Trek tech
Sometimes when I pull into my driveway and hit the button on my remote that operates the automatic garage door opener, I watch with amazement as the door lifts effortlessly to accommodate my entry. Here we are in 2005 and I am still spellbound by this technology. All these years later, I can’t help thinking about those old Star Trek television shows. The Enterprise would approach a floating space station in a galaxy far, far away, the doors to the dock would open and in she would go. Back in the 1960s, this was the stuff of science fiction. At least it was to me. Maybe the automatic garage door had already been invented. I wouldn’t know. Hell, we didn’t even have a garage in my family when I was growing up. I never could have imagined that some day not only would I have my own two-car garage, but I would have garage doors that opened on my command. More fun than pulling into my garage is backing out and watching the door close upon my exit. Often I will fantasize that I am dropping out into the weightlessness of space and not onto the street that will lead me to work. Okay, that’s queer, I know. Still, if you grew up in the era of the original Star Trek, you know what I mean. This was the time of communicators, not cell phones.
The other day, my neighbor had a couple of transporters installed in his garage. Remember those from the show? Captains Kirk and Spock would be on some hostile planet. Kirk would whip out his communicator and ask that they be “beamed up.” Chief engineer, Scotty, would pinpoint their coordinates and bring them back, atom by atom, recombining their bodies on the other end in the ship’s transporter room. Of all the technologies featured in the old Star Trek television series, this was the coolest but also the most improbable (if not impossible) in my mind. I guess they finally worked out the bugs on all that space/time continuum stuff. Now you just call up Sears and some guy with a big, exposed butt-crack comes out and installs the hardware in an afternoon. This kid, my neighbor, can’t be thirty years old. I went over to his place to see the transporters with my own two eyes. I asked if I could take a spin, but he said no, because he hadn’t figured it all out yet and it was only programmed to get him to and from the office. He did, however, take the opportunity of my visit to gloat about how nice it is to have a “zero minute commute” and how weird it feels to have your atoms all jumbled up when you are in the midst of being transported. “Kind of tingles,” he said. Damn him, I thought to myself. He watched Star Trek on syndicated television. I was the one who saw those shows first run. It just isn’t right.
All I know for sure now is that I’ll be getting a transporter or two installed in my garage, too. And soon. I thanked my neighbor for his time and turned to head home. I was trying hard to contain my jealousy. “Beam me up, Scotty,” I said jokingly, as I walked away. He thought for a second; this strange, quizzical look developed on his face, until he got the joke. “Oh, yeah, Star Trek, right.”
9:31:49 PM  Stories
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