Quote:Well, she's fresh out of school... but that might be the only type of engineer the Miranda project attracted. It's your call.
RE Miranda crew - think of the Trek show model - the main cast are the Captain and department heads, so if you give me an engineer, the only reason (s)he won't be Chief Engineer is if you specifically request it, or someone else puts up a more interesting/ealier Chief character.
For your consideration:
M.L. da Vinci
Chief Engineer, USS Miranda
Appearance: Italian-American female in her late-20s, 5'6", 130 lbs, medium build, jet-black hair, brown eyes, attractive but not beautiful (unless she goes all-out, which she almost never does).
Notable Mundane Attributes:
* Re-route around the damage here and it'll be almost as good as new: Crack engineer.
* It isn't that good, really: Has a talent for sketching, but rarely uses it.
'Wavium Abilities: None.
Quirks:
* My parents hated me: Never goes by (or answers to) her full name, just the initials "M.L."
* Say "cheese"! Compulsive photographer, but more enthusiastic than skilled.
* I am happy: Never smiles.
Faction: Trekkie
History:
M.L. was the third and youngest child born to parents who had immigrated (as children) to the US from Italy after World War II. Post-war racism was just as bad as any other sort - they had suffered the minor indignities of other people's unthinking comments while growing up, until the Civil Rights Movement made people realize how ugly such comments actually are. But this meant the da Vincis saw no reason why their children shouldn't have some minor obstacles placed in front of them, too. It's a pity, too, because if they had given Mona Lis... sorry, just "M.L." ... any other name, she probably would have become a successful model.
As it was, M.L. put as much distance as she could between herself and the worlds of glamor and art - she went out of her way to not be attractive, she did her best to never smile, and she even watched reruns of Star Trek instead of playing house or hanging out at the mall. She also studied the physical sciences while her classmates were starting to date each other; this lead to a scholarship to M.I.T. and a distinct lack of socialization.
Mind you, it's almost impossible for an attractive female to attend an engineering school and not discover boys. M.L. finally loosed up a bit and learned about the wonders and heartbreaks of dating, but never seriously connected with any of the guys she dated. This meant that, when M.L. graduated from M.I.T.'s mechanical engineering program summa cum laude, she was available to answer a very unusual "help wanted" ad in 2008. Much to her surprise, she was already familiar with the project... because she had worked on it during her final year at MIT.
Personality:
Emotionally repressed. (Maybe even "dangerously emotionally repressed.") But she's functionally sane.
She's noticed that "Number One" is a good man, and doesn't seem to be romantically attached... but she has no idea how to go about expressing her own interest. She's not even sure she has that sort of interest in him, actually, but she knows she feels something towards him. It might simply be "friendship", but it's been so long since she's had a friend, she isn't sure...
-Rob Kelk
"Read Or Die: not so much a title as a way of life." - Justin Palmer, 6 June 2007
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012