Original Technology Is A Blast

It’s fun to create original technology.

Star Trek canon has all sorts of interesting technology, some of which can degenerate into what often feels like technobabble. But they haven’t quite thought of everything. Anything not here is in the Spotlight category. These are the bits of technology I have in my Star Trek fan fiction.

Medicine

• Birth control shot – The shot works for either a man or a woman (and is different, depending upon gender and species). It is nearly 100% effective for relations with someone from one’s own universe. Mirror gametes are considerably more resilient (the Mirror Universe is not just an area of heavy testosterone but also one where survival of the fittest continues to play a huge role). So then the shot is more like 60% or so effective. The shot is fully reversible if the parties decide they want to become parents. For interspecies relations, often the shot is unnecessary, as usually interbreeding cannot occur without the intervention of medical technology.
• Experimental Ingredient #26 – it would be a spoiler to reveal what it is; it’s from There’s Something About Hoshi.
• Hypralonine – this injectible medication is a treatment for depression. Much like today’s medicine, it is not always effective.
• Quatromenaline – This medication is a treatment for depression. It has oral administration. It does not always work.

Physical Enhancements

For time travelers, older medical care is primitive. To make time travel possible, travelers need a lot of physical rejiggerings. Further, if time travelers lose some of their body parts, their extremities have homing devices in them. You can’t just leave a severed head in 1789 Paris. Hence, from top to bottom, time travelers receive the following enhancements, successors to Augment (canon) technology:

• Brain implants to enhance memory. Time travelers have near-perfect recall; useful if you shouldn’t be carrying around a PADD or tricorder.
• Ear implants with an implanted Communicator. It’s a lot harder to lose it. Also, there is better hearing. They can hear above and below the normal range of human hearing, and can hear faint sounds as well. This device also provides near instantaneous translations.
• Ocular lens implants allow for enhanced vision, obviating the need for glasses or contacts.
• Fingertip implants allow you to change or erase your own fingertips.
• Foot pad implants do not make time travelers any faster. But they reduce shock and wear and tear on the traveler’s knees. This makes it easier to, if not run faster, at least to run longer distances without tiring quite so readily.
• Stem Cell Growth Accelerator

Propulsion

• Dark Matter/Energy Drive – some canon time ships use chronitons (also a canon construction). In the Times of the HG Wells series, the older technology is phasing out. Instead, it’s being replaced with this. The universe (for real) has both dark matter and dark energy. The idea is a type of propulsive drive used by newer time ships, which allows a time ship to fly both spatially and temporally.
• Temporal Enhancer – A hand-held or wrist-worn device. Characters use it with the Temporal Enzyme, trichronium. If an individual does not get a Temporal Enzyme injection, the Enhancer is useless.
• Trichronium – the temporal enzyme works with the Temporal Enzymatic Drive. The time traveler gets an injection or swallows it and, if the Temporal Enhancer is on line, the traveler is sent through time and space. Once trichronium leaves the body, the time traveler returns. Hence it is prudent to carry an extra dose to keep the traveler going if the level is getting low but the mission is not yet over. It smells and tastes a bit like cantaloupe.

Time Travel Helper Original Technology

• Temporal Force Field – Invented in the 2900s, this field protects the master time file. A modification of it protects workers at the Temporal Integrity Commission and puts them outside time. Therefore, they cannot erase themselves from history. However, it has the same limitations as the force field for the master time file. Because changes predating its invention can, conceivably, assure it is never invented. This explains a canon issue whereby, during the ENT Shockwave episode, Daniels could not/did not explain to Archer why he (Daniels) continued to exist even though, apparently, his entire civilization was wiped out by bringing Archer to the 3000s.

Original Technology Tools

• Phase cutter – these replace scissors, but the Quartermaster in the Times of the HG Wells series still uses old-style scissors to cut hair, and an amateur gardener still uses old-style pruning shears to tend to roses and other plants.
  

  Pruning shears. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

• Voice Masker – this technology disguises voices, including going so far as to hide genders, ages, accents, etc. There are embedded (one is in a ceiling; another is inside a hand-held communicator) and hand-held varieties. Some singers also use them.

Communications Original Technology

• Messages and Communications – characters send and receive messages akin to email. I also have them ask to speak with a particular character, in a particular place (e. g. “I’d like to speak to Doctor Phlox, on the NX-01.”). This works almost like an old-fashioned switchboard operator but also allows the character to announce who they are contacting; so they help exposition.
• Searches for PADDs – characters sometimes run Google-style searches. In addition, many search results are actual numbers from the day I Googled a particular word or phrase.
• Sleep Mode for PADDs – PADDs can go into sleep mode, which can include a slide show. Most characters use family photographs for the slide show.

Other Original Technology and Inventions

• Aluminoplastic – transparent aluminum is canon; it is the replacement for glass for windows and portholes. In my universe, this is a metal-plastic alloy hybrid and is the standard for making devices, e. g. medical implants, replicated devices, ships’ hulls, etc.
• 

  Chritmas cracker (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

  Dark matter flares – if temporal tags (a canon construction) go on something in the Mirror Universe, these flares must be set off in our universe. This is for a time traveler to find the temporally tagged items. They look like black Christmas crackers and their setting off is similar.

• Disposer – the trash receptacle is a kind of recycler/incinerator.
• Keys – for houses and rooms, keys are flat rectangular pieces of polymer with a notch cut out of the side. They can be in color for fun, and can go on key chains much like we do today.
• Phaseball– somewhat akin to paintball, this is a safe pretend combat game.
• Point Abic dishes -They look like satellite dishes. These are grey in our universe and copper-colored in the mirror. Also, in both universes, they exist on the planet called Lafa II. Calafans use them to help amplify and direct dreams, but also to keep the two universes separate, so they are also a kind of Berlin Wall or 38^th parallel.
• Sanitizer – a big dishwasher; there is one on the Enterprise.
• Tube Food – it looks like white toothpaste and only has a flavor if you imagine one. Not the same as vegetable paste tubes.