Do not try to adjust your brain. Paramount controls Star Trek. A. Decker control Star Traks. M. Meneks controls BorgSpace. You are now returned to your regularly scheduled thought.
Secondary System Malfunction
{Regeneration cycle interrupted. Command sequence file pathway origination unit designation 4 of 8,} said the computer in its clipped monotone. Second groaned to himself. Interruptions typically meant trouble, and trouble was the last thing he wanted to deal with at the moment. Before he opened his eyes, Second sampled the whitewater chaos which was the Cube #347's dataspace, finding nothing amiss.
Eyes opened and optic implants powered up to the sight of Captain. The other drone was peering at him, obviously attempting to not snicker. For some reason, Captain's face and other exposed flesh was covered in abstract patterns of multiple colors. "What do you want?" asked Second, not bothering to hide the annoyance in his mental signature.
The barest touches of a smirk touched Captain's otherwise impassive visage. "I completed regeneration and was about to head to the nodal intersection when I glanced your direction. You have been the victim of a prank. Thought you might like to know." Captain allowed access to his visual pathways, allowing Second a view of himself. To anyone but a Borg, the odd double vision would have been highly disorientating.
Second found himself looking at himself (and simultaneously at Captain). Bits of face and neck not covered by implants or armor had the same cheery designs as on Captain. Reds and blues twined with yellows along one cheek, turning into a green swoosh along the bridge of his nose. A small purple rose made of geometric designs adorned his chin. Terminating the view, Second glanced down at his unaltered limb, finding it in a similar condition.
"So, what do you think?" asked Captain. "Are they your colors?"
Second frowned, "I should be asking you the same thing."
"What do you mean?"
"Have you had a good look at yourself, lately? Goldenrod and pistachio are definitely not you."
Second felt Captain burrow into his visual pathways, allowing the other a good long look without benefit of mirror. Captain's mirth evaporated as he realized the magnitude of the prank. The fact neither had awoken was not troubling, as it was difficult to rouse a drone manually from a regeneration cycle. What was disturbing was no forewarning of the prank had wafted through the gossipy neighborhood of the local intranet.
Captain logged a session with drone maintenance ASAP to remove the markings, a gesture Second echoed. The next task would be to hunt down the mischievous artist and severely reprimand him, her, or it. Delta had been planning to clean all fifty replicator sludge vats and reinsulate the interiors.
Second and Captain lay on workbenches side-by-side in maintenance bay #6. The quiet zzzt of lasers permeated the area, flickering beams slowly erasing 158 of 203's epidermal masterpiece. That notable was now in subsection 14, submatrix 9 scraping encrusted replicator goo within sludge tank #1.
Doctor was elsewhere, safely in his alcove undergoing regeneration last Second had checked. It was for the best, as several of designs bore a superficial resemblance to animals. Although the tattoo elimination procedure would be completed, Doctor's hovering presence remarking upon the "sad termination of pretty pets" would be a bit much.
The laser burned along Second's chin, removing another line.
"How much longer?" asked Second. He actually knew exactly how much longer the maintenance would require, could pick the time estimate from drone maintenance pathways. However, the question would annoy Captain; and annoying Captain was one of the subtle methods of retribution Second utilized for being chosen as back-up consensus monitor and facilitator. One of the upright drones in the bay gave Second a skunk eye, then returned to her task of tinkering on a biometric battery.
Said Captain from the next table over, "Desist with the idiotic queries, Second. You know exactly how much longer we have. Tattoo removal will be completed in 94 minutes."
Silence filled the maintenance bay, other than the quiet zap of surgical laser and ringing clank as a clamp was dropped. Second stared at the ceiling, picking out patterns of operationally irrelevant stress fractures in the metal with one pair of eyes, while the other two examined the thermal signature of the overhead tool rack. Most of his attention was involved in command and control duties while a small section of awareness observed 158 of 203 waist deep in gray-brown sludge.
{Anomaly detected,} called Sensors. {Weak distress call, species #8299, centered in middle of dissipating gravimetric fluctuations. Triangulation complete. Location is 3.8 light years spinward and 5 light years towards the rim.}
Transwarp conduit vectors altered slightly as Captain directed the cube towards the call. Species #8299 was very much out of place, as it was only found in a pair of systems on the opposite side of the galaxy. The race had yet to discover the principles of FTL drive and was in the process of colonizing a neighboring system via a combination of hibernation craft, autonomous robots, and bacterial/viroid terraforming. They remained unaware of the existence of the Collective (or any other civilization for that matter), so relatively backwards was the species. The last time an Exploratory-class cube had swung by for routine monitoring a decade prior, the initial stages of subspace radio had been among the secret projects of the dominant three governments. To find a vehicle of species #8299 over one hundred thousand light years from its home system(s) was a conundrum which required investigation.
Captain was the traffic policeman in the middle of a multilane megahighway intersection. The shuttle was not warp capable, was in fact a computerized barge designed to carry cargo between orbital habitations and manufactories. The fifty meter length cylinder was mostly unpressurized hold, which an appropriate bare-bones environment in the blunt nose for the occasional living passenger. Small reactor thrusters pockmarked the hull, allowing delicate docking maneuvers. Gross locomotion, on the other hand, was accomplished by harnessing a planet's magnetic field and using its currents to "surf" and "glide" in a manner similar to soaring birds.
