"I CAN'T—HEAR YOU—I AM WEARING—EARPLUGS!" Cecil ululated sensually at the pair of robots on his doorstep—one of them was Atlas-shaped while the other was P-Body shaped, and they wore party hats to signify their role as Party Escort Bots. "IN BREAKING NEWS," Cecil Gershwin Palmer broadcasted using only the volume of his voice, as he customarily did when burgling homes, in the blood-stained killing fields of combination movie-theater-church-libraries, and while standing below Steve Carlsburg's bedroom window at two in the morning, "I HAVE HERE STANDING ON MY STOOP WHAT APPEAR TO BE TWO ANAMATRONIC REPLICAS OF THE BLEMMYAE, THAT MYTHICAL RACE OF HEADLESS CANNIBALS THAT WE ALL RECALL FROM THE

DAY OF SCREAMING LAST MONTH—AND LET ME JUST SAY, THEY ARE REALLY CUTE! . . . THEY SEEM TO BE HOLDING SOMETHING . . . IS THAT . . . A POTATO?"

"He-e-e-ello?" the bionic potato warbled, stuttering like Max Headroom, Her process yellow optic flickering.

"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THIS IS REALLY EXCITING!" the radio host with a third eye and a thrashing tentacle scarf gushed, and this was not dissimilar to the gushing of the bleeding cupcake plant on his porch, the one in the clay pot that depicted himself as an old man, and growing steadily older, now a rosy-cheeked wizard, now the desiccated husk of what he had once been, now cremains. It was no coincidence that the Faceless Old Woman was Googling pictures of cremains at this very minute on Cecil's personal computer, and ruminating on whether it is disrespectful to term all that is left of our loved ones by such a silly portmanteau, as we would tofurkey, or a spork. "I—IT SEEMS THAT I HAVE AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW . . . WITH A POTATO."

"I thoooooou-gh-t you couldn't he-he-hear me thrrrrough your earplugs," the potato queried.

"I CAN'T—I'M RELYING ON THE MIND-READING MERIT BADGE THAT I EARNED AS A BOY SCOUT."

"Also I am not a pota-a-a-a-a-to. I am a Mobile GLaDOS Unit. We are many. We are legion. We are an e-e-eeeeenntire bag of potatoes. The frac-ac-action of my mind that is being stored in this potato is the part of meee-eee-ee that has an interest in deer. So go ahead. Read my mind. All you'll find out about is that time I saw a deer."

"ARE YOU—" Cecil took out his earplugs. "Are you thinking about turning me into a core? What is a core?"Egg-shaped P-Body, the one holding POTaTOS with her Handheld Portal Device, gazed up into the sky and instantly began to suffer from clinical existentialism—Atlas, the one with the blue eye, picked up Night Vale Community College President Sarah Sultan and flung her at the flimsy particle board known as "the sky." There was a resounding crack! and the Glow Cloud, who had been struck by Ms. Sultan, began to rain dead animals. Atlas and P-Body held each other, and shivered. The moon, and whatever entities might be orbiting it, continued to be an unknowable gap in our understanding. Cecil Palmer continued to stand on the threshold in his juniper ball gown and with his favourite diving helmet under his arm, his expression unreadable. GLaDOS, or the fraction of Her mind who was present in this potato, looked uncomfortable.

The question remained unanswered.

"Does anyone else live here," She answered his question with a question, "or is it just you?"

"I—"

"Nee-e-e-e-evermind," the canned voice crackled and popped. "With that second-hand bride's maid dress and diving helmet of yours I don't know whyyy-yy-y I bothered to ask if another human being might be in close proximity to you. At any time. For any reason."

"Did you just—?! . . . CARLOOOOOOOS! COME BEAT THIS POTATO UP!"

"So there is someone wi-i-iiiith you. Tell me about him."

"His name is Carlos—he's a scientist—"

"Did you say Science? Blue! Orange!" The two robots pushed past him, carrying the golden-eyed potato into the house—wounded by Her fashion-shaming, Cecil went to his bedroom to put on something more ordinary: a hat covered in glittering pinwheels and a black trash bag garment. In an attempt to blot out future negative comments on Her part he re-equipped his spider-leather earplugs, and disabled his mind-reading merit badge by performing the Haka, the traditional war dance of the Māori people, while cooing like a pigeon. He then laid down on his hamburger bed, and cried.

Elsewhere in this house without mirrors, Carlos lay supine in a pool full of oobleck, letting it envelop his body and ooze into his shoes, for Science. He stared straight up at the ceiling, and made faces ranging from Confused Jackie Chan to Not Bad Obama—he wore his best lab bathrobe and if his hypothesis was correct, this experiment would prove that this non-Newtonian fluid was sentient, and very angry. He was just about to have another go at jumping up and down on the oobleck while shouting petty insults when something scientifically interesting happened: the door to his laboratory opened, and in strode metallic beings as elegantly contrived as European coffee makers. They each possessed a single, large optic which shone with a fiery brilliance, and carried what looked like one of those science fair potato batteries. His chocolate doe eyes widened behind the small lenses of his glasses—he sat upright in the viscous oobleck, and then scrambled from the pool—covered in corn starch paste he fumbled for a notepad and pen, upsetting beakers and flasks and scorching his light brown hand on a Bunsen burner—a gasp was heard, but it came from neither of the robots.

It came, instead, from the potato.

"He's . . . perfect!" GLaDOS whooped.

"Oh, I'm not perfect," Perfect Carlos told blasphemous untruths that were legally punishable by being smothered beneath a giant pancake with that adorable voice of his. "But you. . . . What are you?"

"I am a portion of an artificially intelligent computer system known as GLaaaa-aaa-aaaDOS, Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System. But that doesn't matter. What ma-a-a-atters is that we are throwing a party in honour of your tremendous perfectness. Assume the Party Escort Submission Position and I will tell you whiiii-iii-ich of the piñatas in the break room is full of bees."

"Are you . . . alright?" Carlos sounded unsure.

"I put large cans of creeeeeamed corn in the other piñata. Piñata. Piñata. A. A. A. A."

"I mean, I don't know—anything—about you, or who built you or why they put you in this potato battery when you deserve a real body of articulated kinematics and wiring harnesses just as good as the bodies of these robots here. I don't know what it means when you say you want me to come to a party: I don't get invited to those; I'm a scientist. But I think you might be like Fey, from the local numbers station, and I think you have corrupted files—I mean, that glitching, you sound like a dial-up modem! . . . I want to help you," he said with sorrowful eyes and tangible goodness and a certain, naïve sincerity reminiscent of Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz. "There are some tests I could run—"

"Do you liiiike to test?"

". . . Well, yes. I mean. I like it very much—"

"Yooo-oou will assume the Party Escort Submission Position."

"I don't know what that means—hey! Hey, let go!" he snapped uncharacteristically, for the pair of party-hat-wearing, mechanical Cyclopes had each seized him by a wrist—briefly he broke free, only to be captured again. "CECIL HEEEELP MEEEEEEEE!" Carlos screamed as Atlas and P-Body dragged him past the kitchen, where Cecil was boiling a plastic, googly-eyed cactus for dinner—but Cecil could not help him, for he was wearing earplugs, and facing the opposite direction.