{"id":10093,"date":"2015-01-20T09:24:31","date_gmt":"2015-01-20T14:24:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/?p=10093"},"modified":"2022-08-01T07:43:05","modified_gmt":"2022-08-01T11:43:05","slug":"i-had-a-dream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/2015\/01\/i-had-a-dream\/","title":{"rendered":"I Had a Dream"},"content":{"rendered":"

KIRK [voice-over]:\u00a0 Captain’s Log, Stardate 52015.19.\u00a0 I have asked Ensign Collins to report to my quarters and brief me on his recent mission to the Planet Earth, where he has undertaken an important but necessarily secret assignment<\/em>.<\/p>\n

COLLINS [at cabin door]: Permission to enter, Captain.<\/p>\n

KIRK: Permission granted, step inside, Ensign.\u00a0 [Door shuts behind COLLINS with a squeaky whoosh.]\u00a0 Damn, that door still<\/em> needs oil!\u00a0 I’ve mentioned it to Yeoman Cheney three or four times, and nothing.\u00a0 Doesn’t he understand who is in command here?<\/p>\n

COLLINS: Yes, Captain.\u00a0 I assume he does.<\/p>\n

KIRK:\u00a0 Anyway, enough of him.\u00a0 At ease, Ensign.\u00a0 Have a seat.\u00a0 [KIRK motions to a chair across the table.]\u00a0 Collins, do you know why I chose you for this mission?<\/p>\n

COLLINS: I can only speculate, Sir.<\/p>\n

KIRK: Well then, I’ll explain.\u00a0 This is the part that I said was “secret” in the Captain’s Log.<\/p>\n

COLLINS: I did not overhear your log entry, Sir.\u00a0 I was outside your door at the time, waiting for the introduction to end.<\/p>\n

KIRK: Damn, I keep forgetting — no one ever seems to hear it but me.\u00a0 But getting back to my point.\u00a0 You remember your last assignment<\/a> — the Enterprise left you on that planet in the Tulsar Quadrant so you could destroy the Comfort Device that the people had grown dependent on.<\/p>\n

COLLINS:\u00a0 I do recall that, Sir.\u00a0 It was just last year.<\/p>\n

KIRK: And you are aware, Ensign, that you violated the Prime Directive by interfering in their society.\u00a0 And that violations of the Prime Directive are dealt with very<\/em> harshly.<\/p>\n

COLLINS: Yes, sir.\u00a0 And I would do it again.<\/p>\n

KIRK:\u00a0 And that is why I picked you<\/em> for the Earth assignment, Collins.\u00a0 You had already been sullied, so to speak.\u00a0 Another violation or two, well, how much harsher can the punishment be?\u00a0 You understand what I am saying, Ensign?<\/p>\n

COLLINS:\u00a0 I believe you are telling me I am your “Society Intervention Officer.”<\/p>\n

KIRK:\u00a0 Exactly.\u00a0 [KIRK rises to his feet.]\u00a0 All societies need a kick in the ass.\u00a0 I never understood this idea of waiting around for centuries, watching people all over the galaxy kill each other and make the same stupid mistakes, over and over!\u00a0 Our standing aside, Ensign, would be a cruelty of much<\/em> greater magnitude than our simply stepping in and doing<\/em> something.\u00a0 But then there’s the Prime Directive.\u00a0 If people are to be helped along, someone<\/em> has to violate it.\u00a0 [KIRK leans down to COLLINS.]\u00a0 So, why not you and I?<\/p>\n

COLLINS [leaning away]: With respect, Captain, I had already come to this conclusion and remain well aware of the implications of my actions.\u00a0 I am ready to brief you on the Earth mission, if you are ready, Sir.<\/p>\n

KIRK [straightens]:\u00a0 By all means, proceed, Ensign.<\/p>\n

COLLINS:\u00a0 As you warned me, Captain, when I beamed down to Earth, I saw societies that were in disarray.\u00a0 Almost all of them, actually.\u00a0 The most disturbing thing I observed was the way that those who were in power, usually the majority, treated the people who were in the minority.\u00a0 Every region of the planet I visited had one or more minority groups who were being denied the same status and privileges enjoyed by the majority.\u00a0 In some places, being in the minority was an inconvenience; in other places, it was life-threatening.<\/p>\n

KIRK [sitting down]:\u00a0 Precisely what you needed to see for yourself.\u00a0 Go on.<\/p>\n

