An Episode of Star Trek Tediously Written for an Audience Entirely Composed of Remote Amazon Tribesmen

CAPTAIN PICARD: Ensign Kopenawa, set a course for the Borg Megacube!

ENSIGN KOPENAWA: What?

PICARD: Do you know the bend in the river with the four trees?

KOPENAWA: Yes. It is the end of all things.

PICARD: No. Close your eyes and imagine the bend in the river with four trees, the clearing with two stones, the cooking space, the huts of your cousins, the bubbling stream. Now picture that there are thousands of these, side by side.

KOPENAWA: Thousands? What?

PICARD: Uh, a number greater than seven. Much greater. Like every speck of dust.

KOPENAWA: Seven?

PICARD: No, more than seven. We’re getting caught up here. The land of the Yanomami is not the beginning and end, the all-amidst-nothingness. There are millions …

KOPENAWA: Millions?

PICARD: There are more than seven Yanomamis in more than seven lands, lands much bigger than all you have seen.

KOPENAWA: I don’t understand. We are the Yanomami, we are all there is. There are only Yanomami. I have seen all there is.

PICARD: No. You are the Yanomami, but there are people who are not Yanomami across these vast lands I’ve described.

KOPENAWA: People?

PICARD: Uh, Yanomami who are not Yanomami. Do you understand?

KOPENAWA: You say the land is vast?

PICARD: Yes.

KOPENAWA: There is another bend in the river with the four trees? More than seven other ones?

PICARD: Well, to be technical, yes, there are other bends in rivers with four trees … but, Kopenawa, not all of the vast lands look like yours. There are oceans.

KOPENAWA: What?

PICARD: There are rivers where the bank does not exist. There are deserts.

KOPENAWA: Deserts?

PICARD: Places where the sand at the bottom of the bubbling brook is not under the brook but is without water and baked by the sun.

KOPENAWA: The sun bakes no sand.

PICARD: And not everyone speaks the Yanomami dialect.

KOPENAWA: Dialect?

PICARD: The sounds that come out of your mouth that “capture the earth” are not the only sounds in the vast lands. Other Yanomami who are not Yanomami make noises that to you would make no sense but to them signify your “tree,” “brook,” “cooking place,” and about half a zillion other words you have no equivalent for.

KOPENAWA: Half a zillion?

PICARD: More than seven other words. Anyway … Jesus, this is taking forever …

KOPENAWA: Jesus?

PICARD: Some of the Yanomami who are not Yanomami believe in other great beings in the sky. One is Jesus. Some don’t believe in any great being at all. They’re called the Church of England.

KOPENAWA: Other great being? No great being? What’s an England?

PICARD: It’s called religion. Listen, Kopenawa, I don’t have time to explain the minutiae of the entirety of human history and civilization to you. It’s, uh, more than seven years long and would take more than seven minutes to explain to you. So let’s wrap up. There are other Yanomami who aren’t Yanomami. The lands are vast. There are other religions and other dialects. OK?

KOPENAWA: No.

PICARD: And beyond all that, there are all these other planets with vast lands …

KOPENAWA: Planets?

PICARD: Great turtles’ backs rising from the water that came from the tears of the great being. So, there are all these other Yanomami who are not Yanomami that live on other turtle backs, who are even more different than the others who are Yanomami who are not Yanomami that I already told you about; these others are called aliens. And some of them are called The Borg. They have no individuality.

KOPENAWA: Individuality?

GEORDI LaFORGE: Not that anyone cares, but I think I should mention we passed the Borg Megacube 700 million light years ago. I don’t know where the hell we are now.

KOPENAWA: Megacube?