Voyager at last

[raven]

Voyager has reached home.
I don't know. Everything I do, everything anyone does, is an escape from reality. You turn on the television and watch a programme, that's because you'll be able to spend half an hour not thinking your own thoughts. You watch a film, and for two hours, you're not thinking your own thoughts, you're thinking the director's thoughts. You read a book so you can think the author's thoughts. You log on to livejournal and read your friends page, that's so you can escape into someone else's life for a few moments.
But then I've just finished a book - Endgames, and now I'm happy because Voyager is home. I'm happy because a starship that has never existed and never will exist, crewed by a lot of humans we wouldn't find at all familiar and various alien races, Romulans, Cardassians, Vulcans, Klingons, Borg, all of which do not exist, never have existed and never will exist, has reached home. Voyager's home is an utterly unfamilar twenty-fourth century Earth, an Earth which will never come to pass.
And yet I'm happy, because for the seven years Voyager was in the Delta Quadrant, its sleek interior and multiple decks were my escape from reality. Its crew became real because people cared enough about them to read about them and take the time to watch them on television, just to find out what would happen to them. And because they had become real, they deserved their happy ending. Even if it never works that way in real life, it was possible for them to have their happy ending, and I'm happy they got it.