NANNY

::::Paris to Captain Janeway::::

"Yes, Tom?"

::::Our little "project" is done, Captain. Would you care to come to Deck 5 to see it?::::

"I'll be there in a minute. Janeway out." Turning command over to her first officer, Janeway strode off the bridge and into the turbolift. This should prove interesting.

The storage bay next to the medical lab on Deck 5 had never been used for much. It had been equipped with holoemitters when Voyager was first built since, technically, it was part of Sickbay and the EMH might, upon occasion, need to access supplies kept there. Items of a medical nature had never been in sufficient quantity on Voyager, however, for the storage space to be dedicated solely to this purpose. Instead, it had come to be the depository for items of a decidedly non-medical nature, even though the EMH might have been involved in the events that caused them to be stored there. The storage bay had become the repository for the crates of the personal belongings no longer needed by their owners. Those owners had lost their lives since the inception of Voyager's journey through the Delta Quadrant.

Three days before, the crates, now distressingly numerous, had been relocated to a corner of Cargo Bay One, to permit the room to be used for a less morbid purpose. The youngest crew member currently residing on Voyager had just been assigned this space.

Vastly altered in appearance by a newly applied, colorful wall coating and holographic projections on the storage cabinet doors, the room now boasted a diorama of animals from several different worlds of the Federation. Each of the animals parading around the room bore a name tag beneath its image. Other words in Federation Standard appeared on the walls in various areas; the Federation Standard, Klingon, Bajoran, and Vulcan alphabets, printed on the ceiling border of the room, were available for easy reference. Upon entering, the captain examined the walls with approval before approaching the small knot of her senior staff in the center of the room. Lieutenants Paris and Torres, Ensign Kim, Seven of Nine and the EMH were standing with one other entity that Janeway did not immediately recognize, although she was well aware of her identity.

While a new crew member's arrival on Voyager was an extremely rare occurrence, it was even rarer for the captain to come calling on the new addition, rather than vice versa. In this case, it was perfectly understandable. The holoemitters were the key factor.

"Captain," said the Doctor as the group separated to give her room to join them. "I'd like to present Nanny to you."

"Hello, Nanny," the captain said.

The young woman who stood before her, hand extended in welcome, was a pleasingly plump, twentyish woman with dark brown hair, warm brown eyes, and an engaging grin. She had a firm grip when she took hold of the captain's hand and shook it enthusiastically and giggled, "So pleased to make your acquaintance, Captain Janeway. I'm sure our professional association will be long and fruitful."

Perhaps it was not precisely a giggle, the captain thought. It might be better characterized as a bubbling over of enthusiasm, always a good sign in any newcomer, no matter how they happened to come into an organization. Certainly, this crew member had come to Voyager under very unique circumstances, not at all unlike the physician who was beaming by her side.

"Isn't she perfect, Captain? She's been progra . . . taught . . . all of the information in our computer banks regarding the tutoring of children of all ages. She's just about ready to meet her new students," the Doctor stated.

"Students? Plural?"

"Why, yes, Captain. We have my son Jeffrey, of course. His Klingon friends K'Kath and Larg will be joining the class as well . . . "

"Klingons. I see." The captain tightened her lips to keep from smiling. "That should keep the class lively."

"There will be a few others, to promote age appropriate social skills. And then, of course, we wil have our prime pupil. Naomi and Ensign Wildman are on their way here now to meet Nanny."

Hardly was this said than a small girl skipped into the room. Thanks to the Ktarian half of her ancestry, she looked more like a human five-year-old than one with only two and a half years to her credit. She skidded to a stop, almost tripping her mother and Neelix, who had been following closely behind her. "Oh, Doctor! This place looks different!"

"Yes, it is, Naomi. This is your new schoolroom. Would you like to have your teacher take you on a tour?"

"Yes, Doctor. Are you my teacher?"

"No, Naomi. I will give you the occasional biology lesson, but my presence is required in Sickbay, to take care of the crew's medical needs. We have a new teacher for you who can spend as much time with you as you need. Come along and meet Miss Nanny."

The captain pursed her lips as the Doctor escorted Naomi to the teacher, who squatted down to the child's level and introduced herself to Naomi as energetically as she had to the captain. There was a warmer, more nurturing overtone in Nanny's voice as she spoke to Naomi, however. The captain was glad to hear it.

Glancing at B'Elanna, the captain caught her chief engineer rolling her eyes at her husband, who was smirking back at her. The captain whispered, "Don't you approve of Miss Nanny, B'Elanna? You are one of her creators, aren't you?"

"It's not the holographic teacher I mind. It's that dumb name."

"We can help her choose a new name, B'Elanna," Tom said, placatingly.

"Yeah. Like the Doctor has a name?"

"Well, he does. He's, uh, . . . Kenneth, to Mrs. Kenneth," Tom responded, reasonably.

"We aren't allowed to call him that!" B'Elanna said, with enough energy that both Tom and Harry hushed her simultaneously.

"Don't worry, Lieutenant Torres, I will immediately begin to research a new, appropriate name for our teacher. Once she's reprogrammed, she won't even know she didn't always have it." The Doctor stepped away from the earnestly chatting Naomi and her teacher, who were busily touring the schoolroom together.

