Sunday, June 28, 2020

Solar Trek: The Eden Trip

This is another post in this series that takes the "stars" out of Star Trek...



Thomas Sevrin (2219-2263) was an an expert in neurocybernetics and advocate for a rejection of physical existence for a purely digital one. Sevrin believed a technological singuarlity was swiftly approaching and only by forsaking the the limitations of human bodies and brains could "the new human"hope to continue to play a part in the coming order.

Sevrin and a group of his young followers (including the the son of a dignitary of an important colony) stole a spacecraft in an attempt to reach the Romulan Neutral Zone. A dangerous reactor malfunction would have likely been the end of them, had they not been rescued by Enterprise.

Interrogation revealed that the group hoped to reach Eden--the name for server running a simulated reality and the asteroid housing it built in the outer system in pre-Federation days. Eden was generally considered a myth of the counterculture, but Sevrin claimed to know its location.

Medical examination following their rescue revealed that Sevrin perhaps had other motives for wishing to find Eden: he was dying a neurodegenerative disease, the accidental result of some of his self-experimentation.

Ultimately, Sevrin's intelligence proved correct, at least in part. There was an ancient server. Unfortunately, the simulated reality within had long ago been corrupted. Sevrin's body died of his illness and any digital copy of his mind he hoped would live forever was also lost.

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