The dumb computer had no clue what had happened to it. One minute it was over a gas giant, dully carting nickel ingots and cylinders of noble gasses from an autonomous processor to a shipping hub, and the next it wasn't. Its sensor grid was very primitive...or very efficient, depending on one's perception. The ship held just enough equipment to dock at stations and navigate between points, with a bit of computational power and memory left over to deal with the occasional mag-field quake and rude taxi driver. While the computer could plot a course by itself between point A and point B within its own system using local star charts, it was now quite out of its element and calling for help on a newly installed subspace radio. The only nugget of information on record was a surge in the local magnetic field and a fuzzy visual of the planet it was flying over as if seen through a gravitational lens. Prevailing theory was a spatial anomaly had spontaneously formed in the path of the unlucky craft, sucking it up and spitting it out elsewhere before disappearing.
Second was bored. Captain had everything well in hand, delegating Assimilation and Delta to motivate their relative hierarchies to dismantle the shuttle and datastrip the computer. Second was left to deal with the very minor problems, such as sitting on Weapons so that the barge would remain in one piece. Sometimes Second felt extremely useless: by some odd quirk, 4 of 8 was by far the best Captain Cube #347 had had in the Hierarchy of Eight for over six hundred years. Even 3 of 8 when he was immersed in Captaincy had to rely heavily on a second-in-command to smooth the sub-collective's bumps into a semi-efficient whole.
{I saw that,} said Second to Weapons. {That won't work, so don't even try it. You won't like it if you do.} Weapons retracted the series of commands he had been attempting to slip though environmental control.
Second idly watched was the shuttle was towed into a cargo hold and efficiently dismantled to its component parts.
{And then Jumba went into the closet, searching in vain for a clue explaining the victim's murder. Heavy wool cloaks hung on pegs greeted Jumba's piercing gaze. The garmets were brown, except for a bright blue one suitable for Holy Day at the local temple. Jumba cast his eyes downward, wrinkling his muzzle in confusion as he saw shoes...only left shoes. What....}
{For the last time, Captain,} complained Second, {read more quietly! I am not interested in Jumba the Wise Lizard novels, and I do not care to hear them.}
In the pressurized section of the barge, the sub-collective had come upon a treasure trove of data crystals. Unfortunately, translation of the crystals revealed not vital information on military or industry, but the species #8299 equivalent of pulp fiction such as westerns, romances, and, yes, three complete Jumba the Wise Lizard books Captain did not have in his collection. In order to make the tales last longer than the short time it took to download data, Captain had slowed his scan rate of the crystals to his pre-assimilation reading speed. However, in slowly savoring the exploits of Jumba, Captain frequently began to "mumble" the words to the general intranets.
Apologized Captain, {Sorry. It is just 'Jumba the Wise Lizard and the Cleric Murders' is so suspenseful.}
Second sighed, returning to his /relevant/ assigned task, that of supervising/assisting the dissection of the few tetrabytes of pertinent data collected from the now defunct barge. Although most of the information was in the form of star charts and orbits of major planetoids, a wealth of knowledge could be extracted from simple plottings of other transports and past cargo manifests. Provided one slogged through the tedious process.
Captain paused his story, taking time to absorb the most recent sub-collective status reports. {I wonder who Eliasi L'vef is?} distractedly asked Captain between task clusters.
{Huh?} said Second. His attention was split between the latest of the "hallucinatory drone" incidents and chasing down an annoying code fragment. The former was yet another phantasm in a long string of phantasms stretching back several months; the latter was a software version of a prion, a possibly malignant bit of software not complex enough to be either virus or application. It had done no harm and normally would be given the same attention of a wayward fruitfly, except Second had nothing else to do. Unfortunately, it seemed to have vanished.
Prompted Captain, {Eliasi L'vef - the author of Jumba. I know it is probably a pseudonym; and with the galactic distribution of Jumba books and sheer number with copyrights spanning several centuries, I theorize it to be a mech.}
{Oh. That. Why not a series of authors, a noncorporeal sentient, or a very long-lived species?} Second frowned. Captain had accidentally triggered a search of the pre-assimilation designation database of drones, past and current.
A mental shrug. {Could be. Well, I'm back to my story. Tasks complete.} Captain returned to his less-than-silent mumbling, apparently unaware of the increasing computational demands required by the search engine to finger /quadrillions/ of entries.
Second watched aghast as 10%, 12%, 17%, 20% of local silicon resources were diverted to the inane and useless task. Most of the demand used currently quiescent memory blocks, although the thoughtless query would soon bite into utilized areas, slowing the entire cube consciousness. Second nipped the program, scattering the inquiry and returning available computational resources to nominal status.
Thoughts whirled in Second's mind, thoughts carefully shielded from the ever prying mental eyes of nearly four thousand imperfectly assimilated comrades. He wanted to be sure the developing gripes, the half-formed deliberations were his own and not the echoes of another dissatisfied drone. A kernel of self, the self untouched by Collective purging, surged, stronger than normal, clambering for attention.
