Assimilation

von Marcus Krug

“Member of species 5618, you will be assimilated!” Locutus says to me as soon as I open my eyes, strapped onto an operating table. A red light on his right temple is blinking while he speaks. I also know him as Captain Jean-Luc Picard. Star Trek – The Next Generation, the bane of my formative childhood years, for I never understood what was going on, yet I was rather fascinated by it for that very reason. It was also the first time I encountered the word assimilation. For some reason, it didn’t leave a positive impression on me. Locutus indulges in a lengthy explanation on how I will undergo an assimilation, while someone else connects my spinal cord with a computer, through which I have access to countless snippets of other peoples’ memories. I access one randomly, which is a quite bumpy endeavour.

“Pregnant women first?” I hear myself shouting through a megaphone in Arabic and some sub-Saharan languages, when I shift back into lucidity. I’m perfectly able to keep my balance standing on our quickly moving rubber dinghy, while circling a cargo vessel, on its way from Libya to the white beaches of Italy. The heavily overcrowded coffin ship is at least twice the size of our old hospital ship from the sixties, which we use to scan the Mediterranean for refugees to save from drowning. Some able-bodied individuals jump from the ship into the rough sea, swimming up to our dinghy. Among the countless bodies in the water there are many dead. Their most pressing worries weren’t about how well or if ever they will assimilate in Europe, but mere survival. Then there is the Italian coast guard ship. I hear them before I see them. And I feel them, too. One of their rubber bullets knocks me out cold.

Next, I am on my way to work. I pass by a typical Chinese neighbourhood, when I see a little boy, his underpants down to his knees, relieving himself into a flowerbed in front of an old and rundown block of apartments. In all this suffocating humidity these days, I feel a refreshingly cool breeze; and then a sudden and warm sprinkle, carried over by the refreshing gust, finds my naked calves. Just the day before yesterday, on my way to the metro station, I stopped at the traffic light of a large intersection. It can be life-threatening if you do not. The light switched to green when suddenly a ruthless pack of silent-death e-scooters skipped the waiting cars and busses. In my peripheral vision I made out one specimen that was headed for my position, if I had kept walking. I wanted to lift my leg up high to kick him off the scooter, but instead I let the anger travel up my arm into my hand. And then I only threw my cup of hot soymilk after him, yelling. He just turned around, laughing. I want to be part of this society, I really do. I learn the language, can eat with chopsticks and all. But they don’t let me. They make it exceptionally hard for me to integrate. As a foreigner you are a drop of water in a sea of oil. Given my expatriate features, I know that I will never be able to blend in with them. I will always be the exotic pet. The foreign friend. The white monkey. Assimilation impossible. Upon this sobering realisation, I shift over into another shred of someone else’s memory.

On the table in front of me are photocopies of several documents. A couple of weeks back, my child’s father had been officially recognised in my child’s birth certificate at the registry office in Berlin Charlottenburg. This step has helped provide him with the legal status he was aiming for all along. There are photocopies of an Italian medical card, a provisional Nigerian passport, and a German residence permit. None of them match. The Nigerian passport had been issued, based on the Italian medical card, and the German residence permit took the Nigerian passport for granted. Bureaucratic whispers down the lane. Three different documents. Three different passport photographs, of which none resembles the man I conceived my child with. Three different signatures. Three different names, let alone the dates of birth. How is this even possible? Does my child have three fathers now? How can I make sure that none of these men can come and claim custody for my child? The woman at the registry office said that once a father is recognised there is no way back. And I should know best who I had intercourse with! Deutsche Willkommenskultur on the loose! If we can’t even integrate them properly, how will they ever assimilate? Tired of the world’s most absurd turnings, I slide back into familiarity.

“Welcome to the Borg’s collective consciousness, Eight of Sixteen, Tactical Drone of Trimatrix 5337!” I open my eyes once more, when Locutus pads me on the back. In a mirror, I see myself in a black bionic suit. There are tubes and cables coming out of my neck and my back fusing into a panel on my right temple. My red light blinks when I state my status, “Confirmed: Assimilation of a member from species 5618 completed successfully!” Is force really the only way this works?! is my last thought before I lose my self in the depth of our hive mind.