Alba was raised in a canister and brought to psychological maturity in six weeks through a series of time-dilated educational and simulations. Not only has she retained a huge body of esoteric knowledge from this experience, integrating her virtual "childhood" into her waking life has given her a flexible sense of the real and the unreal. This has helped her adjust to dreamy Messian reality better than most immigrants.
The experiment has generally been a success, producing a bright, inquisitive, friendly, and confident young lady. The only unexpected side effect is that, with total freedom to explore her inner life, Alba decided something very strange: she's really a "cat trapped in a bunny's body." Not wishing to stifle her, her creator apprenticed her out to a mooncat named Haruki. Haruki promised to carry on the experiment and protect Alba while helping her with her transition and teaching her feline mannerisms and attitudes.
Alba's mentor has mostly kept his promise to her creator, though Haruki's been a little more laissez-faire about letting her keep mild pains or worries that she's come by honestly. This has been a bit of a tough transition for Alba. Not only is this her first major experience outside the lab, right in the middle of a time of great change for her, the Felinol supplements are making her a bit loopy and feisty.
Alba lives in a cozy one-bedroom Neo-Lunarian efficiency (the only type of Lunarian architecture there is) under a nondescript dome in Upwarp, when she's not with Haruki in Down.
Recently, there has been some evidence that Alba's adjusted to the virtuality of the Mess a little too well. She's developed a habit of projecting herself in a false dream-body through the Mess's instantiators while she sleeps. As is typical for her, she's more intrigued and annoyed by this phenomenon than concerned. And, of course, one of the first people she interacted with this way might be as much a dream herself...