Second realized he was tired of being a cog, nothing more than a discarded processor chip considered too malformed for normal use although passably functional in emergency situations. And a redundant one at that. Captain was very efficient in his Captaincy, and any of the other six members in the Hierarchy of Eight could perform a second-in-command's position. He, Second, was not required.
'Does the Collective, does this sub-collective, really need the presence of this drone?' carefully thought Second, aware in a distant portion of his mind the traitorous impossibility of asking the question in the first place. He should not have been able to contemplate such doubt. At the very least, his mental processes would be involuntarily purged; at the worst, his existence would be terminated. The kernel of self wallowed, removing all faltering, all hesitancy, smothering the compulsion to be a Good Little Drone.
Intruded a familiar voice, {Jumba tapped the floor with his walking staff, hearing the telltale 'thump' of hidden storage space. Was this the bolthole alluded to by... } The rest of the sentence crumbled into an inaudible mumble.
Conviction consolidated. Enough was enough: it was time to leave...to go home. The Collective would not miss one redundant part.
Second examined the speedster with a wary eye towards its functionality. The vessel, nothing more than hollow ball with seat and controls, a minimum life support, and a single warp nacelle with attendant power core, had come from a built-it-yourself kit. The kit itself had been stashed in a dark corner of Bulk Cargo Hold #7, a forgotten pair of crates behind old conduits, a pile of half-used paint cans, equipment which looked suspiciously like it should belong in a garden, and for some reason a lone blender.
The kit had been acquired seventy-five years prior during the materials inventory of a species #5689 outpost. Outdated even then, it had been smuggled onboard by long defunct 23 of 300, who had never gotten the chance to build the vehicle. 23 of 300 had been blown into tiny bits two days later by a nasty robotic infantry unit, and his subsequent designation successor had never shown his proclivity towards anything which could be made to go Fast.
Now Second had a completed speedster, with a few Borg-inspired modifications. The little voice in Second's head was becoming increasingly insistent, increasingly loud in the desire to leave. To keep the thoughts to himself, connection with the sub-collective (and therefore more distant Greater Consciousness) had been constricted. It was all well and good, as Second knew the next step to come would require complete severance. He would not be forced to return. He would go home.
'But what about the fact your colony was destroyed, your family assimilated, your /race/ no longer found outside the Collective?' asked the voice of reason. That voice was squashed by the much louder one recounting that such thoughts did not matter, that there was always a possibility fragments of his species survived and would be receptive to a new member. In that community ('Hypothetical!' screamed the unheard self) Second would be important, would be something other than a...Second.
Second climbed into the speedster, closing the hatch. One final trip into the dataspaces to trigger the sequence of commands he had set up, then he would be able to leave all the voices behind. Except his own.
Second imagined hails were impinging upon the small vessel's communication gear. He did not acknowledge their existence, knowing vocal commands could trigger pathways leading to the re-establishment of severed connections. He was two light years from Cube #347 and quickly disappearing into the darkness of interstellar space, speeding onward at top speed of warp 6.84.
The commands triggered by Second before his vacancy of the premises included an emergency stop from transwarp, the opening of doors in Bulk Cargo Hold #7, the disruption of tractor beams, and the scrambling of the sensor grid. He knew the sub-collective would quickly orient itself and discover what had occurred, if it hadn't done so already; he also knew the Greater Consciousness would not broker the escape of a single drone, no matter how insignificant. Second planned to be far away from pursuers in a manner of minutes.
In addition to buying time through a variety of annoyances, Second had momentarily commandeered the communication array. The short series of base 12 numbers and current location coordinates had been a puzzlement, one which was quickly being regulated to the realm of irrelevancy. Already the action was fading from memory, something which should have been impossible considering the eidetic nature of every Borg drone. 'Not important,' whispered the voice, 'it is not important. All will be right. Soon you will be home.'
A wormhole suddenly blossomed three hundred kilometers distant, a brilliant flower of blue-violet petals surrounding an absolute black center. The radiation surge interacted with a locally dense pocket of hydrogen and dust, causing a glittering halo of sparkles. Gravitational eddies disrupted space-time, reaching out to grasp the speedster, directing it into the center of the anomaly.
Second did not resist. He gazed at the wormhole, various filters in his optic implants providing a view of the phenomenon few sentients (other than those such as Sensors) experience. That was the way home.
Home.
The ship which intercepted the quiescent speedster found a motionless Borg, one which stared at a fixed point approximately an armspan in front of its face. The crew was not surprised, and in fact acted as if the "unexpected" presence was actually quite anticipated. Without protest, the drone was levered out of its seat in the cramped vessel and quietly led down featureless hallways, to a room where it was left standing unsupervised.
Another specimen had arrived.
The Eregli - species #1333 - were mercenaries of an unusual sort, specializing not in brute force but science. Although the various Eregli clans would take contracts for military engagement in times of monetary desperation, they were more comfortable in the techniques of espionage and probing the hidden secrets of the multiverses. The far-flung clans had no permanent home, their planet lost long ago during a war with a species subsequently driven to extinction, only mobile asteroid fleets and ship convoys which served to house extended families.