"She'll never know? Doctor, doesn't she know she's a hologram?"

"Not exactly," hedged the EMH.

"But Harry, Seven, Tom and B'Elanna spent so much time working on that spare matrix. I thought the whole idea of dedicating it to a use other than recreating your diagnostic program was to permit our new teacher to be self-aware?"

"The Doc doesn't think that's wise, Captain," Harry sighed. Janeway noticed several exasperated looks being exchanged between her three senior staff members and, to a lesser extent, with Seven of Nine.

"It appears that the human members of the design team are not in agreement with your decision, Doctor," noted the captain.

"I don't believe it advisable, Captain. Believe me, it isn't easy being locked up in one small place during every waking hour, knowing you can't move around the ship freely. Trapped, in one location for all hours of the day, ad infinitem . . ."

B'Elanna offered, in a relatively calm, only slightly elevated tone of voice, "Doctor, the two of you could take turns using the mobile emitter until we figure out how the thing works so we can build another one."

"But it could be damaged!"

"It could be damaged when you're wearing it, too!" B'Elanna growled back, much louder this time.

The captain swiftly intervened to defuse the rapidly escalating dialogue between B'Elanna and the EMH. "Now, now, there's no need to argue here. I understand your desire to be cautious about how much to tell Nanny about herself, Doctor, but I wish you'd reconsider. She's not an ordinary holographic representation like Naomi's classmates. If there's an attack, she needs to be able to protect Naomi. For that, she must be fully cognizant of her own limitations, don't you agree?"

With a self-satisfied smile, B'Elanna crossed her arms, resting them upon the shelf of her protruding belly. "We've been trying to tell the Doctor that since we began, Captain. Nanny may be programmed with all the knowledge a child needs to learn, but I'm not too sure if her personality matrix will remain stable if she doesn't know what she really is."

"I assure you, Lieutenant, I thoroughly researched everything that was incorporated into her program. I made sure to include ALL kinds of governesses and teachers available from the data banks. From Maria Von Trapp to Mary Poppins. Henry Higgins to Mr. Rogers. Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Indiana Jones, Anne Sullivan Macy, Josephine March Bhaer, M'Gatlh, Anne Shirley, Captain Kangaroo, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Lucille Davenport, Anna Leonowens, Socrates . . . "

"You didn't put in the one from 'The Turn of the Screw,' did you, Doc?" Tom asked.

"The problem governesses like that one have been edited or deleted." The Doctor smiled beatifically as he turned his attention back to his new portage. She had finished circuiting the room with Naomi and was speaking briefly with Samantha Wildman and Neelix.

"Glad to hear that," Tom replied.

"I still think you should have included the Flotter and Trevis stories, Doctor. They're really fun and part of just about every kid's experiences back home on Earth. Naomi should get a chance to learn from them, too," Harry commented.

"There's plenty of time for that, Mr. Kim. For now, Naomi will have the benefit of the best purveyors of education our data base can provide. Later on, she'll be exposed to the advanced logic of Vulcan philosophers, the . . . "

"I'm sure you've done your usual thorough job, Doctor. Please think about that self-awareness element, however. I'd prefer she knew."

"Captain, really . . ."

Any further discussion of the matter was curtailed by the approach of the holoprogram in question and her young charge. The captain asked Naomi, "Are you all ready for your first day in school, Naomi?"

"Yes, Captain. Miss Nanny is nice."

Samantha shook her head. "I can hardly believe this day is here already. Only a few months ago she was running around grabbing things off tables before Tom and B'Elanna's wedding. And now look at how she's sprouted! She's going to school!"

"She's such a big girl. You must be very proud, Ensign Wildman," said Nanny, smiling broadly. "I can't wait for tomorrow when you can stay all morning for class. We're going to have lots of fun."

Naomi nodded her head. Taking her mother's hand but keeping as wide a berth from Seven as possible, Naomi walked out of the schoolroom, waving goodbye to Miss Nanny and the rest of the crew-except for Seven, whom she ignored.

After the mother and her child left, Neelix bubbled, "Isn't she wonderful? You're going to find she's the smartest little girl you ever taught." Realizing what he'd just said, Neelix added, "I mean, uh . . . "

"Oh, I'm sure she will be," Nanny said. "I'm looking forward to working with all of the children here. And the ones who will soon be here, too, of course." She smiled smugly at B'Elanna. "And when is your baby due, Lieutenant Torres?"

"In about two, maybe two and a half months," B'Elanna answered, grabbing the bottom front corners of her Engineering smock and giving it a tug before whipping her head around towards her husband, who had mumbled something simultaneously with his wife.

Tom's comment: "Not soon enough, Nanny. Not soon enough."

"Not soon enough for WHAT?" B'Elanna demanded to know.

"Oh, nothing," Tom grinned weakly, rubbing the arm that had just been jabbed by his irritated half-Klingon bride.

B'Elanna stared at Tom a moment more before turning back to the captain. "I need to get back to Engineering-assuming everything is set here for tomorrow?"

