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The sickbay of the Enterprise-D from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Image credit: Derek Springer from Los Angeles, CA, USA
I wish Star Trek medical bays were real.
Some countries like Canada offer universal healthcare. Well, the basics are covered by taxes. The majority of us still have to buy insurance or pay out of pocket for things like prescriptions, dental care, (most) mental health care, basic vision care, private hospital rooms, and many medical devices that are meant for home use.
I’m grateful to be able to visit my family doctor without worrying about how much the bill will be, but I dream of a world where everyone can visit a Star Trek medical bay.
Imagine almost instantly getting a diagnosis after having a tricorder painless waved in front of you instead of waiting days or sometimes even weeks for results from our current and more invasive diagnostic procedures to come in.
Then you would probably be given a hypospray or a little pill to permanently cure any illness or injury faster and with less pain than even the most revolutionary treatments that are available today. All of this would happen without anyone worrying about how they can afford the treatment.
I dream of living in a world like that. Wouldn’t it be marvellous?
As much as I’d also love to experience a few hours of amusement in the holodeck or order all sorts of fancy dishes from a replicator in the mess hall, real-life medical bays would be life-changing for humanity as a whole. I hope they really do exist someday.
Toronto has an excellent public library system that offers a wide range of paper, audio, and electronic books.
Dusting and sweeping are my least favourite chores. There is no carpet in my apartment, so these two chores sort of meld together.
Let’s see if I can answer this question without writing a whole book on the topic. Ha!
My all-time favourite plot line is rebirth. That is to say, the audience is introduced to a morally ambiguous character (or even a downright jerk) who learns the error of his or her ways and eventually make a genuine and permanent change in their behaviour for the better.
Of course, I still draw boundaries about what I’m willing to read and watch. I do not consume stories that make excuses for violence, hatred, or any form of abuse.
The vast majority of the books I read are ebooks, so my place is always marked in them automatically unless there’s a technological glitch. That doesn’t make for a very fun answer to this week’s prompt, so I’ll keep talking.
Anyone who has participated in the Wednesday Weekly Blog Challenge or who has followed this blog for a few years will probably not be surprised by this answer at all.
When I was a teenager, I wrote a little bit of fan fiction for a couple of my favourite worlds (Narnia and the prehistoric world set in Jean M. Auel’s Earth’s Children series that I’ve talked about here so often, if you’re curious). I never finished any of it and it doesn’t exist anymore so far as I know, but I had a wonderful time playing around with characters and settings I knew so well.
I’m bending the rules this week and giving two answers to the prompt because I know we’ve had at least one vegetarian participate in the past. I don’t want to make them read about something that might bother them.