Rob McGoarty, the owner of the appliances and whom they refer to as "The Master", is in his last days of college and is working at a veterinary clinic. One night, while finishing on a thesis, his computer accidentally crashes due to a terrible computer virus. The appliances along with a rat named Ratso seek to help Rob by finding and reversing the effects of his computer virus, hence recovering the master's thesis. Meanwhile, Mack, Rob's lab assistant, plots to sell the injured animals Rob had been tending to as part of his courses, to a place called "Tartaras Laboratories," the same facility that Sebastian, an old monkey, was sent to when he was just a baby. When the appliances discover an old TLW-728 prototype supercomputer named Wittgenstein abandoned, all alone, and run-down in the basement when transistor was invented. Due to being infected by a computer virus, the same one that affected Rob's dorm room computer and the one in the vet's clinic lab when Wittgenstein tried to contact them earlier, the miserable supercomputer reveals that he is living on one rare vacuum tube, the "WFC 11-12-55" (A reference to the producer and screenwriter, Willard Carroll, and his birthdate, November 12, 1955). The appliances learn that unless they find a replacement quickly, Wittgenstein's tube will blow and lead to his apparent death.