A few thoughts about Yori’s job.
So, Yori is clearly a program involved in operating the Digitizing Laser. We see her name appear in the lower right corner of the screen, as the digitized orange appears in the computer.
This makes sense, since the program-mirroring-user rules of this world imply that Yori is Lora’s program, and Lora calls the laser her “life’s work.” Stands to reason that she could have written software for it.
Now, there’s some room to wonder just exactly what Yori does for the laser.
The fact that her name only appears after digitization is complete, seems to suggest that her work is mainly in receiving and processing the digitized data that the Laser brought in.
This also makes sense later, when we see Yori working on the “Solar Sailer Simulation.” It’s not processing digitized matter from The Realm Of The Invisible, like she was meant to do…. but it’s still managing simulations, the rendering of matter in digital form.
It seems clear that the MCP, at some point in this timeline, took her away from her intended purpose… and put her in a different job that was not what she was made to do, but still used her skills.
One interesting question, though.
When exactly do you think the MCP made this change?
I don’t think it was before the test we see where Lora and Gibbs were digitizing the orange. At that point we still see Yori’s name… and if anything had unexpectedly changed from their usual setup, I think Lora and Gibbs would have talked about it.
So I think Yori’s reassignment happened sometime after that.
But… did it happen before or after Flynn got digitized?
This is all we see on the screen, up until the MCP zaps Flynn with the laser.
We don’t see Yori– but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything, because in the original Orange Test, we didn’t see Yori anyway until after the orange was digitized into the computer.
So, I think it could go either way.
Maybe the MCP had taken over the whole process by then, and Yori was already gone from the laser.
Or maybe Yori was still here at this point, being forced to do this terrifying job…
and we don’t see her name on the screen, because we are already looking at Flynn inside the computer by the time her name would have shown up.
If she was forced to be involved in processing the digitized data that turned out to be Flynn… what do you suppose that was like for her?
Did she ever learn what it was that she did there? Or connect it to what she later learned about Flynn, when she met him in person?
Did the process go the same way as receiving an orange, or was it fundamentally different? Did she get an idea of what Flynn looked like? Or just his “function”… whatever that would have shown up as!
Was she involved in the simulation rendering that caused him to rez-in with all that armor on?
(This would make her, perhaps, the first “Siren.” And maybe an inspiration for Flynn’s later work… if the experience of her putting armor on him somehow stayed in his memory.)
(I suppose if it did, it was probably a hazy moment in between the laser blast and the rez-in, and he might never have become sure that part wasn’t a dream or hallucination.)
