(Billy’s birthday party.)

Grammy is there. (Which, is a surprise because she went into cat seclusion since Pa-pop died.)

(Everyone is dirt poor.)

Billy is an especially effervescent kid of a newly turned age 9. And everyone from Pa to Grammy, hell, even cobwebbed Aunt Ester chipped in to buy Billy’s only birthday present.

With eagerness, Billy unwraps his present. (Very old and slightly greased comics were used for the wrapping.)

To Billy’s excited assumption it is the new bored game, “ 3^rd Generation Colour Wheel of Fortuitous Bargains”, complete with two full stacks of cards! (With a smirk Billy whispers, “I must collect them all.”)

(Again, since Billy is such an eager and effervescent child opens the game with the same likeness.)

But the bored game quickly beeps and prints out the words, “in order to play this bored game an internet connection is required.”

Pa carries over an ancient looking dial up cord and proceeds to plug the bored game in.

Green lights flash and the game remarks, “internet speed is sub-par it is recommended to set the graphics to very, very coarse.

(There is a brief look of confusion from all party members.)

Billy, with a look of slight frustration, clicks the box open.

In exclamation! The box squeaks, “your subscription has expired!”

(There is a slight glimmer of hopelessness in the tear of Billy’s right eye.)

Grammy pulls out a red stamped 50 dollar bill – obviously printed in the 50s – and thus puts it in the 50 dollar bill receptacle.

The bored game box expands into a larger device much like when you turn a page in a pop-up book.

Renewed hope has animated Billy’s expression: “Things are much brighter now, Grammy!”

Grammy replies, “your Pa-pop always loved to see you smile.”

Billy quickly runs to the bored game to delegate the different responsibilities of the game to everyone in his birthday party that is willing.

“Ma! You’re the Jewish banker.

Pa! You’re the athletic Black football player.

Grammy! You can be Miss Daisy!

And I can be the poor white trash that may make something of myself someday!”

To Billy’s dismay, there is a blinking cursor preceded by the words:” Update in progress 12 hours ‘til download is complete.”

Billy turns to Grammy with a smile says,” let’s go play outside. It’s what Pa-pop loved to do!”

“We are the Borg! Resistance is futile.” Jean Luke Picard fires his phaser at the robotic/organic creatures before him. Jean’s first shot would take down a drone and then the second and then the third would be sure to follow the first. Just then, the effectiveness of the phaser rapidly decreased to that of a flash light. “We are the Borg. Resistance is futile.” The Borg adapted to the Captain’s weapon and at some point Jean Luke Picard became one of the Borg; they assimilated him into the collective, by infecting him with technology. He became an emotionless cyborg.

I am unaware of the writer’s subplots for the show Star Trek, “The Next Generation”, but I see huge correlations to a similar, yet less technological, foe – the invasive microorganism. As it slowly becomes common knowledge that our weapons for these invisible foes are becoming more benign, life without anti-biotics may become an incomprehensible reality for Westerners. I am living proof to the full life western medicine has given me. (I am type 1 diabetic that once got an infection in an insulin injection site.)

How do you recover from a “staph” infection that has spread beneath the 7 layers of skin located in your left arm? An answer is 5 days on an i.v. drip of Vancomycin – once hailed as the “last resort antibiotic”. Well I was lucky, but what would a staph infection that has adapted to this weapon look like? It wouldn’t look like “the Borg” … I think it would look like Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). MRSA, pronounced mur-sa, is a resistant form of “staph”. How do we stop MRSA? Maybe, amputate a limb and get a bionic arm. In that case I would then resemble “the Borg.” Then Jean Luke Picard (the cured human version) would teleport from the fictitious future to phaser me to a pile of carbon. This would prevent my insulin pump morphing with me and my newly bestowed prosthetic arm to become the first Borg drone! Fantastic! Captain Picard just saved countless cultures that the space veering Borg would have destroyed.

In reality this wouldn’t work, the only time travel that exists is the tick of the clock. We live now so let’s care more about the effects of our decisions as they ripple with each tick. Let our compassion for selfless ambition out compete the selfish agenda and maybe one day MRSA will be out competed by a non-resistant bacterium.

“… the thoughtless person playing with penicillin is morally responsible for the death of the man who finally succumbs to infection with the penicillin-resistant organism. I hope this evil can be averted.”

 – Sir Alexander Fleming June 26, 1945

“We are the Borg. Resistance is futile.”

The way is shut! Your mind is closed. You have become static. Your inability to accept and admit fault has led you to become arrogant. These set ways will make you ignorant. I implore you to reconsider! Listen, I say. Open your heart and listen! List to the rock, the trees and the wind! Humble yourself for you are, but flesh and bone. Listen and you will learn to understand! No one will ever be absolute in Knowledge. Take the grain of salt with a smile and create something beautiful. Remain open and humble to advice and in time happiness will be yours, my friend. Indonesian Poem Night