Eps1.1 ones-and-zer0es.mpeg/Summary

Elliot watches as a group of men in suits sit at a round table with Tyrell Wellick at the head. "Give a man a gun and he can rob a bank. Give a man a bank and he can rob the world," Tyrell says. He explains that he likes this saying because it means that power resides with those who take it. He tells Elliot this meeting may be illegal, so he has gathered 11 lawyers, and offers Elliot to be the head of Cybersecurity for E Corp. Elliot asks to think about it.

Tyrell dismisses the lawyers. Alone, he tells Elliot that he is on his way to becoming CTO and would like to thank the hackers who took down his predecessor, Terry Colby. He informs him that E Corp will be internalizing their network by the end of quarter, so Allsafe will be cut loose and go out of business, thus Elliot should be with him. Elliot declines.

Elliot is driven home by Mr. Sutherland, who gives him a number to reach Tyrell. Walking to his apartment, Elliot comes across his neighbor/drug dealer Shayla bickering with the handsy Fernando Vera. As he drives away, Shayla tells Elliot that he was just an employer that can't take a hint. Elliot asks for a refill, but Shayla is hesitant because she doesn't have withdrawal meds to go with it. Elliot insists anyway.

At home, Elliot snorts some of his morphine, then goes to work hacking Tyrell. He finds that Tyrell's password to E Corp's mail system is trivial, and starts to look through the mail... and then comments to us that this was too easy, it's as if Tyrell expected Elliot to hack him. Panicked, Elliot pulls the memory chips, disk drives, and other components from his system and destroys them (microwaving chips, drilling holes in disk drives). He puts all of the ruined bits into a trash bag and goes out and tosses it into a subway station trash bin.

Elliot arrives at AllSafe, where he wonders if everyone is looking at him, but their attention is on the office TV which is showing news of the arrest of Terry Colby. Elliot wonders to us whether he destroyed Colby's life just to advance Tyrell.

Gideon calls Elliot in and gives him a raise, a recognition for saving the company, but Gideon is curious about the dat file, and why Elliot didn't talk about it at the meeting. Elliot tells us he's worried about how much Gideon is suspecting, but says that he wasn't yet really sure if the dat file was anything, it could have been junk. Gideon is satisfied, but wants Elliot to keep investigating, since the fsociety hackers could do anything. Elliot is alarmed: how does Gideon even know the name "F Society"? Gideon shows him a video that the group just released.

In the video, a figure in a mask and with a filter-distorted voice represents "F Society". It addresses "Evil Corporation", and says they "we" have been watching, "we" know how evil E Corp is and all that it has done to oppress humanity, and "we" have collected tons of data stolen from E Corp's systems, dirt that would bring down E Corp if released. And they will release it, unless their demands are met: the release of their leader Terry Colby, the freeing of all of the debts of the world's debtors, and the dismantling of E Corp. "The people of the world no longer accept your economic slavery."

Outside on a busy sidewalk, Angela and Ollie run into Elliot. (Nearby, there's a guy handing out his music CD's, free, he only wants people to like him on social media.) They congratulate Elliot on saving the company, and invite him to dinner. Elliot pauses, uncertain, and then notices in the crowd two men in black coats, looking like E Corp security men, moving towards him; he quickly accepts their offer and hurries off home. (Angela and Ollie pass by CD guy, and Ollie accepts a CD from him.)

Elliot gets home, and he telling us he's worried about the fsociety hackers and the data dumps they have from E Corp, what they were talking about with freeing Colby, none of that was anything he had heard fsociety was doing; he needs to cut his ties with them. But in his apartment he discovers one of the fsociety hackers, Darlene, using his shower to take a bath, as if she had every right to be there. She borrows some of his clothes, saying hers are in a washer, and says Elliot had been expected to come last night, the others are expecting him later today. She seems strangely familiar with him, but he doesn't know her at all.

Elliot and Darlene take the subway to Coney Island. He asks her how it is she knows him, but she assumes they know each other, it's only natural she knows where he lives and all that. Elliot remarks to us she's just weird, or crazy, if this is fsociety, maybe he should go to Gideon and tell him everything. She switches him to another train just ahead of the two E Corp security men following them; he tells us it's as if she can see them too, they're not a hallucination.

They get to the fsociety hangout on Coney Island, and the other hackers, Mr. Robot, Romero, Mobley, and Trenton, applaud him, and say he did a good job. But Darlene asks Mr. Robot about the "Steel Mountain plan", and he says it's not ready. They all go do different things, and Mr. Robot and Elliot talk.

Mr. Robot says they have a plan: E Corp, and many other evil corporations, maintain backups at Steel Mountain, that's a secure place, what we can do is, Elliot can use his AllSafe clearance to hack the Comet natural gas plant near Steel Mountain, we're working on what to do there to cause a natural gas explosion that will destroy the Steel Mountain facility. Elliot is aghast at this, and asks if the other hackers know this plan, and Mr. Robot says Elliot is the first.

