Sunday, 20th January, 2104.


"Em? You leaving for church this early?" I ask her, rubbing my eyes under my glasses.

"Well, I don't have a proper sense of how far away it is from here, even after a few weeks. So I suppose it's best if I get going early."

"At six in the morning?" I wonder, still a little groggy.

"If I arrive sooner than expected, I'll just help around the place. And you know Sundays are usually days off for me, regardless."

"Oh, alright," I sigh, "Be safe, okay? I don't want midnight to come and go and you're not home."

Em's laughter is soft and light, a sound of heaven I'm sure.

"Of course I'll come back in one piece, and the van will too. Mum and dad wouldn't allow me to pull that on them, especially after we've paid their bills, so here's hoping they won't let me do that to you. If they don't kidnap me as soon as we've had our chat."

"If they do that, Laur and I will track you down and break you out."

"I'm sure I'll come back."

"Promise, Emmy?"

"Promise, Corrie."


It's not till eight-thirty in the morning that my little sister arrives in the kitchen with bleary eyes and a bedhead. Her hair's so nuts, I'm holding back giggles while being ninety percent sure she's not gonna bother with trying to comb it.

Oh, who am I kidding. Laurie's hair is pretty much untamable since it's pretty much Goldilocks' curls, twenty-four/seven. And that's somehow through the genetics . When most of us have straighter hair than this.

"Rough night, huh?"

"Yeah," she groans, "Couldn't stop thinking about that clearing-up from two days ago."

"How'd it go? How'd you do it?"

"I put together everything I could in a timeline of events and wrote an essay," she splats into one of the chairs, "Worth a summer school assignment. I wanted to really prove it wasn't me who made that stupid broadcast. Stupid Donny and Blitz, trying to frame me for no reason with their stupid Red Army scam… Why are those Lawson cousins that're such a pain? Why can't they be decent like the rest of their family?"

Holy damn.

"I mean, at least you have so much evidence against them and their holos thanks to Ed on Christmas, but dear God, did you really have to put yourself through so much?"

"Well, I'm also trying to impress them at the same time so they'll have more of a reason to back off me. The essay and footage were a pain to write and edit within reasonable file size."

"Oh my god…" I sigh, "Seriously, all of what you've done has to be enough to go through. If they can't accept it-"

"I guess I'll have to defend myself from their Big Brother tactics. I mean, give or take a couple more challenges from Ed and Ell and adjusting to the new tech more, it should be easy to break through their heavy-duty firewalls."

Both our stomachs growl.

"Uhm… Cora? What's for breakfast?"

"Would toast be good?"

A small smile.

"Yeah. Thank you."


We don't talk as we take in the cool morning air from the open windows, the silence sharing a space with the satisfying crunches of toast.

Laurie hasn't woken up yet- well, not entirely. She still doesn't have that usual lively spark in her eyes right-

"Hang on, where's Emily? And why just margarine on this toast?"

Ah, there we go.

"At church," I swallow my new bite.

"Oh, right."

"If her parents kidnap her, you're in charge of tracking them down and bringing her back here."

"Of course I'm in charge of that since I'm the only big hacker in this house…"

"Aw, don't sound so grumpy over it Laur! You seriously have the coolest hobby ever which could really save lives here!"

"Shut uuuuup!"

"By the way, you can put other stuff on your toast if you want, since I brought it out. I mean, you can have your favourite hazelnut spread."

"Eh, I guess the margarine's alright. Haven't had a 'plain' breakfast in awhile, I suppose- Cora."

"What? Something wrong?"

"Don't move- aw crap. He's gone!"

"Who?"

I look behind me to see nobody there, just a regular early twenty-first century kitchen and a mirror on the wall-

Wait.

"You see him too? You actually see him?! That wasn't a joke?"

"I saw him the day before yesterday," she admits sheepishly, staring at her toast, "When I peeked in the junk room during a loading break."

"You mean the antique room."

"Yeah."

"Well, there's no shame in admitting it Laur," I shrug, "You're not the only one here who saw him."

"I didn't feel too comfy talking about it when Em was around. Didn't want her to shoot down arguments too fast."

"Well, Em isn't right here now, we can talk about it all we want. Geez, if this stuff keeps happening over our stay here… Say, d'you have an empty notebook around?"

"Yeah, school still wants those to be used, despite it being the twenty-second-freaking-century- Oh, you want to write all of this down?"

"Not just the mirror man," I agree, "But everything since day one."


It takes us about ten or so minutes to write down everything with as much accurate detail as possible: From the four white blips on the electric grid, to the most recent sighting of the mirror man today.

"I guess I'm not having that notebook back."

"Nope." I shake my head, "It's barely been two whole weeks and already so much has happened. I'm actually surprised Em hasn't noticed it."

"Maybe she has."

"Hm?"

"What if she has seen it and she's ignoring it on purpose? Just for the sake of a bit of peace and quiet, at least early in the stay here? I mean, you know how her parents can be sometimes."

