It is a dark, yet oddly smoke-free, room. It is a room filled with people, mostly men, generally about my age. Many are wearing glasses. The man at the front of the room looks at me. He's wearing a pale blue buttondown shirt and pants that are pulled up too high. He asks if I have anything to say. I stand up nervously, sweat pouring off my forehead and I say "My name is Eric, and I'm a geek."

Ok, it didn't really happen, but I was starting to wonder. Its easy to worry about becoming a geek when you're in the computer science biz, after all, most everybody else is one (yep, all the stereotypes are true). I suppose that sometimes I overcompensate, those two years I spent on the NASCAR circuit were probably overdoing it. But now that I have my PhD and a semi-real job I wonder if I'm crossing the line. And last week there was fresh evidence that I was on the verge. I bought a ticket to a Star Trek convention. Sure I tried to justify it, telling myself that it would be an interesting socialogical experience, but deep down I was thinking "oh my god, what have I done!"

As with seemingly all of my adventures this one begins early Saturday morning. I'm not really sure why you can't have a good adventure that starts at about noon, but this seems to be the rule. The convention would take place at the Oregon Convention center up in Portland (yes, I did drive an hour and a half for this!). The featured guest was Brent Spiner (who played Data). Weak justification #2: my friend Neal and I have kicked around a screenplay idea that we thought Brent Spiner would be ideal for. So I figure Brent and I will have plenty of time to chat together and I'll mention our idea to him and pretty soon I'll be moving to Hollywood.

I arrived at about 10:30 (some of you may not consider this too early, but waking up at 8:00 on a Saturday is like having my teeth drilled). Naturally they soaked me on the parking. Entering the convention center I expected to be the only person not dressed like a Klingon or a Vulcan. I was kind of disappointed to be wrong. Of course there WERE lots of people dressed like that, and plenty more dressed as various Star Fleet officers, and plenty more dressed in other Star Trek regalia, and most of the rest of them dressed as well, geeks. And there was a line to get in. A LONG line. A REALLY LONG line. So I got in the back of it and waited. Now when you're as self-concious as me you can always find something to feel weird about. In this case I'm standing by myself in the middle of hundreds of people that under normal circumstances I would mock. I'll leave the rest of the analysis to the reader. Meanwhile people are coming through the line passing things out (schedules and stuff). It will later turn out that several of these people are featured speakers! That's a little hint about the quality of some of the speakers.

Finally its in we go. For starters, before there are any speakers, there is a period of time devoted to the dealer's room. This is where you can buy your Star Trek memorobilia. Need a keychain shaped like a communicator (which even makes the noise)? Yours for $10. Need a very poorly made, horrible looking polyester imitation of a star fleet shirt? Yours for $40. Need a commerative gift plate of Gates McFadden as Doctor Crusher? Yours for $60. You can guess where all of my Christmas shopping got done this year. I just wish I'd left all of my credit cards at home.

After about a half an hour it was time for the speakers to start (meanwhile the dealer's room is open all day). The organizer started out by talking about the convention. It turns out he used to be script coordinator for the show (I will later discover that this is not as impressive a title as it sounds). He mentioned that some of the people in the reserved seats (who paid $55 for the "privilege") have flown from Vertmont, Virginia, etc. And they go to EVERY convention that Brent Spiner does. These same people would later comment to Brent during his portion of the show that he seemed to wear the same clothes all of the time.

The first real speaker writes a technology (sorry, TREKnology) column for the official fan club magazine. And he used to be the head of the science museum in Portland. He's going to talk about the relationship between trek science and real science. Ok, I think this might be interesting, I'm a scientist after all. About a half an hour later I found myself sticking needles in my leg in order to stay awake. Typical of his insightful discussion was relating the star trek phaser to lasers. Here we learned that we have lasers (imagine that!) and that he had one with him. It was one of those pocket pointers. He literally spent 5 minutes pointing at things around the room in order to show that you could point at things a long way away and clearly see the dot of light. Enthralling! Then he talked about how scientists couldn't figure out how you could stun someone with a laser like you can in star trek. This completely ignores the fact that they're not using lasers in star trek, but who am I to quibble with genius?

In order to stop from plunging my eyes out, I left in search of refreshment. The stand in the center was offering $3.50 hot dogs and $2.00 sodas. It seemed like a bargain and everything, but I thought I might be able to do better by walking a half a block to a fast food joint. My bargain hunting instincts were correct as I soon found myself in a strange city called "Burgerville." But thats another story.

It was back to the convention. Returning I was pleased to find our first speaker droning on. At first I wondered why no one was paying attention to all of the people who had slit their wrists, but then I saw the glazed eyes and the drool coming out of the mouths of the people who hadn't and I realized there was no one left but the speaker who was giving a treatise on the difference between the needles that doctors use in our time and the hyposprays used in Star Trek. Sadly, he was soon done, only an hour and 15 minutes after he had started.

The second speaker was "assistant script coordinator for Deep Space 9," which seemed like a good job until they described it. Why they described it I'll never know. We learned that its basically his job to type in the scripts in the proper format and update them as the writers make changes. After learning we were in the presence of such a powerful man I made it my goal to touch one of his garments. We also learned he had never spoken at one of these conventions before. Happily he turned out to be a pretty good speaker. He started by showing slides from upcoming episodes of the show and he talked a bit about what to expect. Then it began. He said the words which will haunt me the rest of my life, "I'd be glad to take some questions from the audience."

