New Faces
Jeff's House, California October 31, 2077 AD
All Jeff had wanted to do was take some time off of work and stop thinking about his life. Self-reflection was something all humans should engage in. If you did not stop and evaluate what direction your life was taking you might as well be a sheep, going wherever your farmer told you. Jeff refused to be another barnyard animal lead around by its nose, he was determined to forge his own destiny and leave a lasting mark on the human race. He was going to be remembered as the genius that gifted mankind with his very presence. The problem was ensuring that he was remembered correctly. For several years now, Jeff had been worried the word 'Borg' would become synonymous with the drones, that his name would be reduced to a curse word people used to describe the boogeymen that came to steal unwanted children (which wasn't true at all, the Collective refused to assimilate anyone under the age of sixteen since their bodies were still undergoing numerous changes). Most people did not grasp (or even worse, did not care) how much good the Collective had done for humanity, they only saw the mindless drones that would eliminate your individuality. They couldn't look at the big picture, couldn't think long term. Jeff spent far too much time at work worrying about how to fix the situation, how to correct most people's flawed perception of his creation. The more he thought about it, the angrier he got. Once he died he would lose control of his legacy, he wouldn't know how people would remember him. His drones would have to make sure Jeff was remembered correctly, but even that wasn't guaranteed. Once he was gone, would they still worship him or would he eventually be forgotten? Jeff was sure that if he put too much thought into it he would induce an aneurysm so he had decided not to go into work today and instead spend the day decompressing. He was going to putz around the house and avoid doing anything strenuous. Relaxation was the goal.
Specifically because Jeff was trying to relax, it came as no surprise that Thurgood decided to drop by for a visit, because that was just how the universe worked it seemed. Despite the fact that the man was probably clinically insane due to his extensive drug use, Jeff enjoyed Thurgood's company. That being said, Jeff had his limits. He could only deal with Thurgood for so long; Jeff's brain cells were a valuable commodity and they didn't need to be wasted listening to Thurgood's ramblings about how the flammable nature of ice cream was contributing to the decrease in the world's camel population or some other such nonsense. At least Thurgood was currently discussing something work-related.
"And then he called me delusional! I just about fell off my unicorn," Thurgood said.
"I don't know why you were expecting him to be reasonable; his daughter is dying and he blames the Collective despite it being his fault. His mental facilities are clearly not functioning at optimal capacity."
"Yea, when I was talking to him...well let me put it this way. Have you ever looked at someone and known the wheel was turning but that the hamster was dead?" Thurgood asked.
Jeff paused for a moment to consider Thurgood's comparison and finally said, "I wouldn't have phrased it quite like that, but yes I understand the concept you are trying to articulate."
"OK cool, cus his hamster was definitely dead. His wife was even more annoying to deal with though."
"Really?" Jeff found that hard to believe. The man was using his daughter's condition to advocate anti-Collective sentiments and the media was broadcasting the story far and wide. How could his wife be more of pain than that?
"Yea, she seemed genuinely shocked that I wasn't there to do fix the situation to her specifications and then got angry when I tried to work out a compromise. Last time I dealt with someone like that was when I worked at a fast food restaurant in high school."
"Oh, one of those types. I've worked for a couple people like that before I was hired by the army. Morons that couldn't conceive of the fact that I knew more than they did and insisted what I was doing was wrong despite the fact that they were barely able to walk and chew gum and the same time, let alone devise complex cybernetic interfaces. Those were the type of people that had to sneak up on their hands to masturbate. Things are so much easier when stupid people understand that you are simply better than them."
Thurgood laughed at Jeff's statement. "Man dude, when you say things like that I can't help but think that a douchebag of your magnitude could cleanse a whale's vagina."
"I wasn't being insulting, I was simply stating a fact. I'm not here to sugar coat things, I describe things as I see them."
"True true. Excuse me for a second, gotta go take a leak," Thurgood said as he stood up and walked out of the room.