Everyone agreed, all was set. After the captain's dismissal, B'Elanna and Tom left the storage area, Tom muttering something about pregnancy hormones under his breath. Harry excused himself, too. Neelix moved off to listen to Nanny's lecture about the characteristics of the animals pictured on the walls. After the EMH began following them around the room, observing them with a proud smile on his countenance, Captain Janeway was left with Seven of Nine, the woman who had been severed from the Borg Collective some months before. Severed, but not yet back to being totally human, not by a very wide margin. Her intent observation of young Naomi had not escaped the captain's notice.

"You seem quite interested in our youngest crew member, Seven."

"I have not had a previous opportunity to evaluate such a young child. The Borg educate newly assimilated children by putting them in maturation chambers. It is a far more efficient method of providing factual data to the young than this . . . classroom."

"Perhaps. Even on a non-Borg vessel, computer programs can educate a child at their own individual pace, but learning facts isn't the only reason for schooling. "

"I fail to see why these individual computer programs are not sufficient for this child, if they are available."

"That's not the purpose of this program. Naomi will receive many lessons directly from the computer. Her afternoon lessons will be given to her that way. But she also needs to learn how to function in society, with other children. The only way we can do that here is by the use of holographic programming, since she's the only child on board. Yet."

"The child Lieutenant Torres has conceived by Lieutenant Paris will also require educational programming."

"Yes, and social skills training. And I'm thinking she's not the only one." Captain Janeway looked speculatively at Seven of Nine again. "You were assimilated at age six, weren't you?"

"I was."

"In some ways, you're very like Naomi."

"That opinion is not supported by fact. I am Borg, and an adult. She is a half-human, half-Ktarian child. We are not at all alike."

"Now that you say that, I would have to agree. Naomi is clearly your superior in social skills, even though she is much younger than you are."

Seven regarded the captain coldly. "Explain."

"You haven't had the opportunity to learn how to interact with other people in social settings any more than you've had a chance to observe young children. I've attempted to help you learn social interaction with recreational programs on the holodeck, but you've resisted much of what I've tried to teach you."

"What you have presented there is irrelevant. If I perform my duties in Astrometrics efficiently, I have no need to interact socially with other crew members."

"No, Seven, that's an incorrect assumption. You may be able to perform your job functions efficiently, but interacting appropriately with the rest of the crew is also essential. Unpredictable things happen on a Starfleet vessel. 'Weird is part of the job,' I once told Mr. Kim, and it's vital for you to understand that. For truly efficient functioning, everyone on Voyager must learn how to work with every other so that in an emergency, we're able to count on each other without even thinking about it. It's a skill like any other, just as easily learned-and far more enjoyably-in recreational activities. Or in a setting like this one. A classroom."

Seven stared again at the captain for several seconds before saying, "Since I am not a child, it would be inappropriate to learn in a classroom. Students are children."

"Oh, it's never too late to learn," Neelix commented, as his tour of the classroom ended next to where the captain and Seven were conversing. "I'm a perfect example of that. I'm constantly learning new things on Voyager."

The EMH added, "Mr. Neelix is correct, Seven. Many people who attend classes at universities are adults who have decided to change professions, and some merely wish to acquire knowledge for its own sake after their primary careers are done. Why, despite the very complete programming provided to me by Dr. Zimmerman, once I was activated I learned there was much more to living than merely performing my duties. I developed interests and hobbies, such as studying opera; and professionally, I found I had much to learn about subjects such as 'bedside manner.' Some of it came from Mr. Paris, unfortunately, but we can't always choose our sources. Our sources choose . . . "

"Yes, thank you, Doctor," interrupted the captain. Tom bashing had become something of a habit with the EMH, which the captain tolerated only because she doubted he meant it. Turning back to Seven, she said, "The Doctor and Neelix are quite right, Seven. While we can't always control the way we learn information, when we are able to, we should seize the opportunity. This may be the perfect place for you to learn a few skills you haven't yet realized you need. Nanny, would you mind if I assigned Seven of Nine as an assistant to you? She has an amazing store of knowledge in her brain from her time with the Borg that will supplement your . . . um . . . your extensive training in education."

"That would be wonderful, Captain. I look forward to working with her. Shall we spend some time this afternoon comparing notes about lesson planning, Seven of Nine?"

The Borg woman's expression became somewhat twisted about the mouth as she said, "I must return to Astrometrics to complete my unfinished assignments there first."

As Seven turned to go, Janeway said pointedly, "You will appear here again tomorrow at 0800 hours for your teacher's assistant assignment, however, Seven."

Seven halted on her heels and looked back over her shoulder at the captain. After a brief hesitation, she responded, "I will comply."

"Good. Dismissed."

The captain excused herself a moment later. As she was leaving the classroom, she stifled a smile as she heard Nanny say, "I'm delighted to have Seven as an assistant, Doctor. I could use additional information about the education of Klingon students. I haven't any personal experience tutoring them. I'd like your advice about that, too. Perhaps we could meet over dinner to discuss this, and some other matters . . ."

Once in the corridor, Janeway allowed herself a throaty chuckle. This was going to be a most interesting experiment.


At precisely 0755, Seven entered the schoolroom on Deck Five. Had anyone dared to ask her how she felt (and if she had been willing to answer), she would have admitted to feeling a certain amount of apprehension at being assigned to the ship's classroom. Today was the first time Seven would be present at a class when any student other than herself was in attendance.

