=/\=
Icheb had heard that everyone adored Admiral Virdian as a teacher, leading him to anticipate a stimulating and enjoyable Xenobiology class. Icheb was attentive and worked very hard to produce well-researched written assignments. He participated in class. He thought he might do as well in this class as he had in every other one he'd taken at the Academy. The one thing he didn't expect was the admiral's reaction to all of his attempts.
Admiral Virdian criticized every comment Icheb made in class, even though another student might contribute the same observation later and be praised for it. The admiral made it obvious he wasn't at all impressed with Icheb. While he never complained to Seven or any of his friends from Voyager about this disconnect between the admiral's reputation and the way he treated Icheb in class, the admiral's comments about the Borg gave Icheb a rather clear hint about what his problem with Icheb really was. As Tom had told Icheb before the summer session began, the admiral lost his husband when the Borg destroyed the fleet at Wolf 359 in 2367. Icheb was sure that his visible connection to the Borg was a constant reminder to the admiral of his lost spouse.
Although Icheb considered withdrawing from the class, he decided he would do his best and live with the results. If he failed, Icheb would simply take the course again, from another professor. If he did well the second time he took it, the failing grade would be expunged, replaced by the new one. He was annoyed, though. His mother would undoubtedly think it was terribly inefficient for him to waste his time studying under someone who was prejudiced against him; but Icheb's stubborn streak, which previously manifested itself when Seven tried to reject his donation of his cortical node to save her life, reappeared. Icheb refused to back down and withdraw from the class just because the professor didn't like him.
At the session's midpoint, Admiral Virdian assigned an essay on the subject: "Describe What It is Like to Be a Member of Your Species." Icheb was perplexed. Everyone else in the class would know what their subject would be. Even someone like B'Elanna or Naomi could either pick one of the species comprising their genome or choose to describe both of their heritages. But how could Icheb describe himself?
In the handful of days he'd lived on the Brunali world, he'd barely begun to learn what they were about before his parents shipped him back to the Borg. Because of his adoption by Seven, and his life on Voyager with a primarily human crew, he identified more with humanity than any other species. However, in good conscience, he couldn't claim he knew enough about being human to write an essay about that species, either. Of course, he'd been Borg, or "almost" Borg. While the Borg were an amalgam of any race the Collective came across that they wanted to assimilate, rather than a separate species, Icheb still knew more about the Collective than he did about his biological heritage or his adoptive mother's.
He finally decided that he could only write about himself, a Brunali child "almost" assimilated by the Borg and rescued by human beings. He imagined Admiral Virdian would be scornful of such a mish-mosh, but that was the only way Icheb could honestly present himself.
Icheb began his essay by using the first few sentences of his personal log, which depicted his expulsion from the malfunctioning maturation chamber and his confusion about who or what he was. He described how a second immature drone awoke, designated himself as "First," and began to give orders to "Second." Three other "Borglets" joined them, but none were fully Borg, nor were they truly individuals capable of acting in the manner of their own species. Then he described the horror of the alien freight captain's attempted assimilation, and its aftermath:
"Five of Six and I tried to follow the instructions of First, who ripped the man's arm off to insert a Borg appliance into his armpit. But we were incomplete. None of us knew what we were doing. Later, we discovered our nanoprobes had been too immature to assimilate the alien. They could barely keep our own flesh and implants healthy, let alone turn another individual into a functioning drone. All we knew then was that this freighter captain we'd captured screamed and screamed until he couldn't scream anymore. Then he fell silent, awash in a pool of his own blood. Instead of making him one with the Collective, we'd murdered him. His remains rested there, a pile of mottled flesh resting on a metallic bed splashed with blood, until our cube exploded. Four of us, and a fifth who was such an immature infant she couldn't even breathe on her own, were rescued by Voyager. First died on the cube, his devotion to the Borg Queen continuing unabated until his last breath.
"Five of Six became my little sister Mezoti. Second was me: Icheb Hansen. The alien we tried to assimilate remained nameless, without any designation we ever knew. He was just another corpse inside the dying Borg cube. His atoms, along with those of at least a thousand other dead drones, now float in space, somewhere in the Delta Quadrant.
"No one volunteers to be a Borg. Drones are like the zombies of old cinematic entertainments. You are attacked and turned into the living dead, without any will of your own. The Queen orders you to do whatever she wants, and if she has any reason to doubt even one drone on a cube, without hesitation she will destroy it, along with thousands more who are on that vessel, too. I know. She did it when I was on Voyager, when my captain and two other officers invaded a cube to free a small number of drones from her control. Some of the debris fields floating in the Delta Quadrant have been identified as the fragments of cubes destroyed by the Queen that day, all because she lost contact with a single drone dwelling inside them.
