This particular series was inspired by the fact that Paul thought it was time for another introduction to the characters, combined with my desire to show them all standing blankly in the empty rooms of goth house.

So right now, 1984 is on my mind. It's the year I graduated from High School, which means my 20 year reunion is coming up, and I'm planning to go, because I always figured I would go to that, but man, it came around sooner than I expected.

I remember my mom's 20-year high school reunion. She already had an adolescent me, which is a thought that freaks me out rather a lot. I mean, when I contemplate the idea that I could already have a TEENAGE FREAKING DAUGHTER at this age, without even reproducing before the age of 21, I feel like I understand some things I didn't before, and let's just say...Mom, I forgive you.

My mom enjoyed her reunion because she got to feel smug. This is the genetic legacy of the Swedish side of the family. I'll probably live to be a hundred and have good skin the whole time. Which is a mixed blessing, because good skin doesn't prevent senile dementia, strokes, cancer, or anything else. I'll live to a hundred, but how much will I enjoy the last 20 years or so? I just don't know. I'm trying to plan for it now. Not by saving money or anything crassly useful like that. I'm just trying to wrap my mind around the concept that, by the time I die, I'll probably be living in a body that doesn't work right and a world I can't possibly understand.

Uh...where was I? Reunion, right.

I was bored during most of it. After finishing my book I roamed around the parking lot, defaced a pro-Reagan bumper-sticker on the back of somebody's car, then felt really guilty about it and never did anything like that again. I am not a fearless anarchistic culture-jammer by nature, apparently. It's good to find out things like that at a young age.

So, maybe you heard, Reagan died last week. I caught part of the official state funeral, quite by accident, and surprised myself by tearing up a few times. My cynical side was sneering, "Good job! Apparently you are more sentimental than political after all." And the rest of me said, "Well, maybe. But is that a problem? To be moved by somebody's humanity first, and disgusted by their politics second?" One thing I'll say for him, Reagan was a likable guy. And he did some good stuff while in office, as well as bad, and Oh my God is that Gorbachev sitting next to Margaret Thatcher? That thing on his head has faded over the years. They're talking, I wonder what they're talking about? Look, it's a clip of Reagan, and Colin Powell back when he still had his self-respect.

My primary objection to Reagan really hasn't changed over the years -- I thought this country was facing a lot of serious questions and problems, about where to go in the future, what to do with our increasingly powerful technology, how to manage our environment, and so on. And in the 70s we were wrestling with that a little bit, but it was like we were too immature to deal with it. We made fun of Jimmy Carter for saying "put on a sweater" and instead embraced Reagan saying "Go ahead! Turn up the thermostat! It's okay!" When he said, "It's morning in America!" I heard, "Go back to sleep. Everything is fine. We've got it all under control, don't worry your pretty little heads about it." And, as a nation, we collectively said, "okay!"

But he was instrumental in ending the cold war. And, he talked mean about a few key issues (abortion rights, nuclear arms buildup) but what he actually did was a lot more moderate than that. And, let's face it, in one area -- the economy -- relentless cheeriness can actually cause good things to happen. When people are feeling good about themselves and confident about the future, they spend money, they invest, they take risks that lead to new things.

Still, in 1984 -- the first election I was eligible to vote in -- I voted against Reagan. I'm not sure, now, if I voted for the singularly uninspiring Mondale, or voted Libertarian, or Communist, or whatever. I think it was Mondale. I wanted to prove that having a female running mate didn't make his performance even worse. Everyone knew he was going to lose. Even the Democrats. They were just going through the motions that year.

I've missed Reagan, ever since George W. took office. Reagan, at least, could deliver an entire speech without long, blank pauses, stuttering, and a string of hilarious Freudian-slip malapropisms. And Reagan occasionally caught flak from the left for things that I didn't understand. The Soviets were an evil empire. The Berlin wall needed to come down. Reagan's shiny stirring speeches might have masked a darker reality, but at least they actually were stirring speeches.

With George W., every single thing that passes out of his mouth is either incoherent, or pisses me off, or both.

With Reagan, there was always a sense that there was a real person there, and that he wasn't actually completely insane. I could go about my daily affairs under Reagan, and, in spite of the occasional nightmare about surviving a nuclear war in a bomb shelter populated only by people I disliked, didn't waste a lot of brain space worrying about his policies.

George W. might be an evil robot from outer space, for all I can tell. On a daily basis, the bizarre antics of the whole Bush Crew tie my stomach in knots of dread until I want to throw up. I have no faith they know what they're doing, that common sense will prevail, that I can know what to expect from the world on a day to day basis.

Polls show that people don't like George W.'s performance in most areas, but trust him to "keep them safe from terrorists." Which I don't understand at all, because he already didn't! So I think, everybody is clearly out of touch with reality, from the president on down, and if we all get through this okay it will be because God is more merciful than just.

When I was in high school, in 1984, one of my classes read 1984 by George Orwell. I thought it contained a lot of powerful ideas, but it also didn't seem terribly plausible to me -- the society was too oppressive, the people had nothing to lose, I didn't believe it would ever last. But maybe I was wrong about that. Maybe systematic society-wide brainwashing is simply too effective.

I have this theory about the future. We are always either heading toward Star Trek, or toward 1984. Toward an optimistic, cooperative, tolerant and vaguely American future, where incredible military power is used primarily to keep the universe safe for capitalism and basic human rights. Where the greatest horrors are individuality-swallowing collectives like the Borg.

Or, toward a bleak and narrowed future based on fear, hatred, and a constantly shifting collective delusional reality. Where individuality is not tolerated. Where power is gathered and consolidated for no purpose other than itself, and human beings are chewed up and spit out by the official machinery with less consideration than I would give a chicken.

The 1990s, in spite of their faults, were a Star Trek decade. Do you remember? It wasn't all that long ago. There were people who seriously proposed that we had reached "the end of the business cycle" and would never have another recession, the we had reached "the end of history" and from now on the whole world would just fall into place as liberal, capitalist democracies. People were predicting the end of AIDS, the end of hunger, oppression, war. There was no problem that we couldn't fix.

Now, humans are stupid, so we thought this with more hubris than we should have, and a lot of stupid behavior. People stopped being quite so afraid of AIDS and the transmission rates in the U.S. started going up again. People stopped worrying so much about the environment and oil and stocked up on oversized SUVs. Some people even thought too much peace was a bad thing because...I dunno, it was bad for the moral character or something.

But a stupid Star Trek future is better than a 1984 future by a long shot.