Jeff glanced over at his personal drone. He didn't give the thing a stupid nickname like Thurgood did with every drone he talked to because there was no point. It would be like thinking up names for each individual hair on a dog. As he had gotten older, Jeff had realized he needed assistance with more and more things. The Collective had assigned him a drone to help around the house. This drone was clearly an older model. Its only visible augmentation was on its back which was a bulging mass of gears and machinery, but since the drone didn't hunch over at all it resembled a metallic turtle that had learned to walk upright.
"Drone, why did you all allow Thurgood to come over here? You knew I wanted time off from work and that he would want to talk about his trip to Norway," Jeff grumbled as he spoke.
"The excuse you gave implied a medical condition Dr. Borg. Mr. Jenkins wanted to check on your health."
"I said that I had anal glaucoma and couldn't see my ass coming into work! You knew damn well it wasn't a medical problem and could have just told him so."
"The excuse you gave implied a medical condition Dr. Borg," the drone responded blandly.
"It was a stupid excuse I said as a joke! The Collective has assimilated plenty of doctors and should know when I'm making something up."
"The excuse you gave implied a medical condition Dr. Borg," the drone repeated yet again.
"Oh forget it," Jeff said, giving up. "If you're that upset that I 'lied' then just say so."
However, the drone did not say anything. It merely stood there in silence. Jeff sighed and tried to make his mind go blank. Jeff wanted to stop thinking about the Collective and idiotic anti-augmenters and whatever stupid story Thurgood would want to tell him when he came back out of the bathroom. He really ought to consider taking a week of vacation to go somewhere tropical and get drunk on the beach.
Jeff's thoughts were interrupted when Thurgood walked in the room and spoke up, "I think I just thunk."
Jeff had to wonder how this confluence of events ever came into reality. He was, undoubtedly, the smartest man on planet Earth. Jeff was so smart in fact, that the argument could be made that he was no longer human, that he was the next stage in evolution: homo superior. Jeff had invented a device that allowed near instant communication of ideas and provided a means of mental immortality...and yet here he was, in his own home, talking to his closest friend who happened to be a man that couldn't seem to go five minutes without using a made-up word. This was not how Jeff had foreseen his life turning out.
"Try to follow my idea. They say that the greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing the world he didn't exist, what if the Collective did that? Back in medieval times, everyone hated the devil, now people don't care about him. Why don't we do that? Lots of people hate the Collective so we convince them that the Collective doesn't exist anymore and in a few years no one will care anymore...although I imagine if we did that you and I would be out of a job. Not much need for PR people if no one cares."
"Thurgood, that idea is so retarded it is probably eligible to receive welfare checks from the government."
"Damn Dr. J, that was cold."
Jeff snorted at Thurgood's comment and responded, "You named your car Kindness just so that if you ran over any animals you could say they were killed by kindness and yet you complain about my sense of humor?"
"Well yea, but I'm a warm fuzzy person like that."
"Look Thurgood, I...appreciate you coming over to see me but don't you have work that needs to be done? I'll be fine, I have my drone to watch over me."
"Actually I'm not needed. Seems the Collective decided they want a new person working in PR so they have a bunch of interviewees in there and are asking them how they would handle 'hypothetical' situations. It was my idea to just use my current workload, this way we get a bunch of ideas for free and I don't have to do anything."
"Your laziness really knows no bounds."
"Hey, always choose a lazy person to do difficult jobs. He will find easy ways to get them done," Thurgood said, jabbing a finger at Jeff.
"I suppose that is one possible outcome," Jeff deadpanned.
"Laziness is just a derogatory term for efficiency anyway," Thurgood argued.
"Whatever you say."
"I may have offloaded all my work to the new people but you still have crap to do J-man. Like making a statement on why China's collective is revolting."
"What?" Jeff turned to his assistant. "What is Thurgood talking about?"
