My sister Erin was a huge “Star Trek: The Next Generation” fan. I was too, but not anywhere close to the same degree. She read the novelizations. She kept a framed photo of Commander Riker on a shelf in her bedroom. She attended a convention, and found her way to the right building by following someone dressed as a Klingon through downtown Minneapolis.
When the show ended its run on TV and the movies began, it was a big deal for us. The first one, “Star Trek: Generations,” wasn’t the epic we had hoped for, but it was a good fan movie and we still enjoyed it. I watched it again recently. With the perspective of a different filter, I noticed it’s actually a layered story about growth, loss, coping with regret, and the stalking passage of time.
The story is centered around a villain trying to find his way to something called The Nexus, a place that exists outside of space and time where someone could live out eternity in their own ideal. One character who had been there described it: “It was like being inside joy, as if joy was something tangible. Never in my entire life have I been that content.” When Captain Picard ends up there later in the movie, he sees a reflection of the life he never had, getting the chance to live out all had sacrificed in the name of his career: a wife, a loving family, a home, and the return of the young nephew he had recently lost.
With Erin’s birthday approaching, it made me wonder what The Nexus would have been like for her. For all I know, wherever or whatever she is now has her existing inside something that maybe wouldn’t be so different. What would her ideal have been?
It didn’t take a lot of thinking to put that together.
She’d be at our cousin’s cabin in Western Wisconsin on a warm summer Saturday night. There wouldn’t be any humidity or bugs to bother anyone. The windows would be wide open, letting in just enough breeze to keep the air intoxicatingly comfortable. The clock would say somewhere around 2 AM. She’d be standing in a kitchen filled with our cousins, all laughing to they point they could barely breathe. The entire house would be filled with the smells of classic 2 AM food: garlic cream cheese dip, chips, frozen pizzas, special k bars. Little ones would be asleep in nearby bedrooms, but in the Nexus they’d be sleeping soundly through the raucous laughter in the kitchen and the pounding music coming from the guitars and drums and keyboards and singing in the basement.
Our nephews would be there, and she’d be able to enjoy them both as the small boys she knew and the young adults she never had the chance to see, because time wouldn’t matter there. Every dog our family ever knew, ranging from Lady, the corgi we had as kids, to whoever might be coming home with me next month, would be in and out of the house, playing, chasing resting, all getting along perfectly.
Even though close to one hundred people would be filling the house there would be plenty of room, both inside and in the yard under the stars, for everyone to sit. There wouldn’t be any awkward moments, no stress or anxiety waiting for our return to the real world, no pain to endure; just everyone together, our own generations, surrounding and enjoying each other in a night that would never have to end.
As the movie comes to an end, Captain Picard convinces Captain Kirk (yep, they’re both in this) to leave The Nexus with him so they can save the population of an endangered planet. Picard appeals to Kirk’s sense of duty; the need to know he’s doing something that makes a difference ultimately tips the scales for Kirk and sends him back to a reality that matters.
That need to make a difference, as selectively as I choose to see it, is something I probably allow to drive my decisions more than it should, so I felt a small twinge watching that scene. It brought back something of a thought experiment that had been going around when the movie was out: What would The Nexus be like for you?
I won’t get into great detail about my version, but I’d imagine that reality would be made of different intersecting points from a number of unexplored timelines or parallel universes, collecting the elements of a life to fill in the blanks of what I don’t think I have here or believe I’ve missed out on. I have ideas about what that might look like, but, much like it had been for Picard, I don’t think I’d know for sure until I was actually there.
All I know for sure is that Erin would be there. And I could see her again. And we’d both be happy.
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