Admiral Fairbanks was a Starfleet flag officer in the late 23rd century. He was stationed at Starbase 237. Fairbanks was in charge of Starfleet operations in the Tabula Rasa, a region of space in the Romulan Neutral Zone near Klingon space. This region of space had previously few star systems until the Romulan Star Empire detonated a prototype subspace weapon, Project Shiva. The resulting subspace anomaly accidentally opened up a pocket universe containing dozens of star systems filled with resource-rich worlds, and both the Romulans and Klingons immediately scrambled to claim them.