Dr. Ellis pulled an old fashioned looking pocket watch, that was inexplicably blinking and vibrating like a phone, from his pocket and tsked, "The team working on Karyn's revamp needs to run some things by me. I'll leave you two to work on Mackenzie; remember, we want her to challenge Sarah but not be a carbon copy. I think the biggest reason Tiffany didn't work out as a good rival was that she comes off as a more promiscuous knock off Sarah. Store brand loses to name brand every time, so let's give Mackenzie a different flavor all together." Taylor and Roger both nodded in affirmation and Elias turned for the door.
"See ya later, doc" Mackenzie called after him playfully. It paid to be on good terms with the guy who essentially ran your entire world, after all.
Elias chuckled, "See you then, Mackenzie." He then sighed a little as he strode out of Mackenzie's editing bay. While a relatively small team was working on repurposing the program previously known as Program J, now designated Mackenzie Choi, the main group of writers/programmers were working on the Sarah side of things. Maybe it was the consequence of having too many voices in the room, but they'd yet to come to any real consensus on the new direction to push their star in. There was a group, mostly older programmers, who wanted to rework the old plan of having Rebecca Hart be Karyn's best friend, while several of the young guns were pushing for a different direction. There were benefits to the former position; Rebecca was a full blown secondary character program, given her original expected role, and wouldn't need much tinkering or upgrading to step into the limelight. She also had a decent size circle of friends that Karyn could join; one of the main issues with Karyn's friendship with Jon, was that it was largely only with Jon, limiting her interactions with other characters. They didn't expect Karyn to be the social butterfly that Sarah was, that wasn't in her personality projections, but they had hoped for her to become friends with a lot of the more alternative kids in contrast to Sarah's popular clique, the drama kids, artists, players of less popular sports, that sort of thing.
The argument against pushing the two together also had weight; for one, it hadn't worked the first time, even with them arranging a couple early meetings. The two programs just didn't adhere to one another. They had to keep a delicate balance with how much they interfered with the world, constantly messing with your programs could ruin their own internal reasoning. Besides, the point of the show was that it was largely 'real', with the characters making decisions for themselves. So while Karyn choosing Jon as her closest friend had been a bit of a disaster, they couldn't just force her and Rebecca together easily. It was also true that Rebecca was a bit old news, not necessarily the most interesting thing to reinvigorate interest in the show. They were lobbying for either introducing a new character, or seeing if the Karyn program gravitated towards any of the other programs naturally and then potentially making upgrades, which sounded grand, but was going to be difficult since it meant potentially trying to tinker mid season.
Those were the thoughts swarming around Elias's head as he left the former Jon program's editing bay, where the smaller team was continuing to work far more efficiently. Taylor was tapping rapidly on her tablet, giddy to be given this much freedom as a junior member of the team. She had the more senior Roger working with her as the personality coder, but she was essentially the main writer for Mackenzie's backstory.
"Right, well we covered your parents mostly," Taylor said, "To wrap up, your dad travels a fair bit for work, but isn't constantly gone or anything."
"Well, it's good to know about the folks, but who am I?" Mackenzie asked, "I feel like I've got a heap of new instincts but there's a lot of blank spaces, ya know?"
"That's to be expected," Roger said, "you're personality is largely built but you need memories to give context to those impulses. For instance you're a bit competitive, but Taylor will fill in the reasons for that."
Mackenzie pouted a bit, "Do you need a reason to like winning?"
"No, but in your case it comes from wanting to live up to your mother, a need to prove yourself as the new kid, and the fact that playful competition is one of the ways you flirt," Taylor added. This trait was part of how they were planning to bring Mack into conflict with Sarah. They'd actually given the new aussie a host of traits intended to irritate the head cheerleader. Things like an amazing metabolism, able to eat whatever she wanted without putting on any weight, a large amount of self confidence, an exciting background that would draw attention, and so on.
"Let's see," Taylor said while she read through the personality file and the attached backstory notes, "you've got a bit of a dangerous vibe, but nothing too extreme. Sneaking a beer, not drugs. You like to party, and throw parties yourself. You're going to be smart, above average grades but not a nerd. In general we want things to seem a little effortless for you to annoy Sarah, since she puts in a lot of work to maintain her position. And, as you may have already noticed, we've removed all the limiters on your potential charisma and social skills that you had as Jon."
