TTV Read

Forgotten Stuff

From: Ben

Hi Vaughn and Tracy, In his e-mail last week, Colin brought up something that I've always wondered about. The fact that wonderfully useful bits of technology are discovered or used every week, and then basically forgotten. I'd long though that the federation kept a massive "Raiders of the Lost Ark" style warehouse where every useful thing in the galaxy was put, and promptly forgotten about. It's contents would include things like: -Directions to a place that will give you god-like ESP if you fly your ship through it. -A machine that will duplicate a human perfectly. -A functional brainwashing machine -A fool-proof lie-detector -Spores that will not only help you relax, but also restore any body parts you're missing. -At least 3 or 4 different ways to get the ship to travel faster than warp 10 - confirmed by the chief engineer who had previously thought it was impossible - but may have been drunk during the test. -A planet that would happily replicate robot slaves, or put your brain into a robotic duplicate of your own body so you could live forever -A Klingon-spy detecting pom-pom -Mr. Scotts plans for an anti-matter bomb that you could transport (presumably even to a Borg ship, unless a more flamboyant plan was called for) -A cloaking device that works against everyone except the Romulans -An injectable transponder that would allow the user to be beamed up even if their communicator was lost, and can be converted into a laser. -A magic water that one could drink, and let the user move so fast that they could dodge energy weapons, and repair an entire space ship in a matter of seconds, and then brought back to normal speed at their own convenience. -A drug that, when injected let the user move objects and people with their mind And this is just the useful stuff the Enterprise physically had in their hands so far. It doesn't include anything Kirk didn't get a chance to steel...or any of the stuff I forgot. The more I think about it though, the more I suspect that these goodies aren't in a massive warehouse. More likely, they're being processed as part of a massive backlog of work, by the same crack-bureaucrats responsible for checking in on the progress of the federations remote colonists, and it's ethically challenged historians and archaeologists. Ben.