Name: Eliza Zerbst
Age on Application: 21
Gender: Female
Appearance:
Golden hair, hazel eyes rimmed with gold, a burnt sugar complexion, and a rather swarthy build and facial structure. Someone could look at her for the first time and never guess they were looking at a thief. Then they would look more closely and see lopsided smiles that never quite reach her eyes. Eyes that instead burn with a never sated hunger. Miss Zerbst stands at a slight 5'3" and the prison medical records indicate she was frozen at 132 pounds Imperial (as opposed to metric). As far as clothing goes, whatever spacesuit she has on only has faded blue jeans and a loose-fitting black tanktop under it. She only brought the clothes on her back and whatever else NASA decided to ship along with them.
Personality:
There won't be much here as I'd like to let the story develop her personality quite a bit. In short, she's relatively quiet and a kleptomaniac who sees something she wants and tries to obtain it surreptitiously and without asking. Starting out, she's pretty lazy, but that may change.
Right now, she equates success in life with material possessions. It will slowly dawn on her that stealing helps no one. Right now, she's rebelling against her mother's ideal that women shouldn't take care of themselves.
Desired Job & Qualifications: Undecided. To quote her, "Do you have anything where I get to sleep and eat for a living?" (I'm thinking she might be a musician given who her play-by is. Perhaps a fellow charrie who has a musical instrument can show her how to play and, in the process, finds out she has a nice singing voice? Perhaps they stumble upon her singing by herself?)
History: On Earth, Eliza's father was a lawyer turned flea market salesman who traveled the world in steadily declining economic prosperity. This resulted in him eventually being reduced to poverty and being killed in Saudi Arabia for peddling his wares to the wife of a prominent oil sheik.
On the other hand, Eliza's mom was a quiet woman who thought that all ladies, her daughter included, ought to be gently raised and put on a pedestal by a man who takes care of them. This philosophy proved to be the mother's undoing as the family's coffers dwindled from the father's lawyer funds as he failed at being a successful flea, so to speak. Her mother's viewpoint was also a source of major disagreement between mom and daughter Eliza, an only child. Eliza was unfortunately not very enterprising in her own right, however, so their conversations turned into "Mom, when are you going to start working?" and the reply would always be, "Ladies should never dirty their hands with labor. You just wait Eliza, I'm sure your father will be back with a fortune any day and make us rich!"
Well as it stands, Eliza's father never did come back to Tallahassee, Florida where they lived. In fact, they didn't even know he was dead for six months before one of his flea market stall neighbors finally made it around to trek to Florida to tell them the bad news. Eliza was twelve at the time and both her and her mother became even more distant and moody.
Her thieving habits started when her mother refused to leave the house for days and weeks at a time. Eliza would run out late at night, or early Sunday mornings when people were liable to be in church, and go Dumpster diving behind restaurants and fast food chains for meals for the both of them. It wasn't until four years later when the "cat food burglar" was brought to justice. The judge was lenient on her the first time, sentencing her to twenty hours of community service.
Eliza responded to this by doing an extra hour of "community service" by breaking into a food bank after hours and getting caught filching two boxes full of soup cans. The judge was fresh out of mercy and sentenced Eliza to three years in the county jail the morning after the incident. When her 21st birthday rolled around, she was offered the option of being cryogenically frozen and brought to colonize a new life-supporting planet. It was that or be released into a world where she didn't even have a high school diploma. Eliza grudgingly accepted the offer and was frozen, but not before angrily shouting at her mother "Okay fine, stay here and rot you hag!" after she and her jailers tried to convince her mother to be frozen before she left (which is bound to cause her some grief in posts to come, spoiler alert). That's where this petty thief's story begins.
Reason for Wanting to Leave Earth: Chance to start a new life and potentially escape the Terran legal system. Being known as Prisoner 0038 for three whole years was one of the last things she remembers. Now Eliza, after being a shut-in turned petty thief and Dumpster diver, who quit school halfway through high school because she hated work, finally gets to live her own life.
Anything Else You Want to Add? Eliza has a lot of growing up to do. She may be twenty-one, but inside, she still has the rebel heart of a teenager. She accepted NASA's offer to be shot into space for some new planet without thinking too much of the consequences. She views this whole opportunity more as an escape from reality than just an extended move. When she wakes up, it's unclear what her path will be - good or evil - but only time will tell.
