Antonia Stevens

Java, java, java. Java this, Java that. Seriously. If it wasn't coffee it was an island in Indonesia or the programming language or the games made using it.

She typed it into Google. Apparently it was a board game too, that won some German award. Fascinating stuff.

Of course, Antonia was just trying to avoid actually doing her programming. When she'd signed up to be a programmer for Mahrtsche Inc. she thought she'd stick it out for a year or three and then move onto something bigger and better. After all, no one wanted to be a code monkey forever, did they? Some of her superiors certainly seemed as though they'd never stop. But their job was mostly to oversee what she was doing, and then take all the credit. Half the time their suggestions were useless. They probably knew that, too and were only pretending to help.

And all the time Antonia was still here fifteen years later, when everyone else had had a life. They'd had promotions and weddings and babies and divorces and she was still in the same place. Java, java, java...

Kristen Sims

Sometimes it really helps if you don't have a very interesting name. You know, like MacGuyver Ignatius Santorimo. For one thing, everyone would ask you if your parents were big on MacGuyver (and frankly, the answer was often no). And then there's the spelling mistakes. Or the utterly ridiculous things like when Frank asks if MacGuyver's related to Benicio Del Toro. As if 'Santorimo' is anything like Del Toro. Or Torro for that matter, since I'm not quite sure how to spell that.

So when I have friends like MacGuyver and Frank Firth (the Frankfurter), I'm kind of glad that my name's Kristen Sims. I mean, there's not really all that much you can do with it. Until the Sims came out to be the most popular PC game of all time. So, like MacGuyver I get the people asking if I'm related to so-and-so Sims whose last name is more than likely not even Sims.

People can be such idiots.

Randal Haney

Randal was the sort who found himself outside of the popular crowd during high school. He supposed that that was the place where most people called "Randal" found themselves. Archetypal Randals also seemed to be kind of small, rather too skinny and have red hair. Randal found, rather unsettlingly, that he fell into all three categories. His parents certainly knew what they were talking about when they named him.

Randal had no idea how. When he'd been born he was a fat baby (there was no denying it), he was of average size, and his hair was more blond than red. It was a bit odd, really. It kind of made him think that maybe it wasn't actually the name suiting him. But rather a case of him suiting the name. Now if only he could figure out why he would want to suit his name.

Holly Sykes

Holly Sykes was absolutely no relation to Bill Sykes. Of course, that was only to be expected as she is real, and he is fictional. Nonetheless, when people encountered her last name, that was their first thought... before they remembered that he was fictional. Holly didn't mind of course. After all, it's kind of funny, if you think about it. How could people be so silly?

Except, of course, that she would have preferred to be pseudo-related to someone a bit nicer. He wasn't exactly a nice guy in Oliver Twist, and wasn't even particularly attractive... not that he was supposed to be, or anything. And Holly did like to think that she was an attractive person. Not only physically, but personality-wise as well. Of course, when people found the really Holly under her layers of deceit, they didn't tend to like her too much. But Holly was careful to never let that happen. What would happen would happen, and it would be much nicer if everyone had a good opinion of her. It certainly helped if she ever happened to, oh, murder someone and try to get away with it.

Lacking - a work of non-fiction

As you may have noticed, I haven't posted in over a week. Part of the reason for this is because I had my wisdom teeth pulled out last week so I wasn't feeling up to it. But after I regained my senses I couldn't think of anything I wanted to write about. Even forcing myself to find just 100 measly words. It's kind of sad. I don't think even this is 100 words long. Oh well.

Harmony

Discordia would have been a better name, Harmony thought as she sat at her table in detention. Everything always seemed to fall to pieces around her. She traced a finger over the graffiti on the desk in front of her, but not touching those bits that were too crude, even for her. Sure, she spent a lot of time in detention, but that didn't mean that she was a bad person. It didn't mean that she swore all the time, or had... impure thoughts. Harmony wasn't even quite sure what it was that she was meant to be thinking to go with the rest of her delinquency.

She drummed her fingers on the surface before her, alternating between the fingertips and the nails. She checked her watch. 10 seconds. She alternated the rhythm so that it was syncopated. 30 seconds. 31 seconds. 32 seconds.

"Would you stop that tapping please?" the teacher sitting at the larger table at the front of the room asks. Probably rhetorically.

32 seconds. It had taken the last teacher four minutes before she'd become irritated enough to even ask her to stop. Better not mess with this one.

The bell rang finally, ten minutes later. Harmony had just about given up on it ever ringing. She was almost certain that the bell was broken before she remembered that she had set her watch five minutes fast. She picked up her bag and left the room without a word to the supervising teacher.

Detention lesson number ten: Don't flush the toilet when the sign says "out of order". It's there for your own benefit.

Robin Misses a Bus

He sat at the bus stop, waiting.

"Stupid," he cursed himself. He couldn't believe he'd just missed his bus. And for what? How had he been late anyway? He hadn't done anything other than what he usually did. And he'd checked his watch; the bus hadn't been early. But somehow, he wasn't there when the bus had come.

Most people would just chalk it up to having taken a little longer to walk to the bus stop. But not Robin, no. He had to have timed it. He left at the same time, walked at the same rate, but hadn't arrived on time.

As he got on the next bus (which was thankfully early), he mused longer. He nattered to the other man in the elevator about it. He whined while his manager came to drop off yet another pile of work for him to do. He complained through his lunch break with his friends. He griped to his fellow commuters at the bus stop home.

And finally, he crawled into bed, only to dream about it all night.

The next day he woke up to do it all again.