A NOTE FROM KEITH HALPER 
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, SIMON & SCHUSTER INTERACTIVE

Greetings to all who come here!

The software you are viewing is the result of tremendous effort on the part 
of many talented individuals sustained for months and months. While most 
everyone is credited on the preceding screens, I want to draw special 
attention to a few groups and individuals:

¥ÊFirst and foremost, to Peter Mackey who managed this project on a day-
to-day basis, rode herd on interactive design, media integration, coding, 
and slept the least of anyone on this project. Also, special thanks to the 
many members of the Imergy crew who far surpassed the call of negotiated 
duty and previous notions of human endurance. 

¥Êto Susie Dominick and Renee Froix, keepers of the Star Trek flame 
(among other things) at Paramount Licensing (nŽe Viacom Consumer 
Products Licensing) for keeping us on track, in touch, in the production 
pan and out of the futility fire. 

¥  to Majel Barrett, Jonathan Frakes, Denise Okuda, Mike Okuda and Rick 
Sternbach, who have lent us their brilliance that this project might shine 
by reflection. 

¥Êto Christine Ross, also a Paramount Licensing friend, who more than 
anyone helped us get off of the ground with Star Trek: The Next 
Generation. 

¥Êto the megaphone-touting Macromedia Director guy,  for providing a tool 
set without which it would have been totally impossible to create a title of 
this scope in 8 months. 

¥Êto the management of Simon & Schuster and Simon & Schuster 
Interactive, a medal for their bravery, a thankful prayer for their insight into 
the future of our industry. 

¥Êto the Apple QuickTime VR team (see their credit screen) for making this 
project special. 

¥Êto my love Nancy, who has had few normal nights of sleep during the last 
few months of this project.

That done, I want to endeavor to encapsulate our goals in the Interactive 
Technical Manual for an interactive development community that will, 
without doubt, surpass our best efforts here in the flash of a tachyon 
beacon, and also for a Star Trek community to whom we owe our gravest 
responsibility.

This software is not quite a game, not quite a story, not quite a work of 
reference.

This is a fiction, with characters and scenes, but no preordained plot. 
Rather, a story  unwinds Ñ or more precisely, occurs Ñ as you go.  The 
struggles and events of the crewsÕ lives are absent from this "episode". 
The mechanism by which a storyteller traditionally tells us about 
characters ÑÊand through them about both writer and audience ÑÊcannot 
exist in a totally non-linear experience. Yet, in your own exploration of the 
Enterprise here, of the environs and systems and quarters and art and 
artifacts, you may come to understand a story about the members of a 
particular starship. This story includes impressions of their world, 
thoughts regarding our relationship with these characters and the 
progress they represent, and about the hurdles we will overcome on our 
own journey through time, till their world is our world. It is a story that we 
come to understand by participating in the telling of it.

If this sounds odd, consider the thought that we tell a tale about ourselves 
by our actions. Ask yourself, what the is difference between your real life, 
and a story about your real life? In both there are characters and scenes, 
even changes in characters over time and in reaction to events. However, 
there is no plot. Things Òhappen,Ó of course ÑÊyou visit your family, your 
young nephew has grown, you get a job offer, you argue with your brother, 
perhaps make up and have a drink to celebrate ÑÊbut events have no 
significance until they are strung together to suggest themes. There is no 
story until your older brother, Robert, ties together the events of your past 
and recent life, assails you for your past stoicism and says to you, (or to 
someone we all know) Òso Jean-Luc, you are human after allÉÓ  The 
crystallizing thought that connects perception and conception ÑÊthat 
bridges the questions, what has happened? what does it mean? 
ÑÊcontains the story. In an interactive story (and a good linear one), you, 
the reader, provide this insight.

So, letÕs you and I tell each other about the crew of the Enterprise and the 
world in which they live. Listen. Explore. Notice. Evaluate. What is 
present? What is missing?   Mr. Roddenberry,  Mr. Okuda, Mr. Berman, 
and Mr. Sternbach (in their Introductions) note that the Enterprise is a real 
vehicle ÑÊfor story-telling. To visit the ship, or even to serve aboard her, 
you need only to participate in the story-telling taking place around you.

While we are accustomed to visiting the Star Trek universe each week (at 
least twice a week these days), it is our hope to bring a little of the 
twenty-fourth century home to you; to create a space you can live in from 
time to time, and to help us remind each other of a bright star in the 
heavens by which to steer.  

Æ