"I was returned to the care of my parents by the captain of Voyager, but after a mere handful of days they put me inside a single-person transport and sent me into the path of the Borg. Voyager rescued me, but only then did we discover my body is capable of producing a pathogen that brings death to the Borg when I'm assimilated. All of those dead drones inside the cube on which I awoke were killed by me.
"My parents were as willing as the Borg Queen to take away my individuality, even for me to be killed. Is this what the Brunali are like? I don't know. I don't have enough memories of my time before they put me in the first transport, or from those scant few days after they enticed me to live with them again and shoved me into the second, to know if they are typical of the species. I hope not. I can't describe what it is like to be of the Brunali. I simply don't know enough about them to say.
"Now I live in the Federation. I have been adopted by a human woman, assimilated as a child by the Borg, who was also disconnected from the Collective by Captain Janeway and her crew. While many Borg mechanicals have been removed from our bodies and the Borg Queen can no longer order us to do her bidding, some implants remain within us, and probably will throughout our lives. We have been Borg, and, in a way, we always will be. The remaining implants are not why we will never be fully free of the Borg, however. We are haunted by our memories of that existence. We are marked by scars, some invisible to see, but always present. Would either of us ever want to go back to that zombie existence? No. We like who we are now. We are individuals who make our own decisions about how to live our lives. Any mistakes we make we will blame on ourselves, not an entity who cares nothing for those she rules.
"There are not many like us, although we know of others who now function as individuals because they were freed by Captain Janeway's actions. Are we a new, unique species? I don't know about that, either; but I'm glad I'm here now. Maybe someday I will look around me and declare, 'Alien DNA notwithstanding, I'm more human than anything else.' But that is a hope, not an expectation.
"I have lived a horror story. It is my fondest wish that no one else ever will."
Icheb read over his essay. There was much more he could have said, but he didn't want to plague Admiral Virdian with an essay as long as the Early Starfleet History presentation he once gave to Captain Janeway would have been - if she'd ever let him finish reciting it. If the admiral chose to fail him for not producing a paper according to his specifications, so be it.
=/\=
Admiral Virdian made no mention of the assignment in class for the next two weeks, but Icheb thought what he'd presented must have made some sort of impression on the admiral. The negative comments ceased. Icheb hoped this meant he would pass the course with a decent enough grade that he wouldn't have to repeat it.
The day before the admiral was to administer their final exam, he distributed PADDs to the students containing their graded essay - to everyone, that is, except Icheb. He was reluctant to say anything right away to the admiral, who spent the last class reviewing the syllabus, hinting, at times, about certain sections which "you would be wise to review prior to the examination." Once the class was over, Icheb would ask the admiral to give him his grade for his essay.
When the admiral announced, "Class dismissed," Icheb stood up, but before he could take a step forward, Admiral Virdian added, "Cadet Hansen, please report to me. I'd like to speak with you."
Icheb walked up to the teacher's desk and stood at attention, waiting for him to speak. "Please, sit down, Cadet. What I have to say may take a while."
Once Icheb had taken a seat, the admiral leaned forward on the surface of his desk and confided, "I have a confession to make. I'm not very proud of the way I've acted towards you during much of this course. I've always prided myself on giving the best of myself when teaching every one of my students, but I let personal feelings interfere with your experience." He cleared his throat before continuing, "When I reached the sentence near the end of your essay, when you said any mistakes you would make from now on would be your own, it struck me hard. I know I did make mistakes with you. Your reputation preceded you, Cadet Hansen. Every other teacher who's taught you has called you one of the most promising officer candidates he or she has ever seen. I didn't see, but that was my fault, not yours."
Admiral Virdian looked away from Icheb and studied the surface of his desk for a moment. "I lost someone very dear to me because of the Borg. Whenever I looked at you, I never saw the Brunali boy who was rescued by Kathryn Janeway's crew. I only saw that metal plate on the side of your nose, which marked you for what you once were."
"Admiral, I know about the loss of your husband. I can only say I'm sorry for your loss."
"But you had nothing to do with it. You weren't Borg then. From what you wrote in your essay, I gather you never were completely Borg at all. On the day the Battle of Wolf 359 was fought, I imagine you were a young child, running around the surface of the planet of your birth."