The both of us shut up at the thought.

"…Do you believe Emily's dismissals?"

"I want to," she sighs, "Ignorance is bliss. But at the same time…"

I stare at my empty plate.

"We shouldn't worry about it right now," Laurie grins, taking one last bite of her toast and grabbing her empty plate to put in the sink, "But at least we have a journal to record down everything that happens from here on in."

"True. Wait, is it called a journal for a reason? I was going to call it a logbook."

"The author of the journals," Laur giggles, "My sister."

I facepalm.

"Fair enough." I take my own plate to the sink and start washing them up, "Hey, you wanna play some Portal co-op after we brush our teeth?"

"Mhmm! You want me to bring up old game modes or just want a regular one?"

"Eh, we'll figure it out when we get to it."


"Hey hey, you put a portal there, and I'll put one here and… No, not there- Laurie! Is this on purpose you cheek? You're not usually like this!"

"Hey, you're the one who knows these maps back to front, you nerd! I'm trying to give you a challenge!"

"I have good reasons! First of all, Aperture Science has a cool aesthetic and the puzzles are a LOT more fun to do with another person, second- gah, not this time- Oh come on! We had It!"

Her face is nearly an exact replica of the classic 'cat with a knife' meme. Always there when she straight up causes problems on purpose.

"You're gonna get your butt kicked when I respawn."

"…You were saying?"

"Look, my second point was that the writing of this universe and the story and the characters are so good! Even when combining it with Half-Life-"

"Hello, Gordon!"

"Not where the AI is self-aware!"

"Are you suuuuure?"

"You and I both know," I groan, "It's just from a series of streams. There's no possible way of it actually happening. Not since the Deviance Incident of 2065 made any AI passing the Turing test illegal. Hey, can you portal me up here again?"

"Oh sure, here you go. But we'll see about that AI, you can't stop people making it happen illegally!"

"Says the one who basically lobotomised all her holos upon getting them."

"Hey, you couldn't trust your personal tech to not be listening in on you since the invention of the computer, basically! Both of us like our privacy - you let me, Ell and Ed lobotomise your phone and other stuff. Em let us do it to her stuff too."

"Ugh, true. Hey, you know what would be cool? Three-person co-op in Portal."

"Oh, that would be so neat! Wait, it's just because you want Emily to play with us now, huh."

"Do you blame me? She's good at this too! I bet we'd all make a great team!"

"… In real life too?"

"Yeah. Maybe the longer we stay here together, hopefully with something to do apart from loving this place into making it ours, the more we might…"

"I get it."

"Really?"

"Kind of. I mean, we've just been here for a few weeks already with weird stuff happening, so who's to say we won't have something cool to happen to us?"

"I like the sound of that. Oh nice! That was the last puzzle!"

My sister smirks before grabbing a small box far to her left and putting it to her mouth, and I know what's coming up next.

"Look, test subjects. I know that completing the tests is worth cause for celebration." She tries to deadpan and hold back giggles, while the voice modulator makes her sound exactly like GLaDOs, "The only sound that's coming from me, your sentient and self-aware AI overlord, is the sound of no-one caring. Not even me. I only cared about one human in this facility and now she's-aheehahahaha! Oh god, I can't do this without it being funny!"

"You seriously," I burst into laughter too, "brought that along with you?!"

"Can't have fun with it if I didn't!" She puts it away as she cat-grins again. "Besides, you packed your Portal-gun replica with you right?"

"Oh shut up, you know I had to put it in the bookshelf! What are you even gonna do with the voice modulator here?"

"Oh, not here. At school."

"…You're planning revenge against the Lawson twits, are you."

"…Maybeeee? Oh hey! I was looking around my room earlier and I found something cool!"

"Oh?"

She stands, stretching before swiping off a bunch of holoscreens and making her way to a set of metal panels on the doorway's wall.

"Wait a min," I frown, "How did we not notice those when we first came?"

"It was originally hidden in the wall, but this one actually looks like it's from old Tom the First. I meddled with it till I discovered it had to be opened by an eye scanner."

"Wha?"

"Here, take a look! This is the first time I'll break into it, so we'll both see what it is!"

I stand and make my way over to the black wall-box, staring over Laurie's shoulder as she taps, slides and types away on her hacking program.

"Come on, come on, just a little bit more…"

Picking the lock…
SITE UNLOCKED
Creating key for future use…
KEY CREATED: CHKR

"Gotcha!"

The box doors slide open sideways, and out comes a checkered bass guitar.

So that explains the key name.

"Whoa, that's awesome!"

"…Yeah. You don't say."

"Laurie…" I glance around the room, putting the pieces together, "D'you think it's actually…"

"I-I guess. I mean, it would be cool if it was…"

For a few slow and long seconds, the air drops cold, despite a heater being on.

"Brr, did you touch anything Cora?"

"No…"

Wait, is the heater on?

I turn around to find it's been stopped - one of Laurie's holos which is keeping track of it as a remote just… turned it off?