When she had lived with her parents on The Raven, Annika Hansen had rarely encountered other children. Except for the occasional Deep Space Station stop or even less frequent planetfall, the family had been cut off from any other humans for prolonged periods of time. Her parents preferred it that way. They wanted no interference with their work, especially from Federation officials who might inquire about the nature of their experiments in advanced propulsion systems.

Their work with propulsion systems was so advanced, in fact, that upon the spectacular success of one of their experiments, they would quite literally leave their fellow theoreticians of the Alpha Quadrant far behind in the interstellar dust. Their experimentation ended in the Delta Quadrant when Annika was six years old. End was the appropriate term, for their lives as individual entities would cease as well. To the great misfortune of the Hansens, their successful flight would attract the attention of a race as yet unknown to the rest of the Alpha Quadrant.

The Borg could recognize advanced technological achievement when they saw it. The technological distinctiveness contained within the brains of the Hansen family was quickly added to that of the Borg-very much against the Hansen family's will.

While her parents immediately became drones, such was not the case with the daughter. For the next twenty-one cycles, all of young Annika Hansen's needs would be provided within the confines of maturation chamber 12805600473. Until she attained sufficient growth for permanent implants to be installed, the future drone was attached by a neural transceiver to the rest of the Hive.

During this time of physical transformation from child to adult, the knowledge gained by the rest of the Borg was fed to her via neural link. She even "participated" in the assimilations of other races cybernetically, although her immature humanoid body was divorced from the physical process, housed as it was in the maturation chamber. Her youthful consciousness had been present at the birth of every new drone to join their cube. She was fully aware of every terrified individual who was absorbed into the vast conglomerate entity that was the Borg, even though she was not yet Seven of Nine. Only when a fully grown Annika stepped out of her chamber to have her left arm fitted with a prosthetic, her left eyeball roughly popped out and replaced by an ocular implant, and the full complement of Borg circuitry installed within her was Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct to Unimatrix Zero-One, truly born.

Thus, Seven's entire education had taken place via some form of cybernetic link. She had never had access to other children with whom to interact-for most of the time, no other people at all. Only during those rare times in her early childhood, when her mother or father could spare the time from research to join her at the computer screen for a learning game or two, had she even had company.

Seven was perceptive enough to note the supreme irony of the day. The teacher and eight of the nine students scheduled to be present in the schoolroom on this first day of school were also cybernetic in nature. It was the one who was not cybernetic, the three-year old human/Ktarian child, who single-handedly transformed this into an entirely new experience for Seven of Nine.

After leaving Astrometrics the previous evening, Seven had spent precisely forty-three standard minutes obtaining a nutritional supplement in the mess hall. Six hours and twenty-two minutes had been required for regeneration. Forty-seven minutes had been allotted to a visit to the schoolroom to consult with Nanny about lesson plans for the students (all holographic) which Seven was assigned to teach. The remaining hours and minutes had been passed in front of her computer screen in Cargo Bay Two, accessing Voyager's data banks and absorbing all she could concerning classrooms, educational philosophies, and instructional techniques within the time available. Because of her eidetic memory, what Seven perused in the files, Seven remembered.

It did not matter. Seven was still terrified she would fail.

No one must know a Borg-or former Borg, to be more accurate-was terrified of failure. So, Seven of Nine walked into the classroom, shoulders thrown back, bosom thrust out, abdominal muscles sucked into supporting her rigidly upright posture. Confidence and Borg were to be synonymous, if Seven had any control over the matter.

The first eyes to light upon her were the dark brown, fierce orbs of Larg and K'Kath. Jeffrey turned his head in her direction a moment later. The pupils of all three males immediately dilated. One trait shared by Klingon and human alike was that visible sign of sexual arousal. Seven stared coldly at them to dissuade them from making any comment to her. The males, after several more seconds of staring, turned away from her and resumed the conversation that had been interrupted by her entrance.

In another corner, two younger children were present. Seven estimated that these two females were both equivalent to seven or eight-year old humans. One, in appearance, was all human. The other was a Klingon female. These were holographic representations, just as Jeffrey, Larg, and K'Kath were.

When Seven moved farther into the room, three other children materialized behind her. One was a Ktarian male, about the same age as the two female holographic children. The other two were female teenagers, a Klingon and a human in appearance. Seven observed the three teenage males stand up straighter, preening for the "girls." Seven looked for a third teenage female to appear, but none did. The lack of another girl meant that this program contained the potential for a significant amount of adolescent hormone-induced rivalry among the males. Seven wondered if she should blame Mr. Paris or the Doctor for this particular development in the program.

A moment later, Nanny shimmered into existence. "Seven!" she called out. "Welcome! It's good to see you. And who do we have here?"

Clinging to the hand of her mother, Naomi Wildman, the intended beneficiary of this holographic wizardry, walked into the classroom to begin her first day of this most seminal of experiences-for her, and for Seven of Nine.


It had been a long first day for Seven. Although Jeffrey and his Klingon friends acted like Klingons, as expected, Nanny did quite well controlling their more rambunctious behavior during the classes held jointly for all the children, regardless of age. Most of the time, however, Nanny stayed with Naomi and the youngest three holochildren. Seven was in charge of the teenagers.

