Lyta Alexander
From The Babylon Project
| |||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||
Lyta Alexander was a Human Telepath originally assigned to Babylon 5 as the station's licensed commercial telepath. She was later physically altered by the Vorlons.
Contents |
[edit] History
[edit] Early life
Lyta Alexander was born on December 10, 2225. She was born a P-5. She was raised from a baby as a telepath by the Psi Corps. While training she met and became friends with Talia Winters.[2]
Early on, she briefly interned with the Psi Cops. After a bad encounter with Alfred Bester she promptly transferred out of the Psi Cop program and took interest in commercial prospects of the Psi Corps. The incident in question involved several Psi Cops tracking down a serial killer who preyed exclusively on telepaths (a killer the regular police did not seem too interested in catching). The Psi Cops used unauthorized and unwarranted scans to find the killer. Rather than arrest him and expose their own activities, the Psi Cops drove the killer insane: he spent the rest of his life confined to a mental institute screaming at visions they put in his head, needing to be forcefully restrained or he would claw his own eyes out. The experience was the first time her absolute loyalty to the Corps was shaken.[3]
Between 2247 and 2257, she worked as the commercial telepath for Xenocorp, which involved monitoring corporate negotiations with alien representatives, including Narn, Centauri and Pak'ma'ra.[4]
[edit] Babylon 5
Not long after this she was recalled to be questioned about her experience during the scan. Talia Winters replaced her as Babylon 5's resident telepath.[2]
[edit] Resistance member
After months of being interrogated she escaped Psi Corps custody and joined the Martian resistance. Lyta Alexander learned of the Psi Corps sleeper program while hiding out with members of the resistance. She found out that one of these sleepers was on Babylon 5, though she was unsure who it may have been. She discovered the password required to unlock this hidden personality and traveled to Babylon 5. Lyta scanned the minds of all the command staff but was unable to discover who it may have been. By chance Talia walked into the room and Lyta scanned her mind, discovering and unlocking the hidden personality, effectively killing the real Talia.[2]
[edit] Vorlon aide
Lyta then traveled to the edge of Vorlon space in an attempt to make it to the Vorlon homeworld. She paid ship captain who brought her there all her money in exchange for a life pod. After drifting in space for five days, she was picked up by the Vorlons and taken to their homeworld. While there she was modified physically and mentally, her regular telepathic abilities increased dramatically. She was given gill implants which allowed her to breathe the Vorlon atmosphere and had her telepathic powers increased greatly. In 2260 she returned to Babylon 5 and served as an aide to Ambassador Kosh. Part of her duties included "carrying" part or all of Kosh's essence around inside her.[5]
Lyta was off the station on an assignment from Kosh when he was murdered by the Shadows. She had no part of him left, but was hopeful someone else might have a piece, though her initial search is fruitless. This does not sit well with Kosh's successor, Ulkesh, whom she then assists.
Once Captain Sheridan and his crew learned that telepaths could be used to disrupt and slow the Shadow vessels, Lyta was asked to help them prove it. She accompanied Sheridan aboard the White Star and they located a lone Shadow Battlecrab. At first, the experience was too much for her, but when Sheridan touches her she has a vision of Kosh's death. Enraged over the brutality of Kosh's death, Lyta is able to affect the Shadow ship, keeping it immobile long enough for the White Star to destroy it. After the battle, she beings to suspect Sheridan himself may have part of Kosh within him.[6]
That theory cannot be properly tested, however, when Sheridan departs for Z'ha'dum and seemingly dies on the planet.[7]
Afterwards, Ulkesh becomes more secretive. He refuses to come to the council meetings and all but ignores any request by Delenn. She asks him to help her assemble a fleet and go to Z'ha'dum, but Ulkesh flatly refuses. After carrying Ulkesh for a brief time, he gives her leave for a brief while. She goes to Susan Ivanova with a desperate plan to go to Z'ha'dum and try to locate Sheridan. She explains she believes Sheridan was sufficiently touched by Kosh to allow her to find him, and that she has the strength to delay the Shadows long enough. Ivanova and Delenn bring her aboard the White Star and they head for the Shadow's homeworld. Once in orbit, Lyta is nearly overwhelmed, but is able to stall them just long enough for a few scans. They find no trace of Sheridan, however, and head back to the station.[8]
Ulkesh treated Lyta even more harshly: among other things, he made her get rid of everything in her quarters save her mattress. Delenn, suspecting as Lyta does that the Vorlons are now hiding something from them, asks her to try and find out what it is. Lyta is afraid to oblige, saying that while Kosh personally might have cared about the younger races, she is starting to believe the rest of the Vorlons do not.
After carrying Ulkesh again, she confronts him with his secrets, but he refuses to answer. Angry, she demands respect from the Vorlon, but he only mocks her. In desperation, she attempts to scan his mind. Ulkesh violently knocks her to the ground, overwhelming her with a flood of painful images of the Vorlons' intentions--they plan to wipe out everyone who has been touched by the Shadows, including entire planets. Ivanova finds Lyta, terrified and in shock, alone in her quarters later, and manages to help her pull herself together. Ivanova lets everyone know (including Sheridan, seemingly back from the dead) that she has evidence of her own confirming Lyta's story.[9]
She helped drive him from the station with the help of the remaining fragments of Kosh.[10]
[edit] Telepath crisis
She soon found herself without any direction when the Vorlons departed beyond the Rim. She was involved in the Thirdspace incident where hidden elements of her Vorlon transformation took over and helped defeat the aliens from Thirdspace.
Despite attempts by Garibaldi to hire her, she did not have the means to continue on her own so she reluctantly had to turn to Alfred Bester for a job in the Psi Corps.[4]
She played a role in the final battle of the Earth Alliance Civil War, sending out a signal to the enhanced telepaths smuggled aboard by Martian resistance to interfere with the Clark-loyal ships during the Battle of Mars.[11]
In early 2262, Alexander became romantically involved with Byron, the leader of a colony of rogue telepaths offered sanctuary aboard Babylon 5. She was inspired by him to continue the fight after he committed suicide. She was arrested on Babylon 5 by John Sheridan, but was given a reprieve from Michael Garibaldi to help fund her cause against the Psi Corps as long as she would remove the telepathic block placed in his mind by Bester.
She left Babylon 5 with G'Kar at the end of 2262 to explore the galaxy with each other.[12]
