Hypothetical Half-Life 2: Episode 3 plot summary posted by ex-Valve writer Marc Laidlaw

Well, Half-Life 3 is finally here. Or is it Half-Life 2: Episode 3? Hard to say, but in any case, it arrived exactly as expected: A whispered surprise, traveling in the wee hours of the night by word of mouth alone. Instead, longtime Valve writer Marc Laidlaw (ex-Valve writer as of last year) seems to have posted the hypothetical plot to a never-going-to-be-made Episode 3 on his blog. It's thinly disguised as "Epistle 3," and the character names and genders have been tweaked too. This forms the basis of Laidlaw's current deflection, which is that it's "a genderswapped snapshot of a dream I had many years ago." He also refers to it as "fanfic."