"Have you completed your exercises in the differential analysis of quantum particles, Larg?" Seven asked pointedly when the holographic Klingon's lack of attention to task became particularly noticeable.

"Yes, Miss Nine," he replied. Nanny had insisted Seven be called that, despite the Borg's protests, citing the need to maintain the "necessary degree of classroom decorum."

"There is a substantial error in the results of the fourth problem which would be catastrophic if you were to utilize these calculations in a practical application. Can you find it?" Seven countered severely, after a quick perusal of his PADD.

"I will," he growled angrily.

"If you spent less time contemplating my mammary tissues and more examining the problem at hand, you would meet with more success," Seven stated emphatically to the deflated Larg, as guffaws issued from K'Kath and Jeffrey. Fixing the other two males with her intense gaze, Seven added, "From the degree of pupil dilation both of you exhibit, I surmise your work may be similarly marred by excessive amounts of time wasted staring at my torso. Would you care to show me your PADDs so that I may test this hypothesis?"

K'Kath and Jeffrey both decided their own PADDs needed a bit more work before any hypotheses were tested. The accompanying tittering from the female teenagers was just as quickly quelled by another severe stare from Seven. Afterwards, Seven noted that the exchange had achieved the desired effect of improving the concentration of all five holographic adolescents for the remainder of the lesson. This was to hold for subsequent lessons as well. Whenever her anatomy came to be subject to the regard of the male students, a tilted eyebrow was generally sufficient to return them to the task at hand.


During the following days, whenever the older students' attention was directed to independent learning activities at the computer, or if the production of research projects required the students to interact among themselves rather than their teacher, Seven spent her free time observing "Miss Nanny's" handling of Naomi and her young classmates. She found it instructive, finding many of the techniques equally applicable to the older students.

One morning, several days after the first day of school, Seven required that her charges produce individually prepared documents to evaluate their absorption of material covered in the lesson concerned with Klingon cultural traditions (the data base had called this type of document a "pop quiz"). With the students engaged on their assignment, Seven was permitted a badly needed "breather," as Nanny had described it during a lesson planning session the previous day. It also afforded Seven another opportunity to watch Nanny working with Naomi and the other three students. Every time a particularly challenging question was answered, Naomi or her classmate received a warm hug from Miss Nanny along with a cheery, "Good job."

/Nanny's personality is well suited to teaching younger children, but hugs would not be a successful technique for me to use with Larg,/ thought Seven, her lips twitching slightly to one side. Nanny chose that moment to look in Seven's direction, smiling broadly at her. Seven acknowledged her smile with a nod.

Another head turned around to look in Seven's direction. After a shudder, Naomi turned away. "Naomi, what's wrong?" asked Nanny.

"I don't want to be assimilated by the Borg Lady," Naomi whispered, loudly enough for Seven's aural implant to catch the message.

"Oh, Naomi, Seven isn't going to assimilate you. She's one of us now. It's like we're all part of the Voyager Collective, isn't it, Seven?"

Seven nodded her head. "That is an accurate assessment. While I had not considered such a view of the Voyager crew previously, we do function together much like a Collective." Seven forbore to omit the rest of what came into her mind. /Only in a much less efficient manner than the Borg./

Naomi shuffled her feet but said nothing. Nanny admonished, "Naomi, you don't have to worry about Seven, you understand that, don't you?"

The child shrugged her shoulders, but her eyes did not leave the floor. At Nanny's sigh, Seven walked back to supervise the teenaged contingent, whose restlessness signaled that the pop quizzes had been completed.

While the quizzes were reviewed and the next topic of discussion undertaken, Seven had no opportunity to think about what had transpired between Naomi and herself. That afternoon, while completing her regular work in Astrometrics, the subject never occurred to her, either. Later, however, when she was alone in her alcove, preparing herself for her regeneration cycle, Seven had sufficient time to consider the incident. The child was afraid of Seven, and for some reason, Seven found this to be disturbing.

And she had no idea why.


". . . so, Seven is turning out to be a surprisingly good teacher. Her ability to maintain discipline is especially notable."

"How interesting, Doctor." The captain bit her lower lip; Seven's ability to maintain iron discipline wasn't exactly a surprise to her.

"It was an inspiration to include her, Captain."

"I'm glad things are working out. I had hoped that Seven would get the opportunity to interact more directly with Naomi, however. Couldn't Nanny allow Seven to teach the younger children upon occasion?"

"Naomi is still somewhat nervous around Seven. It's probably best that Nanny continue with her direct lessons for the time being. They're all together in the same classroom, and as time goes by, I'm sure their paths will cross in a natural way."

"In other words, you're counseling patience," the captain replied, with an off-kilter smile.

"Precisely." The EMH agreed.

"So noted," Janeway said. "Is there anything else you wish to report about our experiment?"

"I'm extremely pleased at the way it's turning out, but there is one tiny little problem. Nanny feels someone is always watching her in class."

"Of course, Doctor. The students are always there to watch her."

"Nanny told me this is someone other than the students."

"Reassure her, Doctor. I'm sure she's subliminally aware of the log cameras recording her. By the way, have you done that bit of reprogramming I suggested?"

