All the characters in the story are inmates of a hi-tech, max-security women’s prison.

“Gau was no one. And her ambition was to be more of a no one.”

Full Name: Gautama Deer Parson.

Gau had spent most of her life in the Pacific North-West, but her favorite place on earth was Disneyland. 

As a child, she had a small robomouse. The mouse was a compromise–her parents wanted no AI around the house and Gau wanted a cute XL capybara robopet, like all the other kids. After years of negotiations, her parents finally caved in and allowed for the tiniest, most inoffensive one–if Gau did all her chores.  

Gau was satisfied. 

After a few years, her little mouse’s optical wire broke. It was now blind.  

She kept it exactly as it was. She couldn’t bear the thought of hurting it by ripping the cord out to put a new one in, and mom and dad wouldn’t let her go into a roboshop even if she tried. They said, “Anyway, in nature, in real life, Gau, things break. Things die, and spoil, and run away from you. Real life is dealing with all those facts, and loving life just as it is. Broken means real. Don’t trust anyone who says everything is replaceable.”  

She had a blind mouse, and loved it. When mom and dad left, and she went to university, and could do whatever she wanted with her money and her morals, she bought two more–broken ones, from the local internet market. Their optical wires were broken, too. 

She now had three blind mice. Like in Disneyland. 

When she started her BnB, she had to turn them off. She thought, the guests would hate them. They’d be turned off. 

The three mice stood in her office, on a shelf. She turned them on only when she did accounting there, alone. She’d watch the mice play then. If she so much as heard a guest’s approaching footsteps, she’d hurry for the master remote and switch them off immediately. They’re too morbid, probably, she’d always fear. 

   “An expensively crisp neon and white lace tattoo peeked out from under the three-finger holoscroll gloves that extended from the sleeves of her all-black zip-up.”

Full Name: Ixchel María Monterrey.

For her quinceañera, Ixchel got a three-bedroom apartment on the fifty-second floor of a skinny skyscraper on Manhattan’s so-called Billionaire’s Row. 

As soon as she turned eighteen, she moved. She had lived there, alone, ever since. Until her conviction. 

“She walked in small, resolute steps; half a lady and half a cage fighter.”

Full Name: Ephesiah Smith.

Ephesiah worked in a commercial cosmetics-testing laboratory. 

“She embodied the type of perfectly natural chaos that would take a professional styling team half a work week to storyboard.”

Full Name: Korra Mahandra.

Korra had a red-eyed, white pet rat–a biological one–when she was a teenager. Fizzy reminds her of him. 

“Her slightly downturned eyes seemed both careful and impatient at the same time.”

Full Name: Proserpina Lucien Jackson.

Proserpina was conceived using PRS (posthumous sperm retrieval). 

Her mother accepted the request for DNA-combining from a wealthy Cameroonian elderly couple whose only son had died before he had children. 

As Proserpina is the only descendant from her biological father’s bloodline, when her paternal grandparents died when she was a teenager, she received all their wealth. She invested that money into her beloved and extremely expensive hobby–which her mother hated. 

Despite her mother’s disdain for her “frivolous” pursuits, Serpie succeeded in making herself independently famous in a sport that required vast amounts of financial resources to succeed in.   

Serpie was convicted for the legacy of her paternal line. She is serving a double for USA and Cameroon. 

“The glossy, thin braids that her waist-length white hair gathered into swayed gently with her every step.”

Full Name: Reykjavik Carrey.

Reykjavik came from a long line of homebodies.  

She never worked a day in her life, and neither did her mother, or her grandmother before her, or her grand grandmother before her. 

 “Lori still seemed worried. She huddled even closer to Ixchel. She was both taller and stronger than Ixchel, making the scene appear as if a scaredy lion tried hiding behind a puffed-up fawn.”

Full Name: Lori Lou Calvato.

Lori always carried five stuffed toys with her on every flight.

When she was a child, her father told her it was rude to book an entire seat just for her toys.

The little Lori, having never been denied anything before, was personally offended. This scarcity might have inspired her burning obsession with bag collecting.

“She walked with an awkward clumsiness, like someone who likes the idea of walking, but isn’t too happy about the muscles-working reality of it.”

Full Name: Mikki Lavoie.

In highschool, Mikki once spent an entire semester researching how to 3D print boiling hot wontons. She ruined seven printers.

She never succeeded. Neither did anyone else.

“She ended in a dramatic whisper, then dropped into a heavy bow, folding her upper body in a cut-marionette slump.”

Full Name: Rendivia Keahi-Stolle.

Rendivia mostly performed barefoot.