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This is the third and last installment in the Tron 2.0 Guide. Again, for those who have played it, please feel free to add or comment on what I marked down here, especially any notes you may have for Ghost in the Machine where 95% of it turned out to be a mind screw.

This section focuses on the characters and how they might fit into a canon timeline.

Character Notes:



Jethro Eugene Bradley:
For the record, he never goes by “Jethro.” In The Ghost in the Machine comic, he is quick to tell the shrink that even his dad calls him “Jet.” First impressions are that he is a laid-back sort and mostly interested in making games, even turning down a promotion Alan was trying to arrange for him in order to become a lead programmer on Encom's next game. Scratch the surface, and Jet's more troubled than he seems. He and Alan...there's clearly a lot of love, but very little understanding. A flashback and emails indicate that Jet got into trouble in both high school and college. The high school principal remarked on Jet's tendency to make sarcastic interruptions and on his “despondent” behavior. There's also the one note from the police regarding Alan left his wallet when paying Jet's bail. It's stated in a flashback that Jet's arrest was for hacking into the school's mainframe. Jet says he did it because he was “bored,” but another way to read it is that Jet became very used to shoving down his feelings as to not trouble his already-grieving father, bottling them up until they get too much and he does something stupid as a result.
Ghost in the Machine also proposed that Jet had a much more adverse reaction to his time on the Grid than the Flynns did. The adrenaline wears off, and the implications set in. He knows now that “It's an entire universe in there...Every time you shut off your computer, do you know what you're doing? Have you ever reformatted a hard drive...destroyed an entire universe?”
As for a Legacy fanfic writer? Well, Jet and Sam would obviously have grown up together, and probably were the type of friends that sat across from each other in a holding cell going “that was fun” at least once. If Sam's got anyone helping him with the annual stunts, Jet's on the short list. Setting 2.0 prior to Legacy would also require some fast explanation as to the setting differences and why Jet and Alan keep their mouths shut.
Ma3a:
Alan and Lora created the first Math Assistant (Ma1a) in 1988, and she's third in the series. In-game emails, and the casting of Cindy Morgan as her voice, imply that at least part of Lora's mind was compiled with the Program. She really plays like a benevolent and less powerful version of Master Control, giving Jet his missions and advice as she can. However, she is still very much a program. She doesn't recognize Jet as anything other than a User, and usually refers to him as "Alan-2." A revealing conversation comes about when Jet tries to explain the concept of "father" to her, and she can only understand the idea as "a previous version." Again, it's not clear if Alan compiled what was left of Lora into her as accident or by design. What is known is that the pair of them have been working on those correction algorithms for the laser, and that Alan hid them in her code.
Mercury:
Seriously? If someone wanted to write up the idea of some leftover Tron and Yori code going into a new Program (creating a de facto “daughter”), Mercury would be a semi-canonical way to pull it off. Rebecca Romjin is the voice for Mercury, and with the distortion they put on her voice, she still sounds like Mystique from the Singer X-Men films. She's more like the Grid types in that she's ruthless and cunning. However, when the mission required her to sacrifice herself during a reformat, she got Jet out of the way without a blink. There was some implied romantic interest between her and Jet, but there wasn't a lot of screen time exploring it.
I-No:
If Ram had lived to see old age, he'd be I-No. A terribly friendly and relaxed sort, he marvels at Jet's elaborate coding and addresses him as “stranger,” in the same way the nice old man across the street would use “kiddo.” The old Tower Guardian had been around for a long time, and even mentions that he was one of those taken prisoner by the MCP during the film's events. You can easily see him and Dumont having a quiet drink of energy and playing a friendly game of mahjong. He still is a Guardian, though. He chose to accept de-rez when the system he was on went critical.



The less-than good guys
J. D. Thorne:
After being passed up for Vice President of security for Encom, Thorne became receptive to bribes. When he was approached by Crown, he was all too willing to fall for the bribe and sell out Encom's security secrets. His PDA doesn't have a lot of contacts on – the pizza place, a therapist, a few work contacts, and his mom. He also had at least one cat. He agreed to get digitized, believing Alan was lying about the need for correction algorithms. Alan does not bullshit, and Thorne found out the hard way. The process was not stable, and he ended up being a personified computer virus, infecting half of Encom and turning his private server into a sickening wasteland. Eventually, his body just fell apart from all the corruption and a beating by the Infiltration Counter Programs.
Seth Crown III (Attorney):
Born 9-25-74 in New York City. Went to Harvard and Cambridge. He is a medium-built, sharp-dressed African-American man (voiced by David "Sgt. Johnson" Scully). He's listed in his profile as a “born leader,” but he's the kind of “leader” that scares or bribes his people into complying. He's the type of guy, it seems, for whom everyone has a price. Most of his dialogue indicates that he's the guy who could probably hold a gun to someone's head and still keep his voice even. He's also the guy who keeps commenting that they “do something” about Alan, even after locking him in the storage room. One of the emails also states that he paid Alan a visit and made some “persuasive threats.” Whatever those threats were, they worked.
Dr. Eva Popoff (Human resources):
Born 3-13-78 in Lyons, France. Graduated American University of Paris. Native language is French, but she speaks English, Russian, German, and Cantonese as well. It says she's excellent at managing large groups (herd control), but stiff with one-on-one situations. That's the polite way of saying she's the HR manager from hell. She's heavy on the “resources” aspect of the “human resources,” and just a shade above Catbert in attitude. She's usually right behind Crown on the intimidation roll and the most aggressive about launching the Datawraith project – safeguards be hung. Popoff is frankly the most batshit nuts of the three, and completely shameless about the Datawraith project being able to appropriate anything from credit card data to state secrets, giving F-Con an “unprecedented influence over people and nations...erasing any who oppose us!” She and Dillinger Sr. would probably work smashingly together. Hell, if I were to give him a mistress on the side, it would be her (and I'd pity Dillinger).
Esmond Baza (Technician):
Born 11-10-71 in Delhi, India. Educated in Leicester, UK. His file says he's self-critical and prone to bouts of depression. What it means is that he's pretty much been bullied by Crown and Popoff to be the code monkey for their scheme. His clothing is rumpled and his shirt hangs half-open. He's easily bribed and intimidated, which means he's Crown's chew toy. Really, Baza is a weak man strung along by the nastier pair above.

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