8. BON VOYAGE

We hope you will enjoy your stay aboard the Leviathan. Visitors will be offered a farewell dinner with their Shipboard Guides and the command staff whenever possible. Visitors are encouraged to attend destination briefings held prior to their departure. Depending upon the destination, visitors may be required to have a medical exam before leaving the ship.

Visitors who find life aboard the Leviathan to their liking may want to consider serving in the Star Guard Network where many exciting challenges will await them. The Star Guard Network offers a variety of service contracts ranging from single mission experiences to multi-year tours of duty. The Star Guard Network will provide whatever training is required to qualified applicants. Applicants can apply as individuals or as family groups. The Star Guard Network provides for an applicant's immediate family during their period of training and tour of duty. Usually this means the immediate family will accompany the applicant on the ship or installation they serve on once they complete their training. Visitors desiring further information on becoming a part of the Star Guard Network should see their Shipboard Guides before departure or a Star Guard Network representative at their destination.

Bon Voyage!

9. AFTERWORD

9.1 Introduction to the World of the Leviathan

I wrote "A Visitor's Guide to Starship Leviathan" to express my vision of a human starship from the far future. This series of articles is in part a response to the way human starships and the societies aboard them have been portrayed in the mass media. This book also presents my hopes for the future symbolized by the shipboard society I have created on the Leviathan. While I have used the pattern for human society proposed by the Bahá'í Faith as my model, the society I have presented is not meant to accurately portray the Bahá'í model. Instead, my shipboard society should be seen as a reflection of the Bahá'í model as seen through the lens of my own assumptions, prejudices, and world view.

I have chosen for my setting a time period over a millennium in the future. While most mass media visions of starships show them as being only centuries away, I personally believe it will be somewhat longer before we reach the level of technology needed to build such fantastic vessels. I have even occasionally wondered if the idea of ship-based faster-than-light travel is itself incorrect and that real travel to other stars will take place by means other than those we are able to understand or perhaps even imagine at present. Still, I am a creature of the time period I live in, and right or wrong I am very attached to the ship-based concept of faster-than-light travel. Thus, I decided to present my vision of star travel using the ship paradigm, well aware that such a vision probably will seem childish to our descendants whom I deeply believe will visit other star systems someday.

I see the historical path leading to the time of the Leviathan as one of humanity achieving greater levels of unity, first on a worldwide scale, then as a federation of human settlements located throughout our solar system. I firmly believe that we will never make it into space in any meaningful way until we settle the differences that divide our presently contending nations and adopt a world encompassing federal government. I believe that such a government will be necessary to maintain the peace that the nations will be forced to bring about sooner or later in order to ensure our collective survival. I see the effect of world unity on our collective psyche continuing as we set up permanent settlements in other parts of our solar system. In time, the need for a pan-solar government would become apparent and I hope that such a government would again be based on the federal model. By the time we are ready to send people beyond the confines of our solar system, it seems to me that we would be so imbued with the concept of human solidarity that it would be small communities traveling to other stars rather than pseudo-military missions bent upon territorial conquest.

In my model of the human future, interstellar travel existed for centuries using only sublight propulsion technology. During this time humans developed truly sentient computers, which in time became partners with humanity in the exploration of space. Humanity had to struggle to accept the artificial life they had created as their spiritual equals.

About three hundred and fifty years before the time period of the book, humans developed faster-than-light communications. Almost immediately they were contacted by the Galactic Sentience Network, a galaxy-wide association of sentient races. The human race as a whole was overwhelmed by the diversity of sentient life inhabiting the galaxy and humbled by the existence of the vast network already in place to govern the interactions among these various intelligent races. Fifty years after the first communications between humans and the Galactic Sentience Network, starships carrying representatives of the Network visited Earth. This first physical contact by extra-terrestrial intelligent life experienced by humanity as a whole was a further shock to humans’ view of themselves as the apex of evolution. It took almost two centuries for humanity to collectively come to terms with the truth that the God most of them worshipped had created other races as spiritually advanced as themselves and that they must now regularly interact with these other intelligent beings.

