Dreams

[beccaelizabeth]

I think I slept like twelve hours today.
Dreamed a lot of random bits.
Holodecks and pirate captains and religion in space.

In one there was a holodeck on a space station, and I was in there wondering what program to run, but someone ran a forbidden one. There were people screaming and running and this one guy in a maintenance uniform going full horror movie stab stab stab on them. And then he just walked out? Onto the station? And that could be considered A Problem.

BUT neither of the real people got stabbed, they were all holograms. It was a reconstruction of a day that went exactly like that, but with more real bodies. The stabbing was done by a program acting outside his parameters. Everyone kept looking through the signals and the code to find out who had hacked the program and reset the man to be an assassin, but the woman who just restarted the program had a different theory. And they were sure enough of it they'd just walked around next to him watching what happened.

And what happened was one too many people asked him a stupid question with the answer written right in front of them and then treated him like it was his bad when he pointed it out. One too many people treated him like trash just because he collected it. And boom, for perfectly people reasons, he snapped.

And stabbed a bunch of holo people, this time, and then walked out, which shouldn't be possible without major interventio so I guess this person was really really sure of their theory.

The holodeck person developed sentience, but since they were an NPC with very limited responses to draw on, that went really poorly.

If he's a sentient now, can he be put on trial for all that?

But in another very real sense this one never did a crime, since he was rerun from an earlier recorded state, surrounded by simulated people.

If stabbing simulated people is a crime, Worf is in serious legal difficulties.

But if treating simulated people poorly can upset them, maybe he should be.



So, properly Star Trek shaped conundrum, but with more stabbing than usual.



So we went out into the station and I found the guy I'd been planning to mee, but also this holodeck guy. And my friend had already kind of made friends with him? Because finding the one disgruntled person on the ship is kind of a professional skill for pirates.

Not that he'd done that sort of thing recently.

Not very recently.

Captain Will Swann, nee Turner, is a semi immortal who can't set foot on land again, but there isn't a whole lot of land in the universe, in the grand scheme of things. So he just keeps going. He's tired and kind of bitter and usually alone, and it's not a good idea to leave him scheming, but I found a perfect distraction for him.

A new colony is going out, to settle an entirely uninhabited world. It's lovely conditions for humans, relatively, but the closest thing it has to land is endless archipelagos, islands seldom big enough to hold multiple trees. The weather has nothing to brake it and there are storms that just wander the planet, seldom calming down. A man with a knowledge of sailing ships is going to have a grand adventure out there, because the whole world will have to live on one, or build out docks and pilings from the tiny bits of rock.

And sure, they've got replicators, so they'll probably have fancy ironsides to live in.

But replicators can make planks.

... the grin on his face when I told him the plan was something long missing and much missed, but that might possibly bode ill for the sort of beings as aren't fond of freedom.

And, also, sailing ships might not sound impressive in the space age
but there's no particular reason they can't be solar sails
so if he ever gets bored down there again...


So I filled in all the forms and we all had a place in the new colony.


But while we're in the queue for boarding, a lot of Starfleet security start looking around.

When the people ahead of us start to notice, I make a decision to trust them, since we're going to be neighbours for the forseeable. I tell them we're maybe about to have religious problems. As in, we have one, and Starfleet has a problem with that.

(Not a criminal arrest, oh no, they're far too enlightened for that. Just a referral to the Counsellor's for your delusions.)

I undo a button and let an ankh fall out of my shirt, on a long chain to keep it hidden.

I don't know what Will's carrying, but it'd be something, after all he's been through. A cross or a trident, it's all one to Starfleet.

And as for the new guy?

I tell them he's a new sentience, new today, and Starfleet always wants to research that.

... we get let in ahead in the queue, and the whole line takes their word for it that we need to.


Starfleet doesn't take much of a new angle to look very worrying.



And I purely cannot agree that the future would give up religion. There are religions with thousands of years of history of being told to give up. They would never.

If they had a choice.




In the next bit of dream there was Supergirl, but more than one of her. One was a newly arrived young teenager, and the other was maybe thirty? She looked like an adult to the newer her, but didn't feel like one some days. The two got talking about religion, and the younger knew she didn't know much yet, and what she did know had a lot of kid superstitions mixed in. So she asked the older, but older said she couldn't teach. Their religion was strict about who could teach, to avoid pollution. (It was not a polite word.) But they'd arrived so young and alone they knew their beliefs were polluted, and they didn't know how. No teachers left, struggling alone, they knew they were the last of their religion. The last to even know the language their religion practiced in. And with no teachers and no texts, they would stay the last, and watch it end in their lifetime.



That bit was sad.




... then it went on to a sports game where the game got started when a bell was rung, but the only way to ring the bell was like a test your strength thing but to send an entire little elevator car up real fast? And to start the game a varying number of people could get in the car, but sooner or later someone would send it up and they'd all get thrown around as it hit the bell.

That bit was not sad. Very silly.

Then something something boom? Stopped being restful. I'm awake now.





But in with the usual dream weirdness there were some good plot seeds about freedom, and religion, and legacy. And what is the shape of the future, and who will get there, and how will they be fenced in.


I like throwing mythic people at Starfleet, because the conditions the myths arose in and the values they represent will combine with Starfleet in interesting ways.

... xovers are fun.




But I should get up now and eat a food and so forth.

ugh, awake. boring.