After speaking with Valve at PAX East, Kotaku reports that a "surprise" is planned between now and the release of Portal 2 the week of April 18 to help explain the goings on in the many years between Portal and Portal 2. "We're actually going to release something that we're not talking about yet that will give a little bit of the story of the interim time," Valve writer Erik Wolpaw told them today. "We're doing that before release." Wolpaw discusses this timeframe in brief: "Portal is after Half-Life 1 and before Half-Life 2," he said. "Without getting into it too much, Portal 2 is further down the line." His comments also should put a damper on speculation that the Portal and Half-Life storylines tie into each other very directly. "We tried to keep as light a touch about it as we did in Portal 1. Fans of Half-Life will notice some things, but if you haven't played Half-Life they'll just kind of pass right by you. You're not going to see Gordon tromping through the facility," he says. "Aperture Science is kind of this fun-house of science, this bubble in the otherwise serious Half-Life universe."