The creator of Star Trek and his computer wife will be traveling the cosmos together, even after their deaths. Stick with me here, it’s not just a geekout moment. Gene Roddenberry is the man responsible for, or culpable for if you’re just not that into it, for Star Trek in all its myriad forms. His wife,  Majel Barrett Roddenberry, had rolls in just about every iteration of the show. She played the voice of the Enterprise’s computer, hence the mention of a computer wife.

Roddenberry died back in 1991 and his wife had part of his remains sent out to space on a Celestis rocket in 1997. Well, Majel Barrett Roddenberry died in December of last year. Now, the remaining remains of both will be placed in a specially hardened container and shot out into space. There, it will continue on a trek across the stars, never to return to Earth.

Oddly enough, launching ashes into space is the subject of my latest short story. It’s called “Countdown” and it’s in an online magazine called Aoife’s Kiss. You can go read it here. And, if you like it, feel free to vote for it as the best of the issue and get your humble author/blogger into the print version of the magazine’s best of the year issue. But that’s not really why I wanted to talk to you about this. Just a bit of shameless self promotion.

Actually, I think it’s kind of romantic, in a zombie-infected sort of way. I mean, here are these two people who loved each other very much, even more than they loved their shared dream. And now, after death, they get to spend eternity exploring their shared dream of the cosmos. Well, speaking metaphorically of course. Because I’m not sure just how much enjoyment a couple of cans full of ashes can get out of, well, anything. Still, it makes as much sense as having embalmed bodies buried next to each other.

So, congratulations to the late Majel Barrett Roddenberry and Gene Roddenberry, who have set out to boldly go where no dead people have gone before. Their eternal mission to just keep on going, missing any impacts on orbiting bodies. I wish them well.

– Richard

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