Daydreams of Enterprise

What Would You Do?

I suspect I’m not alone in occasionally daydreaming about being captain of the NCC1701 Enterprise, the ship from Star Trek. A or D, or even E, it doesn’t really matter. I wonder if we have the same dreams, though. Would you want to go boldly where no one has gone before? I no longer dream of that. Perhaps you would live out your fantasies of cowboy life, medieval court intrigues, or Doyle’s Sherlock on the holodeck? No, that’s not for me. I would leave it comfortably parked in Earth orbit and engage in more prosaic endeavors.

I’ve enough humility in my abilities to realize that I can’t run the world as a dictator, though possessing a weapon would surely allow for it. Dictatorships don’t work, as I’ve written about many times, and generally make things worse for everyone, even under benevolent dictatorships. There is some appeal to the magical Enterprise dictatorship because what more could I possibly extract from Earth that I didn’t already have? What use is a collection of fancy cars or millions of servants if I already have the fastest thing in the galaxy and the holodeck to fulfill my every fantasy? No, I dream of a much simpler way of life.

I would start by converting every compartment on the NCC 1701D, the ship from The Next Generation, to a holodeck: every crew quarters and docking bay, even the passageways and the medical facilities. Everything except for the bridge and engineering would be dedicated to holodeck space, but not for myself.