She stepped slowly into our midst, her lithe electronic body swaying back and forth in a manner that was both seductive and repulsive, the chalk-white pallor of her face broken only by a pair of deep red, sensuously curved lips. In an instant, I hated her and loved her.

"You again," she said to Q, her voice oozing like honey.

"None other," he replied, making a sweeping bow. Picard's face was a fixture of horror.

"You…you know him?" he asked, his voice sounding too shocked to be accusatory.

"Locutus," she said, turning to him. "It is so very good to see you again. It's been a long time." She reached a hand out and caressed the air in front of him. Picard backed up a few paces. Q chortled.

"As I understand it," he said, "the last time you saw him, things got so bad you lost your head over it." No one laughed, least of all the Queen. She turned her head and stared at him with barely hidden malice.

"Sometimes sacrifices must be made in the quest for perfection," she said. I suddenly found my voice.

"Q, what is she doing here?"

"An excellent question, Captain," Q said. "What are you doing here, my beautiful Queen?" he asked. She raised her lips in a half snarl, then turned to me.

"Who are you?" she asked. Her gaze was withering, and I wanted to turn and run. But there was no place to run to, so I stood my ground, choosing to get angry instead.

"I'm Captain Michael Allen," I said, "and I'm here to kill you for what you've done!" She looked at me for a long moment, then smiled, the perspiration glinting across her upturned lips and face.

"And what have we done to merit this hatred?" she asked.

"You killed my friend," I said, knowing that it was only a fraction of the answer that had been in my head.

"Like I said, there are sacrifices which must be made."

"Q, what is this all about?" Picard said, and he looked nauseous as he said it. The Queen stared back at him, then at Q.

"You mean you haven't told them?" she asked, mock incredulity lining her dripping voice.

"I thought I would save that part for you," he said. "After all, in a universe of mortals and immortals, sometimes it's best to be fair about these things."

The Queen tipped her head back and laughed. It was a throaty, almost mechanical sound, and I found that more and more her beauty was beginning to slip away, the monster beneath it beginning to surface.

"I assume you've even taken the trouble of stopping time for this little game of yours," she said. Q nodded. She gave an almost polite nod back at him. "Very well." She began to pace.

"Tell us what?" Picard asked, cocking his head to one side and staring intently at the Queen, then at Q, then back at the Queen again.

"I'm going to tell you," she said, "how it began."


The time of the beginning is so far etched into the past that the expansive chasm between it and now has seen the rise and fall of countless civilizations. At the furthest reaches of what will some distant day be called the Delta Quadrant of the Milky Way Galaxy – these words have no meaning now – there is a planet. It is a beautiful planet, lush green with vegetation and life. Those who live there are happy. No – they are more than happy. They are filled with joy. There are no wars among these people. There is no peace because there has never been anything wrong to suggest there was a need for peace. There is simply life, and they live within the comforting womb of pure joy. Within Perfection

There is a girl. She sits cross-legged on a rock, gazing into the night sky at a million billion stars, each one a brilliant, distinctive pinprick of glorious light pouring through the velvet canvas hung by the gods.

She thinks about the gods for a moment, her young mind turning the thought over in the slow but deliberate way that a child's mind does. She is thankful to them for what they have given her and her people. She worships them in the way that a child does, watching what her parents do and doing her best to mimic the action and the intent. Her faith in them – their existence, their power, their perfection – is absolute.

Except that she fears them.

She tries not to admit it to herself, for even a child has a sense of what blasphemy is. But she cannot shake her fear. When she is older, she imagines, she will understand the gods more fully, and then the fear of them will melt away, as it seems to have done for her parents. They love the gods, and do not appear to be afraid of them at all, so perhaps she will be the same.

The child grows on this green and wonderful world. She blossoms into a woman. She loves, and she is loved. The joy of this world envelopes her as it does the rest of its inhabitants, and she thanks the gods with them for it.

But somewhere in the joy, there is still the seed of fear, and it has grown. Things that were only vague whispers of notions to her mind as a child, begin to slowly take the form of definite ideas.

She knows the gods exist. She has seen them. At times throughout her life – often, in fact – they have come down from the sky and walked among her people. They even have taken on the form of her people, though she wonders at times if this is not a backward way of thinking about the notion. She has even spoken to them before. Oh yes, she knows they exist.

