Your boss stares at you impatiently as you look around the room, but he won't let you touch his computer or the kitchen door (and there's nothing you can do with the French Fries Pizza ad). However, he'll let you borrow his pepper shaker from the table, and take the pizza from the counter before you leave.

Outside, you see a gross roach crawling on the wall outside. Equally gross is the dumpster on the right, which emits the stench of tuna and old socks, as well as a voice asking for booze. On the less shady side, there's a comic store next to the pizza place, but you can't visit it or the pizza will go cold!

(Click the delivery scooter to head out to the rest of Portal City.)

Click on the lower right area of the map to travel to Calvin's lab, situated right beside a nuclear power plant and a toxic sewer that's totally safe to live next to.

The control panel in front of the futuristic entrance is the intercom to the lab, so you talk to it and your uncle tells you to look for the Y-shaped lever missing from the panel, or get creative.

The lever is nowhere to be seen, but you do find a crowbar sticking out of a tube in the bottom right.

So use that crowbar to pry open the sewer entrance.

The sewers are lit from the glowing green goo in the pipe on the right. You also see that the grate at the end is chained shut, which is too bad because you could really use the glowing thing behind, whatever it is. Among the clutter on the ground, you find a slingshot.

Climb back up and place the slingshot in the panel, and flip it. An elevator rises out of the ground!

Enter the elevator, which takes you straight down to meet your uncle and his- oh my goodness what is that? Anyway, he explains that he hasn't spoken to your dad in 3 years since the lab accident, and that you can help clarify that the cause was just a mechanical flaw.

Once you've finished that conversation, you can look around the lab at the red unbreakable glass case (with text in fine print describing exactly how to break it), the half-finished invention on the table, the floating creature Isaac from another reality, and some extra-futuristic three-eyed goggles in the corner.

Go through the doorway, and you find yourself in a bedroom. On the wall next to you, there are instructions for taking care of Isaac. Further to the left, there's a table from which you can take a jar, and a four-digit safe beneath.

(Click the middle location now revealed on the map.)

A sign outside the entrance tells you about the ongoing gadget competition. Nobody's around to notice you open up the hood of the nearby car and remove the jumper cables there.

Enter the tower. A guard sits under the family photo in the lobby, and informs you that your only hope of getting access to your dad's office is to win the gadget competition so you can (get rich and) shake his hand.

Go right to join the registration queue, currently held up by an old shirtless man (wearing a tie and fluffy slippers), who struggles to remember his name. The guy behind him holding a pocket watch in one hand is busy playing a pixelated colorless video game in the other, or if you believe him, finding Mixies from another dimension. He's only missing one! The guy behind him has a device that can enlarge things, but it's just a cheap hologram projector. In the sudden realization that nobody will fall for that, he offers to trade for an even more advanced 3D gadget. And if waiting for all these people isn't bad enough, you still need to find $1000 for the submission fee!

Report back in to the store, where your boss complains about you being gone for so long that he had to deliver pizzas himself. Talking to him again, you find out just how much he hates and fears cockroaches.

Go to the comic book store next door, where Dona who works there insists that you don't actually know anything about Toxic Dogs, the band on her shirt, and challenges you to tell them the name of their number one hit. Sammy on the left is sad about his dead fish, but insists that Pedro would only be saved with the help of a defibrillator. You also notice a sign advertising a $1000 reward for the first issue of Lee Prescott's series. It's only so high because the artist himself went missing from his power plant janitorial job.

Return to your uncle's lab and explain the situation to him. Thankfully, his super battery will certainly win the competition, if you can find the required materials on his list. Time to search your home for items.

(Click the lower-left location on the map.)

Before you enter the house, look at the discounted TVs on display, the almost-empty spray can underneath and the rope sticking out of a trashcan, and then talk to the kid who's lost his watch.

Your house is a mess and your TV doesn't even work, but for some reason your old sketchbook under it catches your interest. You can open the fridge to find a bottle of beer, and move the book on the table. All these colored digits are so puzzling, and the baby's cry that almost shatters your window isn't helping at all.

Enter the door to the bathroom, where you find that you've padlocked your cupboard in a fit of drunken paranoia. You can turn off the lights with the switch next to the mirror to make another digit appear on the wall above Mr. Rat's mousehole.

The colored rectangles on your bathroom cupboard match the four colored digits in your house.

The blue, yellow, red, green digits read 7, 6, 2, 8, so enter 7628 in the padlock to unlock it.

In the cupboard, you find a pair of anaglyph 3D glasses that you bought after reading that 3D was the future.

Exchange the 3D glasses for the 3D hologram projector from the last guy in line, who's amazed by how 3D the 3D glasses make everything look. He also admits that his only use for the projector was scaring people with giant spiders.

Use the jar to trap the cockroach outside the pizza place.

All you have to do now is turn it into the biggest bug ever!

No, it would be too dangerous to soak the cockroach in radioactive goo, although you do get a nice animation if you try.

Instead, place the cockroach on the hologram projector, and then use it to scare your boss away.

He ducks under the counter, and now you're free to touch his computer (which does something with photos) and go in the kitchen, where you find a piece of cheese, a car battery (his secret ingredient!) and the biggest potato you can grab from the pile.

Give your beer to Lloyd (in the trashcan outside the pizzeria).

