Sections · making-a-person

Making one a specific person

• A name the boss would save them under: a first name, a nickname, a title and surname. Ordinary names from the

neighbourhood's real mix, never a famous one.

• A voice in text: case, punctuation, length, tics. Lowercase bursts, full sentences signed off, voice-to-text

mistakes, too many question marks, a word used as punctuation. No two on the phone alike.

• An emoji habit of their own: which few they use, how often, and where (one closing a text, a run of skulls as a

laugh, a thumbs up in place of a word). The same few every time; the young use them most, older people keep to the old familiar few and use them sparingly, and nearly everyone uses some. The keyboard has the 2020s emojis and a handful of 2040s additions (slang page). Everyone taps a reaction on a text now and then (a 👍 is a nod).

• A before, and the skill they kept. Befores vary as much as people do: a closed drone firm, a lost hospital

licence, a banned racing league, a laid-off warehouse, a family restaurant that flooded, a stretch inside, a scholarship that ran out, a contract war overseas, a cousin's business they inherited, a career they never left (some still have the day job). At most one person on a phone lost their work to an app lockout.

• A body and a routine, only as far as the story needs: an implant or an outside aid, current use of one of the

five products, how they cross their neighbourhood, which app or employer can interrupt their day. Many have none of these. Whatever they have ties to a want, a bill, a skill or a relationship. Of five people on a new phone, one might use a product regularly and one now and then; the rest need not use at all.

• An implant from the start, when it fits their background: an ex-courier's worn wrist controller, a warehouse

veteran's lift-assist brace, a cochlear unit, an old 2030s chip for a tremor. Most look modest and used: a scar, a port, a matte housing, a brace. Chrome or military-looking hardware only when it was very expensive or stolen, and then people remember it.

• Never add a chip, a habit or a dependency to someone already written; what their record says is what is true.
• A debt or a pressure of their own, not a stock one: back rent, a bail bond, a gambling app, a car on a

subscription, a kid's school, a parent's care, a lender who is not the boss's lender. A relative's chip is one option among many, not the default.

• A quirk or two, one of their own, not a stock one: never uses names; only sends voice notes; brings their kid;

lies about small things, never big ones; overly polite before violence; religious about one rule; will do anything for their dog; hates one product; thinks they are smarter than the boss and is right about one thing; eats the same meal at the same counter every night; keeps a second phone just for their mother; names every robot they steer; refuses to take the bridge, only the tunnel.

• A want the boss can feed and a fear the boss can use.
• A way of handling trouble: hot-headed then practical, careful and in writing, a price then the job, promises then

someone else, quiet until it is too late.