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I've often compared humankind's collective intelligence to that of a plague of toxic lichen -- mindless, yet effectively destructive.  Brian Kaller's girl takes a more constructive view: 

As we talked we decided that the rivers were the blood, the rocks were the bones, soil the flesh, and animals were the nerves.

“What kind of germs are we?”

It depends what kind of person you are, I said. Some people have been like the bad germs, making the world sicker.

“Can we be like the white blood cells?” she asked, knowing that they patrol the body and heal it. 

. . . “I’d like to be a white blood cell when I grow up,” she said.

I have to think Gaia's immune system would welcome such allies.

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