In the midst of this process of social and psychological adaptation, a new belief system was born which attempted to bring humans, their sentient computer offspring, and other sentient life into a spiritual partnership. By the time period of the book, this belief system, while fully embraced by only a minority of humans, has influenced humanity to relinquish its collective pride and become full members of the Galactic Sentience Network.

The dramatic and humbling events described above are meant to symbolize the great spiritual adjustments that I believe humanity will have to make as it travels beyond its home star system. Two crucial things I see missing from most mass media representations of our future in space are the ability to adequately express the vastness of the galaxy as a field of exploration and humanity's need to accept the tremendous challenges to its collective psyche as it enters this field.

By the time period of the book, artificial life forms called the Sentrobs have been in existence for a little over a century. The Sentrobs, jointly created by humans and sentient computers, are sentient robots whose brains are a synthesis of biological and mechanical components. The Sentrobs were created to be a life form better suited to space travel than either of its creators. The Sentrobs are seen as a threat by many humans who feel humanity's role in space exploration will become much less important over time as the numbers of Sentrobs grow. Some humans are profoundly disturbed by the melding of human and artificial life into a new life form. These attitudes, enhanced by the struggles of humanity to accept its position as but one of many sentient races in the galaxy has led to widespread prejudice against the Sentrobs. At the date of the book, Sentrobs have gained legal equality but have yet to be accepted as equal partners by the majority of humans.

I have used the rise of artificial life described above to represent the ethical challenge presented by humanity as it battles to overcome the racism rampant the world over. I felt the need to deal with current society’s uneasiness with interracial marriages and children. In the book, the symbol for this is all future humans' struggle to accept the existence of a form of sentient life which is a combination of themselves and their artificially created companions.

9.2 Conception of the Leviathan

Now that we have explored briefly the sociological and political environment that the Leviathan is a part of, I will move on to the Leviathan itself. Starship Leviathan is from a time period about two hundred years after humans first developed faster-than-light propulsion technology. By this time, human starships have been part of the Star Guard Network, the exploration and defense organization of the Galactic Sentience Network, for about a century. The Leviathan is one of the largest and most powerful human starships.

My basic concept for the Leviathan was a large starship which could perform a variety of functions. I wanted a vessel that was not just a research vessel, or a starliner, or a warship, but a combination of all three. Furthermore, I saw the Leviathan as serving not only on its own but as a part of a larger organization which was again not just a scientific research group, or a starline, or a military force, but a combination of all three. I suppose that the Star Guard Network would have much in common with Starfleet of Star Trek, but would differ in that the human component of starships and personnel would be only a small portion of the total network, with human elements of the Star Guard Network serving relatively close to human occupied space. Human starships would be of only average technology compared to others races’ vessels serving in the Star Guard Network, with many of their ships being far superior.

I saw the Leviathan as one of a small number of large starships which serve as flagships for the human component of the Star Guard Network. I always liked the appellation "Starcruiser,” and conceived of four types of such giant vessels with Type-I being the smallest and most numerous and Type-IV being the largest and fewest. Thus starship Leviathan became a Type-IV Starcruiser, one of only eight vessels of the Leviathan class. While I could see there being other classes of Type-IV Starcruisers, the Leviathan class is meant to be the most recent and most advanced. Since the Star Guard Network is not a war fleet, and Type-IV Starcruisers would no doubt be some of the most expensive human starships to build, the overall number of these multi-mission behemoths would be relatively small, probably between twenty-five and fifty vessels total.

I wanted the performance of the Leviathan to reflect the difficulty of transversing the vastness of the galaxy. I set the ship’s faster-than-light speed at an arbitrary number of 2.5 light years per day and its endurance at twenty-five years, which gives it a range of approximately twenty thousand light years. This rate of travel allows exploration of a sizable portion of nearby interstellar space without resorting to space-operatic, galaxy-spanning jaunts, which respect neither the actual immensity of our single galaxy nor the tremendous number of star systems available for investigation.

