The Two of Two Chronicles
Part Two
By Serendipity
Identity
The Borg Queen found it much easier to assimilate alien life forms. She didn't think much about why this was so; she just accepted it as a fact and something she could take advantage of.
Two of Two, deep in her mind, did think about why. She still had a conscience, even though she was gradually losing control under the power of the Queen's mind. She still thought for herself even if she could not always act for herself. She did have the strength of mind to prevent the Queen from assimilating children, convincing her that they were not suitable for assimilation.
Two of Two realised that many alien life forms still lived in survival societies, where the identity of the tribe was more important than that identity of the individual. It had to be so for them to survive the hardships that living deep into the galaxy engendered. The Vulcan's were able to embrace a collective consciousness more easily since they had strong telepathic links with their own kind anyway. Humans had long since moved from a survival society, where they needed to stick together to hunt for food, to an identity society, where people considered themselves to be judged more as individuals and less as part of a collective society. 20th Century psychoanalyst Carl Rogers claimed that the identity society was the reason for many emotional problems as people often struggled to find an identity they were comfortable with. But the need for a strong identity may just have been what saved Picard. Why Two of Two had been so easy to assimilate was also uncertain but it may have been because she lacked any real identity to start with. Her mind was dysfunctional at the outset and readily open to order and control. It was easier to let another take responsibility for the terrible things the Borg did to innocent people. But sometimes, just sometimes, the woman Kathy could have been emerged to beat the Queen at her own game.
The Vulcans who were assimilated brought a couple of things to the Borg. Their clear, analytical minds played a part in paring down the Borg language to the barest minimum, such as 'regenerate', 'work', 'sleep'. They also brought longevity. The Queen was able to extract the regenerative gene that protected them from death and disease, and use it to ensure that more feeble life forms survived the assimilation process.
News of the loss of one hundred Vulcans in the Delta Quadrant soon got back to earth. Colonel Peter Bowler III was devastated. Subspace beacons failed to find the Vulcan ship's digital log. They were too far out. Tracking down the Vulcan ship and the first two Borg became his life's work. He burned with hatred for them, conveniently forgetting that it was his grandfather who created these monsters in the first place. Bowler died on a long journey to the Delta Quadrant, leaving his son and his son's sons to finish his work. Legends arose within the family that Peter Bowler III had been captured and assimilated by the Borg. They were wrong, but the tenacity and cruelty which characterised the first Peter Bowler was to run through the entire family tree.
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The beauties of the worlds they assimilated were lost on Two of Two as the Borg surged through the Delta Quadrant, assimilating hundreds of thousands, and feeding off the experience and technology of each race. They preferred humanoid cultures as the DNA was often more suitable for assimilation and it created a race of Borg that for the most part looked alike. They became androgynous beings, incapable of emotion or conscience.
Those who studied the Borg wondered if they dreamed. The answer was no for most Borg, but yes for the early prototypes. When Two of Two dreamed, she dreamed of rolling hills, lush meadows and the horror on the faces of the beings they assimilated. By the time she regenerated the dream was lost amidst the technical data that the Borg needed to function.
For a long time the Borg were trapped in the Delta Quadrant, running out of suitable worlds to assimilate.
Then one day the main Borg ship found itself catapulted into the Terran system. They had no knowledge of why, but the Queen was pleased that her imprisonment had ended. She set about punishing those who had exiled her from her own system. Once again the Borg found new worlds to assimilate, now having more luck with human settlers due to the information they had fed off others.
Much of the rest of the story has already been told elsewhere. How Jean Luc Picard was assimilated, how the Borg tried to prevent First Contact (thereby preventing the Queen's exile) by assimilating the earth in an earlier time, and how the Queen met her end in a showdown with Jean Luc Picard. Some people, however, may wonder what happened to Two of Two. Why was she not on The Enterprise with the Queen? This is her story.