"Funny," Laurie tilts her head, "Why did it do that…?"

Nevertheless, I head back to my spot on the floor and pen the new events in the journal.

"Everything alright, Cor?"

"Yeah, it's fine. I should head to the basement to check on stuff."

"Normal basement or the weird multilayered one?"

"Um…"

"Please, don't go there. Either of them."

"Why?"

Laurie sits back down next to me, shifting the heater remote tab to the electrical maps of the house.

"What's with the feedback vid from day one?"

"No no, this one's archived from yesterday . And from the weird basement a couple days ago."

"What?"

I stare at the screen intently, waiting for-

"Wait a min, are those the same white blips from last time?"

"Maybe? I don't know, but look! They were freely roaming the fourth basement level! We were there last Tuesday!"

"Oh my god… Laurie, are you sure they're the same blips from day one?"

"I've tried comparing footage, but I'm not a hundred percent on that with you."

"What about similar electronic signals they gave off?"

She shakes her head.

"I don't think my tech is powerful enough to try it out, former Lawson stuff or not. I'd probably eat up a full power cell in my pocket, even if we wanted twenty-five percent of the data to download and take a look at."

"Come on, Laur." I try to reassure her, "Surely it can't be the case."

"But what if it is?"

Her bright blue eyes are full with worry.

"Please, Laur. Just once for me and the journal? I'm sure you can plug the power cell in your lab and recharge it, too!"

She stares at the screen in front of her for a moment, before pulling her jacket pockets inside out and holding the small cubed power cells in her gloved hands.

"Alright. But if these blow up, you're getting the new ones."

"No I won't, you're the one threatening the Lawson twits at GLaDOs-point."

"… I'd tell you to shut it, but you're right."


She gets down to business, fingers flying across the holoscreen as she pulls up some code-creator/translator and compressor, running the footage and its raw components through it.

"Once I can get everything, I can sort out the coding that the blips give off from all the other stuff, then run it through an analyser to see how much of it is matching up."

"How long should it take?"

"A few minutes. My archiver doesn't just store sixty-nine terabytes-"

"Nice!"

"-and more for nothing. I hope it doesn't get corrupted though…"

"Alright- wait, how were you able to make it so the blips were seen to you on the electricity network twenty-four/seven?"

"Mostly by fiddling around."

Not the answers I want, but hey. I'm not gonna press further when she's busy.


"Alright… I think I have the info, let's see if we can get a match through this stuff."

I lean over Laur's head for a better look as she hits enter.

Come on, something should…

"Whoa!"

"Holy popping poodles in paradise!"

"Again, Laurie?"

"Come on, you can see why I said that!"

ALL SAMPLES SCANNED 99.89% MATCH WAS FOUND
BETWEEN GROUPS A AND B

"Group A is the blips from day one, and B is from the most recent sighting of them," Laur explains, "I'm guessing the other point-eleven percent was from the difference in time."

"Holy crap… Laur, is it possible to look at what the data really makes up? Apart from white dots on your screen?"

"I dunno, Cora. After making hell for myself two days ago, I'm not sure if we should do this. At least now."

"Can't we even get a preview? From one of the blips at least?"

"…Alright, just one," she reluctantly nods, "But one only."

"Fine by me."

"Alright, let's see… Separate some of that stuff… Set to preview- what the heck?"

"Already? What's wrong?"

ERROR: UNABLE TO DISPLAY
INSUFFICIENT POWER

"…Has that ever come up before?"

"No…"

Weird. Laurie's tech should be the most powerful stuff in this whole house, but yet…

I scribble down as much as I can of the recent events into the journal, trying (and failing) to keep it as neat as possible.

"You're really going to get everything weird down in there, are you?"

"Yeah, I guess this is Journal One for now."

"D'you think Emily should see this?"

"The journal, or?"

"Both."

"Definitely not the journal," I reason, "If she's not going to believe us. But maybe we can show the data results at a later time."

"Sure," Laur nods, "But it's so weird, Cora. We all just came here to get a paid somewhat-break from work thanks to dad, but instead of an actual break from everything…"

"We're winding up with a mystery on our hands," I finish, "I don't think there's any denying it: there's so much more than meets the eye around here. Even Em can't deny the house is a treasure trove of secrets."

"You're right, but we've barely scratched the surface, there's still so much at hand. But, I don't want to get my hopes up if it's all a fake."

"How come?"

"If I play it neutral between you and Em, I'll have no room for disappointment when the cookie crumbles in one way or the other."

"Smart kid."

She grins.

Creaaaak.

Clack.

"I'm hooooome!"

"Oh thank god I don't have to track you down!"

By instinct, I shove the journal into my hoodie pocket as best as I can.

"Let's not mention the data to Emily yet." I whisper, "She sounds really happy and I don't want to ruin the moment for her."

"Good idea."

"Just… One more quick thing, Laur. Have you ever gotten the feeling of being… Watched, since you came here?"

"Not really, aside from the Mirror Man. Why?"

"Just… Wondering."