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When I left Vulcan, that self-proclaimed ‘boarding school for the education and rehabilitation of severely disabled but intelligent boys’, a phase of my mundane education was over. I was now an Old Vulcanian, though not in any hurry to attend reunions — if any were even held.

I had been much changed during my years on those premises. Perhaps you could say I had been Vulcanised, vulcanisation being a process for treating rubber by adding sulphur or other substances in the presence of heat and pressure. Vulcanisation enhances rubber’s strength, resistance and elasticity. The description can be made to fit. I (or actually only ‘I’) had been strengthened and weakened in a complex simultaneous process, fortified and adulterated.

Then gradually the whole world became Vulcanised, in a different sense. A few years later the Star Trek series started to be broadcast and became extremely popular. English fans were told that no work was done at NASA on a Friday evening, because staff were required to watch Star Trek. They too had to learn what the future would be like.

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