Future Pleasures

by Marcus Priddey

I had to write this in response to Matthew Dean's comments, "The Simple Pleasures Of Life...?". Basically, to recap Matthew mentioned how it wouldn't be that great living on the Enterprise due to the possibility of death or bereavement, no pay and working for seven days a week.

Sorry Matthew, but I have to disagree. Let's take the Enterprise first. It has everything you could possible dream of on board. You could indulge your every whim courtesy of the holodeck (as we see Lieutenant Barclay does). You could eat anything you want courtesy of replicators and then burn it off in the gym afterwards. You could have ten pints of your favourite beverage in Ten Forward every night after work and then wish the hangover away thanks to synthehol. I think I could live with that for a few years.

Now, about the no pay situation. Why should you need to get paid? Why do we get paid nowadays? To afford the things we want, that's why. But with the replicators, everything no longer has any value (the communicator pins, for instance are made out of gold, as you will see from "The Last Outpost") so what's the point of being paid? For services, I hear you answer such as haircuts and so forth. But think. They have use of the replicators too, so they have no need to pay for anything they want, so they have no use for money so they need not charge for their services.

As for working for seven days a week, let's look at that for a moment. Under Picard's command there were three shifts a day making them 8 hours each. Normal working hours for most of us. Under Jellico's command (as seen in "Chain Of Command") there were four shifts which meant the shifts were only 6 hours each.

Now the Enterprise is climate controlled. You live extremely close by and everything on board is free. I suppose I would work in those conditions (to be read in a sarcastic frame of mind, preferably with a sigh at the end for effect.) Not only that, the crew get shore leave quite often. Gets you thinking, doesn't it? Most of us have travel to work in a polluted atmosphere, slog along for about 8 hours a days for pittance which we have to save up for an eternity before, we can afford anything, so most of us are in debt to our eyeballs and then we only get between two and four weeks holiday a year! Life in the 24th Century doesn't sound all that bad now does it?

As for death and bereavement, we live our lives in constant fear of that, and it will come to us wherever we may be. If we thought we were safest on Earth then we might as well cocoon ourselves away from the glorious sights the universe has in store for anyone with a mind to go look for them. Death and bereavement is the price you have to pay sometimes to see those sights.