Eregli lived knowing their species and technologies were a prize for the Borg; and also knowing their mobility was their greatest asset. The Collective was geared to the scale of mass assimilations of stationary targets such as moons or planets. The total Eregli population was not very large, no more than one billion total, and spread throughout the vast volume of the galaxy. The assimilation of a family here or part of a clan there was sad, but did not threaten the sanctity of the whole.
An Eregli followed the typical humanoid pattern, distinguishing cranial features being cauliflower ears, a heavily ridged nose, and a propensity towards double chins even in the thinnest of what was a very skinny race. Eyes were a deep violet, punctuated only by the black of a pinpoint pupil. Bodies were absolutely hairless and skin a mottled camouflage of grays, browns, and greens which hearkened back a time of pre-sentience when Eregli held a position in the middle of a vicious food chain.
The Alborus clan, like the Eregli in general, held no malice towards the Borg, recognizing them as top predators in the galactic ecology, a similar view distant ancestors probably held concerning their four-legged, sharp-toothed nemesis'. The Collective was a force to dodge, to hide from; even in the depths of BorgSpace cubes could not be everywhere, and it took time for the Greater Consciousness to respond to a foreign ship tripping automatic sensors. The galaxy was a large place, easy to become purposefully lost in. However, the clan Alborus had also been approached by a desperate assembly of five races, pooling together their resources to buy scientific information hopefully leading to a method to resist the Borg.
Alborus clan leaders privately believed their clients would fail. The only proven method of resistance was to be where the Borg were not, which included cutting sentimental ties to the birth world...or any stationary fixture, for that matter. Still, money was money, and it bought the risk of scientific inquiry.
The task to steal individual drone specimens from the Collective began by pinching shuttles, tugs, or other non-FTL capable vessels from unassimilated species. Any crew on the to-be-bait were returned to their place of origin, sans memory; and computer memory configured to reflect a naturally occurring spatial anomaly whooshing the ship from point A to very distant point B. In the process of preparation, many virus fragments, in and of themselves unrecognizable as such and harmless, were inserted into the computer. The virus reassembled itself upon the trigger of a Borg ship capturing the Trojan Horse vessel and trolling the onboard computer's memory for data.
The virus resembled a jigsaw puzzle, bits and pieces which fit together. Once the initial section, the leech, was attached to a random drone's personal computational pathways, the other parts slowly accreted. The process occurred over the course of several days, subtly altering the drone's mental patterns to foster a need to escape the Collective. Right before the drone went rogue and severed all connections with the Greater Consciousness, it hijacked the local communication array and sent a signal denoting its current location. At that point, a wormhole would be aimed at the locale and now docile drone (the virus dulled cognitive pathways) picked up when it appeared at the termini.
At least that was the way the process was supposed to work.
The first of many obstacles revolved around a created wormhole, not the most tame of technologies. The science was relatively new to the Alborus clan (developed just for the current project) and yet to be perfected; while a mouth could be aimed at any known coordinate within sixty thousand light years, failure rate for an object sent into the wormhole and re-emerging hovered at 1 in 20 attempts. Not to mention an energy expenditure which required a vast assemblage of energy cores, together which would be able to power most of the domestic and industrial demands of the highly developed Terran solar system. The technology, therefore, was too fickle and expensive to be used in day-to-day movements of family vessels and asteroids, but for the purpose of sending Trojan Horses and retrieving specimens it was adequate.
Other problems were more minor, but did contribute to overall rate of success. Beyond the obvious wormhole dangers, punching through space-time was not always exact, and Trojan Horses were occasionally sent accidentally well outside of BorgSpace. Assuming the ship was found at all during an accurate aiming session (lots of empty space out there!), Borg cubes did not always swallow the bait, but outright destroyed the suspicious vessel. If the virus pieces made it into a sub-collective data matrix, virulent protection programs had to be evaded long enough for complete assembly in a target. Finally, the subverted drone needed to avoid destruction long enough to trigger the vital communication burst and escape its location, eventually arriving at the wormhole.
Overall, the Eregli Alborus clan managed to reclaim one drone for every fifty Trojans dispatched. Thus far, a decade into the long-term project (well, as long-term as possible considering the threat hanging over their employers), ninety-five drones had been stolen from the Collective without the latter catching on.
The retrieval of number ninety-six was a surprise to the primary clan scientists engaged in the project, as the Trojan in question had been a victim of improper aiming. A gravitonic surge originating deep in the smaller pair of the binary system currently inhabited - the stellar equivalent of a polite burp - had misdirected the wormhole, sending the Trojan the Directors knew where. Far from BorgSpace was the consensus. And now...now another specimen had appeared on the doormat.
The Eregli were not a species to dismiss good luck. Specimen number ninety-six would be processed as the ninety-five before, eventually reduced to component pieces during the final vivisection.
Second floated in a haze of no-thought, secure in the knowledge he was soon to be home. The Collective was the past, a nightmare; and the future was, well, the future. The present, on the other hand, was...not important. The present, and those ghosts that slipped through his vision of now, was simply a conduit to the future. Cooperation in the present would secure the future.
If only the damn ghosts would shut-up.
Annoying questions intruded into the no-thought, forcing synapses to function. Eventually the illusions would evaporate for a no-time, but they always returned with their irritating queries and bothersome commands.
