Peers on a table, served raw.

Posted on 02 Oct 2013 @ 3:46pm by Lieutenant Lilou Zaren

810 words; about a 4 minute read

[ON]

My human mother had a saying: 'whistling for the devil'. She used to say it under her breath, or in a wry, laughing kind of manner whenever someone said something that, she thought, was hailing defeat. Like when my uncle Jethrod muttered that contacting the Trill Commission for permission to return to the planet was a death wish. Or when Ketrex said there was no way that the tri-colloidal engine he'd manufactured in his lab could possibly explode. Whistling for the devil.

What would she have said to this? Months spent on building a holographic protocol in which to battle the demons that faced me in my mind. Years spent fighting and running and practicing different techniques for combat and evasion based on every recorded detail of Borg assimilation and contact. And now they were actually here. And all my training and running and jumping and bleeding and cursing was for nothing because nothing, no program and no research and no theoretical dissertation, could compare to the real thing. And wasn't that always the case? Nothing is ever what you think it will be. Starfleet was supposed to be my chance to shine and it taught me how to shut up and be less. Now I was about to be nothing at all. Whistling for the devil.

What is there to me, really? Born in a machine in space. Befriended machines in space. Learned how to fix machines in space. How was I any different than the Borg that so terrified me? I was a cog in a machine, same as them. I tried not to be any more or less than my peers, same as them. Well, maybe they didn't have to try. The main thing, it seems to me at this moment, that separates me from them is fear. Fear and a lack of nanoprobes infiltrating my system, but mostly fear. Emotions. The bane of my existence. What have emotions ever done for me, really? Sweat. Shaking. Drinking to excess. Self-destructive behaviors. Risk. Anxiety. That pressure in my chest. The pounding in my head. Stuttering. Who needs it? Whistling for the devil.

But what is there without all that? What is it to be, in the absence of the awareness of being? If a star bursts in an uninhabited distant nebula, will anyone notice? My poor mother. Spirits, what she must think of me. What does she think? Surely she must have noticed the changes as they came. The way I retreated from everything into work, stopped coming home, stopped writing and calling. A year and I was the first one to make contact and when I did it was... what? Nothing. Nothing out of the ordinary. Did they ever expect anything from me? Did they ever care? Does it matter one way or another? Well, of course it matters. If they do care, if I've missed some sign and not been what I should have to them, then my being assimilated and turning into a walkem-talkem robot would be... distressing for them. If they noticed. Well, they'd be notified probably. Of my assimilation? Or would I just be marked KIA? Would the distinction make a difference to them? Whistling for the devil.

And after all, what's the big deal anyway? I am a tiny, speck of dust in the inexorable, inexplicable cosmos. In the sands of time, I am not even a grain. So in the long run, in the universal sense of Time with a capital T, my existence or lack of existence or transferral to a different form of existence is... immaterial. Nebulous. Gaseous. So much wind in the empty.

I've never understood my mother's religion. Never cared to. And my father's... well, that's not really a religion, is it? Believing that things have souls. What's a soul? A purpose. Things have purposes. Cosmic ones. Gears in motion. That makes sense. But thinking that 'angels' and 'demons' float about, invisibly cursing or blessing people for their actions and thoughts, so that eventually when their bodies wither and decay they'll... what? Ascend or descend? What is ascension and descension in a universe without gravity? If my body is taken for the purpose of the Borg, is that the same as death? Would Mama's priests say my soul was freed, to go to heaven or hell? Where would they think I was headed? Does it matter? The story went that the devil was an angel who was too proud, and that pride had a weight and it pulled him down. Well, and so. If he's so far down, how does he even hear whistling? Does he need a particular tune? Or is all whistling something he recognizes? Every failing. Every pitiful excuse and stammering attempt at... something. Anything. Maybe I've been whistling all along.

[OFF]

Lilou Peers
Assistant Chief Engineer
USS Galileo

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