Captain’s Blog: Stardate 12222025.8

An entry originally posted on my main site, https://blogtrek.net/

Federation scientists sometimes spend their entire careers studying a single animal, hoping to understand where it came from, what shaped it over time, what its genes reveal, how it interacts with its ecosystem and vice versa. Sometimes, this process leads to some surprising connections.

Officer Bella fighting off a Horta from swallowing her!

Someone studying Gila monster venom peptides led to the development of Ozempic which in some instances led to weight loss, improved health and maybe even a relationship (or ozempic butt!). Yew tree bark was found to have a compound that when extracted leads to chemotherapy which is used to treat cancer and save lives. Scientists at CERN particle physics lab were having trouble sharing documents to each other due to incompatible systems. Tim Berners Lee came in to fix issues at CERN and this resulted in him creating HTML, HTTP, and URLs, which made it easy for people to publish and navigate linked pages on the internet. Humans aren’t the only ones that have utilized unusual connections to overcome challenges. The universe is filled with countless species, each trying to adapt to an ever changing environment. I know that isn’t anything new but I find stuff like co-option soooo cool. For the unaware, co-option is when something (like genes) existed for an initial reason but then is used for a new reason. For example, beetles moved the genes for limb building so that it could be used for horns. Electric eels co-opted muscle excitability genes to generate electricity for hunting and defense. Underlying all this seems to be that different pressures leading to different adaptations which turn something relatively basic into something new and more complex. I bring all this up because of something that came to me during a bout of deep meditation.

Officer’s Bella and Valerie climbing a tree; an activity that you rarely see kids doing nowadays.

I was sitting in bed with my eyes closed, felt fully conscious but started to see like a lot of tiny bubbles moving around bunched in groups over a dark background. In some weird way, I felt a familiarity with it and when I looked at my body, I was one of the bubbles too. I was thinking, “What the hell is going on”. I then heard a voice that came from inside my head. It had an unusually deep resonance to it as it said, “Hey, I need you to write this down”. I was thinking to myself, “I’m resting, I don’t want to write anything.” It then seemed to get upset and said, “Hurry up and open your notebook.” So I opened my eyes and opened my notebook. I was irritated because I REALLY didn’t want to do anything. I stared at my notebook and thought to myself…”ugh what”. The voice said, “Quiet your mind and listen”. I quieted my mind. It began to speak. “Like you, I am charting the possibilities of possibilities. This place seems to be an iterative fractal generation of experiences. It grows by acquiring these new energy configurations and then merges those new sequences with all the others it has acquired to churn out super large collections of knowledge and prunes redundant information with the ultimate goal of optimization and to co-opt that which has existed in a new manner.” Upon writing this, I thought, why doesn’t it just do that without relying on external sources. The voice answered me by saying, “It can only use the materials that are available and everything has a cost that must be outweighed by its benefit.”

The voice seemed to go away after that as my mind began to try to process that which I just wrote. I’m not sure how accurate any of that is but it seems at least somewhat plausible. It seems safe to say that we are basically the universe trying to understand itself. 62.8% of human atoms are hydrogen; and once material from the Big Bang cooled, 92.3% of the atoms were hydrogen. Another 25.5% of mankind is composed of oxygen atoms and 9.4% carbon atoms which are made in stars that are 73% hydrogen. Is there something out here that could exist like the voice said that spawned due to some emergent happenstance before humans? If our universe is indeed in a blackhole, maybe there’s something out there way older than humans that could function almost like a God? It may not seem like it, but we are very high up after climbing some rocks. This little area was low-key really comfortable. I very much wonder if the hydrogen, oxygen and carbon atoms that makes up the majority of what we are is even capable of perceiving a fraction of how a super-intelligence could operate or the true nature of the universe. Is this existence more than just an arrangement of energies? What would perfect understanding and optimized homeostasis be like if one could experience such a thing? Are humans destined to be co-opted into different roles in some hypothetical afterlife? The one thing I could say is that it would make sense why a God would allow such horrors to occur and not intercede if its primary goal was to acquire all these unique life arrangements for its own purposes. Humans test on animals (even to the point of death) and don’t intercede to mitigate a lot of horrors since it isn’t in their best interest. Maybe (the) God(s) really is like humans….which is quite a scary thought. Or maybe the religious are correct that there is an evil entity that feeds on human suffering due to some energetic need with the other side trying to use our energy for reasons already outlined. Who knows!

In other news, I am no longer serving aboard Starbase 701 (my previous job). Due to legal reasons, I am unable to disclose more about what happened. Needless to say, I am hoping to serve aboard aboard another Starbase in the near future. I met with several other admins for interviews and I am hopeful that I can start at a new post soon. I have been keeping myself busy for the time being.As much as I like being home for the holidays with the other officers, I do miss the routine of serving aboard a Starbase and helping those in need. Plus, this star ship (house) isn’t going to pay for itself! Admiral Pam has really elevated herself in my eyes. She has served as an accountable buddy to ensure I stay on task and has helped me not get too down on myself. An honorable mention also goes out to Captain Eric. We still talk regularly and sometimes I feel like he’s the only one that actually gets me. Well, to be fair, the crew here know me better than Eric but they only like talking about serious things in short snippets. My disdain for the sometimes short attention span of this younger generation can not be overstated.

Officer Valerie undertakes a risky maneuver near this nebula

As I plan for our next mission, I’m still thinking about the voice. Was that just some subconscious process? Were the 2 lobes of my brain communicating? Is the voice something external to me? A hybrid? As I’ve accumulated time in this place, I am feeling like the Neil de Grasse Tyson quote that says, “As the area of our knowledge grows, so too does the perimeter of our ignorance.” Despite all the time I have tried to learn, I have ended up with more questions and less confidence in that which I think I know. And so it goes for this ugly bag of mostly water hovering above a large collection of rock and metal, held up by the refusal of electron clouds to let me through.

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