Growing up, I was a huge Trekkie, obsessed with both the original series and Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG to those in the know). When I started in the fandom in the nineties, TNG was already in hard re-run mode, but somehow still way ahead of its time. The show tackled euthanasia, censorship, gender identity, class systems, and more, and I couldn’t get enough of it. Teenage me lined up for conventions, covered my walls with posters, and plundered my allowance to pay for meet-and-greets with Patrick Stewart, Denise Crosby, Gates McFadden, and others. I obsessed over storylines and could recite entire scenes. I was a lonely, socially awkward kid (STILL AM) and I wanted nothing more than to live inside this world of exploration, humanity, and wonder.

Oh the memories!! Source: Paramount

My favorite scenes? When a character visited the Enterprise’s holodeck – sort of a fantasy rec room where the options were near-limitless. The holodeck used holograms—projected light that created the illusion of solid objects—to build incredibly detailed 3D simulations of real or imaginary settings. You could walk through a quaint 19th century Irish town or climb into a B-52 bombing the Pacific theater in 1943. Anything you wanted. But, of course, the holodeck had a dark side. Billed as recreation and entertainment to the crew, it served as a narrative trap door (smart writers!) where scenarios routinely veered sideways. In practice, it was one of the most dangerous rooms on the ship. Weapons and bullets suddenly became real. NPCs went rogue and turned self-aware. Simulations malfunctioned and trapped the crew inside.

The magic happened here – in the holodeck Source: Paramount

The holodeck heavily inspired Resilusio, the virtual reality world in THE GARBAGE MAN. Now, TNG’s holodeck existed long before social media or AI, so the writers didn’t have the current dystopian framework to push the concept to its worst possible conclusions. Well… I did! I wanted to imagine what happens when the virtual world doesn’t just surround you but invades you. And I wanted a full body connection to the user. A vector, if you will, for changing brain chemistry, just as a drug might do. Thus, the suits that users wear to plug into Resilusio. A skin-to-skin communication. The holodeck had no gear or “rigs” required, and I don’t remember any real fear of users’ brains getting permanently fried (readers-tell me if I’m wrong!). That, in my mind, missed the whole point of conjured realities:

they are poison to an actual human being.

Rec rooms gone wrong – an artisit’s rendering of THE GARBAGE MAN’s VR world, Resilusio.

The concept of Resilusio was simple: a real-life illusion that gets into your brain. Destroys your brain. Makes you insane. Because while a magical holographic world sounds like a dream, it is also, with certainty, a nightmare without end. Remember that next time someone tries to sell you “virtual reality” or even “augmented reality”. Fantasy has a price. Always.