miyomo:

okay, so I know how Wheatley was a tumor for GLaDOS, to dumb her down.

But was he just not enough to get her down, so they removed and replaced him with the alpha cores?

Then thought it was a great idea to keep him in charge of test subjects?

Or did Wheatley get thrown out as a failed attempt at GLaDOS and he somehow found himself on a management rail, thinking he had to take care of the test subjects?

Because for some reason, it just seems irresponsible to leave an Intelligence Dampening Sphere who was designed to think irrationally, and have him watch over humans. I mean, he almost killed Chell in the first chapter.

I think Wheatley’s crazy.

I think Wheatley was put in a position where he had absolutely no power and thus THOUGHT his job was to watch over the human testers.

Subsequent slaughter of all scientists and then GLaDOS’s shutdown by Chell left all systems barely functioning (Nuclear plant was down). But because Wheatley was so stupid, he didn’t require that much power and thus ended up in charge of the humans.

And the railing thing just seems something so they can keep track of him, if GLaDOS were awake and all systems functioning, I’m pretty sure she could redirect his railing elsewhere. Somehow, during systems failure and subsequent years of just decaying, his rail landed him on the tester rail and thus Portal 2 was born.