COLLINS: What was remarkable, and very sad, is how the people on Earth were sorted into groups based on the most trivial differences among them.\u00a0 In the United States, for example — they call it a melting pot<\/em> for some reason — people were assigned to groups based mostly on skin color, nose shape and eyelids.\u00a0 The majority called themselves white<\/em> but their skin color ranged from pink to tan and they had a variety of nose shapes.\u00a0 All the groupings seemed very arbitrary to me.<\/p>\n

[COLLINS stands and strolls a few steps.]\u00a0 In other parts of the planet, minority groups were isolated from the mainstream based on their spiritual beliefs, or heritage, or lack of wealth, or gender, almost any reason you can think of, really.\u00a0 In every case, the majority used its power to secure its own position and disadvantage the rest.\u00a0 But here is the odd part, at least to me.\u00a0 Generally, the majority would not<\/em> use its numeric superiority as justification for its oppressive acts; instead, it would point to these superficial differences among peoples as their rationale.
\n <\/del><\/p>\n

KIRK:\u00a0 Yes, but your assignment, Ensign, was not simply to observe, but to do something.<\/em>\u00a0 We are … [KIRK breathes in] … men of action<\/em>.<\/p>\n

COLLINS: And I have acted, Captain.\u00a0 I was considering ways to resolve this situation, when I came across a crime report from a place called Gulfport, Mississippi.\u00a0 The report said that the police were “looking for a black man, about 5-foot-6 and 150 pounds, wearing a red hoodie and tan pants.”\u00a0 I compared this to another crime report, from a town in Canada called Petrolia.\u00a0 Petrolia has a population of over five thousand, but only ten black people live there.\u00a0 The Petrolia report said, “Police are looking for a man in his 30s who is about 6 feet tall, wearing sunglasses, gloves, a grey hoodie with a logo on the front, and a white shirt.”\u00a0 This report didn’t mention the man’s skin color, apparently because the reporter thought it was obvious.<\/p>\n

KIRK: Please get to the point, Ensign.\u00a0 I have a date… I mean, an appointment… with Nurse Chapel at 0800 hours.<\/p>\n

COLLINS:\u00a0 Yes, Captain.\u00a0 These reports made me aware how easy it is to single out people who have skin of a different color than the majority has.\u00a0 The problem, as I saw it, was not that there are too many colored people, as some people on the planet claimed, but too few.\u00a0 So, with the help of Doctor McCoy, I prepared a special biological agent and released it into Earth’s atmosphere.\u00a0 The agent interacts with human mitochondrial DNA —<\/p>\n

KIRK: Please<\/em>, Ensign Collins, these technical details make my head spin!\u00a0 Along with that Aeolian brandy last night… but please, wrap this up!<\/p>\n

COLLINS: Essentially, the agent makes each person’s skin turn a different random color based partly on their geographic origin and partly on chance.\u00a0 People who are of Slavic origin, for example, tend to have blue skin but some are orange.\u00a0 People whose ancestors are from the British Isles are various shades of magenta or green.\u00a0 There are hundreds of different skin colors.\u00a0 Everyone on the planet is now a colored person.\u00a0 There are no more majorities, only minorities.\u00a0 There is no longer any privilege in having the same skin color as the majority, because the majorities have been divided and subdivided to the point where they no longer exist.<\/p>\n

KIRK: Interesting solution, Ensign.\u00a0 Not one that I would have considered.\u00a0 Did you have to do any fighting?\u00a0 [KIRK looks hopefully at COLLINS.]\u00a0 A good fist fight, perhaps.<\/p>\n

COLLINS: I’m afraid not, Captain.\u00a0 I had to beam up from the planet quickly, since my own lack of color would have caused me to stand out among the population and my intervention would have been more easily detected.<\/p>\n

KIRK [chuckling]: Yes, Ensign, you would not want to read a crime report that said, “Police seeking man, early 60s, with no color, last seen wearing a Federation uniform, without a hoodie.”\u00a0 Good work, Collins.\u00a0 The Enterprise will visit Earth again in a few years and we will see whether your intervention has made a difference.\u00a0 You’re dismissed.<\/p>\n

COLLINS: Thank you, Captain.\u00a0 [COLLINS salutes and walks to the cabin door, which whooshes open with an annoying squeak.]<\/p>\n

\"People<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KIRK [voice-over]:\u00a0 Captain’s Log, Stardate 52015.19.\u00a0 I have asked Ensign Collins to report to my quarters and brief me on his recent mission to the Planet Earth, where he has undertaken an important but necessarily secret assignment. COLLINS [at cabin … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humor","category-short-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10093"}],"version-history":[{"count":35,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10093\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19572,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10093\/revisions\/19572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}