Character Profiles

MacKensie Peter’s life up to that point had been an array of blues and whites. His career had stretched across both collars; from A/C technician to working on a Master’s degree in Psychology. He had been a man of resources most of his adult life, but a man still wrestling with the niche we all pursue in our life—travailed around a streak of uncertainty that had dictated itself as fate through his thirty-two years. Recently, he had finely starched his new collar to the psychotherapy banner; but he was still years away from achieving his doctorate. His friendship with Roger had prospered only through their subtle addiction to cribbage, bad jokes and football, even to the point of following Roger into the corporate world of SCAB! Magazine. He to keep moving towards his degree; Roger to use as a springboard back to the career he had once had. Their camaraderie had evolved like most until, without really realizing it; they had become pals, then good chums. Now they numbered each other amongst their close circle of friends. Mac cared little for the business, except as a rich source of watching life turn against individuals; and a good source to conduct a dissertation on the frailties of human emotions. Although, if put to it, he couldn’t decide whether or not his study would be on the people featured in the rag or the people who bought it. Being from Oklahoma, Mac grew up listening to the Texas bands from Austin, so his recollection of the band, SYN, was not a long stretch. He was still a child, when the band had disappeared from the Oklahoma airwaves, did not recall they had gone to California. But he did remember his father in the evenings, fixing the ’72 Nova; the one Mac still continuously tinkered with, with the radio blaring the Austin City Limits. A smile creased his brow as the remembrance came and went.

Jose Miranda’s life up to this point had been one of solitary resolution. He never did like sports and was thus thrown into the group of undesirables in the public school system. He became a reclusive, taking more pleasure in the video games he adored then in a place that seemed to spend most of its time looking for ways to bully him. After that college was no better and his affixation with computers and their inner workings he parlayed into a degree in computer science. He may have finished his MFA by now, except for that catastrophic error in judgment stupid bet! that had enticed him to break into the UCLA data system to change a grade for a friend. Or his attempt, for he had been found out; his grant gone, his expulsion a moot point. He had continued his education in the web of electronics by himself and was satisfied that he had learned quite a bit more from trial and error, than he would have ever learned in the confines of a classroom.

After several stints in the business network, he had chanced upon interfacing computer enhancements and the love affair had begun. Using the last of his savings, school money, he bought into the entire Apple Final Cut package and began working for himself. His most prestigious account was with the infamous SCAB!, for which he set up unlikely photo opportunities; president meeting with aliens, two-headed babies, Sasquatch. It was fun, but gnawing at the back of his craw was finding a use for his skill; a purpose or at least a respectable purpose.

Several blocks away, Isabella Baum sat contemplating her future and her ever present problem. She was a woman of practical measures. Perhaps it was her upbringing in the Jewish tradition that had prepared her as a pragmatic; perhaps it was the Italian in her that caused her annoyance of people who believed half of the shit: teaching Creationism in schools, that climate change was god’s will, that the welfare state was responsible for the record high unemployment, that religion was our only salvation, the religion of commercialism. It was not so much a break with religion as a drifting away; a log upon a winnowing stream. Her religion had grown from a sense of humanitarianism toward those less fortunate than herself, the view of a vengeful god inflicting pain and suffering upon his devoted followers just so much flotsam and jetsam within her mind. But the last few nights at work in the shelter had drawn her bead closer to God and the prayers she could still remember from her youth suddenly came back to her.

She had always felt an empathy for the downtrodden; perhaps that was why she had turned her back on her father’s business; turned her back on her own pet project; why even now, as the mumbling continued from the corridor in the darkest section of the shelter; while mothers and children huddled together in disbelief on the cots at the other side of the building, she felt a duty to remain.