When I began designing the Leviathan, my first challenge was to decide upon a rough size for the vessel. I wanted a large vessel, but not so large as to be overwhelming when I got around to figuring out what was on each deck. Also, I felt that I needed a well-known fictional vehicle to use as a rough yardstick for readers to compare my vessel to. In fact, much of the technology I have created is meant to deliberately contrast with and comment on the technology of Star Trek. Thus, I decided to use the Starship Enterprise 1701-D from the TV show Star Trek: The Next Generation as my starting point for general size and mission. Starship Leviathan has roughly the same mass and internal volume as the Enterprise. Like the Enterprise, the Leviathan is a deep space exploration vessel capable of long-term missions and equipped with the most advanced scientific technology available to humanity. The two vessels perform similar roles in their respective fictional environments.

The shape of the Leviathan is perhaps one of the most arbitrary aspects of the design. I wanted a shape roughly submarine-like but somewhat more interesting. The nautical shape is also a deliberate reference to the ship's name, as the Leviathan was a large sea creature mentioned in the Bible. In addition, I wanted a shape much more conservative from an engineering standpoint than the Enterprise, but not so conservative as to be boring. I believe the shape of the Leviathan to be a good compromise.

As I began to lay out the basic design of the Leviathan, I decided that the direction of the decks would be based on what was convenient for the design, not on a strict “all levels face the same direction” paradigm. My reason for this is that with gravity control technology similar to that on Star Trek, there would be no need for all the decks to stack in the same direction. Also, I am making a reference to the work of science-fiction author Arthur C. Clarke, in which advanced technology allows the creation of artificial environments where the direction that is supposed to be down is an arbitrary one. The earth-bound object that most resembles the Leviathan in layout of floors is a modern skyscraper. If the Leviathan were placed on the ground with the bow as the top floor and the stern as the bottom floor, it would be approximately three hundred fifty stories tall. While deck heights vary, most are three meters high with a half-meter deep space for machinery between levels.

One of the aspects of the concept of the Leviathan that I wanted to be hinted at, but not fully explicated in the book, was the fantastic technology needed to operate the starship. While I felt it important that the technology I alluded to be plausible, I also wanted to leave some mystery in how it really worked, making it clear that some of the principles that the engineering of the Leviathan is based upon are not only not yet understood, but in some cases not even imagined. I also wanted to avoid the use of a lot of technological jargon which would detract from the book’s main objective to describe the society that exists aboard the giant vessel.

9.3 Star-Faring Technology of the Leviathan

The basic approach for the technology of the Leviathan is self-sufficiency. I did not want a starship that would need to be refueled by other vessels or need the use of refineries outside of the vessel. I decided upon a system where the ship can absorb energy directly from its environment, primarily in the form of solar radiation, as one of its main power sources. In addition, I equipped the Leviathan with sophisticated space matter intakes which can scoop up gaseous material and compress it for fuel. The almost mystical space matter/energy reactor combines the energy absorbed with the matter collected to generate the vast amount of energy needed to run the starship. I chose this approach deliberately to contrast with the matter/anti-matter reaction technology of the Enterprise which depends upon the difficult storage and manipulation of anti-matter as a reactant, with dangerous radiation being one of the by-products of the matter/anti-matter reaction. I guess you could say I wanted a more environmentally sound energy production system that took from the environment but did not degrade it. To compensate for the Leviathan's less obtrusive impact upon the interstellar environment, I made its performance less than that of the Enterprise.

The sublight propulsion system of the Leviathan also differs from that of the Enterprise. My drive system is based on gravity manipulation, perhaps pulling the Leviathan towards massive objects rather than pushing it along. This propulsion system I see as entirely energy driven with no need for fuel as a reactant. My gravity based sublight drive would probably not be as flexible as a reactant based drive, but would serve the ship's basic needs for propulsion. As the Leviathan is supposed to be a thousand years in the future, perhaps its sublight system is actually more advanced than the fusion powered drive used for the Enterprise.