"The collective formed by the Chinese government has been showing signs of independence over the past year which has caused quite a lot of concern. While implantees are not in any positions of military power, there are many that, due to their jobs as researchers, have quite a lot of economic and/or scientific power. Government officials feared that having too many intelligentsia on the neural network was the cause of the growing lack of loyalty so they decided to implanted an equal number of blue collar workers. The newly implanted workers are attempting to flee the country," the drone explained.
"Why am I only hearing about this now? Jeff asked in disbelief. "There is no way that all happened this morning."
"You are correct Dr. Borg. This has been going on for approximately three months but until this morning the Chinese government was doing a very effective job at controlling the flow of information."
"So what changed? How do you know its been going on for that long?"
"We have been in contact with the Chinese collective since this began, they asked us for assistance in ensuring their independence and survival. They asked us to send them weapons so help them leave but we refused to get that involved in the fighting. However, we have been discreetly smuggling Chinese drones out of the country that manage to make it to one of our locations. The reason the situation has only now been picked up by the media is because a large bomb was detonated in Beijing last night. Several hundred people were killed, both in the blast and in the panic that occurred afterwards. Government leaders are blaming the attack on the Chinese collective."
Jeff had to make sure he had heard the drones explanation correctly. "You mean to tell me that the Chinese collective blew up a bomb in their capital city, which has garnered international media attention, and that we are harboring the people that caused all of this?"
"The Chinese collective has informed us that they were not responsible for the bombing, though they do not know who is. Regardless, the cause is irrelevant as the aftermath is already occurring."
Jeff took several deep breaths to calm himself down. "Even if the Chinese drones say they didn't do it, I still don't want us to get in trouble for protecting alleged terrorists. I'm assuming the Collective has already thought all this through though, so what do I need to know?"
"The reason we refused to get heavily involved in the fighting was specifically because our psychohistory analysis showed how swiftly public opinion would turn against drones after the Beijing bombing. We have plausible deniability and, while the Borg Collective will become more unpopular amongst many individuals, no governmental sanctions will be brought against us. Once we bring the remains of the Chinese collective into the Borg Collective it will be impossible to tell us apart."
"Say whaaaa? The Chinese drones that escape are just gonna leave the others trapped?" Thurgood asked in surprise.
"No, only the drones' bodies will be trapped. Once we have enough of them and are able to study their hardware we will merge the neural networks, saving their minds. Whatever the Chinese government chooses to do with their bodies will be inconsequential."
"So...if you combine the neural networks, then, even if they, like, assimilate more people, it wouldn't matter, right? Because they would just be joining our Collective instead of the Chinese one," Thurgood said tentatively, confusion laced in his voice.
"You are more or less correct, Mr. Jenkins. After the merger, the Chinese drones will have no reason to make any escape attempts and so will go back to work as it was before this situation arose. It will be several years before the Chinese government realizes what we have done. When they realize how much of their top secret files the Borg have had access to, they will kill all of their drones and scrap the collective project."
"What? That's horrible. Jeff, we can't let that happen!"
"It will be fine, they are only killing the bodies Thurgood. Their minds will be part of the Collective, remember?"
"Oh yea, good point," Thurgood said. He paused and then looked at the drone. "Hey Quasimodo, I have a question. You drones like to give codenames to all of your projects. So, if you had sent the requested weapons to the other collective so that they could try to beat the Chinese government would the project have been called Chinese Take Out?"
"Thurgood, that was a terrible pun," Jeff said with a groan. He looked over at the drone. It simply stood there and didn't respond to Thurgood's joke which Jeff found really unfair, they took Jeff's joke about being sick serious yet they knew to ignore Thurgood.
"Yea, I suppose asking a drone if the codename of gun smuggling operation was a pun was kinda a loaded question."
"You ought to be thrown in jail for that one."
"Wouldn't that qualify as cruel and unusual punishment?" Thurgood asked with a grin.
". . ."
"Though if I was arrested I think I would do alright in prison because I know that a criminal's best asset is his lie ability and that he's always looking for a window of opportunity."
