Lana Hartley

Age: 40 Gender: female - she/her Sexuality: Bisexual

Personality: Rigid Rule-abiding Strict Self-righteous Ignorant Cold Distant Sellout Quiet Dutiful Organized Efficient Quick-thinker Intelligent Academic Bookish Know-it-all Superiority Complex Resentful Unempathetic

Backstory and information: This character exists well into the future. The Earth is dying. And the rich want out. Lana is an astronaut working for NASA. She worked extremely hard to get where she is and she will not have her efforts questioned. She is one of their most diligent workers and she has led in several interstellar missions to go beyond the Milky Way, tracking several new galactic systems and planets along the way. Lana is one of a few from a rough background who has been granted the privilege of escaping this planet when it sunders, for her service. Her family, however, are not so lucky.

Lana was born into the Hartley family. A regular unit with absolutely nothing to their names. Her mother was a cashier at a local big chain store and her father was a mechanic for AI companionship robots. With their pooled incomes, they could afford to pay the rent, the bills and the groceries. Nothing more. Lana had three siblings. Two older sisters and one younger brother. Being in the middle, Lana received the least amount of attention, leading to her growing up quite emotionally stunted. She didn't know how to express her feelings because no one would listen, anyway. She was nothing and she belonged to no one, in her home. Not when her elder sisters had far more pressing problems and her younger brother needed every scrap of their attention. So Lana focused everything she had into grades, Astronomy programs and documentaries. At school, Lana seldom had friends, though she was not bullied. Just overlooked. Always overlooked. Over the course of her teenage years, scientists began to predict something known as 'Earth's Sunder'. Lana had seen televangelism and doomsday predictions before. But this was different. Scientists were the ones backing it. And it was backed by the Earth's shifting and tearing magnetic field as the sun was getting closer. This looming crisis continued to haunt Lana. Her entire generation, actually. Those with the knowledge simply named it as an inevitable extinction, said that nothing could be done. They were all just waiting to die... Whether that was to be fifty years forward or fifteen. Worse yet, Lana's parents brushed it off as 'bullshit'. They would talk about all the 'fake crisis' of previous generations as if there was nothing new or factual about this one. Once more, Lana felt unheard, unloved and overlooked in her own home. And those feelings festered into deeply embedded, nasty resentment. And that resentment became the determination to escape her roots entirely. Lana had a very high GPA. Additionally, though on a budget, she had utilized scholarships to mark her record with extracurricular courses. It was not difficult for her to get into university with a student loan. From there, she worked her way through all the hoops to finally apply for a job in NASA. It wasn't easy. The competition was high. It took Lana two years of failed applications before one of hers was accepted at 30. She had to go through an intensely rigorous bootcamp, as well. This program was militant and rigorous, forcing her to become hardened and disciplined. On top of molding Lana's character, it brainwashed her. See, NASA had a very slimy plan. Their interstellar missions, though not disclosed to the public, would be focused on finding a new planet. They needed their forces to be as loyal as possible. Through command, propaganda and misconstrued facts; they made sure this lot of trainees had the compassion and morality for wider humankind baked out of them. And Lana, already so resentful in her heart, fell straight into that trap. Nothing made Lana feel more seen and more special than the crumbs of praise she would later receive for her efforts in these missions. She went on several exploration deployments to chart the systems beyond the Milky Way. And in that process, she and her coworkers found the perfect one. Named now, 'Planet Changeling' for its likeness to Earth, this is where those with enough power and money will be settling. For her efforts, Lana is among the fifty astronauts rewarded with the privilege to settle there too.

Now, the days are hotter. The earth tremors as pieces are beginning to be pulled towards the approaching sun. There is little time left and calamity destroys family after family. Lana knows what's happening. Everyone knows the basics but she is one of the small percentage of humanity to have all the details. And she is telling no one. At this point, hackers have released the planning documents created by NASA and other institutional bodies to get the wealthy and the useful off of Earth. Protests break out daily. Lana does not tell a soul that she has been chosen. But she thinks herself superior and she believes that the rest of humanity are simply... Too foolish. Too impure. Of COURSE they aren't being saved when they act like monkeys every day! That is what she tells herself to bury what little morality she may have left. The people who are leaving, she truly does believe, are the most intelligent and deserving of continuation. She's deep in it now, her mind destroyed by propaganda and grooming.