if they’d met as part of a cycling club or at a bar, he would like Christophe just as much as he did now. Christophe, on the other hand, did not need to deal with his cellmate/test subject buddy developing messy feelings for him.

Wout cleared his throat and attempted to clear his head at the same time. “Good?” he asked.

Christophe nodded and let out a soft, pleased murmur that did nothing to stop the building heat in Wout’s center. His mind wandered over to how it would feel if he let his hands drift lower, over the swell of Christophe’s ass and the meat of his thighs. Wout generally wasn’t shy about hitting on people, but he also usually didn’t end up trapped in a deranged science experiment with only one other human around. If Christophe wasn’t chill about this the way he was chill about everything else, this could be a disaster. The only people they could rely on were each other.

Wout dug his knuckles into Christophe’s back one last time before stepping away. “Better?” he asked.

Christophe flashed him a quick smile. “Much better,”he said.

Wout’s chest clenched. It was awful. And yet, he didn’t think he would give it up for anything. During times like this, Wout thought maybe Aperture had a point. Much easier and simpler to be a cold, unfeeling robot than a soft, squishy human with soft, squishy feelings.

Wout never formally asked Christophe to join him on his many and varied escape attempts.

That first day after they moved in, Christophe sat on his bed and watched as Wout attempted to unscrew one of the vent covers with a piece of metal he’d ripped off one of the broken robots during his last testing session.

“What are you doing?” Christophe had asked.

They didn’t know each other well then. The trust they’d developed later had to be hard fought and hard won. So at the time, Wout snapped, “What does it look like I’m doing?”

Christophe was quiet for a moment. Wout knew he probably looked a little bit insane for even attempting this. Christophe had probably been at the Enrichment Center long enough to realize how dangerous it was to do anything other than what the AI deemed acceptable. But then Christophe said, “Cool. Can I help?”

That surprised Wout enough he turned around. Christophe’s face was free of mockery. His expression was serious and even maybe a little thoughtful. Wout had already liked him then, at least more than anything else he’d met at Aperture Science. It was a low bar, but Christophe cleared it easily.

“Okay,” Wout said. He pulled another sharp, metal robot fragment from underneath his mattress and handed it over. Christophe took it.

Then they both got to work.

Wout was bleeding. He couldn’t say he was happy about this turn of events. If he had to make a list of the best moments in his life, this wouldn’t make the top fifty.

“How are you doing?” Christophe asked. His arm was hooked around Wout’s back, keeping Wout upright as they stumbled forward.

“Well,” Wout said through gritted teeth. “I got shot by an angry microwave. I’ve been better.” His leg left a red trail of blood on the tiled floor. Out of a wave of spite, he hoped it made a cleaning robot’s life difficult.

“It didn’t seem very angry.” Christophe readjusted his grip on Wout, then picked up the pace as best he could. “It was singing that cheerful song about the dangers of radiation poisoning.”

“Stop treating them like people,” Wout grumbled. “It still shot me.” They were still trying to get to a door in the distance, glowing green exit sign above it.

“I’m sorry it shot you, but I, uh, I thought that model was sort of cute. And I think they’re sentient.”

“It definitely wasn’t cute,” Wout protested. “Especially not with that machine gun arm.” The pain and blood loss were probably getting to him, because he added on, “I don’t know why I’m attracted to you.”

He didn’t even realize what he’d said until Christophe went quiet. Christophe wasn’t much of a chatterbox most days, but he did usually have a dry remark. Wout hadn’t thought he was the type of straight guy who would freak out because the only other human he had regular contact with was more than a little bit gay. He could also see why Christophe might need more than five seconds to process this whole thing while they were trying to escape from said angry microwave.

Wout decided it was better not to dwell on that and keep running. Well, it was more of an awkward shamble forward. It did the job.

They made it through the next door, only to find a small empty room beyond it. The door behind them hissed shut and then clicked ominously.

“Oh, shi–” Wout managed to get out before the room filled with gas, and they were both knocked unconscious.

When he woke up again, they were back in their cell, Wout’s leg was wrapped in gauze, and the digitized voice of the AI berated him for his ineffectual escape attempt and bemoaned the weakness of humans’ “fleshy meatbags.”

Christophe fussed over Wout and Wout’s leg as soon as he noticed Wout was awake: handing him a glass of water, checking for a fever, examining the bandage. He didn’t bring up the whole unfortunate confession thing, so Wout didn’t either.

