Life Plug started with one unsettling question: what if the cushioned life you’re living was never meant for you, but built to preserve someone else’s legacy?
The core spark for Life Plug came from imagining a luxury simulation that was never marketed to the masses. Just a private digital ark, reserved for a bloodline wealthy enough to protect itself from the world it helped break.
From there:
a curated digital “Eden” that only exists because the outside world has collapsed
descendants raised inside a reality that was chosen for them, not by them
a real world left behind, mutated and violent, full of people who didn’t get an ark
Franco and Page were built as products of that system, contained, and unaware. The story only begins when the illusion fails and pain cuts through the code.
Eden had to feel inviting, even desirable. It is designed as a clean, soft, aesthetically pleasing existence with:
controlled weather, controlled experiences, controlled risk
an easy rhythm to daily life
no visible seams in the simulation unless you know where to look
But because Eden was built by people who feared the outside world more than they respected it, the simulation has a cold core. It’s a vault.
The digital stewards who run it are not villains in their own minds. They’re caretakers enforcing a plan, keeping the bloodline safe, even if it means lying to every person living inside.
Franco was designed as the person who doesn’t fit as neatly into the script as he should. His ability to manipulate the digital world with his mind makes him a glitch in a system that needs total obedience. That rare power isn’t meant to feel like a heroic superpower, it’s a liability that makes him a threat to the people who rely on control.
He represents what happens when a closed system creates something it can’t fully predict.
Page needed to be the one who breaks first. Her trauma inside Eden is the moment where emotional reality refuses to stay in its lane. Her pain cuts through the programming and exposes seams in the world around her.
The outside world was never meant to feel like a blank, bleak desert. It had to feel lived in, scarred, mutated, improvised. The nuclear devastation warped:
landscapes into fractured zones
people into divergent groups and factions
morality into something negotiable and situational
Designing the mutants and altered humans meant thinking past “monsters.” They are:
people who adapted with whatever they had left
those who evolved in ways that terrify the “clean” outsiders
survivors shaped by a world the privileged fled from
The wasteland is harsh, but it’s honest. Unlike Eden, it doesn’t pretend to be something it’s not.
Life Plug is not meant to offer easy optimism. The world outside Eden is brutal, and the people who built the simulation don’t suddenly grow a conscience. But the story isn’t pure despair either.
The hope in the book comes from:
Franco and Page choosing what to do with the truth after they’ve seen it
the small alliances they form in a place that should want them dead
the idea that honesty, even in a poisoned world, is worth more than a beautiful lie
Several decisions shifted during the writing process:
Originally, the digital stewards were closer to faceless administrators. Over time, they became more personal—less like nameless programs and more like custodians who truly believe in the hierarchy they’re maintaining.
Their connection shifted away from pure romantic framing. It became more about two people who share a catastrophe and have to decide, together, whether knowing the truth is worth what it cost them.