"Not yet, Captain. She's not ready."

"I hope we don't run into any problems because of this, Doctor. I'm willing to defer to your judgment for now, but if there's a red alert while Naomi is with her, Nanny has to know she must stay with Naomi, and with Tom and B'Elanna's baby, once she arrives. Seven won't be able to stay. She has her own duty station in Astrometrics during red alerts."

"Don't worry. We've added a new protocol to the program to address your concerns. Both Nanny and Naomi know to go to the designated area between Sickbay and the classroom if there's a red alert. That's the most protected area of the ship, and I can easily check on them from Sickbay to make sure they're all right."

"We'll see how that works during the next shipwide drill-if something real doesn't happen first. Anything else to report? How is your 'new nurse' doing?"

"Trust Mr. Paris to call himself a nurse. Just the sort of flippant comment he's always making during his duty shifts in Sickbay."

"He's not working out, then?" Janeway asked, a wrinkle of worry appearing between her brows.

"Oh, no, I don't mean to imply that, Captain. He's actually coming along . . . adequately. He's shown a special aptitude for gynecology and obstetrics-no surprise there."

Janeway laughed. "That's Tom. If he's interested in a subject, there's no better student. And I guess we can't fault him if that's a subject that's been on his mind a lot lately."

"Hmm. That subject seems to have been on his mind as long as I've known him. Be that as it may, he has absorbed the essentials of the childbirth process and has been a great help to B'Elanna during her labor and delivery exercise classes. He should manage to be a help, not a hindrance, when her time finally comes."

"Glad to hear that, Doctor."

"Oh, and Captain? Please don't tell him I complimented him. Too much praise and I fear Mr. Paris will believe he won't require any more instruction. He needs to spend a lot more time absorbing the material to be as excellent an assistant as Kes."

An awkward, silent moment passed. Kes. She hadn't been much in Janeway's thoughts for many weeks. So much had happened. A transwarp experiment had gone bad, throwing the ship almost ten years journey forward, well out of Borg territory, but almost killing Tom and B'Elanna in the process. Seven's temporary regression into Borgdom had thrown the crew into an uproar when she stole away in a shuttle and discovered the wreck of her parents' ship, The Raven. Aliens had tortured the crew with an array of medical conditions and cost the life of Ensign Mallon, all in the name of research.

So much had gone on lately, it was difficult to just sit back and "smell the coffee." There was seldom time to consider where they'd been because of the need to face the crisis of the week. Add to that the amount of guidance and attention Seven needed at virtually every turn, and it was no wonder the captain had barely thought of Kes for far too long, even though Janeway missed the gentle and lovely Ocampa woman terribly.

The captain sighed deeply, then caught the look on the holographic physician's face. His expression mirrored hers. Once again Janeway marveled that a hologram could have developed such a vivid and full personality.

"Thank you for your report, Doctor. And think about Nanny's program. Just look how much you've evolved since you first came on line. Doesn't Nanny have the right to enrich her own personality, too?"

"Don't you think Nanny has enough personality, Captain? If you don't, we could do some more research and . . ."

"You've done a marvelous job creating Nanny; that's not what I meant. Now she needs to have a chance to discover her own self, Doctor, just as you have."

"I don't want her to be hurt, Captain."

"Being hurt is inevitable. All beings experience pain. Isn't it one of the things that helps one grow and mature?"

The Doctor reluctantly shrugged his shoulders. "I think there's plenty of time for that, Captain. There isn't any hurry."

"I'll defer to your professional judgment-for now. We'll give her a little more time to settle in."

"Thank you, Captain. If we're done here . . ."

"Of course. Dismissed."

As the EMH walked out of the door of her ready room, freed from the confines of his Sickbay prison by a piece of 29th century technology, Janeway couldn't help thinking about the imperious, sarcastic being who first had inhabited the psyche of the Doctor.

Becoming virtually a full-time crew member instead of an "extra hand" in a crisis had changed him irrevocably. The EMH's ability to function on the holodeck had permitted him to rescue Harry Kim from a Beowulf program gone awry. He'd experienced compassion and love for Denara Pel, the Vidiian doctor whose life he'd saved. His horizons had been expanded by opera lessons and recreational activities taken with the rest of the crew. He'd accepted the responsibility of family life and had, in the process, been taught the passionate fulfillment of marital love, the joys of parenthood, and the tragedy of loss. Thanks to the acquisition of his mobile transmitter, he'd been able to successfully complete away missions. In every conceivable arena, the EMH had exceeded all expectations about what a hologram could accomplish.

Now here was Nanny, imprisoned in a pleasant holoemitter-equipped classroom/prison of her own. Her existence was as limited as that of any other holographic character on the holodeck, despite the potential for growth inherent in her sophisticated holomatrix. What a waste!

/He's being rather overprotective of his holographic protégée,/ thought the captain with a sigh. /Much too overprotective! Hopefully, Nanny will get a chance to experience growth of her own, for her sake, as well as for the Doctor's. He needs the company!/


From the moment she stepped out of her regeneration alcove each morning, her days were full. Classes in the morning. A quick meal in the mess hall. Afternoons and early evenings in Astrometrics, broken up by another ingestion of nutritional supplements. Study of Voyager's data base before slipping into her alcove to regenerate for a few hours before the cycle began all over again.

