Whatever happened to Rio Dresnik?

Midnight's another character I'm overwhelmingly fond of, but one I hardly ever use. Her physical detachment from the main cast (she lives in America, somewhere on the East Coast; the main bulk of the story happens in Manchester, England) makes it hard to work her into any storyline. (I don't like overdoing it on the 'events within a computer game' strips, because 1) I don't play many games that were released past about 1999, so I just end up creating generic stuff that bears no relation to real gaming, and 2) It always feels like a total cheat when people do 'fictional reality' ideas too often, like when Star Trek: Voyager used to do a holodeck episode every three fucking weeks.)

Midnight's a more interesting character than some of the others because she's essentially a child playing in the adult playground -- she's 14/15 (she did give her age in her first arc, but I think she was lying) and has an IQ far in excess of any other member of the cast. Which is bizarre, because she's American and the rest of the cast are largely English. I think Midnight - or Laurell, to give her her proper name - is probably doomed to end up like Daria from the cartoon series of the same name. She seems to have little life outside of online gaming and her own white-hat hacks for various apps -- like the Trillian hack Halifax had on his phone in the pre-Milton Hoight strips -- and the occasional bit of malicious hacking, as seen in this very strip. In fact, one gets the impression she'll either end up going to MIT and then going on to serve some kind of tecnological company... or else she'll be an anti-government hacker for several years until the government finally tracks her down and grabs her onto the payroll.

Midnight Soliloquy: an interesting girl, but one with a far more interesting future ahead of her.