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.