In truth, Seven appreciated her busy schedule. Routines were comforting to one who had lived as a Borg. Despite her many and varied tasks, there was plenty of time for her to meditate about what was transpiring around her. Behind her seemingly impassive humanoid forehead, the agile brain of Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct to Unimatrix Zero-One, was always cogitating.

Most of the time, these thoughts were hers alone, unshared with any other being. Captain Janeway or Commander Tuvok sometimes sought her out to find out what she was thinking. Ensign Kim was frequently assigned to tasks with Seven, and she found his intelligent conversation bearable. Neelix and Lieutenant Paris occasionally asked her how she was feeling, and she would reply, succinctly and efficiently.

And then there was Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres. Voyager's chief engineer made it clear she found Seven of Nine to be a constant irritant. When forced to cooperate on a project, as they had with the programming of the holographic teacher's holomatrix, they managed to complete their tasks with only a bare minimum of sarcastic remarks on Seven's part. Lieutenant Torres was quite able to utter sufficient sarcastic remarks for both of them.

Although Seven would never divulge it to her, there was one aspect of her contacts with Lieutenant Torres that intrigued Seven. The chief engineer's burgeoning form supplied an abundance of topics of inquiry. What was it like to have another being inside your body, yet have no actual neurological link with it-or her, since the child growing inside Lieutenant Torres was of the female gender? Lieutenant Paris mentioned once that the child moved inside the uterus. What would that feel like?

Since the engineer's bare tolerance of "that Borg" was so obvious, Seven did not ask many of the questions she wished to ask about this most basic of bodily functions, even though, in this instance, the information in Voyager's data base was inadequate for what Seven wished to know.

The chain of life was a profound concept. The child gestating within Lieutenant Torres was merely a repetition of what had occurred previously when Lieutenant Torres grew within her own mother. Seven had been carried within her own mother's body. It had occurred with every other biological being on Voyager, with only minor variations. When she was Borg, Seven had been fully cognizant of the process, of course, but to see it in operation at close hand was compelling. Whenever she was alone in her alcove, regenerating or merely resting, contemplating the ramifications of single-cell reproduction occupied a fair amount of Seven's time. It seemed so different from Borg reproduction, yet was it, really?

The Borg assimilated already created beings. It was more efficient that way. Since those beings had been conceived, gestated, and birthed in the manner of the races that were later assimilated by the Borg, however, the Borg ultimately depended upon the same, old-fashioned, single-cell fertilization process. The Borg simply allowed others to complete this first step for them. If the Borg truly succeeded in their goal of assimilating all the races whose technology they desired, and there were no more assimilatable beings for the completion of the Borg reproductive cycle, would the biological components of the Collective eventually wear out, dooming the Hive to the assimilation of inferior species-or extinction?

Perfection might be even more impossible to achieve than Seven thought.

Contemplating gestation also meant contemplating conception and its precursor, courtship.

Now that she was no longer linked to the Collective, single-cell fertilization could become relevant to her personally. Inevitably, Seven found herself considering which males on Voyager would meet her specifications for DNA of sufficient quality to contribute to the creation of a child of her own, should Seven ever decide to reproduce, of course. Only those males who could meet her specifications would be appropriate candidates for the performing of the various courtship rituals she had studied-including those that were on view before her every day in the schoolroom.

After spending a significant amount of time evaluating her choices, she found there were few who were suitable, and some of these, such as Mr. Paris, were unavailable. (The idea that Lieutenant Torres would consider sharing him with Seven was obviously out of the question.) Of those who were available, the one whose qualities seemed the best match for Seven of Nine was Ensign Kim.

Seven knew the story of Ensign Kim's late wife Kes, although she had barely gotten a chance to meet the Ocampan woman before the latter was transformed into a non-corporeal being. Because Kes' expected life span of nine years had been truncated to less than four, her desire to perpetuate her memory on this corporeal plane of existence by leaving behind children with whom her husband could share his life had been thwarted.

Even Seven, with her meager experience of humanoid emotions, could see that this was a source of great sorrow for Ensign Kim. Indeed, of all those who dwelled upon Voyager, Ensign Kim was one of the few whose pupils did not dilate when Seven's body came within view. He was still undergoing the process of mourning, as the captain and the Doctor had explained to her. Mr. Kim was always polite and helpful, though-almost suffocatingly so at times. He was always trying to teach her social conventions, just as the Doctor and the captain were; but somehow, his lessons engendered a much different reaction in Seven of Nine than those provided by the Doctor and Captain Janeway.

By studying her students, Seven realized what it was. Hormones. Her own body was responding to Ensign Kim's presence by producing an overabundance of female reproductive hormones.

Although it had become much more surreptitious in execution, Jeffrey, K'Kath, and Larg continued to evince interest in her body. Seven noticed them regarding the two teenaged girls, who whispered to each other or giggled annoyingly, in a similar fashion. At such times, blood flushed all five teenaged faces. Their widely opened eyes began to shine brightly. When she consulted the Doctor about it, he curtly dismissed the topic. "Hormones. Reproductive hormones, to be precise. Just ignore them. They'll work it all out on their own if you let them." Because the equation of three into two did not result in a whole number, however, Seven felt the numbers did not promise so easy a resolution.

