Enamored, where it all began
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It seems that when the inner workings of our technology exceeds the understanding of the common man it ceases to be a wonder and takes its place in the background as an adjunct to our lives. Sort of like my holo-collection of early twentieth century bread toasters. The design and function of a toaster is really quite simple and easy to understand. But you don’t need to understand how a toaster works to make toast. And that is the basic difference between me and most of the rest of the world/universe, I have a burning desire to understand, in detail, how everything works. I don’t like being a spectator unless I have the plans and blueprints to the event.
A lot of my studies involved the analysts of technological history and the resulting outcome of decisions made by people who were involved. In particular the twenty first century when advances in technology were stymied by corporations that used their power to control and ultimately profit from setbacks in certain areas of technology. I find it fascinating that people of that era embraced new technology with a passion, especially communications yet they were oblivious to how communication corporations were holding back the next great advances. But the most important part of my findings (to me anyway) was the hold new technology had on the people of that time and especially the more curious ones like me who pushed the limits of their technology. They were called hackers and from what I gather they were rebels and proud of their art. Of course this was before the “Time of Reason” and hacking was subject to abuse and destructive behavior.
I can still remember when all I would dream about was going to the Starfleet academy and then one day hopefully being assigned to a Starship. As a child it was all consuming and my parents even indulged me and sent me to only Starfleet approved schools as I was growing up. Whenever I would go shopping with my mother I would beg her to buy me replicator rations and every once in awhile she would relent and I would be in heaven. I would stand in front of the replicator and endlessly scan the menu and marvel at the exotic selections and dreaming of one day visiting those faraway places from which goodies like Vulcan Plomeek soup, Klingon rokeg blood pie, and Bajoran glop-on-a-stick came from. But of course after scanning almost the entire menu I would always get same thing, a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup. My mother would just roll her eyes at me while I meticulously ate every bite of what I considered to be technological magic. If I could I would have happily eaten only replicator food every day as I was growing up, later in life I would regret that wish.
Once some friends and I built a shuttle craft mock-up from some used transport containers we found, we even lucked out once and found a container that was actually used on a Starship. The container had Starfleet markings on it and to me that was like finding latinum. Of course we could have used the Hologames to simulate a real Starship like a lot of the other kids did. But I liked the idea of getting my hands on something real and making it work. The Hologames Platform could create an almost perfect Starship simulation but everyone always wanted to play commander while I was happy just working with the technology. I guess that was when I realized that I wasn’t cut out for command because I was so much more interested in the workings of everything Starfleet. As I got older and entered advanced studies in school and I could then requisition Starfleet study materials, I took advantage of every opportunity and ordered all the study materials I could. I was in techno-bliss when I got my first Starfleet PADD. It was a basic unit but I was able to scrounge up Mod Packs to upgrade it so I could interface with almost any Starfleet terminal. Of course I immediately researched on how to modify the Mod Packs and tweak them beyond their intended purpose.
One day while I was scrounging around my favorite surplus tech depot for the schematics of an advanced PADD Mod Pack, I stumbled upon George Atwater. George was a lot like me and we became instant friends and he gave me the keys to a world I did not know existed. Tech Enhancement, a very happy word for a tech geek like myself. Until I met George I followed each guideline and tech manual to a T but that all changed. I had experimented on my own tweaking and fiddling to get the results I wanted but now I found that I could far surpass those expectations and I entered a new world and thus an engineer was born.
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