Justin B Rye 1992-98
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Section 8: HOLODECKS

8.0 GENERALITIES

Holodecks (hereinafter HDs) are less relevant to my theme, being an added rather than inherent flaw in Star Trek Universe plausibility, but I like lambasting them anyhow.  Now, given highly advanced forcefields, holography and continuous use of imperceptible transporters, controlled by a super-AI, I'll swallow the HDs as a feasible technology.  The obvious spin-off applications are, as always, what make it preposterous.  HDs are too close to omnipotence, which (like Utopia - see 9.4) makes for low-quality plots.

8.1 PSEUDOMATTER (see footnotes, postscripts)

Objects created by the HD are supposedly made of pseudomatter, which evaporates when removed from the holofield.  Pseudomatter is real enough to eat; real enough to fool Geordie's vizor; to reflect Krieger waves ("A Matter of Perspective", STTNG3); to feel wet; to kill you; even to step out through the doors ("The Big Goodbye", STTNG1)... but it's not "really" real.  Yet we know that orthodox Star Trek replicators could build a visually convincing "puppet" from spam!  Add holograms for detail, move it with forcefields and transporters; if it runs away, it drops dead.  So who needs the extra quasiscience involved in the idea of pseudomatter?

8.2 ILLUSTRATION PROGRAMS (see footnotes, postscripts)

• Porn - the obvious use for the HD, though I would expect standard HD etiquette to involve (A) conventions and/or restrictions on the simulation of real people, (B) security codes so nobody else who sneaks in can sabotage your program, and (C) a Vacant/Engaged sign.
• Horror - program it with the collected works of Cronenberg, Lovecraft and Giger, then let it improvise.  Whatever you do, though, don't go in.
• Mindwarp - try the collected works of Sheckley, Watson and PK Dick.  If you enter, don't expect ever to be sure you've got back out again... unless of course you realise you are evaporating.  I suspect this is where the twenty-fourth century's SF fans have gone, leaving nobody who can recognise and short-circuit the scifi-cliché plots the Enterprise runs into.
• Banquet - have a slap-up meal; come back outside; and keel over dead as the food evaporates from your innards, and your metabolism goes crazy.
• Dog bite - if a holo-simulation rabies virus "simulatedly" invades and reprograms one of your cells, you are left with genuine hydrophobia.
• The Great Zombini - simulation hypnotists are likewise a bad idea.
• Torture chamber - you get the picture.
• Fraud - fabricate any evidence you want.  The premier abdicating in your favour, your enemy molesting children, you walking on water...
• Memory extension - if the ship runs low on memory capacity, you can create vast upgrades made out of pseudomatter on the HD. (?!)
• Brains trust - simulate Lao Tze, Bacon, Einstein, Surak etc.  Either (A) actually take their advice or (B) throw custard pies at them.
• Turing test - tell the computer to simulate Alan Turing, then ask him whether he really is an intelligent being or "just a simulation".
• Moriarty - remember STTNG2's "Elementary, Dear Data", swiftly followed by "The Schizoid Man"?  The NCC1701D's databanks held (A) a sentient mind seeking a body and (B) Dr Graves' expert-system for transcribing sentient minds into android bodies.  Another reason for replicating Data (cf. 7.2).  And I wonder: has Moriarty got a pseudomatter brain?  Or is his head hollow and his neurochemistry purely a HD emulation?

8.3 MILITARY APPLICATIONS

If even Starfleet's guaranteed-safe recreational HDs can kill, imagine the potential of a battleship with a HD built onto its hull: Holocaust class.  This "openplan HD" could easily provide:

• Guns - any size at all: they may be illusory, but the effects aren't.
• Camouflage - forget mere "cloaking devices"; this can disguise you to the eye, to radar, or indeed to the touch as anything or nothing.
• Armour - any type, any amount, right in the way of incoming missiles.

Or if you can't swallow "openplan HDs", how about... Holoheart class.  Gut a ship of all its contents bar HDs, then simulate the absent rooms.  Use the saved space for extra-huge engines, computers, and guns; the crew (if not the "Away Team") can contain as many geniuses and heroes as you like.  No need to tell them what's really going on...

FOOTNOTES

POSTSCRIPTS