Chapter 6: Powerful Potatoes

"I know it's very exciting at work. My job must seem like a fairytale to you." He smiled.

"It sort of is!" Chell squealed excitedly. "Like when you turned the tomato plant into a beanstalk! Are we gonna do something like that?"

Dad just shook his head. 

"We're in a new age... an exciting one. It's easy to focus on the end results of it all, but Rachael, science is a lot more than that. The process matters just as much as what comes out of it." 

"How about... a rocket ship! You can make it blast off at the ceiling! Or an ant village! There's so much we-" Chell was practically hyperventilating.

"You're not listening, are you? Look... I was just like you twenty years ago. I had the maturity of a child, but unfortunately, I also had a fancy degree. I wanted everything to be flashy and whimsical, and frankly, that's all a man like Cave Johnson gives a damn about. And look what it's led to... not a thing, not a single discovery has been worthwhile."

Chell's dad was always cheerful. He was the type of guy to find the best in things, so it took a lot to really get him worked up. Mom used to say he needed his work to stay that way, but at the same time, it brought out a certain cynicism in him; a willingness to throw anything and everything he'd ever done under the bus.

Dad brightened up:

"I'm sorry Rachael. Just... you're a bright girl, you know? Don't make the mistakes I did. There's sunlight at the end of every tunnel, but you have to know what it takes to get there. There are easier tunnels... and tunnels that'll swallow you whole. And if you end up in the bad one, you've gotta fight through it. You can't get caught in the darkness like me."

Chell looked up at her father, nodding as if she had a whole lot more life experience. 

"So let's..." he went on "Let's do some science! The good stuff. You wanted a rocket right? That sounds like a lot of fun, but I've got something even better!"

Chell's eyes lit up, her smile contagious. He pulled something off the table, hiding it behind his back.

"It's a..." he brought it out "Potato battery!"

Chell's smile quickly faded, and she had to stop her eyes from rolling reflexively. She knew this whole thing was too good to be true.

"Looks like a regular potato to me." She said.

"C'mon, it'll be great! Now, what is the first step of a scientific study?"

"The hypothesis. It's an educated guess based on our intuition." Chell recited.

"Wrong!" He said like a buzzer on a game show. "First comes observation and research. But since someone already did that a hundred years ago, it was a lucky guess. Noooooow" He said, lifting her in the air:

"What can we do with our handy potato battery?"

"Power things up!" Chell giggled.

"Aha!" Dad said, propping her on the table, balancing the potato on her head. "But you only know that cause it's a battery! Why on Earth would a potato power anything up?"

Chell sat and thought for a moment. She placed her palm on the side of her face like a scholar, tipping the potato off her head and onto the ground. 

"Because... potatoes are powerful!" Chell offered.

Dad turned around, plucking more food - this time a lemon - out of his pocket like a magician.

"When I was growing up," Dad explained, "Lemon batteries were all the rage. Lemons are very acidic. The citric acid acts as an electrolyte, allowing all of the little electrons to pass through. It's not very practical, but it's strong enough to power little lights and such."

"But potatoes are better, right?" Chell inquired.

"That's right! Potatoes are giant heaps of salt and water, which release a ton of ions. That facilitates conduction in a more efficient way than Mr. Lemon is capable of." Dad threw the lemon into the sink, his face deadly serious.

"But Dad! Mr. Lemon did his best!"

"Not good enough!" He cleared off the rest of the table. "Now, that's all great in theory, Rachael, but science is much more than just theories. We have to get this darn potato to actually do its job. Potatoes are lazy, Rachael, they won't do it by themselves. We've gotta make 'em!"

Chell stared at the potato, still not quite grasping how it would energize anything. It was a potato.

"Now Rachael: Where does the electricity come from?" Dad asked, miserably failing to hide the wire and nail from behind his back.

"From the..." Chell thought about it again "The potato?"

"Rachael! Potatoes don't make electricity! We don't power cities with potatoes," he said sarcastically, picking the potato off the ground.

"Hmm... maybe we should use those!" Chell guessed, pointing out the materials he was hiding.

"That was supposed to be the twist! Ah well, you saw them. Let's just..." He stuck the  zinc nail into the potato

"Let's just plug this into here. Now what?"

Chell was still baffled:

"I... dunno." 

"You dunno? Well it's your science project! Here's your nightlight. Figure it out! I gotta go upstairs for a minute."

Chell stood up, staring over her experiment. It was still just a potato. Potatoes don't power cities - they don't power anything! She flicked the copper sheet back and forth with the wire, waiting for the light to turn on. Absolutely nothing happened.

She hooked the end of the nail to the nightlight with the connecting wire. Still nothing happened. She stuck the potato near the kitchen ceiling light. Nothing kept happening.

"Dad! The potato's broken!"

She heard him stumbling around upstairs, but he wouldn't respond. She stuck the unwashed potato in her mouth, and it didn't taste anything like french fries.

