Ghost of a flea

Being a late 20th - early 21st century kind of person, I tend to use popular culture as a touchstone, a tool to understand or explain reality. I've used "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" a lot, as you probably know. But today, as I look out my 11th-floor apartment window down onto a busy Melbourne street, one image comes irresistably to mind.

At the end of the "Star Trek - The Next Generation" episode "The Best of Both Worlds Part II", Starfleet Captain Jean-Luc Picard is in his study. The Federation has managed, barely, to survive it's first encounter with the Borg, an alien hive-mind collective of seemingly unstoppable power and will. He himself was assimilated briefly into the Collective, becoming Locutus of the Borg, and directing the attack on Starfleet.



He gets up and crosses over to the window, and gazes out at the endless stars wheeling in their impersonal courses, oblivious to the fate of mankind. Like a bone that, once broken, is never quite as strong as it was before, Picard's mind has been broken by the Borg. He was forced to become something other than human, to act against his individuality as part of a vast array of linked minds. He has killed fellow Starfleet officers, fellow humans. He has been rescued, but he will never be the same as he was.



He has known pain before. And fear. And he has faced them. But now he looks out at the remotness of infinite space, and realises there is something out there that is implacable, remorseless, utterly without human emotion, and powerful beyond belief. And it is coming to destroy him and his universe forever. It will be as if they had never even existed.



He sags a bit, and he realises he is feeling something for the first time in his life, something beyond simple fear. Jean-Luc Picard looks inside, and feels the crack in his mind left by the Borg. He feels it now, something unfamiliar and terrible. He doesn't know if victory is possible.



He feels doubt.