Character Profile - France

France

Birth Name

Esme Vernada

France is 12 years old, but with the mind of a wise old woman many decades her senior. France is always very well-spoken and seems to have composed every word in advance (she has). She and her brother Ralph (see Simian, below) are of Mexican ancestry, and came to the facility from their home in Billings when she was very young. France comes across as bewilderingly intelligen, curious and with a slightly jaded perspective. She dresses very eccentrically --a highwayman's coat over a black sleeveless turtleneck with a pink skull, a gypsy skirt, a black beret upon her head, dark green knee-length socks and army boots. She has short, straight brown hair in a boyish cut, but typically wears a wig (she favors a curly black pirate wig she found as part of a Halloween costume). She's got tan skin, and wears a pair of librarian glasses with the lenses poked out. France's inner mental development has long since outraced her physical body, which leaves her somewhat bipolar -- either bitter and jaded about what's been done to her, or behaving in exaggerated youthful ways in an attempt to reclaim her childhood before it's gone.

France, despite her unusual personality and eccentric presentation, is considered to be one of the most successful candidates in the recent history of the program. France's nervous system has been "overclocked"; her synapses fire much faster than is normal, and her rate of time perception is correspondingly dilated.In effect, she lives and perceives the world somewhere between twice and three times as fast as most people, yet her body still responds in what we would consider realtime. France also manipulate her nerve impulses when concentrating, the result of intense yoga-like training. In this manner, she can actually manipulate her body's electrical field to a limited degree, which is amplified by the increase activity of her nervous system. Her performance is amazing, but there were some negative side effects. France needs to eat an awful lot for such a small young woman (much of it sugar), and they had to install a pacemaker to prevent nervous feedback from burning out her cardiovascular system and bursting her heart when she gets excited.