Maybe he had managed to dodge at least one bullet today. It probably wasn’t the more important one, but Wout would take the wins he could get.

Obviously, their phones were confiscated when they first arrived at the Enrichment Center. That meant they couldn’t call for help and couldn’t check in on their family, friends, or the outside world, but most importantly, it meant they were bored.

Christophe managed to rustle up a deck of playing cards from somewhere. His story was that he’d found it in his previous cell’s closet, worn and used. Wout wondered what happened to the human who left them behind. Though he supposed it could also be true that the cards had been left there because one of the robots had been programmed to deal cards. That seemed like a product that could be sold to casinos. Not that it seemed like the company was good at selling anything to anyone.

They sometimes tried their hands at poker and blackjack and on top of that, half remembered games from their childhoods. Sometimes, Wout would also practice shuffling the deck just to have something to do with his hands that wasn’t slowly unraveling the threads of his pillow case.

The hotel room/cell/“relaxation vault” had also been equipped with a television, complete with remote control, attached to the wall. The only thing it would play was Aperture Science infomercials, though it did span the entire back catalog, so the seventies-era advertisements for asbestos-coated bowls (just in case your cereal accidentally caught on fire!) were interesting from a historical point of view.

If they were too tired from their latest escape attempt, they would leave the television on to drone away in the background, just so they could hear human voices other than each other’s.

All of this meant that when Christophe climbed onto Wout’s bed and pressed his lips against Wout’s, a blandly pleasant American narrator talked about how they could call now to buy a vest with special pockets for storing steak knives. It would only cost them nineteen dollars and ninety-nine cents, plus tax and shipping and handling. Truly a steal.

Wout’s eyes fell closed. His right hand came up to rest on Christophe’s shoulder. The kiss was warm — warm and a little wet. Christophe’s teeth scraped against Wout’s bottom lip. Wout’s body lit up, piece by piece. His left hand slid underneath Christophe’s white undershirt to press against the warm, soft, human skin of Christophe’s back. Christophe made a soft noise into Wout’s mouth.

Was this a dream? A hallucination? Had Wout been here so long his grip on reality had slipped? To be honest, this reality was much better than his usual one, so Wout couldn’t even be angry at his mind for conjuring it.

Christophe drew back. His eyes were difficult to read. Wout’s breath felt heavy in his chest. “So, uh, what was–” he managed to get out.

Christophe dragged one hand along Wout’s side. It left a tingling sensation in its wake. Wout shivered. He and Christophe touched plenty, but it had been too long since Wout had experienced this level of intimacy. Christophe said, “I was waiting for your leg to get better.” His voice had a satisfying rasp to it. His hand found the spot on Wout’s leg where the bullet wound had scarred over.

“Oh,” Wout said. His brain still wasn’t working correctly. Maybe he had lost his mind after all.

Christophe continued, “I really like you, in case that wasn’t obvious yet.” A small smile spread across his face, shier than his usual ones. For some reason, that, more than anything else, brought the truth of this moment into focus.

An echoing smile spread across Wout’s face. “Okay,” he said. “And for the record, I really like you, too.”

Christophe said, “I like it when you smile. You don’t do it enough.” He pressed kisses to the curves of Wout’s cheeks and the corners of his eyes, where Wout knew his laugh lines must be making deep creases.

“I’ll try to do it more,” Wout promised. “It’s easier with you here.” He had no idea what insane algorithm in the AI brain had decided to pair them up, but Wout thought he would be forever grateful to it.

Christophe decided to contribute to the mood by saying, “If it’s alright with you, I’m going to put your dick in my mouth now.”

Wout laughed. He’d laughed plenty during his time here, but it tended towards the dark and bitter. Nothing like the effervescence bubbling up through him now. “Okay,” he said. “I guess I’ll allow it.”

He grinned at Christophe, and Christophe grinned back.

After he came down Christophe’s throat, the nice actor on the television was now trying to sell some sort of smell-o-vision laserdisc player. Wout briefly wondered if there was some sort of stockroom in the building that still had all of these old products.

Then Christophe crawled up the bed to kiss him again, and he didn’t think anything else about Aperture Science for a while.

It actually started like any other afternoon.

Well, it was hard to tell what time it was in the Enrichment Center due to the lack of clocks and sunlight, so really, it had started like any other period of time after the second meal of the day. Which was to say, in an elevator. They spent an unreasonable amount of time in elevators. Getting to places, leaving places, getting carted around between places.