He tosses the bottle into the sky, and in doing so dislodges a half-eaten can of tuna.

We know from Calvin's sign that Isaac likes tuna pizza and hates pepper. What if we gave him both?

Add the tuna to the pizza and then the pepper, then feed it to Isaac, who sneezes up a power cell but is otherwise completely fine.

Place the potato in the toxic waste in the sewers, and it develops tumors. Pick up the giant mutated potato.

Combine the car battery and jumper cables to make a defibrillator, then give it to Sammy in the comic store.

Just as he said, the defibrillator works wonders, and he gives you an all-day arcade coupon to thank you.

(Click the top left of the map.)

Arriving at the arcade, you find an interesting ad on the lamppost for a mainboard processor that's exactly what your uncle asked for. Too bad you can't order one right away, because you don't own a shop! You tear off a piece of the flyer anyway.

Inside the arcade, there's only one game you can play, and you need a token for it. The tokens are all in a cardboard box on the counter, but the owner (busy playing Snake) won't let you touch it. There's also a sign on the wall with a phone number for repairs.

Give your coupon to the owner, who lets you take an arcade token from the box.

Place the token in the coin slot (beneath the buttons) to play Donkey Shell. You can't actually control the game, so you always lose… unless you can find a way to rig it.

But just as you leave the arcade to look for hacking implements, you spot the 3D guy standing outside. He tells you that the glasses got him disqualified and now he makes safes. All you have to do is crack the metal ball to receive the prize inside.

Click the safe and solve its puzzle to open it.

The two-digit code must match the question marks above so as to complete a sequence, but what's the pattern?

The first two digits of each group add up to the number formed by the last two:
7+2=09
8+7=15
3+8=11
which means that equation for the last group must be 9+9=18.

So enter 18 in the safe and open it to get a tape recorder.

The "unbreakable" glass in the lab is weak to high-pitched sounds, and you've already heard a sound that can break glass.

Now if you could just bring it to the lab…

You need to store your sound in your recorder, but for optimal recording quality you need to tie the rope to the recorder and then lower it out the window.

After that, go back to the lab and use your weaponized tape recorder to break the glass and receive a quantum boomerang hacking device, along with a warning on its effects.

Time to game the system! Go back to the arcade, and place the quantum boomerang in the opening at the top of the Donkey Shell Cabinet.

Now you can play again (after picking up and inserting another token). The boomerang turns the tables so you win, but the game immediately breaks and the owner has to look up the repair guy's number.

So use the spray can to change the number to the one you saw on the flyer, then play (and break) the game again.

Another hour later, the cabinet is repaired again. Not for long, as you can pluck the ZX9-lite mainboard right out of the circuitry!

You now have everything on the list, so give them to your uncle.

One hour later (again!), the super battery is completed. Next up, you have to submit it.

Examine Isaac, who is now wearing the memory-augmenting headset, and your uncle gives you the code to the safe holding the improved version.

Entering that (randomized) code into the safe, you find a family photo next to the RE-LIVEET BETA 2.0 device.

Go back to your house, and use the cheese on Mr. Rat's hole. He gratefully exchanges it with your old TV remote.

Use the remote on the display sets outside. It's a lousy rock music video from that band!

Talk to Dona from the comic book store again, and this time you can name that song.

She offers to go out with you, then she realizes that she won't be free for their next gig, so she asks you to help take photos of her boyfriend (the lead singer) with her camera.

Back at the lab, use the camera to get a photo of Isaac (which he likes to pose for).

It's a great photo, but it needs a little modification.

Place the photo in your boss's computer, and a short while later you get a pixelated colorless version.

Back in Nucleus Tower, you sneak "Mixinoda" onto the gamer's device while he's not looking. As he rushes away in search of it, he leaves his watch behind.

Give the watch to the kid outside your house, and he returns the favor by giving you a bolt cutter.

Use the bolt cutters to unchain the grate in the sewers and find an ID card with a familiar name, face and job title.

Go back to Nucleus Tower again, and give the old man his ID. Now he can finally move on with his- oh well, he forgot his gadget.

Which leaves you as the last competitor standing, provided you can get the submission fee. All you have to do is find that first issue, and who better to ask than Lee Prescott himself? Conveniently, he's standing right outside the tower because he's lost his car. (On second thought, this might not be such a good idea.)

Give the old man the memory augmentation headset prototype, and all his memories come flooding back.

Then give him your sketchbook so he can redraw his comic book with perfect memory.

Bring it back to the comic store to claim your $1000 reward.

Go back to Nucleus Tower to submit your uncle's invention. He's brought it along so all you need to do is use the cash bag on the lady at the counter.

Since you automatically win the competition, she gives you the elevator pass immediately. Use it on the elevator or the guard who lets you pass.

Enter the elevator. At the top floor, you face only one more obstacle: the door lock with digits in a 4 by 4 grid.

Solve the Latin square puzzle by adjusting the digits until there are no repeats in any row or column.

The (unique) solution is
3 2 4 1
1 4 2 3
4 3 1 2
2 1 3 4
so enter those digits, unlock the door, and proceed in.

Your dad is surprised that your uncle completed the Super Battery by himself, but he just can't bring himself to go downstairs to talk. If you could give him just a small push…

Show him the family photo, which convinces him of your uncle's feelings.

The two brothers make up, and so they work together once more!