The faster-than-light drive I have envisioned for the Leviathan is the classic warp-jump paradigm seen in the work of science-fiction author Isaac Asimov. My use of warp-jump drive is meant as an homage to him, as he is one of my favorite authors. Warp-jump drive as used by the Leviathan is substantially the same as portrayed by Asimov and others writing in the same vein. The major limitations of this propulsion system are the distance a vessel must be from a massive object such as a star or planet before it engages the drive, the distance the ship can transverse in each warp-jump, the time needed to accumulate the power needed to activate the drive, and the time needed after the warp-jump is completed to determine the exact location of the vessel. The warp-jump generator is the heart of this almost mystical form of faster-than-light technology. I have chosen deliberately to have the Leviathan use three warp-jump generators in conjunction to contrast with the dual warp engines concept used in Star Trek technology. Perhaps this symbolizes my desire to present a universe that is less dualistic from those that appear in most modern media. Like the gravity based sublight drive mentioned above, the warp-jump based faster-than-light drive may not be as flexible as its warp drive counterpart on the Enterprise. Yet, by using the warp-jump model of faster-than-light travel, I avoid the time paradox difficulties presented by drive systems which are supposed to literally propel a vehicle at speeds near or beyond the speed of light. In the end, I picked what I think is the more believable system.

The defensive and offensive systems of the Leviathan are all energy based. The force field generator grid is similar to the deflector shield system of the Enterprise in function and performance. The main exception being that the Leviathan could by no means get as close to a star and survive, as the Enterprise does in a few of the more fantastic episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Like the Enterprise, the Leviathan is equipped with extensive energy-based countermeasures, mainly to keep less advanced sentient life from detecting its presence. However, the Leviathan is not able to completely cloak itself from sentient life possessing a technological level comparable to human technology. The two offensive systems of the Leviathan are similar to their Star Trek counterparts. The energy beam projector which emits a highly concentrated beam of energy resembles the phaser of Federation starships. The energy bolt launcher which shoots highly concentrated balls of energy at a target is akin to the disruptor of Klingon starships as seen in the original Star Trek TV series. I decided against a photon torpedo-like weapon, as I did not want a weapon with a material casing and propulsion system. Such a weapon seems too primitive to me for advanced space combat as well as vulnerable to jamming. Also, such a weapon would necessitate the storage of anti-matter on the ship for warheads and I did not want such a dangerous material aboard the Leviathan.

9.4 Life Onboard the Leviathan

As I began to think about what life would be like aboard the Leviathan, it became obvious to me that visitors to such a complex environment would need the assistance of crew members specifically trained to help them adjust to life aboard and make the most of their time there. Thus, much of the book refers to these shipboard guides, as I have called them, and lists the many services which these guides can provide for visitors.

Since the Leviathan serves on long term missions, I felt strongly that the living accommodations should be as comfortable and spacious as possible. I even considered giving each visitor a two story luxury apartment-like space, but in the end decided upon a one story apartment of similar size to those seen on the Enterprise. One major difference from the crew quarters on the Enterprise is the inclusion of lots of plant life in the living quarters of the Leviathan with long planters located near the ceiling. I saw these planters as part of the life support system which would be a mix organic and mechanical compo-nents.

From the start I believed the Leviathan should have a shipboard society more like a small town than a military vessel. However, the small town in my vision is not one from a homogenous culture of our past, but one from the more diverse yet unified culture which I believe will emerge in our future. One of features of the society aboard the Leviathan which represents this possible future reality is the inclusion of children not as mere adjuncts to the adult crew members, but as crew members in their own right with their own roles to play as part of the shipboard society.

For the occupants of the Leviathan, I desired the majority to be a mix of human adults and children. To symbolize the great technological advances such a built environment would require, I included a sentient computer to oversee the vast mechanical complexity of that environment. Providing the necessary labor for particularly mundane or dangerous jobs, I added non-sentient robots to be controlled by the human crew and the sentient computer. I have described above the reasons for inclusion of sentient robots in the form of the Sentrob. The presence of a small number of extra-terrestrials, mostly observers and scientists representing other sentient races in the Galactic Sentience Network, is a final element contributing to the diversity of sentient life aboard.

