Time Enough …

The Timeship Aeon.

One of the more recurring themes in science fiction, particularly Star Trek, is that of time travel. In the distant future of this futuristic series, the human-created Federation Starfleet has evolved into something more. Instead of just exploring space with its Starfleet, the Federation now explores time as well as space with its Timefleet.

I love work, but with all the various pushes and pulls of life, I find like I’m sure many of you find, that there is just not enough time in the day to do ALL the things we want, or even need. I find myself craving more time to do everything! I find myself planning ahead, sometimes obsessively, so that I can maximize my time. How glorious would that be to use a timeship (like the Starfleet Epoch-class) to extend your day, and do a month’s worth of work in just 24 hours? Heck, why stop there, perhaps do a year’s worth of work in 1 hour! Or a lifetime in 1 second?

There I think is the danger in delving too deep thoughts of the future (ironic eh?) Occasional excursions are grand, frequent excursions just take away too much of the little time we do have in the here and now. Sometimes we just need to live in the here and now and do what we can. As my wise wife always says, “Live in the moment.”

The Cardassians: Resource Scarcity and War

The Hutet-class Battleship

The Cardassian Hutet-class starship was a powerful battleship designed by the Cardassians around the time of the Dominion War. The Cardassians were a resource-poor polity that was ever-expanding its empire to remedy that lack of resources. Ironically, this expansion meant a further drain on their empire’s resources, thus fueling further expansion.

How many times have we seen the same vicious cycle at work here on Earth? Resource scarcity begets war begets resource scarcity begets war. Perhaps the only way to truly reduce or eliminate this vicious cycle here on Earth is to expand out into space and acquire resources from other worlds in our own solar system. The cynic in me, though, would only surmise that we would just expand our wars into space. The optimist in me, however, would hope that we could spin the exploration of space as a conquest requiring the unity of all humanity to succeed.