"Thurgood..."
"Like that chick who stole all the soap from the Wal-Mart down the street, I heard she made a clean getaway."
"Thurgood!"
"Or those guys that stole all the Viagra from the drug store by Burger King. No one is sure who they are, but the police are on the lookout for hardened criminals."
"THURGOOD!"
"Alright geez, I'll stop."
"Thank you."
Borg Collective Headquarters, California November 14, 2080 AD
Roma Gupta had been working for the Borg Collective for just over three years now and still did not understand Dr. Borg or Thurgood. They had both been working for the Collective for decades now, yet neither one of them seemed to properly appreciate their situations.
Thurgood didn't seem to care about anything, he was content to just drift through life. Thurgood had been attacked by gorillas in a zoo when he was younger and the only reason he was still alive today was due to the Collective's cybernetic technology, but based on what Dr. Borg said, Thurgood hadn't learned anything from the whole event. Thurgood was apparently just as lazy and apathetic before the incident as he was now. While Roma admired him for his continued work at the Collective, Thurgood didn't try very hard to better the company that had given him so much.
Dr. Borg was pretty much the exact opposite of Thurgood. He cared, he clearly cared a lot, but he cared about the weirdest things. Rather than do his actual job, Dr. Borg spent time wondering about the logistics of how to get every drone off of Earth in under a day, whether the United Nations could continue to function if it had to manage extra-terrestrial colonies, the effect on the world's economy if the consumer computer market collapsed, and other high end problems that seemed better suited to a Socratic exercise than the ramblings of a semi-retired employee that was supposedly in public relations. Not that Roma would ever say anything to him. Dr. Borg had done more for humanity than possibly anyone else before him, so if he wanted to spend his twilight years thinking up solutions to problems that didn't exist Roma was going to let him.
Still, it bothered Roma that Dr. Borg didn't do more. Roma knew, from talking with the drones, how much time and effort Dr. Borg had put into designing, building, and upgrading the neural transceivers when he worked for the military. He was capable of some dramatic discoveries when he put his mind to it, yet he didn't put his mind to it, not anymore. Roma had sometimes wondered what state the world would be in right now if Dr. Borg decided not to put in the effort needed to create the neural transceivers. The various superpowers probably would have gone to war, there were only so many smaller countries they could gobble up for resources. If the Collective hadn't figured out the solution to the energy crisis...World War III. Roma didn't understand how so many people couldn't see that, couldn't see all the good the Collective and Dr. Borg had done. Ignoramuses like that were the reason so many people died of diseases the Collective had figured out the cures to years ago, simply because they didn't trust drones. To this day, the Indian government still didn't wouldn't let the Collective into the country.
Roma looked at herself in the mirror in her office. She was supposed to be getting ready for a press conference, not thinking about what if scenarios. Her long hair was neatly tied in a bun behind her head and her western style white dress was wrinkle free. Roma really like this dress, it exposed enough cleavage to grab people's attention but not so much to make her look slutty, it was a careful balance. Roma turned around when she heard a low wolf whistle.
Thurgood was standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame. "Looking good girl, with everyone focusing on you I could probably not ever show up and no one would even notice."
Roma liked Thurgood, he was very easy to get along with. That didn't mean she was entirely comfortable receiving compliments about her appearance from a man over twice her age however. She knew he didn't mean anything by it which was why she never said anything, but it was still weird.
"What can I say, I enjoy getting frantic phone calls from my mother after every televised conference about how I'm showing too much skin. No sense stopping now right?"
"She still calls you?" Thurgood asked in surprise. "I thought you said she threatened to disown you when she found out who you worked for."
"She never followed through with it when she realized I wasn't budging. I guess she thought I was only interested in the Collective because its a tech firm and not because of how much it's helping people."
Thurgood grinned and put a finger to his lips, "Ssshhh. Don't let a drone here you say that. You know how much they consider charity a waste of resources. Plus, I think they secretly enjoy people hating them. I swear I saw a drone get wood when it assimilated an anti-augmentation terrorist."
