11/08/2013 00:08:00 ¶ ●

## Portal 2 - The boy

There is a boy knocking on my door.

I wake up in a shabby motel room with a headache like I drank twice my own weight in pure alcohol last night (Science tells me that’s impossible. Science can stuff it) and there is a boy knocking on my door. There is something decidedly surreal about the situation, but my mind is foggy, and I can’t remember what it is.

Oh yes. The death robot. The murderous engine of destruction which considers itself my mother and which I had to fight my way through to get out of my previous place of residence. The door once again reminds me that there is a boy standing outside it.

I open the door, and find that the boy, too, is a robot. I suppose this is what passes for normal in these parts. The robot boy lets itself into my room, talking and joking and lying. He’s smooth, in a disarmingly awkward way. He insults me to my face and then talks it over, pretending nothing happened. It reminds me of something I read about once, negging, the practice of undermining someone’s confidence in order to make them more sympathetic to you. I feel momentarily defensive, then shake the thought, the robot boy is obviously too incompetent to perpetrate such a scheme.

He asks me to run away with him. Well, not in so many words, but as we (he) speaks, the sentiment is made clear. He needs me to get an old thing of mine, so we again head back into the place I fought so hard to leave behind forever.