A quick examination of the parameters of the schoolroom program, which had not been her area of responsibility in the preparation of the program, showed that initially, Nanny was to provide the education for both groups of students. There were supposed to be three females and three males in the older group, apparently so that Naomi could be exposed both to beings from differing cultural backgrounds as well as to the ways adolescents interacted, to prepare her for the days when her own hormone levels increased dramatically and erratically during puberty, as the process was described in the database.

Seven's inclusion as an aide in the classroom had created unexpected repercussions. Apparently Seven had been interpreted by the program as the third "adolescent" female, an uncomfortable situation for Seven. This appeared to be what Mr. Paris referred to as a "glitch" in the program. Seven resolved to speak to him about it when she had the chance.

Increased hormonal activity seemed to have prompted her unfortunate reactions to Ensign Kim whenever he tried to assist her in adjusting to being a member of Voyager's crew complement.

The most serious repercussion from observing the social interactions on board Voyager, however, was that Seven of Nine began to experience visions, many of them similar to those she had experienced when she'd fled to The Raven's wreckage. Incidents from her life before her assimilation emerged into her consciousness. Feelings were reawakened as the memories were awakened:

Hugs from her parents, flooding her with the sense of being loved, and loving them back in return.

Happiness at receiving praise from them, when she'd completed her lessons well, or if she'd been a very good girl when she'd visited a planet and quietly listened while her parents talked with people who knew many very important things they needed to learn.

Warm feelings of acceptance, when she remembered the station master who thought her such a smart, clever little girl-so smart that he gave her the most beautiful red flowers twisted into a coronet to rest upon her brow. "They look so pretty on your golden hair." The station master had said that. She remembered it vividly.

Excitement, when the very important invention Daddy was working on worked so well! So well! "Can you believe how far we've gone! The conduit theory is right! We will revolutionize warp theory! Travel across the galaxy will be possible! Those Federation scientists don't have a clue, do they, Annika?"

So many strange things that she hadn't understood at the time, although somehow, on some level, she understood what her parents had accomplished-and what the Borg had stolen from them.

Stolen from her parents. What a strange thing to think about. All the Borg owned everything together. How could anything be stolen from one Borg to be given to another?

But wait. Something could be taken from you by the Borg, if you were not yet one of them.

Agonizing fear. Fright, terror, welling up from her psyche as she remembered racing down a corridor, tall black-clad men walking past her as her mother and father screamed at her to run, run away. "Hide, Annika!" Hide away.

Hiding, until the tall black-clad men found her, and yanked her out of her hiding place, and locked her away in a tiny cubicle, with only the voices in her head for company. All the voices, none of them familiar. None of them Mommy and Daddy, not really.

Only the strange, faint echo of their voices, in her mind? Or buried in with the other voices? Annika Hansen never could be sure if she'd ever heard them again or not. She only knew that she was alone, in the dark, hidden away for such a long time, with no arms to hug her, no voice to praise her, and no hands to hand her a gift of red flowers, plaited into a crown to rest on her hair.

But in that lonely dark place, the voices were always there. Whispering at her. Shouting at her. Screaming in terror at her.

And then, one day, when the dark lonely chrysalis had become too small a space for her to inhabit without pain, Annika had emerged and been transformed into Seven of Nine. Tertiary Adjunct to Unimatrix Zero-One. A drone, one of the mighty Borg, whose individual existence mattered not, dedicated as each must be to the advancement of the Borg Collective itself. Individual components had no importance. Only the Hive did.

She remembered something about that time. Feelings. Strange feelings. Angry feelings. Seven of Nine found herself feeling rage, directed towards her own people. The Borg.

Why should she feel that way? Were Naomi's fears about Borg assimilation infecting Seven?

Or was she feeling this way because of her contact with the hormone-flooded youths who confronted her each day?

As Seven stood alone in her alcove at the end of the day, she thought about the child she had been, who had never existed in a classroom such as the one created for Naomi. She thought about the students she saw every day, who interacted with one another and learned things in an open room-a place where the computer screen was in front of your body instead of attached to your skull; where every discovery was an individual achievement, capable of engendering great pleasure from the accomplishment of a goal, not simply a tiny, insignificant bit of data acquired by a collective consciousness.

If things had been different, she might have been one of these students who preened and ogled and flirted with each other, instead of the one boxed away until she was ready to be assigned a niche within the great consciousness of the Borg.

After many nights of such ruminations, Seven realized she did have an inkling about what it had been like to live the childhood that Naomi was living. She had had a chance to experience that herself, for the first six years of her life. What she had no idea of, however, was of later childhood and adolescence. She had lived those years locked away. What would she have been like if she had never become Borg?

On Voyager, when one is curious about something, there is a way to find out if one wishes. A quick lesson from Lieutenant Paris about holodeck programming and some research into the holocharacter data base yielded up a female who had once been part of a program the Doctor still visited. Perhaps a short session with this female holocharacter concerning aspects of adolescent behavior might permit Seven of Nine to begin a journey into what might have been.