But somewhere in the back of her mind, she thinks that this might be part of the problem. Should gods be walking among the people, as if people were their equals? It has never occurred to her until this moment that perhaps, in some way, her people areequals. She knows that they do not have the power of the gods. She has never seen their power used against her people – there has never been a need – but instinctively she knows that there is no question as to their powerful superiority.

But their authority, perhaps? She wonders, finally holding back the mental fingers that threaten to push the thoughts away, as they have so many times before. Surely there is no crime in simply thinking. She wonders, in fact, if in some strange way, she is meant to think of these things.

The seed grows in her mind, branching out into every facet of her life. The joy is still there, all around her, but as time goes on, it permeates her less and less. She is not sorrowful, nor is she hollow. She is merely consumed with her thoughts. And her thoughts begin to give way to something deeper and more primal – desires. She finds that above all, she desires an equality with the gods. She no longer wishes to subject herself to them. No; she wishes to be equal to them.

Thoughts and desires give way to words. She begins to tell others around her, spreading the word that perhaps – just perhaps – their existence is not so joyous after all. That they have somehow been shortchanged, denied the freedom to take their place alongside the gods, not beneath them. At first there is resistance, but after a time her ideas begin to spread among the people. It is like a spark that, with the proper force of delicious air, gorges itself into a flame that eventually becomes a wildfire. Soon there is a new unity among her people, a unity which stands against the joy they have been given and demands more. In one voice, they will cry out against the gods, and demand that they be given the equality they so richly deserve.

She will always remember the day that it happens. The jagged lightning and the roiling boom of thunder – things that have never happened on her world – are forever etched into her mind.

It is the day that they – her people – stand up and tell the gods that they will no longer be subservient to them.

The crash of thunder is suddenly accompanied by a rising wind, which tears across the open plains and whips her hair into her face. She is frightened. Only too late does she realize the mistake she has made. Her people realize it too, but somehow they still rally behind her, their anger at the gods doubled by their fear. The voice of the gods, terrible in its ferocity, is carried into their midst on the wind.

"We have made your world a haven of peace. We have given you joy and perfection to live within, and this is how you thank us?"

There is no answer to this. She cannot utter a word.

"Speak!" the voice calls, with a tone of authority that both chills her and urges her anger. She steps forward.

"You have given us nothing but rules!" she cries, desperate to be heard over the wind. "Our joy is an ignorant one; you have kept us here to do your bidding, all the while telling us that we were happy. And for a time, we believed you. But now we know the truth. We are your equals, and we demand to be treated as equals!"

There is a brief stillness that makes its way through the wind, and then there is a bright flash of light. Before them, clad in red and black robes, is the figure who will some day and in some other form be known to a man named Picard as Q. He steps forward toward her. She shrinks back, but cannot go far because of the pressing crowd behind her. He sneers at her, then at them.

"So," he says, "this is what all of you think?" Most of them look down, but there are a few nods scattered among the people. He looks back at her. "This is your doing," he says simply.

"Yes," she admits, barely forcing her gaze to remain locked with his. He peers at her for a long moment, steepling his fingers.

"So you think you would like to live outside of what we have given you…"

"We do not need you to give us perfection. We can find it on our own," she says in a hoarse whisper.

"Very well, then," he says, his voice now a cold monotone. "Seek your perfection someplace else!" He waves his hand, and in a flash he is gone. A moment later, in another flash, so is their world.

She awakes to a bundle of strange sensations. The first is cold. Bitter cold. She opens her eyes, and in a horrifying instant she realizes that she – they – are no longer on their planet. They are somewhere else. Some vast, distant frozen wasteland.

The second sensation that she notices is much stronger, but impossible to define. She feels, somehow, as if something is slowly draining away from her. Nothing physical, but something beyond the physical. She does not know it yet, but the something she feels ebbing away is her life. In the coming months, as she and her people start their lives over in misery, she discovers something she has never before seen: death. At first, it is just a few of her people. They are found motionless in the morning, the characteristic fog of breath missing from their frozen lips. In time, some of her people will find that, with the right effort, they can accomplish the same thing on their own, without having to wait for the uncaring cold to do it for them.

She is horrified, and although she does not know a word to describe what she is seeing, the instinct begins to form within her that she – they – are mortal. She now regrets her actions, her very thoughts, and wishes to once again be safe within the perfection of the gods.

No, not the gods. She realizes that she wishes for the perfection, but not the gods.

