Character Name: Kelsi Alyssa McGee
Age: 26
Homeworld: Luna Colony
Species: Human
Height: 5’7”
Weight: 142 lbs
Languages: English (Luna variant, including associated vocabulary and structural differences)

Appearance:

Kelsi has large, brown eyes and brown hair that is often pulled back into a high bun. She is relatively fit, but by no means could undertake activities such as marathon-running, rock-climbing, or other intensive activities. She almost always wears glasses, and often she will utilize tinted red lenses, since these are one of the few measures that assist her extremely poor vision.

Background:

Kelsi McGee started out her life in much the same way as many children of Starfleet parents; she learned about such things as the stars, ships, alien cultures, and other minutiae of the galaxy. Similarly, she spent time playing with other youngsters and trying her best to integrate, although it was noticeable that occasionally she would sit away from the others during playschool and either read, or play with the xylophone, or similar.

It wasn’t until, at six years old, she walked into the same door three times in a week, causing herself a nasty head gash, that she was taken in for assessment by her parents. Medical examinations found that her eyesight was notably weak for a child of her age, and whilst extensive tests, including neurological scans, found nothing wrong, as she got older things continued to get worse. Corrective lenses failed to have any real effect for her.

Eventually, a particularly skilled ophthalmic doctor was able to trace, but not cure, the problem from which Kelsi suffered. The illness would not cause her to lose all ocular capability, but would mean that she would find things extremely difficult as time went on. Different treatments were tried to improve Kelsi’s condition and certain had effects, whilst some did little, if nothing, to resolve the situation. Most of them caused her pain, and by the age of sixteen Kelsi found herself incredibly frustrated with the ongoing difficulties and the near-constant headaches.

No ‘miracle’ treatment seemed plausible at that time, so Kelsi tried to get on with things as much as was possible, which oftentimes meant having someone make notes for her, having texts read aloud to her, and the like. It didn’t mean that she was unintelligent, though – whilst she lacked the excellence afforded some of her classmates, she was by no means a poor student or even a mediocre one, and hung around in the top third of her group. Ultimately, though, a good deal of time that might traditionally have been spent in social interactions was lost to allowing her to keep up with her studies, and this, while less relevant at school, would be a wider issue later.

Entrance to Starfleet Academy proved problematic. Whilst accommodations were made for her disability, she found the engineering problems she faced on the written tests to be more than she could handle and almost failed the exams. However, ultimately, she did very well in the spoken parts of things, and found admission to the Academy forthcoming.

When she started her studies and her social forays at the Academy and made friends – some genuine friends, and some who were more curious than interested in making a friend in Kelsi – jealousy became the order of the day when she would meet several of her friends at once. She often found herself acting reclusively when new links that did not involve her would form between them, and whilst she wasn’t the sort that was attention-seeking, she did withdraw a bit, not strong enough to believe that her friendships were valuable to the other parties in question. What this meant in a practical sense was that Kelsi was not always the bubbliest person due to constant concern about potentially losing people to others. Ironically, that self-reclusion probably caused some of her friendships to weaken.

Her first assignment in the Fleet was on board USS Louisiana, as one of its many engineering staff. The ship was a fairly large Nebula-class cruiser, which, as it turned out, prepared her well for her upcoming tour of duty on USS Hiroshima. Nevertheless, as with much of her life, it wasn’t an easy time; she joined with several other ensigns and, as could be expected, some of them found her nature – by this point, more reserved than jealous – difficult to work with. Some didn’t want to account for her visual difficulties but Kelsi was more than able to change the screen configurations to suit her as she needed. Tactile displays were trickier, because they needed to be physically installed, but, for the most part, whether scorned for it or given assistance with it, she handled her disability well.

What earned her respect was her hard-working nature. Despite the issues, Kelsi would often (perhaps overly) dedicate herself and work long hours to resolve issues with the ship. She is a competent engineer and during her tour of duty aboard Louisiana she picked up a number of techniques, hints and tips that allowed her to complete repairs and fix problems more quickly. She was not a master of the art by any stretch of the imagination, but she was no slouch and she focused her efforts on improvement. Of course, as before, this came at the detriment of her sociability; whilst Kelsi seeks to make friends, she very rarely does anything other than work, given her lacking social skills, and that lack of contact makes things harder the next time.

After three years of hard work and effort, she was offered the post of assistant chief engineer on board the Hiroshima, another Nebula-class vessel. There was nothing particularly to tie her to the Louisiana, so she accepted the transfer offer and tried hard to offer her best on her new ship, as she had previously.

Personality:

One might anticipate that Kelsi’s visual difficulties would have an impact on her life; it is a correct assumption. A number of modifications generally have to be made for her, most notably to displays at which she is to work, and in some cases, tactile interface functionality has to be made available to her. This can cause tension to arise at times between those who are charged with assisting her and the woman herself.

It would be entirely fair to say that, given the progressive loss of her sight, Kelsi is resentful at times, too. She will walk into things or miss objects from time to time, hurt herself and become noticeably angry as a result of this. On occasion, she will find herself erupting with frustration at the lack of ability of the medical teams she has worked with to more conclusively solve the problems she experiences, and with the things she has to do. Kelsi has not overcome the resentment of her disability, even though she is now in her mid-twenties.

Whilst Kelsi enjoys making friends, she also finds jealousy a problem, and because of a long-term lack of development of her social skills, she has few friends. She can become jealous when these few start to branch out and connect with each other, feeling that they are no longer interested in, or value, her. More a problem of her Academy days, she is slightly more secure since her tour of duty aboard the Louisiana, but this occasionally crops up as a problem for the young engineer.

Dates of Interest:

2361 – Born on Luna Colony
2367 – Diagnosed with visual difficulties and starts to receive treatments
2372 – Specific illness diagnosed, but no cure found yet
2379 – Enters Starfleet Academy
2383 – Graduates Starfleet Academy; assigned to USS Louisiana as an engineering officer
2386 – Assigned to USS Hiroshima as Assistant Chief Engineer

Date of Service: 30 JAN 2011