Charmaine
Charmaine is one of the novel's two protagonists; she is married to Stan. At the beginning of the book, Charmaine tries to maintain a positive attitude despite living in a car and fearing gangs and sexual violence. After losing her job as at the Ruby Slippers retirement home, Charmaine takes a job serving at PixelDust, a seedy bar. She is compelled by a TV ad for the Consilience/Positron project, which offers employment, safety, and certainty. Inside the project, she works as a Medications Administrator, forced to euthanize undesirable troublemakers. Not long after moving into the walled town, Charmaine has an affair with "Max," the man who lives in their house when Stan and Charmaine are serving their alternate months doing prison labor. Max seduces Charmaine, who loves fulfilling her fantasies of sexual submission with him. Charmaine is later forced to euthanize Stan, not realizing that she is only sedating him. While playing the grieving widow, Charmaine becomes the target of Ed's obsession and is at risk of having her former attachments erased and turned into Ed's sex slave. However, Charmaine is fooled into believing that the surgery has made her hopelessly devoted to Stan. At the end of the book, she and Stan live happily with a three-month-old baby. She learns from Jocelyn that she never had the brain adjustment surgery, meaning she is at risk of cheating on Stan again in the future.
Stan
Stan, the novel's second protagonist, is Charmaine's husband. The more negative of the couple, Stan becomes grumpy and pessimistic when he loses his job at Dimple Robotics and subsequently has to abandon his house, which has lost all value. Stan goes along with his wife's decision to join the Positron project despite his belief that it is promising something that's too good to be true. Inside the walled community, Stan works as a chicken farmer in the prison and a scooter repairman in the town. When Stan finds a note Charmaine leaves for "Max" using the assumed name of Jasmine, he becomes obsessed with the idea of having sex with Jasmine. On the day he plans to "ambush" the mystery woman, Stan learns about his wife's affair from Jocelyn, who forces him to live with her and reenact the affair based on surveillance footage. When Stan can take it no longer, Jocelyn reveals that she is using him as a pawn in a plan to undermine Ed, her fellow cofounder. Jocelyn fakes Stan's death to smuggle him out of the town and leak documents to the press. At the end of the book, Stan struggles with the knowledge that Charmaine was willing to euthanize him, but he is pleased when it seems that the brain adjustment has made her hopelessly devoted to him and willing to fulfill any sexual fantasy.
Conor
Conor is Stan’s brother. A criminal, Conor thrives in the post-collapse society. Stan swallows his pride and visits his brother to borrow money; while there, he notices a sleek black car waiting outside. Later in the book, Stan learns that the car contained Jocelyn, who has been collaborating with Conor. With Conor and his associates' help, Stan gets information about the project leaked to the media. Conor and his gang also save Charmaine from Ed and bring about a reunion between Stan and Charmaine. At the end of the story, it is implied that Conor and Jocelyn have a romantic relationship.
Sandi
Sandi is a sex worker who frequents PixelDust, the bar where Charmaine works. She goes along with Veronica and Charmaine to live in Consilience/Positron. When she believes that Veronica has been killed, Sandi is caught trying to escape. At the end of the novel, she attends Charmaine and Stan's renewal ceremony and explains that she managed to escape after all, having been dropped by frightened guards.
Veronica
Veronica is a sex worker who frequents PixelDust. Friends with Sandi, she goes to live in Consilience/Positron, getting a job as a teacher of yoga videos. When Veronica refuses to take the job of euthanizing criminals, she is punished by being given a neurological surgery that is supposed to make her obsessed with the first man that she sees upon waking from the surgery. However, her surgery goes wrong when the first thing she sees upon waking is a blue teddy bear. She becomes obsessed with the bear and there is no way to fix the mistake. Veronica becomes an operative for Jocelyn and Budge, helping Stan to get out of Consilience/Positron and deliver the flash drive with evidence against Ed to the media. She later becomes famous as a spokesperson for people who have non-conventional romantic attachments.
Max/Phil
Phil is Jocelyn's husband. Using the name Max, he seduces Charmaine so that Jocelyn can manipulate Stan into helping with her plans to undermine Ed's authority. Aside from working as his wife's driver, Phil makes sure that his affair with Charmaine is caught on tape so Jocelyn can use the videos to get Stan to do her bidding. At the end of the story, Jocelyn divorces Phil and gives him a brain adjustment surgery so that he will be obsessed with Aurora and be cured of his philandering ways.
Jocelyn
Jocelyn is one of the co-founders of the Consilience/Positron project. initially, she believed in the mission of the twin town project, but she becomes disenchanted when greed drives Ed to get involved in increasingly immoral and twisted revenue streams, such as killing people to sell their body parts. Jocelyn orchestrates the affair conducted by Charmaine and her husband, later forcing Stan to reenact the affair with her as part of a plan to con Stan into helping her smuggle out a flash drive of documents to the media. A frequent gymgoer, Jocelyn is strong and masculine, making her a disappointment to Stan, who'd fantasized that she was "Jasmine." Rather than give Ed over to authorities, Jocelyn reorganizes the Consilience/Positron project and turns Ed into Lucinda Quant's sex slave. At the end of the book, Jocelyn reveals her ongoing business dealings with Conor, Stan's brother, and it is implied that she has started a romantic relationship with Conor.
Ed
Ed is one of the founders of the Consilience/Positron project. A slick pitchman, Ed sells Charmaine and her friends on the idea of joining the project. Later, it turns out that Ed will do anything to make money for himself and his investors, including killing people to sell their body parts, abducting women to turn them into sex slaves, and selling a line of child robots to pedophiles. After Stan's supposed death, Ed becomes obsessed with Charmaine and plans to give her a brain adjustment surgery that will make her become obsessed with only him. Instead, Jocelyn betrays Ed and submits him to the surgery, which makes him become obsessed with Lucinda Quant. Rather than face the legal consequences of what he has been doing, Ed goes to Dubai with Lucinda, safe from extradition.
Budge
Budge is a criminal associate of Conor's. Under a false identity, Budge gets inside the Consilience/Positron project and takes a job in the Possibilibots division. There, he helps smuggle Stan and Veronica out by shipping him to Las Vegas disguised as an Elvis bot. Budge then escapes in the same way, reappearing in the story as a member of the Green Man Group with Conor and his bodyguards. Budge helps rescue Charmaine from Ed.
Aurora
Aurora is a member of the Human Resources department in Consilience/Positron. When Aurora "scraped off" her face in a roller-derby accident, she was offered a facial transplant if she joined the project. In exchange for working with Jocelyn to take down Ed, Aurora is given Phil as her husband. She ends up marrying him, delighted by his surgically determined obsession with her.
Lucinda Quant
Lucinda Quant is a TV journalist. A cancer survivor, Lucinda looks to revive her career by breaking the scandalous story of what's really going on at Consilience/Positron. Lucinda takes Stan on a date in Las Vegas as a cover to receive the flash drive from him; she breaks the story the next night on the six o'clock news. Jocelyn rewards Lucinda by giving Ed the brain surgery that makes him imprint on her. Unsure when her cancer might come back, Lucinda wants to live the rest of her life with someone completely devoted to her.