"What is your designation?" asked a disembodied voice. "Answer verbally."
Mouth was forced to move. "3 of 8."
"No, what is your full designation? Answer verbally."
"3 of 8 of the Hierarchy of Eight, tertiary redundant co-processor of unimatrix 005, Exploratory-class Cube #347. Current subdesignation is secondary consensus monitor and facilitator."
And so the interrogation continued, punctuated by spaces of no-time:
"Relate the circumstances of your assimilation. Answer verbally."
"Describe the function of your optic implants. Answer verbally."
"Account the procedure by which assimilation occurs. Answer verbally."
Information was not the only demand, but orders of actions and submission for various examinations also transpired.
"Go to the door and open it."
"Here is a dummy console for a shuttle. Demonstrate how you would usurp command from crew and/or computer."
"Make this yo-yo work."
The haze began to recede after an unknown amount of no-time as mental pathways content to slumber endured forced stimulation. The length could have been hours, days, weeks, months, or years. Internal chronometer indicated the passage of eleven time periods. A realization of wrongness slowly consolidated, a realization home was not located on a defunct colony world, but within the featureless corridors of a Borg cube.
*****
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of light years distant...
<<Initiate deflector protocol 18 through 25 and report outcome. Comply,>> boomed the Collective Voice before hastily retreating.
{Compliance,} responded Captain. He disliked when the Greater Consciousness attempted to micromanage the sub-collective. Efficiency decreased everywhere. Not only did the Greater Consciousness expend an exorbitant amount of concentration upon one sub-collective to the detriment of the Whole, but Captain was unable to offer guidance in a manner proven to benefit the cube's general survival. At least no danger was immediately threatening. All in all, while the momentary sensations of Oneness was good, local efficiency (and survival) was also an admirable goal.
The manner of Second's disappearance, and his odd actions leading up to his severance with the Collective, had confirmed a theory of the Greater Consciousness. Over the last ten years, 162 drones had gone rogue in similar circumstances, with 107 actually escaping termination. The number was a pitiful amount considering the trillions which made up the current drone population. However, the trend was worrisome because rogue behavior before the critical decade mark had been nearly non-existent, even among known trouble areas such as those imperfectly assimilated. In each case, a derelict ship or probe had been chanced upon by a roving cube and the discovery summarily dissected. Days or weeks later a rogue emerged.
Several coincidences could have contributed to the preponderance of rogue drones. However, the sample size had not been large enough for careful calculations to eliminate any but the most improbable. With each disappearance circumstantial evidence had been gathered and stored away in the vast mental machinery which was the Borg Collective. The actions of drone designated 3 of 8 of Exploratory-class Cube #347 provided the final datum to pronounce the deed deliberate theft.
The Collective was very possessive of Itself, of its drones. Most importantly, the drone, even one imperfectly assimilated, must be recovered; after that, if possible, the brigands had to be assimilated or destroyed.
The key to tracking where 3 of 8 was stolen to was the wormhole. Along the path of the wormhole, the fabric of space-time was weaker, similar to a crack in an ice-cube. If the wormhole could be induced to reopen, it would be possible to follow the tunnel back to its origin; at the very least, a sympathetic resonation might be set up, one with a signal detectable at the other end by local Borg vessels, should any be near. Anyway, hammering at the point of fracturing was more productive than attempting to bore directly through the warp and woof of reality.
Five of the (relatively) small deflectors on face #1 of Cube #347 glowed in the ultraviolet as they charged. Deflector protocol 18 was employed, to no avail. Space-time wobbled sickenly, but the wormhole did not open. The cube began rotation to bring another cluster of deflectors into alignment, to commence prodding at the bits of the multiverses which were better off unprodded.
Deflectors, although normally employed in the vital task of keeping atoms, molecules, dust, and other particles from making mincemeat of a ship's hull, were vastly mutable devices. They were the Swiss Army Knife of the cosmos. Communications, offense, defense, scientific tool, method to pick up those premium movie and skin-flick channels, a decently built deflector could do it all. Those on Cube #347 were being used as a crowbar to wedge open a closed and locked door.
While Captain did "like" Second as much as a Borg could be said to "like" anyone, he wasn't sure if the effort to retrieve the stolen drone was worth it. When one came right down to it, 3 of 8, nee Second, was just another cog in the greater Whole. Sure, a rather sarcastic cog with a tendency towards flippancy, but a cog nonetheless. Besides, the people on the other end of the wormhole might not be too happy to see a Borg cube, welcoming the sub-collective with open singularities.
Unfortunately, Cube #347 could not bend the rules, not with the Greater Consciousness paying greater than normal attention to the sub-collective's actions.
{Prepare deflector protocol 19,} ordered Captain.
*****
Click. Clunk. Hiss. Second automatically stepped forwards, more aware of his surroundings than since before the species #1333 barge had been assimilated. From that point onwards, thoughts increasingly become foggy, until now. Unfortunately, a heaviness continued to weight his mind, dulling cognitive abilities and will for action. Second quietly stood.
"You have got to see this, Chocta. Trust me, this is the most hilarious thing ever. I'm seriously thinking of requesting the vivisection be delayed; or else dropped entirely. I'd like to mentally castrate this fellow and keep him on as entertainment," a voice bubbled in barely contained eagerness. Second focused his eyes on the source.
