Summary
Lieutenant Junior Grade George Edison Myers serves as a historian aboard the USS Soval. His work supports the ship’s archaeology and social sciences departments. He studies the history of civilizations encountered during missions and turns that information into something useful for the command staff. Political conflicts, territorial claims, religious divisions and cultural traditions can all have important implications dating back to historical ties. Myers tries to help define the roots that help shape each mission.
His work often overlaps with Lieutenant Commander Schonfeld and other officers who work throughout the Soval’s extensive science facilities. Archaeological discoveries usually send Myers on a search through adjacent historical records. Diplomatic missions may require him to study how two cultures grew to distrust one another. Myers enjoys the challenge of taking centuries of complicated history and finding the few events that actually matter to the situation around the ship.
Several civilizations remain subjects of his independent research. His curiosity makes it difficult for him to simply close a file once the immediate assignment is finished. One historical question usually produces another. A short research project can lead to weeks of study once Myers discovers something that interests him.
His more unusual historical project is the Pirate Subspace Station. The subspace radio station combines his two great interests in Earth history and old music. Myers broadcasts recordings from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. He often slips in short historical discussions between cuts.
Myers enjoys the idea that someone might tune in for the music and accidentally learn something about Earth’s past.
Appearance
Myers has a lean and gangly 5’9 frame. Exercise rarely successfully competes with a good book or an unfinished research project. His naturally thin build makes putting on significant muscle mass difficult. Long limbs and a short torso add to his awkward appearance.
A long rectangular face ends in a strong jaw and angular chin. A thick beard of straight medium-brown hair covers much of his lower face. Straight hair is brushed backwards across the top of his head. The sides and rear are cut extremely close to his scalp. The contrast gives the style something near a Mohawk’s profile. Direct light reveals golden tones hidden in his hair’s brown.
Crystal-clear light blue eyes sit beneath long thick eyebrows. Their distant and dreamy quality can make Myers appear half awake even when his mind is racing.
His long nose extends into a fleshy bulb with relatively small nostrils. The shape contributes to a slightly high-pitched, nasal quality in his voice. A naturally posh British accent can be heard despite his attempts to speak informally.
Myers can speak extraordinarily fast.
Ordinary conversation moves at a brisk pace. Put him behind a microphone with a track approaching its drop and entire sentences can spill out in the time another person might need to finish a single thought. Words occasionally crash into each other. Slang interrupts otherwise formal speech. His voice rises with excitement. He might repeat something just because it sounded good the first time.
The same restless speed follows him physically. Myers walks quickly through corridors and laboratories. Even when there is no emergency, he often gives the impression that some unfinished project is waiting for him.
Personality
Myers is an outgoing dreamer who developed the inconvenient habit of actually pursuing his dreams.
The Pirate Subspace Station began as one of them. He became fascinated by the ancient techniques of disc jockeying and emceeing rather than simply asking the computer to compile track lists. He studied how DJs selected music, mixed tracks and controlled the energy of a crowd. He studied radio personalities and the distinctive ways broadcasters developed recognizable identities around their voices.
Eventually Myers wanted his own station, so he made one.
PSS became part music station, part historical experiment and part personal playground.
Drum and bass and trance from around the turn of the twenty-first century dominate his musical interests. Hip hop appears regularly. Rock and metal have their places as well. Myers enjoys the music on its own, but the surrounding period fascinates him just as much.
The era seems almost unbelievable from his twenty-fifth-century perspective. Humanity possessed increasingly powerful technology while they seemed to repeatedly create situations capable of destroying the world. Myers can spend hours reading about its wars, politics, cultural upheavals and technological transformations. He sometimes emerges from the research amazed that Earth survived long enough to produce the Federation.
At least, as he likes to point out, they had good music.
That attitude reflects how Myers approaches history professionally. He respects the importance of the subject without believing respect requires solemnity. History was lived by ordinary people. They ate, drank, argued, danced, watched sports, fell in love and listened to music while the events now preserved in textbooks happened around them. Myers wants to understand that part as much as historical dates and battles.
His easygoing sense of humor helps him communicate.
Myers loves to laugh and enjoys being at the center of a crowd. He can easily become one of the louder personalities at a social gathering. Give him an audience and an interesting subject and he rarely needs encouragement to start talking.
The contradiction is that his social nature frequently loses to his workload. Myers always has another project. Research for the Soval blends into personal study for his own whims. That research leads to an idea for his station. Preparing that idea for his broadcast sends him in search of another recording. That recording introduces him to another historical event. Before long an evening he could have spent with friends has disappeared into several interconnected projects.
Romance produces a different hesitation. Myers enjoys meeting people and does not lack confidence in a crowd. He can still become cautious when dating starts to advance into something serious. Commitment requires space in his life he feels he doesn’t have.
His simple pleasures are a seasoned steak, a cold beer and a game of “footie”.