"I believe I was, Admiral, although I don't know the exact date of my birth; but that doesn't matter. Even if I had been there, I couldn't have stopped myself from participating in the destruction. None of the drones who took part in that battle had any control over what they were doing. They were programmed, just like computers, to act the way they did."
"I've known that intellectually for a long time, but I guess I never fully accepted it. Then I read your description of assimilation, how a drone is turned into a 'zombie', as you put it. Thanks to your essay, I felt the of horror of that process, the loss of any will of your own. It pains me now to even speak of it, yet you were ordered to inflict that fate on another being. If he'd had the choice, the alien may well have chosen death rather than become one of your Collective drones."
"Was your husband assimilated, Admiral?"
"No. He died. His remains were found in what was left of the USS Yamaguchi. At least I never had to wonder what had happened to him, but I was always bitter to lose him that way. In the back of my mind, I think I always thought that if he'd been assimilated, perhaps I'd get him back someday, the way Riker and the crew of Enterprise were able to recover Jean-Luc Picard. After I read your essay, I was glad he was released from life and never had to experience that loss of self. It would have been absolute torture for a man of his temperament."
Icheb sighed deeply. "So many lives wasted, Admiral. I feel badly for all drones. I've often wished more could have been saved and returned to individuality the way my mother Seven - Annika Hansen, that is - and the five of us were." He paused a moment, wondering how much the admiral knew about their trip back to the Alpha Quadrant. Finally he said, "Millions must have died when we returned to the Alpha Quadrant through the collapsing transwarp conduit system. My mother told me she knows she participated in the decimation of entire planetary populations when she was a drone. It haunts her now, but at the time, she had no recourse."
"And you know for a fact the Queen ordered thousands of drones to be slaughtered because she couldn't 'hear' one drone on a vessel?"
"Captain Janeway witnessed her doing it. The Queen was using it as a tactic to try to make the captain cooperate with her. She wanted the captain to stop protecting the drones who went to the virtual reality of Unimatrix Zero, where they could be individuals again during their regeneration periods. I didn't put it in my essay, but the Queen ordered my 'Children's Collective' to terminate ourselves when she lost contact with our cube, too. We didn't follow the order. Until Seven came on board, we were unable to decrypt her message. We didn't understand Borg alphanumerics well at that time, either. We didn't become competent using them until we were living on Voyager. Seven taught us the system because she thought we might need to know it someday. It was a good thing she did. My sister Mezoti was able to read a message and help the Borg Resistance drones who came to the planet she lives on now to obtain necessary medical care."
"Your sister Mezoti didn't come here with you? I'd heard that a female child came to the Alpha Quadrant on Voyager."
"That was our baby Six of Six. She was adopted by another crewmate. Her name is Aimee Gilmore now."
"Is Marla Gilmore her mother? I remember her. She was in my class several years ago."
"That's Aimee's mother. She's resigned from Starfleet. I see them every now and then. They live in San Francisco."
"I'm sorry to hear about her resignation. I thought she had a brilliant career ahead of her. It's a shame. Say hello from me when you see her again," the admiral remarked matter-of-factly.
Icheb was loathe to respond to this comment, but he didn't get the sense the admiral was speaking either ironically or sarcastically. Icheb hoped this meant he wasn't privy to all that had happened on Equinox. Fortunately, Icheb didn't have to respond to the admiral's comment. Admiral Virdian rose to his feet, prompting Icheb to do the same, and said, "I'm sorry I didn't think to have this conversation with you sooner, Cadet. As you can see, even admirals make mistakes. It may be even harder for us to admit it when we do, because of our positions. I hope you'll accept my sincere apology for the rough time I gave you."
"It's all right, Admiral. It may be good practice. I understand some commanding officers think cadets are coddled too much at the Academy!"
This prompted a smile and a slight chuckle from the admiral. "I certainly can't be accused of coddling you, can I, Cadet? By the way, I've sent your essay to you through the com system. I don't think you'll be unhappy with your grade. And I have a suggestion. You might consider submitting the piece to the Academy literary magazine. You write well, considering Federation Standard isn't your first language. Since your essay educated me on the true nature of assimilation, others may benefit from reading it as well." He extended his hand to shake Icheb's. "Good luck on the exam tomorrow."
"Thank you, Admiral. I'm heading to my suite to study for it right now."
=/\=
Icheb did do well on the exam. His final grade for the course was an A, the same grade he'd received for his essay.
=/\=