A quantum subspace interstitial anomaly sucks you out of your chair and into the Star Trek universe: TNG continuity, shortly after the Dominion War ends. You’re lucky enough to arrive in Earth rather than the Klingon homeworld. A couple of Starfleet officers happen to be around when you fall through the hole in space, and as they are used to weird crap, they’re willing to help you out. Examining your quark vibrational rate or whatever, they verify that you’re a human from an alternate reality; unfortunately, they cannot return you to your proper place in the multiverse, as you don’t know the subspace signature of you world as you do not have a degree in technobabble, and there’s like 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 possibiliities. While the magic Federation docs take a few minutes out of their schedule to cure you of your high blood pressure, diabetes, lung cancer, and any other ailments you have upon arrival, nobody here can get you home.
Schooling. And comic books. We’re talking three hundred more years of comic books. Alan Moore’s head is probably in a jar somewhere ranting. I want to see that.
Really, life in the federation is as close to utopia as you’re likely to get. Might as well enjoy it.
Assuming I retain my present skills and don’t gain any new ones, options are somewhat limited. Reckon I’d sign up for Starfleet JAG, get a post to a ship, start working on the Bridge Officer’s Test.
You seem to be assuming that any one of us would want to go back home. (Although you go on to assume the hopelessness of that.) Those of us with no dependents and a rather unhappy situation may feel differently. Personally, there are goals I still want to accomplish. But I could always set new ones.
What runner pat said about Wesley makes sense, BTW. - Og
Picard reads bound books; Jake Crusher wrote and published at least one novel. I’m not sure there’s a market for non-interactive movies, though; they would have been replaced by holo-novels in a way that text novels would be somewhat less likely to.
Hmm. Probably not much, apart from trying to boink Dr Bashir. And maybe discuss Shakespeare with him, when we had the time.
If it weren’t for the fact their early twentieth century is nothing like ours, I’d get in touch with some historians. And get a cat.
Do I have knowledge of Star Trek? Because that would be creepy for them. Not that I’d share, or have anything relevant to share. I mean, what, “Starfleet Command, I don’t have any relevant information, but let’s talk about how silly all those holodeck episodes were, oh and I’m a big Odo-Kira shipper”?
I suppose I would go back to school and use my knowledge of early 21st century computer science to become an expert in … uh… early 21st century computer science.
OK, it IS a niche field, but how many people live in the Federation?
I’ll bet there is a journal that I could publish my material in.
I also suppose that someone (female, humanoid and attractive) in the Federation is interested in crosstime castaways, and I could become a source of knowledge for her.
The first thing I’d do is hitch a ride on the next ship leaving the planet. Outer Space! Fuck yeah! It’d be my biggest childhood dream coming true! 'Course, everyone would be laughing at the newbie, but so what? I’m in space!
Let’s see… apply for housing somewhere on Earth that seems nice… (There’s no money system on Earth, so how do they handle things like that?) Then start accessing public education files and learn all the little details about living in the Federation that never really get covered in the tv shows.
I might try the Starfleet academy entrance tests, but frankly I’m not sure if I’m cut out for possible combat duty the next time the Borg comes close - and if the dominion war is just finishing, I know that Shinzon is due to take over the Romulan empire sometime soon. Of course, he doesn’t manage to blast Earth.
Learning how holonovels are authored would be interesting - I have enough of a background in programming and interactive game design that I think I might actually be good at that. Also might look into how feasible and safe it would be to tour the planets of the Federation without having to earn mucho credits for the trip beforehand.
That’s enough to get started on I think. I wouldn’t be excessively worried about getting ‘home’
I’d have to try a holodeck eventually, but the allure of the holodeck for me now is escape from this reality. That reality would be so cool to explore it would take quite a while before I felt the need to escape it.
I would bet there would be plenty of real life women that would be intrigued by a Man From An Alternate Realty, so I’d try that first, then once that peters out, yeah; the holodeck.
