Anyone reading this blog probably knows that my daughter, Abigail, has been in St. Mary’s Children’s Hospital since Thanksgiving Day. One might say that she has been assimilated.
When we brought Abi to the ER in Superior, WI, she was obviously sick, but I didn’t understand how seriously. Thank God we listened to expert advice and brought her to the emergency room.
Language fails me. That helpless feeling, watching my baby grunting and panting. Holding her, I thought she might melt in my arms from fever. And she kept looking at me. Big, moist, blue eyes set in dark, sunken sockets.
The emergency room was torture, but she couldn’t have gotten better care. The doctor proved herself very competent in dealing with such a little person, and the nurses were kind. No one likes needling a three month old, and Abi sure didn’t make it easy on them, on any of us.
Eventually, she became weak from the fever and the tears and all she could manage was a pitiful moan. Ripping my hair out would have been less upsetting than listening to my baby cry like that.
How quickly we forget.
Abi’s first IV was placed in her scalp, prompting my dear father to compare her appearance with that of a Borg. He’s so sentimental. My reply was: except adorable! Yep, that’s the big difference between Abi and a Borg. She’s cute.
If you aren’t a trekkie, or a casual Star Trek enjoyer (which is more my category), then you might be wondering: “What the heck is Borg?” The Borg are a multifarious group of alien species that have been linked together in a collective. Their goal is perfection and they conquer whole planets and systems by assimilating the individuals. An assimilated individual’s body becomes a drone and their knowledge is added to the collective knowledge of the Borg.
It’s actually an excellent way to advance a society (unless you like being yourself). However, the Borg collective doesn’t advance without the fresh knowledge of unassimilated individuals being added to their collective. So, while deriding the less “perfected” societies, they would stagnate without them.
Here’s an interesting thought, though. The Borg could assimilate the entire universe and not reach perfection. It’s like trying to reach infinity, by definition impossible. And, actually, they might be going the wrong way because how can adding up more and more flawed individuals create a perfect whole? Maybe they should start subtracting civilizations?
Anyway, it’s just sci-fi, but the point of sci-fi is to explore real-life scenarios from the safety of fiction.
How in the world did I get on that topic?
of cabbages and kings 
She is the cutest Borg I’ve ever met and the cutest little girl, since her mom and aunt.
We like being ourselves don’t we? There seems to be only one way to reach perfection, that is through dying to your old sinful deeds and becoming like Christ.