"First of all, you most certainly did not see that. Second, eww. Third, I wasn't talking about charity work, I meant overall. The Collective isn't like a weapons manufacturer that only makes products that kill people, it creates lots of things that are incredibly helpful."
"Save it for the press conference, no sense wasting all your best material on a guy who works for the same company as you. Speaking of, we should probably be heading there now."
Roma and Thurgood headed down the hallway. Thurgood was humming under his breath and bobbing his head so Roma assumed he was singing some song to himself. She was trying to guess at what questions the reporters would ask her. The Collective had successfully sent a message through subspace from C.H.E.E.S.E. on the Moon to a research center in Antarctica. The message had been received instantaneously which, given that it took light a little over a second to travel that distance, was quite a feat. Roma didn't really understand what subspace was or how it allowed for instant communication, alternate dimensions or something, Roma just knew that it was big news and it was her job to tell people about it. She knew Thurgood had sort of discussed this subject already in an interview several years ago when the Collective's quantum computer had discovered subspace via mathematics, but this was the first time they had successfully sent anything through it. Roma found it a little odd that, given how Thurgood had been the one to talk about this before, he wasn't covering subspace this time. Instead, he was going to talk about the Mayflower Expedition which would be leaving January first to build a settlement on Mars. Should be the longest test of the Collective's impulse rockets too, flying from Earth the Mars.
"So how has your day been going?" Thurgood asked Roma.
"With the exception of preparing for the speech, it's been rather uneventful. Same old, same old. You?"
"Today I spent the better part of an hour shaking a bowl of jello because it looked cool," Thurgood said excitedly.
"Are you serious?"
"I regret nothing."
Thurgood could have spent the morning practicing his presentation, going over scientific terms with a drone, researching which reporters were going to be at the conference, but no. He had used his free time to play with jello. Roma didn't know what bugged her more, that Thurgood didn't seem to care about his job, or that the drones didn't care that Thurgood didn't care. If they all buckled down and got to work, there was so much more the Collective could do.
As Thurgood and Roma passed by Dr. Borg's office, they overheard him talking. "Love is the self-delusion humans manufacture to justify the trouble they take to have sex. I'm just glad that at my age, my hormones have subsided to the point where I don't have to worry about any of that nonsense anymore."
"Yo Ja-fizzle, you talking to a drone about this emotion called love? Are we in a sci-fi B movie and no one told me? If so, I call dibs on getting the giant rabbits as pets," Thurgood said as he and Roma stepped into Jeff's office to see what was going on.
Dr. Borg was sitting in his chair behind his desk talking to a drone that was standing over by the window. The drone was a standard model; exo-plating covered its body, one of its hands was replaced with a series of weird pointy instruments, and half of its face was covered with cybernetics.
Dr. Borg, after looking to see if the drone was going to answer, said, "We're not discussing love per say, we're discussing marriage and procreation.
"Why? Don't the vast majority of spouses seek a divorce if their significant other gets assimilated? What could there possibly be to discuss about marriage?" Roma asked.
"There isn't much to discuss actually. Contrary to what some people say, marriage isn't required for children, which is the primary focus of the discussion we were having."
Roma tried to suppress the image that was suddenly popping into her head: Dr. Borg married to a female drone at a hospital as they held their newborn child. Roma couldn't help it, she giggled. "Alright, so what about children were you discussing with the drone?"
Dr. Borg leaned forward and folded his hands together in front of him on his desk. "Due to complications with various implants and nanites in the body, it appears that female drones are incapable to getting pregnant. Their eggs are still viable, but their uteruses are not suitable locations for fetal development. We were discussing the possibility of employing surrogate mothers to carry the children to term."
"Jeff, I don't see what the big deal is. Why does the Collective want kids? They are loud, annoying, messy, expensive, and constantly get in the way. You already have me for all that." Roma couldn't tell if Thurgood was joking or being serious when he said that.
