The world of Life Plug is built upon a profound and unsettling premise: reality is an elaborate, computer controlled simulation, designed not just as a virtual world, but as a mechanism for life preservation. The mythology centers on a post apocalyptic backstory, an elite group of “Controllers,” and the powerful mental abilities of certain individuals who serve as the operators of the fake reality.
The primary setting for most characters, including Page and Franco, is a fabricated environment. This simulation, the titular Life Plug, was established in the real world after a devastating nuclear war left the planet’s surface heavily polluted and largely uninhabitable.
Nature of the World: The simulated world runs under the control of controllers who maintain the illusion. While it appears to be a normal, contemporary human world (e.g., featuring Los Angeles street signs like ‘Santa Monica Blvd’), its physics and continuity can be instantly manipulated by the “gifted.”
Preservation of Life: The Life Plug serves as a refuge where people’s lives are preserved and protected from the outside world’s toxicity. In this environment, humans can theoretically live longer, up to fifty or sixty years old, shielded from the radiation and pollution of the true world.
Tenners: This is a derogatory label used by those with “the gift” to describe the ordinary human occupants of the simulation. It suggests these people are mundane and unaware, using only “ten percent of their brain.”
The functional mythology of the world revolves around a select group of individuals born with extraordinary mental abilities who are crucial to the simulation’s operation.
The Gift: This is the term for the advanced psionic abilities possessed by people like Franco and Adam. These powers are not just passive, but actively shape the reality of the simulation:
Reality Manipulation: The ability to conjure physical objects, people, or entire scenarios simply through thought.
Telepathy: The capacity to read the thoughts and emotions of others, which is often a source of conflict and deception.
Telekinesis: The power to move physical objects without touching them.
DMI (Developmental Mastery Institute): This organization is the central hub for the gifted. DMI recruits individuals with the necessary mental power and pays them to essentially act as the programmers and content creators for the simulation.
The mythology’s foundation is the desolate reality that exists outside the simulated environment, the result of the nuclear war that necessitated the creation of the Life Plug.
The Wasteland: The world outside the safe structure is an industrial, polluted environment characterized by destruction and nuclear fallout.
Freaks: This is the label given to those inhabitants of the true world (such as Cass) whose bodies have been physically affected, mutated, or ravaged by the pollution and radiation of the wasteland. They live in stark contrast to the healthy, preserved occupants of the simulation.
Eden: This is the name for the safe, protected building in the real world where the controllers and protectors of the simulation reside. It serves as a personal “plug” for them, keeping their lives preserved and extended while they manage the vast virtual world running on the computer systems.
