So after Daimon's sermon and a short conversation afterward, John and Allison make their way up from the City back to the what John thinks of as the main level.

Onward, to the media library, to find texts on Buddhism since he's pretty sure that he can't explain it properly.

Fortunately they are in luck: along with fictional documents such as Herman Hesse's Siddhartha, there are more applicable non-fiction titles like The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, Introduction to Buddhism and Awakening the Buddha Within.

The titles might make John feel like he's doing half-assed research on a paper, but at least it's a start, right? "Which one first?" Considering they aren't really books, per se, but small electronic notepad looking things.

Brenda had been looking forward to this.

Her little side-adventure with the portal gun and the cake had disrupted a plan she'd made too-long ago now, to find some time to let Dark Smoke Puncher teacher her a little more about hand to hand combat. She was sure that her scramble around Glados' little arena had been a good enough warm-up but her actual fighting skills were probably pretty rusty and lacking at this point.

She also couldn't argue with the idea of showing off a little bit to a mysterious geek-boy in a mask. It was good for her ego. Probably. Maybe. Unless he didn't underestimate her at all and totally trounced her and then it would just be standard levels of embarrassing.

Brenda was going to try not to think about that. She stopped for a second outside the sensorium room they had agreed to meet at and ducked inside.