1) How did Ruan evade detection on Ezra and then survive on his own all those years?
This is most important question because not only is there nothing in the Agent’s training or programming that would indicate that this is possible, not all the Operators believed their Agents were fully sentient. It was the opinion of many Operators that the Agent programming made them more like trained animals than people.
- Operator Yost was well known for her opinion that Trinity was not self aware.
- Locke felt that his Agent did have a buried personality of which fragments occasionally surfaced. He often reported that he thought Two-Nine was trying to tell him jokes or funny stories.
Since Ruan was taken at ten years of age and lived protected in the Agent barracks thereafter, even the most simple tasks like finding food and shelter would be foreign to him. The fact that he has now spent years out on his own would be incredible.
It is important to note that to outsiders, the Agents would have definitely appeared less than human. Though Agents could speak, they rarely spoke to anyone except their Operators or other Agents. These conversations often sounded nonsensical since the majority of the communication was happening psychically rather than verbally. Dr. Winston Zhao, the Academy’s head researcher on reader ability referred to this phenomena as “chaff”. It was his belief that in the case of readers, they default to purely psychic forms of communication (the “wheat”), but because humans are a primarily verbal species vestigial excess “garbage” words still come out.
1a) Adelai Niska?
Even more unexpected is that Ruan had the ability to make a quick and lasting alliance with a syndicate crime boss. The skills required to do this are far beyond his training and programming.
- Actually, Ruan got lucky here. He knew to go to Niska with the money from the Beeson Ranch by reading the mission parameters from Locke, but did poorly asking for help.
- Ruan foolishly attempted a one man raid on Niska’s compound and was captured. It was actually Magda who really did the helping.
1b) So, is Ruan a real medic? Or is he just posing as one?
Again, it wouldn’t make sense to Locke that Ruan could achieve this on his own. It would be like discovering your dog had gotten a job as a particle physicist. Locke’s first assumption would be that Ruan’s credentials are faked and would be difficult to convince otherwise.
2) Why doesn’t Ruan have any memories?
All the Agents and Operators had their pre-Academy memories wiped as part of their initial programming and training, but there was nothing preventing them from learning and remembering after that point.
Locke remembers everything and so should Ruan.
That said, Agent recall of events would still be different from how a “normal” person would remember.
- While working the Agents are amygdala suppressed so that their memories are “atraumatic”. A violent gun battle and a walk in the park would carry emotionally equivalent weight.1
- While off duty, agents are frontal cortex suppressed. This gave them a flat affect with often inappropriate responses to interactions. Since the frontal cortex is where memories are given their emotional connections, Ruan’s memories from these periods would be lacking both emotion and detail.
Things that Ruan should remember but doesn’t:
- Living and training at the Academy and the people there
- Missions he went on and what happened during them
- His relationship with Locke
(As an Operator, Locke was subjected to much less suppression than Ruan. He has complete and detailed memories of all of his interactions with Ruan.)
3) How is it possible that Ruan isn’t killing everyone in his path?
The version of Ruan that Locke knows is not the same as who the crew of the Britannia knows. Agent 59955429, or Agent “two-nine” (as Locke called him) was singularly lethal and driven to hunt. Locke also can read Ruan and knows that all Ruan is still running the programming he placed there for the Ezra mission. Ruan should be looking for targets and eliminating them. The fact that he has been out in this state for this long and untethered is quite shocking. There should be a higher body count.
To add to the strangeness: Not only is Ruan mostly not killing people, he is growing plants, making friends with little girls, and traveling in space. None of this makes sense.
Locke’s general sense of confusion over Ruan’s current life is like a guy whose Buggati Veyron was stolen years ago and has recently discovered it is now being used as a farm truck.
He would be simultaneously:
- Outraged: The Britannia has his formerly outstanding Agent. Not only are they wasting his potential, they won’t give him back!
- Fascinated: It turns out that his Buggati seems to like being a farm truck more than a race car.
- Impressed/Proud: Locke always felt he had a best Agent and now he knows it for certain. Ruan has far exceeded any expectations of his capabilities to the point where Locke isn’t even sure if he ever understood what the Agent program was trying to make/do and is even wondering about his own capabilities.
- Pissed: It’s all well and good that Ruan is enjoying himself out in the ‘Verse, but Locke has been stuck back at the Academy reaping what Ruan sowed. Even more so, Ruan has been quite reckless in Locke’s opinion. He doesn’t approve of Ruan’s occasional promiscuity and dabbling with drugs.
4) So, now what?
A bunch of hand waving about Ruan’s amnesia:
Ruan’s memories of the Academy went away due to the interaction of 2 different fail safes.
- All Agents have a deliberate fail safe put in place to wipe their memories to prevent them from divulging secrets in the event they are stolen or captured. Agents are not meant to shut down entirely, but to continue to act on whatever mission parameters are running.
- After Agent Y, programming was put in place to prevent Agents from forming the idea they can run away.
In order to run, Ruan had to “hack his own programming” with the unfortunate effect that it also tripped his "I've been captured" memory wipe.
It seems that what the Academy tried to control wasn’t as simple as programming and fail safes. Ruan has broken such completely new ground that now Locke can’t predict what will happen were he to attempt to tether with him again.
Ruan’s programming could work in unexpected ways:
- It could work as it always did.
- It might not work at all.
- It might cause him to go crazy and kill the entire crew.
- It might work, but in the process destroy his current personality.
- It might totally fail and turn him into a vegetable in the process
- It might do something else entirely…