The designation - species #1333, Eregli - was difficult to dredge from the depths of his mind. While part of the molasses could be attributed to the dimly remembered action of severing! himself from the Collective, species categorization tended to be data kept in permanent personal drone storage. No, some other factor was to blame.
Female Eregli were the larger of the two sexes, dominant in the socio-political hierarchy, as to expected in a matriarchal society. Males assumed a more reserved role, often found in such careers as computer/software support, theoretical technologies, and primary family caregiver. The speaker in this case was female, long white coat of a scientist one of the unusual constants in an otherwise highly diverse galaxy. Her companion was a male in a somber colored set of trousers and shirt, a heavy toolbelt around his waist.
"I don't know," replied Chocta. "Cervin will kill us if she knew we were here during the Borg's downtime. My God, Tanasi, that thing is watching us. Its eyes are open! I think it is time to leave."
Tanasi shook her head in amusement as she reached into an expansive coat pocket. "Don't be a wuss, cousin. This is an open secret, and Cervin is an old fuddly-duddly besides. What she doesn't know won't hurt her. Our friend 3 of 8 here is not only restrained neurally by the virus, but also by the fact he doesn't have the Collective telling him what to do. Without the Collective, individual Borg are relatively harmless when proper precautions are taken. And all the proper precautions have been taken. Besides, 3 of 8, like all previous specimens, practically begs for commands...or he would if drones begged. It is their nature." A thick spool with a string reeled around its middle was brought into view.
"What is with the yo-yo?"
"As I said, trust me."
The two Eregli were fairly young, of a Terran equivalent age of late twenties. While no longer full of delusions of adolescent immortality, they nonetheless firmly believed in their ability to extract themselves from any danger...mostly danger as represented by a certain Cervin. Even Chocta's protests had a ritualistic quality to them, and were not especially strong. Besides, he had heard rumors of the yo-yoing Borg and wanted to see for himself.
Tanasi cleared her throat and clearly spoke words of command, "Borg, attend me. You will take this yo-yo. You will make this yo-yo work. Comply. Acknowledge verbally."
One part of Second was puzzled. Yo-yo? What was a yo-yo? A weapon? A medical instrument? A fruit rind peeler? At the same time, another part of Second said "We will yo the yo-yo. We comply." A hand was reached out to grasp the small object, loop in string fit over a finger. Limb jerked downwards, then slightly upwards. Second yo-yoed.
"Walk the dog," commanded Tanasi.
Second walked the dog.
Tanasi clapped her hands together in glee. "See? Isn't it great? It was Lotu's idea, but between the four in my interrogation cell we've managed to teach 3 of 8 a dozen different yo-yo moves. We want to try to choreograph a routine to music, but we need more time. The vivisection will ruin everything."
Chocta stared at Second with the same expression one reserves for a clever dancing bear. Or someone performing a Stupid Eregli Trick. "That is amazing. I didn't think the Borg had so much coordination."
"We didn't either, which was the whole point of the yo-yo in the first place. My cell was tasked to push the envelope on physical coordination for this specimen, and the yo-yo was a spur of the moment idea. I expected him to fail miserably, but the drone picked it right up. We learned a lot on what we were supposed to test, and this was a bonus."
Second continued to yo-yo. For some reason he could not stop himself, no matter how much he wanted to. Virus...the one designated Tanasi mentioned a virus tailored to Borg. Second had enough initiative to begin a diagnostic on those mental systems which seemed to be most affected. If he could track down the epicenter of the infection, he might be able to selectively reprogram virus protection software to eradicate it; the process would have been much easier if the virus had been a physical entity within his bloodstream, not lines of code.
Chocta asked, "So, when is the vivisection scheduled, anyway?" He was memorized by the up and down movement of the yo-yo, head bobbing as he followed its motion.
"Two days, at nine and twenty in the first quarter." Tanasi sighed. "If my cell and those we've asked to help can't convince Old Woman Cervin, 3 of 8 will be on the table. The impetus for the vivisection is to explore the exact pain tolerance of the drone, to see if the nerve blockers can be overcome short of death. If so, there are several promising developments in synaptic resonance armament the skunkwork teams have on the drawing boards, I hear. Our clients will be pleased."
The smaller male nodded absently, "Good. That might mean the clan will acquire the materials for my maintenance group to finish the children's creche Obesus family has been demanding on their new Birthing ship." He paused. "I think I hear someone coming."
Tanasi paled as much as a camouflage colored being could. "Drone, stop your actions and give me the yo-yo. Return to your regeneration cubicle and cycle back to downtime. Respond verbally."
"We comply," sedately answered the part of Second which was still stuck in no-time. The yo-yo was grabbed by Tanasi, and both left the room without staying to see if Second actually followed orders. While he did in fact do as commanded, diagnostics were narrowing their search patterns to the most severely affected internal systems.
Second did not want to be vivisected. It was not a...proper way for a drone to be terminated. Besides, what if his captors /did/ manage to circumvent the pain inhibitors?