First, let me say that he was hampered by the fact that there was an audience member who was "mentally challenged" and would loudly speak and ask questions at inappropriate times. I thought the speaker handled that quite well. Actually he handled everything well given his complete lack of knowledge about anything beyond the scripts he has typed into the computer at Paramount. Somehow the concept that he wasn't in charge of the show just never got through to the audience though. Q - "Is Troi going to be on DS9?" A - "I honestly don't know, not in the scripts I've seen." Q - "Is Dr. Crusher going to be on DS9?" A - "I honestly don't know, not in the scripts I've seen." Q - "Is X (where X is everyone from Captain Kirk, asked twice, to Doctor Who (I'm not kidding)) going to be on DS9?" You get the idea. Then there were all the questions on stuff in the star trek universe, "how do you play paresi squares?" "What's the command hierarchy in the Cardassian milatary?" Happily he didn't know the answers to these either. I won't bore you with the REALLY inane questions.

After a break the next speaker was the script coordinator for Voyager. She had a great name - Lolita Fatjo, and she seems like a really lovely woman. Lolita is the other guy's boss and therefore knows slightly more about what's going on, BUT she's not a writer or producer and therefore has no real insights about what will happen in the future which she was very clear about up front. She started with a slide show for Voyager, much like the DS9 show. Then she talked about how to submit a script to the shows and told some funny stories about crazy things people have done. Then, of course, it was that time that I had learned to dread, questions and answers. I am amazed by the human capacity to screen out relevant information. Question after question that I knew how she would answer before she respond - "I don't know." Everyone wants to know what will happen for the next 11 years with Star Trek and she has made it clear she only knows about the next 6 weeks. But the discrepancy just doesn't seem to bother anyone. Now the flip side of this coin is the question of what exactly it is that we should be asking about. Mostly she could tell us about writing for Star Trek and I did find that interesting to a point, but that really isn't enough for the people who paid good cash to come to this thing. Why give her an hour and a half up there when she really has only 45 minutes worth of information? But she cheerfully went on her way fielding questions about the possibility of Mr. Sulu having a Christmas special (real question). The scary part is that she does this 2-3 times a month! Imagine that every weekend you travel somewhere where you speak in front of a big audience of people who bombard you with questions you can't possibly answer, questions you've been asked 47,000 times before. I for one might let the slightest hint of sarcasm invade my answers (but only the slightest hint).

The next portion of the convention was an auction of trek memorabilia. Mostly this amounted to the same junk the dealers were selling except that nearly all of it was autographed by somebody (for some reason it was usually Gates McFadden). I've always kind of wanted to go to an auction so I was kind of excited to attend this. I'm no expert, but I don't think it was exactly "professional." The auctioneer turned out to be Brent Spiner's stand-in from the show (trek trivia - his name is Christopher Hobson which is meaningful to trekkers for several reasons) and he had no idea how to run an auction beyond wise cracking (which isn't a bad way to start). After a while the main service the auctioneers provided aside from presenting more junk was to comment about how we weren't willing to pay lots of money for the junk. Is this supposed to entice me to pay more money? Personally I think $65 for a postcard set of the cast of The Next Generation (autographed by Levar Burton and Gates McFadden) is a bit pricey. There was a little polaroid of Gene Roddenberry that he had signed which went for $200 and we were assured that it was an incredible steal and we were all suckers for letting it go that low. If only I'd stopped at the bank on my way!

The final event was Brent Spiner. Brent turned out to be a completely charming and funny guy, extremely entertaining for the hour and a half he was up on stage. Now Brent's entire show is to take questions from the audience, so you can imagine how excited I was to have that to look forward to. Of the first 10 or so people who had questions I'd say 6 were women and 4 were little kids. All six of the women brought Brent gifts. One group of women had actually paid to have a star named "Brent Spiner" and had the registration information. They paid money to have a star named after him! Their cash to have a star named after a guy the've never met! They took the time and made the effort to name a star after a guy who will probably go home and toss the stuff into the big pile of other stuff he gets! To his credit Brent handled the gifts well and even made a joke about how gifts aren't necessary because "I do pretty well for myself." What's it like to be Brent Spiner? You fly into a city, show up at a convention for an hour where you are showered with gifts and treated like the second coming. An autographed picture of you is fetching $45 a throw and people are naming stars after you! At one point he stopped and asked a women in the 2d row why she had binoculars! He asked her if his pores were clogged. She was sitting six feet away and was using binoculars! I've fallen in love with exclamation points!

So that was the Star Trek convention. Was it worth the $20? Based purely upon entertainment value at the time, decidedly not. Nonetheless, I hope you'll agree that I got some good stories out of it and it was an interesting socialogical experiment. The people involved in Star Trek are not of this world (I suppose this is why so many of them dress like Klingons). I like Star Trek a lot, I won't deny that, but these people breathe Star Trek. Both this and my trip to Las Vegas this year have left me scratching my head about the intensity with which people are willing to throw their money away (note that having participated in both of these events myself, even in a more limited way, I'm not completely immune, which is the scary part).

My name is Eric, and I'm NOT a geek. I've seen geeks up close.