The Best of Both Worlds
Part Three
By Serendipity
Picard tells Kathy about the Borg
Kathy picked up the sheets and began to read, occasionally casting a glance towards Barbara's office…
"I am not sure I can explain the idea of the Borg to someone in your time….but I will try." Jean Luc had said, "Imagine bees in a hive, all working away, controlled by one a queen…. They have but one purpose…to work. But the Borg do not even have the joy of flying among the flowers…I am moving too fast for you. First I must explain what the Borg are. They are bio-organic beings, part man, part machine. But all that made them men has been removed. I do not mean their vital organs. I mean their individuality…the one thing we all take pride in. We are all different. The Borg are not. True that you can see different races and species represented in the parts of their faces that are still visible, but their spirit is dead. They inhabit a colourless drab world of machinery. No art, no literature, no friendship or love. My spirit is dying. I feel it slipping away from me as I lose the will to behave in the way that is normal and right for me and become one with the others… I will never enjoy Mozart again, or enjoy a sea breeze on my face, or fall in love…
Do you have any idea how that feels Katherine? To lose your will? To be controlled by a being or system you despise? There are hundreds more on this ship. They are past caring. I am almost past caring. Only yesterday…was it yesterday? Or was it days ago? I am losing track of time…our time that is…The Borg exist on a different clock… I took a part in destroying many of my friends. I murdered them and I watched impassively. Only inside am I screaming, crying for the lives I have taken. I feel I can never go back, even if my friends on the Enterprise could find a way to save me. How can I face them again? They are chasing us as I speak to you. In a few hours we will reach the Terran system…Earth to you…and I will have to kill them because that is the will of the collective. I know every move Will Riker will make and because I know it, the collective know it. Is this shocking to you? Are you sickened by me? I do not blame you. I sicken myself.
You wonder how I am here? Why I make excuses for my crimes like some concentration camp guard from the Second World War? I was taken from my ship, The Enterprise, from my crew and friends, Will Riker, Deanna Troi, Guinan... The Borg implanted electronic components into and onto my body. I feel the pain of them now, even though I cannot cry out. It is searing, a constant reminder of the violation. They wish to make me one of them, to assimilate me so that I too stop thinking as one and become the many. I hardly understand how I am able to communicate with you now, but I do know they won't allow it for long.
Have you ever read George Orwell's 1984, Katherine? That is the nearest analogy I can make to the situation I am in, but even Orwell couldn't have dreamed this nightmare. At least Winston Smith could keep his own thoughts as long as they didn't show on his face. I am constantly aware of others knowing my thoughts as I know their's. Occasionally a young Borg…there are a few on this ship who like me have only recently been assimilated… will remember his mother, but the memory is wiped from his mind as quickly as it appears. Other Borg have no thoughts other than the basic commands they are given…work, fight, sleep…Orwell would have been proud of the death of language among these beings…I don't understand why some memories slip through. I think it is because they are too busy with this battle to ensure all Borg are completely assimilated. But it will come…soon we will all lose our memories, then there will be nothing…no pleasure, no heat, no cold, no hunger, no satisfaction, no love, no pain…All I have learned will be lost, added to the collective perhaps but only used to destroy, to kill. The poems I love will mean nothing. The beautiful planets I have visited will only be conquered and assimilated. Soon I will forget it all…perhaps that would be best…the pain of destruction is too much for me…
Perhaps death would be better than that pain…
End of Part Three