"Wakey, wakey, droney-boy! Much to do today!" The voice, despite similar translated syntax and babyish expressions, did not originate from Doctor. The nightmare was far from over. Second opened his eyes to the smiling visage of yet another Eregli. A total of three females crowded into the room, already made cramped by the presence of bulky equipment. Most machinery either had a recording function or was associated with the poor excuse of a regeneration alcove Second apparently had been plugged into since his fuzzily remembered capture. It felt as if he might be developing a nasty rash.
Second consulted his internal chronometer. It was approximately two days since he demonstrated yo-yoing. He had an unpleasant suspicion it happened to be nine and twenty in the first quarter.
"Just about nine and twenty in the first quarter," cheerily announced the female, "and so /much/ to do today. I know you don't understand me, but young Chocta and her cohorts almost talked Cervin into keeping you in one piece. What an accomplishment! The Old Woman /almost/ gave in. However, our clients started up their pandering at about the same time, and when push came to shove, fulfilling contract is more important. Perhaps Chocta can have the next drone for her cell's personal entertainment."
'Oh, crap,' thought Second to himself, the words perfectly clear. All the mental fuzz was gone, and he was surprised at how he had fallen for the chance to go /home/! How irrelevant! During the last two time periods he had managed to track down the virus and eliminate it, the task diverting his attention from important things, like the schedule for the upcoming vivisection.
"Let's go! Out to the hallway to you. Make a left and begin walking. We'll follow behind and give you additional orders on how to proceed. Acknowledge verbally. Comply."
Second shifted his head to look the female directly in the eyes. Her inane expression expected full compliance, as with the ninety-five specimens before. Second opened his mouth to speak, pluralities slipping in the face of imperfect assimilation, "Vivisection? Pain tolerance? I don't think so!"
Three stunned faces watched Second as he pushed past, making for the door at best possible speed. Admittedly it wasn't better than his normal walking, but he managed to stretch the pace slightly. A glance out the door showed no waiting security; in fact, the cream hallways with fanciful blue waves painted on them were relatively empty. As left eventually led to the operating room, right was the preferred direction.
Second had moved approximately seventy meters and past eight doors and three intersecting hallways when an alarm blared. "Specimen ninety-six has escaped. I repeat, Borg specimen number ninety-six has escaped. Retreat to the nearest shelter area and secure hatches. Observe biohazard protocol five. Security will eliminate the threat," bellowed from speakers buried in ceiling bulkheads. Second had no clue if he was in a ship, or on an asteroid, planets and moons typically not utilized by species #1333. First priority was to access a computer and find a map.
The heavy sound of boots and the hiss of phaser fire prompted Second to turn at the next intersection. He halted before a door decorated with a festive jungle scene, complete with a smiling slothlike creature hanging from a tree branch. The simple expedient of smashing a nearby wall panel with fist caused the door to slide open.
The interior rooms were empty. It appeared to be several linked recreation areas, soft chairs perfect for reclining arranged in a not quite haphazard fashion. A quick glimpse into the other rooms showed a large viewscreen with rows of long sofas arrayed before it, a small kitchenette with dirty mugs next to the sink, several tables, and on a pedestal in a central place of honor, what looked strangely like a coffee machine. A very well used coffee machine. Next to the icon of harried sentients everywhere who are unable to schedule time to sleep, two personal computer consoles thrust from the bulkhead.
In addition to the amenities, a bank of windows stretched from floor to ceiling along one section of wall. The combination of no rotation and lack of an asteroid scene of rock (or internal view overlooking hydroponics and greenspace) assured Second he was upon a ship.
Second looked down upon the console pair. The one of the right was at the center of a virtual blizzard of paper and yellow sticky notes. Text printouts, graphs, and hasty sketches of an unrecognized device filled the visible pages. A large note with the species specific words "Touch this computer and die" was taped over the display. Second prudently chose the left-hand machine.
A hand was lain on the terminal and assimilation tubules triggered. Swiftly Second made his way along the internal web which was the vessel's computer, at least the peripheral systems. Vital areas such as life support, propulsion, transporter, and weapons were blanks protected by heavy encryption algorithms. Second did not have the time to break the lines of scrambled code, did not have the resources required without connection to his sub-collective. Okay, maybe he was a redundant cog in the washing machine of existence, but along with other such superfluous parts, things could be accomplished. Besides, all Second wanted was a local map, anything else was a bonus.
Second found a map and copied it to his personal storage matrixes, taking several milliseconds (an eternity) to mull his options. Again, he wished he could hear the other voices; this making up your own mind business without input and consensus was inefficient. The ship was called the "Razorback," a dedicated R&D science vessel with a limited permanent crew; i.e. most of the workers commuted in from Family vessels or planetoids, staying for shifts of one or more local weeks.
Routes unfolded in Second's mind - to the bridge(s), to primary engineering, to main computer core. It was the path to the vast shuttle bay/cargo hold which caught his attention: a mysterious device entitled "slingshot" could be found within the bay. Of all the options open, travel towards the hold was calculated to be 43.1% successful, with progressively lower rates of success if one tried to make it to higher security areas.
A well disguised hatch leading to Razorback's internal maintenance spaces beckoned. By the noise coming from the outer rooms, the doors to the lounge were being forced open. It was time to leave.