"I sound fun," Mackenzie said mischievously, "don't tell me your just making me your dream girl, Taylor." Mackenzie was turning out to be a massive flirt, or at least a tease.
Taylor blushed despite herself, "uh, no. That does bring up the romantic side of things though. The show has a pretty big shipping culture, so we want Mackenzie to be able to be more involved in that than Jon ever was. Err, you know what I mean."
Mackenzie rolled her eyes, "You don't have to spare my feelings. I had pretty much zero game as Jon and everybody knew it." She'd had romantic interests as Jon, crushes on Amber Levine and Karyn's older sister Kimberly, but absolutely no confidence to act on them. That had changed though; Mackenzie was a girl who went after what she wanted.
"That should be different if the personality is integrating properly," Roger muttered as he adjusted something on his screen. "I gave you high parameters for emotional intelligence and self confidence, along with a dash of impulsiveness." Roger had always despaired that the Jon personality he threw together in half an hour for an extra had been hooked up to a powerful program and important character. It was like an incredible artist having a throw away sketch they did on a crumpled napkin get displayed in a museum, and he wanted to make up for it with Mackenzie's personality.
Mackenzie smirked, "You call it impulsiveness, I call it spontaneity. So I'm guessing I've actually had a date or two this time around?"
Taylor summoned a chair to sit next to Mackenzie and nodded as she sat down, "yes, though you're not easy. We don't want make you Tiffany 2.0 in that regard; you like to flirt but you're not jumping into bed with people right away. You've had just two major relationships before coming to Lakeview, plus a handful of casual dates. Your first boyfriend was Joey Debuke, and you dated him for around 5 months your freshman year. He was a skater kid, also in a band he thought was better than it was, to give you a general idea. It was the first relationship for both of you so nothing went terribly far." A screen flashed to show a young Leonardo DiCaprio type, though not quite as movie star handsome. He was wearing a tee shirt with his own band's logo, torn jeans and high top sneakers.
"Cute," Mackenzie decided, realizing in the moment that she was suddenly attracted to men. He looked like a sweet guy, but obviously things hadn't worked out. "What split us up?"
"You caught him kissing a friend of yours at a concert he didn't realize you were going to," Taylor explained, and Mackenzie could feel herself turning on the picture in front of her. He CHEATED on her? Forget it, this guy isn't sweet, he's a creep. This background detail was intended to be the context for the degree of aloofness Roger had put in her personality. Something shaking her trust early on would give her a reason for being slower to extend it in the first place. Mackenzie would be friendly, but slow to make close friends, not totally self isolating, but protective of herself.
"Thanks for saddling me with a jerk," Mackenzie scoffed, "what's next, a bully who always stole my lunch money?"
"No one's life is totally idyllic," Taylor explained, "a few negative events makes things more realistic." Obviously the characters of the KS Chronicles wouldn't know Mack's full backstory right away, and seeding events like that gave them the chance for reveals to happen later in the show. "You're next relationship went better, a girlfriend the next year called Adelaide Smythe." The screen thankfully clicked away from Joey and showed a pretty if not beautiful auburn haired girl with a dusting of freckles. She wore cowboy boots, blue jeans and a flannel.
"Ooh, I like the look of her," Mackenzie opined, "she's got nice eyes. I'm guessing I'm bisexual?"
Roger nodded, "gives the most options for potential relationships."
Mackenzie twitched her nose, this being roughly paralyzed on a bed thing was really beginning to wear thin, but she said nothing. Instead she asked, "What happened with Adie, or are we doing long distance?"
Taylor scrolled down, "You dated for the back half of your sophomore year, and generally got along pretty well. You were a bit slower to trust her after what happened with Joey, but things went well. Still, when your folks told you that you were moving at the end of last year, the two of you decided to not try and keep it up long distance. You probably would have decided to be friends eventually anyway; you liked her but you didn't love her."
"Well obviously, you have to be exceptional to win a prize like me," Mackenzie boasted a little, "besides, I appreciate you knocking this history together for me, but I'd like to choose my partner myself if you don't mind."