"I have often said that the Collective was the inevitable future of humanity, drones are able to accomplish so much more than a group of individuals that it seems absurd to say otherwise. Combine that with pyschohistory's ability to predict the actions of large groups of people, and the only logical conclusion is that the Collective has the ability to control destiny in a way only seen in fiction until now. It was not until a few weeks ago that I stopped to consider the ramifications of that level of control. Why limit the Collective's control to technology that we use? Sure, they might lop off a body part to make way for a more useful tool, but ultimately a drone is still human. Why not give them control on a cellular level? We already have, to some extent, by allowing them to put nanites in our bodies, but what if we did more than that? What if the Collective had control over our DNA? If we inject nanites into an egg cell and then ensure it gets fertilized, we can alter the development of the fetus as it grows. Think about it, directable evolution of the human race!" When Dr. Borg had started speaking, he was calm and collected, but by the time he finished he was practically shouting with glee. Roma wasn't sure if she had ever seen him this excited about something.
"Jeff...dude." Thurgood said slowly, clearly having difficulty processing everything Dr. Borg had just said. "You sound like a cartoon super villain. Controlling our DNA? I'm not saying it's a bad idea but how are you going to sell this to people?"
"That's what I was discussing with the drone before you two interrupted us."
Roma felt she had to interject, "Dr. Borg I realize that you have been doing this job for ages, whereas I am still rather new, but wouldn't announcing something like that unite all the far too many groups against the Collective?"
"What do you mean?"
"Think about it. You would piss off the creationists by claiming we are evolving. You would anger the pro-lifers by altering fetuses. You would upset fundamentalists from numerous religious sects since this is basically the Collective replacing God as the source of human Creation. You would create a lot of the justification for the conspiracy theories that think the Collective secretly controls the world. I'm sure many governments are not going to be pleased to find out that a private company is breeding what might as well be super soldiers. Not to mention that the Collective is still loathed in China, both by the citizens for the Beijing Bombing and by the government after we took over their collective. I could go on but I hope I've made my point. And I just want to add that, like Thurgood, I'm not saying this is a bad idea, just that we should consider the ramifications of it first," Roma said nervously. She had no idea how Dr. Borg was going to take criticism of something that was so important to him.
Dr. Borg spun his chair to look at the drone in the room, "She has a point. If we are going to agitate that many people with something like this, we should keep it under wraps and only announce it once there is nothing they can do about it."
"Very well Dr. Borg, we shall remain discreet in our search for suitable mothers," the drone said.
"Well if you need us J-man, Roma and I are going to be downstairs in the press conference being awesome in ways scientists haven't even thought of yet. Come on toots."
"Thurgood, I really wish you would settle on a nickname for me already," Roma said as the two of them left Dr. Borg's office.
"I know, I just haven't figured out one that fits you yet. Its the same reason I haven't settled on one for J-dawg either. Though considering how long I've known him, if I haven't figured one out for him by now I don't think I ever will."
"Hmmmm," Roma said after several moments of thought. "What about Admiral Baldy? You know, because Dr. Borg doesn't have any hair...alright so it wasn't that creative."
Surprisingly, Thurgood didn't comment on Roma's horrible attempt at humor. "I like to keep military ranks limited to my pets, not people."
"You give your pets military ranks?"
"Sure. Of my five cats there is Captain Snugglebottom, Commodore Fluffypaws, Lieutenant Bushytail, Sergeant Sillywhiskers, and Bob."
"Bob?"
"We don't talk about Bob," Thurgood said sternly.
"OK..." Roma wondered what a cat could do that would cause such a reaction, then decided she didn't want to think about it that much. With Thurgood, it could have been anything. Roma decided to stop worry about Thurgood's unusual home life and just try to focus on getting through the press conference. Luckily, she was speaking second so the reporters should be sufficiently dazed that they wouldn't bother her with too many questions.