Life Plug details the lives of people living in a highly controlled, programmed simulation, focusing on the relationship between an engaged couple and the moral conflict arising from their respective roles within that system.
Identity/Role: A twenty year-old man with extraordinary abilities, hired by DMI (Developmental Mastery Institute) to program and create surroundings within the computer based world. He programmed a small town and was “thrilled” that they were naming things after him.
Abilities: He was “born using more” than the average brain capacity. He has telekinetic abilities and can manipulate time. He uses his gifts for recreation, including conjuring women for sex and dabbling in drug use.
Personality: He is an optimist who believes life is agreeable and should be enjoyed. He is in love with his fiancée, Page, and insists on getting married.
Realization: After exiting the simulation, he is angered and disheartened to learn that his “gifts” were merely programming of his surroundings.
Identity/Role: Franco’s fiancée. She works at a “crappy little diner” called Gillian’s Diner.
Abilities: She is a “tenner” or ordinary person who uses the average eight to ten percent of her brain.
Personality: She is a profound pessimist. She feels a strong sense of purposelessness, believing her life is “silly” and that she is inadvertently waiting to die. She is religious and wants to wait until marriage for sex.
Trauma: She awoke outside the simulation with a man on top of her, having been sexually assaulted by one of the “controllers” in the real world while she was connected to the computer.
Realization: After waking up, she understands that their world was a computer simulation.
A large, muscular man with bluish tinted skin.
He shares a small room with Franco and dispenses drugs to Franco upon request.
An older DMI employee who is thirty seven.
He also has the “gift” and works at DMI, currently designing an amusement park.
He is cynical about commitment, predicting Franco will eventually conjure women for sex after marriage, just as he does. He warns Franco about the dangers of marrying a “tenner” who might gain their abilities and read their minds.
A young woman with light red hair and freckles who graduated two weeks prior.
She is single and unemployed. Franco, intrigued by her, checks her status via a surveillance camera and then conjures her into his room.
A woman from the real world who meets Franco and Page in the desert.
She explains that the “real world” is now a desert after a nuclear war over a hundred years ago.
She is empathetic to Page’s trauma and is a crucial ally in helping them escape the area to find a city.
An “old man” who is an ally to Cass.
He has a base where he gives Cass, Franco, and Page his specially designed, three wheeled motorcycle with a sidecar to escape the area, as they are being pursued.
A man whose face has drooping tumors and hair covering his enlarged forehead.
He is an ally who helps retrieve Cass and Franco from the old world’s sewer system, where they were hiding.
A man who works for the controllers in the real world.
He confirms that Franco and Page were in a computer and that he helped “create the surroundings in the computer”.
Men from the real world who manage and control the lives of the people inside the computer simulation (referred to as Eden ).
They are characterized by their abusive behavior, exemplified by the man with two gold hoop earrings who sexually assaulted Page in the real world while she was incapacitated.
