One day I started writing a novel. It would depict a guy who bought an old church and turned it into a shrine to worship Star Trek.
Then I learned that Futurama had essentially already covered that. So I quit.
Here is what I had before I abandoned it.
“One more question,” I said. “What if we take down the cross and replace it with the Starfleet insignia?”
He stared at his notepad, almost nodded, then looked up at the wall. Without looking at me he said, “Star fleet.”
“Yeah,” I said, “ like this one.”
I slipped out the pin that I was, of course, carrying in my jacket pocket. I’d purchased it in the theater lobby the first time I saw Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Slightly tarnished all these decades later, the pin still reflected my ideal Star Trek symbol - the delta insignia originating from the 60’s TV show but with an added circle behind it. A large metal version of it — spotlit just like the cross had been on the outside of this church — would be glorious.
He took it from my outstretched hand. “Can I use this to model it?”
“Just please don’t lose it. I need it back. I've had it for forty years.”
He nodded absently, looked up at the wall again, stuck out his bottom lip, then said, “Okay.”
He pocketed the pin and made a few scratches on his notepad. “I’ll get an estimate to you by the end of the week.”
“Great. Thank you.”
“Okay,” he said. “This is a Star Trek thing, right?”
“The pin? Yeah.”
He nodded. “Not that it matters, I’m just curious, but are you going to turn this into some kind of Star Trek church?”
I laughed and shook my head.
“No,” I lied.