This is way outside Elliot's comfort zone, he says he's not killing anyone. As Elliot goes to leave, Mr. Robot asks, "are you a one or a zero? Are you a yes or a no? Are you going to act or not?" Elliot refuses: "Life's not that binary." But Mr. Robot continues: "Beneath every choice, there's either a one or a zero." Elliot leaves, though Mr. Robot says, if he leaves, he's gone from the group, don't come back.

During a subway trip home, Elliot wonders to us whether he should turn the fsociety gang in.

He gets home and checks in at Shayla's, and discovers Fernando Vera there, dressed only in underwear, and he says Shayla is in the tub, and don't disturb her. They talk, Elliot uncomfortably, about Elliot's drug use, while Elliot explains to us what he's found about Vera: he's the "worst human being he's ever hacked", running drugs, porn, and guns, and his e-business is terribly unsecured, so the evidence of all that, including killing rivals, is all available. It would be easy to turn Vera in, but he's Shayla's only supplier, so Elliot needs him. Vera gets dressed and leaves, leaving behind the hint, backed up by his gun: Shayla is his.

Once Vera is gone, Elliot breaks into the bathroom, and finds Shayla bruised and drugged out in the tub; she says Vera came over, they smoked some, and that's all she remembers; it's clear she's been drugged and raped. But she doesn't want Elliot to do anything about Vera, she needs his money.

Elliot walks the streets, musing to us on how Mr. Robot is right, we have to pick yes or no. He could do nothing, keep getting his drugs from Vera and Shayla; but Vera kills people, and has just raped Shayla, Elliot says he has no choice.

Elliot is at an appointment at Krista's office, and he's complaining about "everything", about not being in control, not having choices worth making. (Throughout, this scene is interspersed with scenes of him doing web search into Vera's crimes with drugs and guns.) We think we can make choices, but they're trivial, like which of two drinks we want, but none of it really matters. (Elliot is shown uploading a file to an NYPD Anonymous Tip Line website.) It's as if the choices we make are predestined. (Now we see Elliot walking along a street, and there are Vera and several others, handcuffed and surrounded by police, as other police load evidence into a van.) Elliot tells Krista he had been in a "project", which he thought could have been special, but it turned out to be a mistake, might as well have done nothing. Krista says that Elliot had earlier talked about how his father had similarly chosen to do nothing about his cancer, or the company that gave it to him, and that he had no options, but Elliot now has options. Elliot gets upset and won't talk about his father, or anything else.

At home, Elliot is burning his Vera files onto a CD, and labeling it as music. His phone rings, it's Angela, he ignores it.

At home, Angela hangs up the phone, and tells Ollie she's worried about Elliot, he's been seeming out of sorts at work. Ollie is busy at his laptop, he's been trying to insert the CD he was given earlier, but he complains that it just freezes his computer. He checks his email, and there's mail from Stella B., with a picture and a message "come over tonight." Ollie takes care that Angela not see this, and tells her that he needs to go out and meet with a buddy who is unexpectedly in town. He leaves, but his laptop is still on, with its camera facing the bathroom where Angela is....

And now we see the CD guy, sitting in a library, looking at his laptop screen, which is showing what Ollie's laptop sees. Angela moves out of the camera view, so the guy closes the window. He opens another window that seems to be a chat in Chinese characters. He adds a line to the chat, in Chinese, but a subtitle translates it: "(Cisco) we're in."

The next day, Elliot is out walking on the boardwalk along the ocean, and finds Mr. Robot sitting on the railing. Elliot sits with him, looking over the rock-strewn beach. Elliot says he's come up with a plan to destroy the Steel Mountain backups without using an explosion. Mr. Robot doesn't want to hear about it until he gets past an issue: Elliot walked away, and now wants back in. He needs to hear from Elliot about his father. With some reluctance, Elliot explains that his father was his best friend, he worked at E Corp all his life until they suddenly fired him, then he developed leukemia. He made Elliot swear not to tell anyone, not even Mom, even though he got sicker and sicker. Eventually he got so bad that Elliot told Mom, and that got Dad so angry that he pushed Elliot out a window, and Dad never spoke to Elliot after that, to the day he died.

Elliot asks Mr. Robot, so, are we good now? Mr. Robot nods and puts his hand on Elliot's shoulder. He says he knows what it's like to lose a parent, but did Elliot ever think he deserved what Dad did to him? Elliot says no, he didn't do anything, he was trying to help. Mr. Robot pushes Elliot off the railing, unto the rocks below. Mr. Robot comments to the air, "You didn't commit to the sacred pact you'd formed," and walks away.