She begins to grow old; those of her people who have the will to live have found ways to survive the harsh climate of this frozen rock. In time, they have even learned that there are warmer regions to which they can migrate. They discover caves, in which they can dwell and keep fires going. There is food and shelter, and in its confines they are able to piece together a kind of slipshod life for themselves.

It is within these caves that she one day makes the discovery that will change the outcome of their future. She travels far into it, farther than any one of her people has ever traveled before. Suddenly, the narrow walls give way to a vast chasm, so tall and wide and long that she cannot see the far end of it.

And she realizes it is an abandoned city.

There are things here that her mind has never had the frame of reference to even dream of. It is warmer in this city, though how it can be warm with no fire is something beyond her comprehension. She wonders why there are no others here, though up until this moment it has never even crossed her mind to consider the possibility that there might even be others in the universe besides her people and the gods.

Perhaps it was left by the gods, she muses, but then dismisses the thought. The gods have no use for corporeal things. Someone has left this city. Or perhaps, she thinks with a shudder, they too have tasted the eternal stillness which has claimed so many of her people.

In the center of the city, she finds what seems to her mind to be the source of everything else. It is a pillar of solid metal, with sections of a transparent material that she would have called glass if she knew the word. It casts a faint, greenish glow, and there are strange symbols dancing across it. She does not yet know that these are words – her people have never corresponded their verbal skills with their ability to make signs. But she feels somehow drawn to it, and reaches out a hand to touch it, as if somehow tactile contact will make it more real to her.

It does, and in an instant, her mind is filled with billions of radiant images and sounds, smells and textures. The existence of an entire race explodes into her consciousness, and her body writhes in tandem with all the pleasures and the pains, the joys and the sorrows, of those who have left behind this wondrous piece of what she now knows is technology.

But she does not pull away. Her mind slowly begins to organize what she is experiencing, in the way that only an unbound mind can. Despite the fact that not everything she sees is good, there is an ethereal spasm of joy that she experiences as she touches the pillar. The more she assimilates, the more she realizes that the perfection she has so longed for is captured within this touching of the minds of others. It finally occurs to her that the imperfection she has felt is embodied by what her mind has fought so hard to conceal. Loneliness.

A single, heavy tear slips from the corner of her eye, traces over the flesh of her cheek, then trickles down her throat and between her breasts. Yes, it is the loneliness that she has sought to destroy. And before her she can see the answer to that loneliness. This race of beings has left in its wake a gift of the most magnificent power. No matter that this power, this…technology, was what destroyed them. She knows that now it has fallen into the proper hands. With what she knows now, she can reach out to her people and touch their minds, bring them all together as one in a way they had never imagined possible.

And there are others. She knows that now, too. The universe is full of others. She rejoices in this thought.

"We will add their biological…and technological…distinctiveness to our own," she whispers.

The thought occurs to her that others might resist this change. They might not want to play a part in her people's – her – return to perfection. It does not matter.

"Their cultures will adapt to service us," she says, this time a little louder.

But what if they don't? What if they are afraid? What if they resist?

"Resistance," she says coldly, "is futile."


I sat on the floor now, my body aching from holding one position for so long. The Queen finished her tale, then turned to us with a smile. It was warm and friendly, but only in the sense that a monster may assume the guise of something warm and friendly. Picard stood with his arms folded across his chest, his face white as a sheet.

"The Q were your gods?!" he asked in disbelief.

"We thought they were," she answers bitterly. "We had never known anything else, so how could we possibly have had any idea that they were simply another race of imperfect beings in an imperfect universe?"

"Well," Q said, "there's no need to get nasty about all this." He turned to Picard. "What do you think of the story, Jean-Luc? Does it satisfy that burning curiosity that you've always had about how the Borg came to be?"

"Yes," Picard breathed. Q snapped his fingers, and the Queen disappeared.

"If it helps any," he said, "I can probably make sure that she does not remember this conversation."

"Probably?" I asked. Q nodded solemnly.

"Yes, probably. It seems that, for the moment, my powers are growing weaker. This is only temporary, I'm sure, but I thought you might like to know. I would advise, Captain Allen, that when I return you to your ship, you move it out of the center of that sphere, and find another way to beat her."

"So that's it then?" Picard said with a flush of dismay. "Your part in all of this is over?"

Q smiled in a way that seemed to indicate what Picard had just said was somehow hilariously ironic.

"Non, mon capitaine," he said. "My part in all of this is just about to begin."