Wout shoved the remaining bits of his nutrient paste into his month as the elevator pulled to a stop on a testing floor. Christophe tapped his foot in time with the rhythm of the shaking of the elevator. He was much more efficient at eating their meals than Wout. The disgusting lack of flavor and sludgy texture never seemed to bother him.

As soon as they exited onto the floor, a deep rumbling noise echoed through the test chamber, and the whole building shuddered. It could have been just a blip. An earthquake, a test chamber being rearranged. Some robots exploding at an inopportune time. Wout’s heart rate still kicked up. Something about this felt different.

He glanced towards Christophe, who had a similar idea. He was already moving. They’d been through this test chamber before and knew the layout of it well. On the far side was a loose tile on the wall. The robots kept trying to reset it, but it never fit quite right.

They sprinted past the television-facts robot Christophe liked, who was in the middle of saying a lot about Family Ties. Wout shouldered it aside. It responded by angrily telling them how the theme song was written in 1982 by Jeff Barry and Tom Scott and was originally credited in season one as “Us.”

Christophe reached the loose tile first. He started to pry it open as Wout caught up. Another rumble shook the building.

They’d made it this far only on two previous attempts before being caught. This time, no swarms of robots were dropped from mechanical arms, no personality cores popped out of the walls. It felt like the whole building had other concerns right now. Behind the wall was a cavernous space, one that felt even larger after the claustrophobia of their cell and their various test chambers. It was spanned by a network of catwalks. One of them led to a single door lit with a green exit sign.

Wout climbed down first, then Christophe followed. Their shoes clanged against the metal grating. The whole area was lit in dim red-orange lighting, enough for them to find their way.

They kept running. The rumbling continued. The metal structure of the catwalks shook with an ominous creak, but they held together long enough for them to reach the exit.

Beyond the exit sign was a stairwell. A sign just inside the doorway announced that they were on floor twelve. A light was flashing, accompanied by a low, droning alarm and a mechanical voice — that sounded unsettlingly like the terrible AI — informing them that they should leave the building in an orderly and efficient manner.

Obviously, they ignored it and booked it as fast as they could down the stairs, sometimes skipping steps and jumping.

Wout almost cried when they reached the ground floor, that painted ‘G’ on the wall caused a relief so powerful he wanted to collapse then and there. But he couldn’t. They weren’t out of the woods yet. He yanked open the door, and they spilled out into the lobby. He had come through this lobby when he first arrived at the Enrichment Center. He had lost track of the days and weeks and months it had been since that had happened.

The entrance doors were clear glass. Somehow, it was sunny outside. Wout had forgotten what sunshine looked like. His brain couldn’t process the sight of it again.

They started running in that direction, but then the floor exploded beneath them, and after that one glimpse of the sun, everything went dark again.

Wout came to with his eyes closed. Everything hurt. His back hurt. His legs hurt. His arms hurt. His chest hurt. His head definitely hurt. Even his teeth hurt. But there was a light behind his eyelids, and the ground underneath his back didn’t feel like the stiff mattress of his cell.

He blinked his eyes open, and then had to shut them again immediately. It was too bright. There was sunlight everywhere. He took a deep breath in, and the air smelt like burning. He coughed and blinked his eyes open again, this time careful to squint, so his eyes could adjust.

They were on a patch of grass just beyond the front gates of the Enrichment Center. What used to be a massive, sprawling building had been reduced to a smoking, collapsed rubble.

Christophe was a few meters away, also coughing.

Wout half-crawled, half-slithered over to him. “Hey,” he said.

Christophe didn’t respond with words. He just put one hand on Wout’s shoulder and pulled him closer. Wout collapsed on top of him, letting his head fall onto Christophe’s chest. Christophe let out an ugly cough at that, but he didn’t push Wout away.

“Well, that sucked,” Wout said. “Let’s never do that again.” He was pretty sure he would never be able to see another robot without having PTSD flashbacks. He was liable to destroy his parents’ Roomba the next time he visited.

“Definitely not,” Christophe agreed.

Wout had no idea what had brought the whole facility down like that. Maybe another test subject had found a way to destroy the AI. He didn’t know, and quite frankly, as long as he wasn’t trapped in there anymore, he didn’t care. He said, “I guess we don’t get any cake now.”

Christophe laughed. “I’ll bake you a cake later,” and Wout fell in love with him just a bit more.

He fell asleep like that: with grass underneath him and the sun on his face and Christophe in his arms. If he heard the distant sound of music with a distinctly synthetic edge on the wind, that was probably just his imagination.