Star Trek Interest Check

Elijah is taller and skinnier than average, a lanky 6'6" with bright blue eyes, hair as black as this pages, background, and pale skin. His appearance was largely influenced by his upbringing in a low gravity environment with artificial light.

Elijah Thorne grew up never seeing the sky. He was born on the asteroid colony in the Hepburn System. The system’s sun was any old, bloated, red thing that had long ago burned away an native life on the system’s planets. The only thing of any value was the densely packed asteroid belt, rich with rare metals and minerals. It was here, far away from the bright center of the Federation that Elijah Thorne spent his formative years.
Growing up in a mining colony is different than life on a planet. Elijah didn’t eat food that wasn’t replicated until he was ten, and at the time turned his nose up at it because it had a funny texture that replicated food didn’t share. Every breath of air he took had been recycled millions of times before it reached his lungs. While teens on planets were racing ground cars, Elijah was racing mining shuttles through the asteroid belt.
When children become adults on Hepburn they have 2 choices. Stay on Hepburn and become a miner or leave. Elijah opted for the latter and the easiest way out of Hepburn went through Starfleet. In the fall of 2377, Elijah saw the sky for the first time.
Needless to say, there was some culture shock. Elijah struggled through his first year of the academy. Not out of any lack of aptitude, he was clever enough. His problem was focus. He had always known there had been more to the universe than Hepburn, he just hadn’t realized how much more. He tried so hard to experience all that life had to offer, that his academics suffered as a result. By the end of his first year, he was on academic probation.
Realizing that he needed to shape up, he signed up for the Xenoarchaeology program because a classmate had told him it was an easy major. This was a lie. Elijah would likely have washed out of the academy had it not have been for a charismatic Andorian professor named Shrehr. Shreh had a passion not just for his work, but for life, and saw a similar streak in Elijah. Shrehr showed the young man how to turn that passion into productivity. By the end of his third year, Elijah was a rising star in the Xenoarchaeology program, had joined the academy flight team (where his upbringing piloting mining tugs served him very well), and was minoring in biology. He graduated with a commendation for academic excellence.
His first posting was a bit of a dissapointment. The USS Minerva was fine ship and a fine crew, but the mission was not to Elijah’s taste. The Minerva was a survey vessel assessing asteroid fields for mineable mineral deposits. Elijah had been assigned to the Minerva because of his background. Unfortunately, the fact that he had joined Starfleet to get away from his background hadn’t occurred to anyone other than Elijah. Still, it was good experienced and he learned the basics lessons of being a Starfleet Officer that can’t be taught in a classroom. He was grateful to his superiors and crew mates for all their guidance. He was more grateful when they signed his transfer orders.
His next post was more exciting. The USS Valentine was another survey vessel, but instead of asteroids, it was surveying a star cluster. The Glanen Cluster had over hundred star systems and a dozen were suspected of hosting life. Elijah saw a lot of new skies on that tour. He was among of the first citizens of the Federation to walk across three separate planets and was part of the team that made first contact with the Hrlnir. Perhaps his most fateful accomplishment was documenting the ruins of Darius IV.
When Darius IV was selected for colonization, his superiors pushed Elijah to apply for a position on the colony’s science team. Other than the fact that Elijah’s previous work there made him a natural candidate for the position, it was a good opportunity for him to spread his wings as an officer. Elijah spent the next few years digging into (often literally) the Darius ruins. They proved to be quite the enigma. While many artifacts still had an intact power source, there was no way to interact with the devices to activate them. No writings have been discovered in association with these structures, offering precious little evidence to work with outside of the material record.
Nevertheless, Elijah persisted. He became the foremost expert on the subject of the ruins and published a few academic papers detailing his findings. His career got the boost that his superiors had been hoping for. Had he chosen to stay, he probably could have become head science officer for the colony and greatly expanded his team. But as the years went on he found himself looking up at the sky. While his work on Darius IV was fascinating, he found himself wondering what else was out there. He missed his time on the Valentine. After 4 years, Elijah decided it was time to go see another sky.