My vision of life aboard the Leviathan is one where serving others is a way of life, and the acquisition of material things as a way to measure self worth has long been abandoned. The onboard economy of the Leviathan is based more upon mutual reciprocity than accumulation of material wealth. Scientific research and assistance of others are much more frequent activities than combat. The combat that does occur is for self defense and the protection of those under the care of the Star Guard Network, not for territorial conquest or glory. The shipboard society of the Leviathan actively promotes the personal growth of the individuals which comprise it, by equally encouraging their integration as a community and taking delight in their diversity. For the crew of the Leviathan, unexpected discovery is one of the greatest sources of joy, especially if it is the discovery of other forms of sentient life.

9.5 Contrasting the Leviathan with Starships in the Mass Media

Now that I have explicated on the society onboard the Leviathan, I will return to the ship itself. Given the size and shape of my starship, it seemed to me that the ship was really a collection of smaller ships, each capable of operating independently if necessary. Making the Leviathan an aggregate vessel also provided a variety of options should the ship receive a sizable amount of damage. In the case of damage so massive as to warrant evacuation of the entire vessel, I included a number of large lifeboats. While I felt somewhat dubious about whether such lifeboats could survive long enough in deep space to be rescued, they at least symbolized the hope that humans can summon when faced with even the most dire circumstances. It is assumed that by the time period of the Leviathan, communications and patrol networks exist which are able to respond fast enough to recover sublight lifeboats ejected from a crippled starship.

One major way in which the Leviathan differs from starships as portrayed in the mass media is its internal transport system. Instead of the turbo-elevators which are able to get main characters quickly to the next scene of action and thus quickly advance the plot, I have created a more relaxed network of connecting low gravity corridors. A starship as large and complex as the Leviathan cannot afford to depend on a small number of key personnel to solve every problem, and with an omnipresent sentient computer available to oversee the entire vessel it seemed unnecessary to me to rush crew members through the ship when most situations do not demand it. In addition, the transport corridor system is meant to symbolize a slower pace of life than that of our overly hectic present. By the time period of the Leviathan, people no longer feel the need to rush just because technology allows them to, and no longer are compelled to rush by a society that worships productivity over human dignity.

9.6 A Personal Tour of the Leviathan

Now I will take you on a personal tour of the Leviathan noting what each main feature of the ship is meant to represent. I made Zone A to be the Science Section to symbolize the primacy of scientific research among the functions of the Leviathan. Zone B was designated the Visitor Section to locate passengers as far from the dangerous engineering section as possible. An extensive education facility is located between the visitors' quarters and the science section to emphasize the connection between education and science as well as provide a convenient place for crew members and visitors to interact. I wanted to portray the passengers more as co-travelers than mere tourists and thus attempted to explore ways they could be involved in life aboard the vessel. The use of the term visitors rather than passengers throughout the book is meant to accentuate this point. The visitors' recreation and medical facilities, while smaller than those provided for the crew, house the same variety of activities and services and are vital backups should the crew's facilities be damaged. I made a vigorous attempt to address a wide range of recreational activities with a strong emphasis on the arts. In the time period of the Leviathan, the arts have regained their position as one of the central activities of the community with all members ardently encouraged to participate. While I have used arts familiar to my audience, I am aware that in the far future era of the Leviathan there will be many arts as yet unknown to us. My use of the arts symbolizes a society that has learned to worship the arts, sciences, and technology equally, appreciating each for what it offers to humanity.

Zone C/Garden Section is my attempt to bring something of the natural environment along. The three land environments and one water environment I chose may seem arbitrary, but I felt they would also appeal to the widest range of people. While such environments could be created using virtual reality by the time period of the Leviathan, I believed it was imperative for people to have real plants, soil, and wildlife which they could enjoy. The inclusion of the large aquarium environment allowed an easy way to have dolphins aboard as well as providing a sample of the ocean from which we sprang.