"Hold on a minute!" Dad finally called back. "I've gotta finish this mechanical arm. I had to make it here at home, would you believe it?" 

Chell decided to wait for help...

He came downstairs looking a little more stressed, his thin greying hairs stretching out like spider legs. The arm was tilted in the middle, as if it were making a fist. He threw it on the floor as if he couldn't care less about it. He looked up:

"What're you doing?" He spotted her trying to take a bite out of the potato. "That's not gonna help you know."

"I told you, the potato's broken! Potatoes can't power anything!"

"So you're giving up?"

"Yes. It's hopeless. Give me dinner!"

"Rachael, I won't always be here to help you. You need to do this on your own." He said, suddenly serious.

"I can't! It won't work."

"Listen to me: You can never abandon a scientific experiment. You have to keep trying, whether you like it or not. If I can't help you, you've gotta work with someone else. Or something else can work together..." He said it like a riddle.

"Huh?" Chell was even more confused

"The copper. The zinc. It works together!"

A light went on in her head. She attached the wire to the nail, and then the copper sheet. Like a mad scientist, she carefully stuck the other tips of the wire to the nightlight. This time, the light went on in real life.

"I knew you could do it! I told you - you're a real bright girl, Rachael. You were never really gonna give up, were ya?"

"I guess not. What's that thing do?" She pointed at the arm on the ground.

"Ha? This? It's to make our computers look a little more... lifelike. Mr. Johnson's going through one of his little phases."

"Are the computers powered with potatoes?"

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"You've had a literal millennia to nap!" Wheatley snapped, his eye blinking furiously. Chell opened hers to the sight of the little core zipping around the room like a hornet. 

"Can you stop leaving me alone like that?"  He jabbered.

Chell inhaled deeply, the present sinking in. Solitude might not be great, but she really wouldn't mind a bit of it right now, with what she was in for.

"I concocted a brilliant plan of escape! We were well on our way, and you had to go wake her up... several thousand years ago! What were you thinking? Honestly."

The analytical side of her was wondering if someone had simulated his voice in a little booth at the beginning. Had they intended to make him as insufferable as possible? It was truly one of the great mysteries she had to contemplate, at least relative to anything else that passed through her understimulated mind.

"What's that? How am I still alive?" Wheatley mocked. "I'm glad you asked! She thought she'd crushed me to a pulp, throwing me into the scrap heap! So I rolled around for a while and found all of my missing parts! It's a real miracle, really. You should be jumping for joy! I'm your only hope!"

Chell wanted to grab that little thing, but she had to pull herself together. It had been a long time since she remembered something from so long ago - maybe it meant something.

"Now get up, would you? We haven't got all day! Well... I suppose we do. 'Lot more than that actually, we've got- we've got all of eternity, really!" He laughed. "But sincerely, I would prefer it if you would-"

Nope, this was more important. She sprung up and grabbed Wheatley by his handlebars, shaking him up and down. She eyed him furiously, motioning to break him against the floor.

"I'm- I'm sorry! I'm sorry! You're right I- I'm the one who got caught. It's my fault, as usual. Look... if you let me go, I'm gonna sail through the facility and make another plan. We're gonna do it right this time. She's got the whole place on her side... weapons, deadly neurotoxin, brains, turrets, bullets, that new gas that almost threw you off a ledge... but we've got- we've got friendship, yes. Friendship always wins."

He had a lot of talk in him, but Wheatley looked very breakable. It wouldn't be hard to tear him in two. He had gotten her into one mess already, and he seemed to be the product of a very specific kind of flawed programming. His first plan had been quite intricate - creative even, but not particularly well thought-out.

He had described it all to Chell as if it were flawless. They would break GLaDOS from the inside, disabling the neurotoxin, mashing up the turrets and taking her on only when they had those advantages. But of course, they couldn't do any of that until they were out of sight, and GLaDOS wasn't about to let it happen.

"Look, you have that scary look in your eyes and- and, well it's scaring me. Can you take that off please? Thanks. Thank you - in advance. You could get rid of me right now, and... well I would deserve it, but I'd rather if you wouldn't. Please. It'll work out this time, I thought it through."

Chell placed him onto the ground reluctantly. A sigh of relief came out of him, as his eyeball widened. Chell opened her hands, as if to ask him something.

"What's that supposed to be? What - you want to know my plan? Well... erm. I would tell it to you, but, it's sort of uh dependent... dependent on you finishing this chamber first. Get through here aaaand I'll explain it all."

Chell glanced at him skeptically, and then at the chamber door up ahead. She shuttered at what GLaDOS has just done to her. That machine was cruel - she was even sadistic. But whatever that gas was had been an entirely new experience. That feeling - watching as her body inched closer and closer to nothingness - it was terrifying. 

Chell fell back, shaking her head furiously, remembering what had just happened. She couldn't go back in there. There had to be another way.

"There's no other way!" Wheatley chimed in. "You've survived in here without me for months, right? What's one more chamber?"