Zone D/Command Section provides a place where the two co-commanders and the sentient computer can interact and provide group leadership to the crew of the Leviathan. I did not want any single being to be in sole command of the vessel, thus representing our need to discard dependence upon charismatic leaders and begin to use consultation as the primary process to solve our collective problems. The inclusion of an artificial life form as one of the leaders of the ship symbolizes our need to admit members of minority groups into the highest levels of decision making. I made the co-commanders a married couple to denote the full equality of women and men that exists in the time period of the Leviathan. While I am aware that the best location for the primary command center of a starship would be near the middle of the vessel, I decided to go with the more romantic location near the top of the ship with a large observation deck directly above offering a dramatic view towards the front and sides of the vessel. Like other vessels of its size, the Leviathan has a number of secondary command centers located in various parts of the ship.

Zone E/Crew Section contains the widest variety of facilities of any portion of the Leviathan. Living quarters for human crew members, Sentrob crew members, and resident aliens are located in three separate areas of this section, not so much as to keep them apart as to provide for their disparate life support needs. The segregation of the Sentrob further symbolizes that even in the far future, humans will continue to struggle to overcome their prejudices as they face ever more diverse forms of intelligent life. Among the human crew, there is no distinction between officers and others; thus there is an equality of accommodations where each person is allotted roughly the same amount of personal space. The inclusion of a sizable number of family quarters emphasizes that the Leviathan is more a traveling community than a military vessel. I have left the definition of a family to the reader as I feel that by the time period of the Leviathan, there may be more than one.

At the heart of Zone E is the sentient computer's main body. The sentient computer, named after the vessel itself, acts as brain and nervous system of the ship and thus provides the Leviathan with a voice to express its wants and needs. Located next to the sentient computer is the worship facility where a variety of belief systems are celebrated. Because I wanted to express both a plurality of forms of worship and a future time where the Bahá'í Faith has profoundly affected society, I chose to allude to three mythical belief systems which among them enjoy the allegiance of the majority of mankind. The Radiant Faith represents the Bahá'í Faith after it has made its greatest impact on human society and begun to face the challenge of accepting non-human life as spiritual equals. The Humanicist Philosophy symbolizes the strong strain of agnosticism which I feel will continue into the future, especially among those devoted to science.

The Pansentia Way stands for the next great belief system which Bahá'ís are told will come about a millennium from the present. The Pansentia Way pleads with the society around it to accept the diversity of sentient life in the same way that the Bahá'í Faith pleads with the modern world to embrace the diversity of the human race and worship its Creator as a unified spiritual body. The three fictional belief systems I have named probably say more about my own spiritual struggles and prejudices than they do about what religion will be like in the distant future. In an attempt to recognize this, I have mentioned the continued existence and worship of other belief systems aboard the Leviathan including a belief system unique to the Sentrob. The location of the worship facility so close to the sentient computer may even indicate that its own spiritual growth may have bestowed upon it the status of semi-deity.

Zone E contains a number of large meeting spaces where not only social events are held but also large gatherings take place where the entire crew participates in governing life aboard the vessel. The non-military governing body of the Leviathan, which I have named the Starship Council, is based upon a Bahá'í institution called the Local Spiritual Assembly. Like the Starship Council, the Local Spiritual Assembly is composed of nine adults and sees to the needs of the local Bahá'í community in the same way that the Starship Council cares for the shipboard community. The Starship Advisors are based upon another Bahá'í institution called the Auxiliary Board of Counsellors. Both the fictional and actual institutions offer a place where charismatic and knowledgeable individuals can be recognized and influence the community without wielding inordinate political power.

Zone E has the primary food production and preparation facility. Unlike the replicator systems of the Enterprise, the system used by the Leviathan incorporates some agricultural processes, however technologically assisted, to symbolize the continuance of some natural components in the food production process. The main fabrication facility is also located in Zone E. The technology used here is more like the fabricators of the Enterprise where objects can be assembled and disassembled from constituent elements providing a closed circle of production and recycling without the creation of toxic wastes. While the technology of the Leviathan allows material objects to be created molecule by molecule, it does not have the capability to move living beings in the way that the transporter of the Enterprise does. Of all the devices depicted on Star Trek, I find the transporter to be among the least believable. My basic objection, beyond the sheer complexity of converting a living being into energy and then recreating it in material form completely intact, is spiritual. If a sentient being has a soul, a spiritual essence that exists even after its material form has dissolved, how does it accommodate the sudden transfer of its physical body from one place to another? Perhaps if the soul exists outside of physical space and time this concern would be unfounded. Perhaps real interstellar travel will be based on just such a technology as the transporter. In the end, I have used the lack of transporter technology aboard the Leviathan to acknowledge that there will always be limits to technology as developed by finite human beings and that no matter how far we may reach with science, there will always be realms of understanding and truth beyond our capacities.

Zone F/Cargo and Hangar Section is the warehouse of the Leviathan and nest for its support craft. While the Leviathan has a closed loop fabrication/recycling system, there is still a need on such a huge multi-purpose vessel for a facility to store large quantities of supplies as well as cargo being transferred elsewhere. The vast cargo holds represents the generosity which humans at their best have for those in need. Such abundance of the spirit of sharing would no doubt be even greater in the future I have described where life is treasured above profit. Since the Leviathan has no transporter technology, shuttles are crucial to ferrying personnel and material to and from the vessel. Other smallcraft help defend the giant starship and repair its exterior surface. I have included two small starships to show that star-faring vehicles will most likely come in a variety of sizes. Unlike the multi-purpose Leviathan, these smaller vessels are more specialized as I have indicated in the text. I could see different mixes of small starships used for specific missions. In addition, four external docking ports on the Leviathan are equipped for hard-docking such small starships to its hull.

Zone F also houses key components of the life support system of the Leviathan. As mentioned above in the section about living quarters, I wanted plant life to be a major component of the system. In addition to the large hydroponics bays located not only in Zone F, but in Zone C as well, plant life would be visible throughout the ship. It would be seen not only in living quarters and lounges, but in most other occupied areas as well, including parts of the science labs, fabrication facilities, and engineering complex. Such a profusion of plant life symbolizes our symbiosis with other forms of life and the recognition that we must respect our connection with this other life to be really whole.

Even though the society I have portrayed aboard the Leviathan is much more peaceful than our turbulent present, I still see the need for law enforcement and a security facility to support this function. The security facility is located in Zone F and provides a place to hold the rare violent criminal of my more concordant future. The punishments I have depicted for various infractions may seem harsh in some instances and lenient in others. There are two factors that I have tried to balance in devising these penalties. The first is the critical importance of maintaining trust among those aboard the Leviathan, an environment utterly dependent on technology and intervention by sentient beings to keep it functioning. The second is my belief that by the time period of the Leviathan, human society will be more attuned to justice as a spiritual principle and thus moderate reprimands would provide adequate impetus in most cases for members of that society to abide by the law. I have used the punishment of stasis for the most violent offenders to recognize that even in a more enlightened future, there will be those whom society must protect itself against.

Zone G/Engineering Section is the temple of the sometimes almost mystical technology that provides the Leviathan with power and propulsion. While I have attempted to make the contents of this part of the ship sound feasible, I also tried to leave some mystery in the naming of the various components to allude to how far we have to go before our technology becomes capable of producing such a vehicle as the Leviathan. Zone G also serves as a second home for the sentient computer giving it a chance to survive even large scale damage to the ship.

9.7 Conclusion

I now bring to a close this essay on how I devised the great craft and society that is the subject of "A Visitor's Guide to Starship Leviathan." I hope you enjoyed reading this article and found it illuminating, not only about the articles, but about the author as well.

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