Second panned the shuttle bay, at least that which he could see from his current vantage in a shadowed corner beside several closed crates. Signs of hurried departure to safer quarters were numerous. The immense area held several small ships in various states of dismantlement and repair; many were of species #1333 design, while three could be recognized as belonging to other civilizations.
Second paused perusal for enemies as he noted the speedster he remembered building. It was on a cleared pad separated from the rest of the hold by a waist high barrier. Looking up, Second saw a series of high strength force field emitters, the type used to control high energy operations which had a tendency to unpredictably warp space-time. The force field prohibited accidents from spreading to the rest of the supporting complex. Also near the ceiling were two large devices pointed at the speedster, resembling a cheesy sci-fi flick's representation of a mad scientist's Doomsday Laser.
The little ship rested in the middle of the contraption referred on Second's map as the slingshot.
Second focused on a computer terminal at a position of control near the pad. He had not sensed it among the peripheral systems during his earlier ransacking, and deduced it was likely self-contained. Speedster. Slingshot. Dedicated computer. The first glimmerings of idea synthesis were forming. Unfortunately, with a consensus of one, Second could not bounce the brainstorm off others for refinement. In other words, the only control upon personal impulse was himself, and that control was slipping.
Searching the periphery of the hold, Second counted eighteen cameras offering a complete view of the area. If the system was complex with computers scanning images for unfamiliar objects, security would be quick to respond. On the other hand, if humanoid operators were busy manually examining banks of displays somewhere in the bowels of the Razorback, it might be possible to achieve the speedster goal before deadly forces arrived. Second hesitated, calculating the odds, then flushed the entire decision tree matrix. What the hell. You only live twice.
The skittering jaunt from hiding place to target was uneventful, although Second kept anticipating the blare of new alarms and fizzle of transporter beams. While a glance at the speedster assured him of apparent spaceworthiness, his attention was more directed at the stand alone terminal. The term "slingshot" alluded to throwing an object; and if Second's idea was correct, he would not have to risk phasers scoring the hull of his get-away machine. If he was forced to put directly to space, odds of rejoining the Collective hovered in the 0.003% range, plus or minus (mostly minus) 0.007%. A hand was placed on the base of the display.
The slingshot device was in fact used to project vessels to distant parts of the galaxy, via a tame wormhole. It also could function as a retrieval system if the far termini coordinates were known, although due to several dangerous factors such as inability to reliably anchor the exit point without destroying all within a fifty kilometer radius, ships thus transported had to be spat into local space and the wormhole immediately evaporated. The initial sending appeared to be a much more benign, and controllable, process.
Directions to use the slingshot passed through Second's mind; alas, however, the computer did not hold schematics to construct a new slingshot. A moderately bright child could operate the device, provided he or she knew his or her numbers. Most of the process was automated. As Second began to mentally translate the last known coordinates of Cube #347 (If he tried to fling himself back to BorgSpace, the Collective would simply pick him up and put him in stasis until such time his sub-collective returned. Or possibly terminate him.) he noticed the settings for the slingshot's previous use. It was fixed at the locale Second had been retrieved from; the species #1333 scientists had not slingshot additional ships since his capture.
The warnings every Eregli of the Alborus clan were taught concerning slingshot operation were not present on the terminal. The computer itself was a dull machine built for the sole purpose to contain and direct a wormhole and was unable to spellcheck a child's "See Spot Run" story. Besides the general 1 in 20 rate of failure, slingshot operators avoided opening wormholes to the same coordinates. Not only did the practice avoid having the Borg associate wormholes and the appearance of interesting derelicts with the disappearance of drones, the integrity of space-time was maintained.
The analogy of space-time as a block of ice was only moderately accurate, but sufficient in the case of visualization wormhole damage. Naturally reoccurring wormholes occupied elongated "tubes" drilled by primordial forces through space-time and were relatively stable. Those civilizations which played with singularities long enough eventually learned to mimic nature...or else tended to vanish amid reports of rampaging black holes. Species like the Eregli which were just beginning to devise practical uses for wormholes forced their creations through solid blocks of the space-time ice-cube, producing fractures. While the fractures eventually did heal, if one irritated it often enough by repeatedly laying a wormhole line, the ice-cube might "shatter." The Eregli had yet to shatter space-time as the mathematicians among them had foreseen Not Good Things from the crystal ball of nth dimensional fractual equations.
And there was that region of really screwed up space near star Gibson Alpha where effect had a chilling tendency to proceed cause. Whispered rumors long since degenerated to the status of cautionary fairy tale told of an arrogant race, three chickens, and a wormhole experiment gone wrong. While the chickens may have been thrown in for effect many centuries prior, the kernel of the story wrapped around racial extinction due to an industrial accident. The most horrible versions related a virtual Hell where the species' homeworld once orbited, the entire race caught in the clutches of eternal paradox.
Second had not had the education of a young Eregli, only knew the slingshot was aimed in the correct direction and that the speedster was on the pad and ready to go. As a new series of alarms blared, security began arriving by transporter beam, weapons draped from every body. Second swiftly switched the computer from "receive" to "send" and set a delay to allow himself time to enter the speedster.
The view of the cargo hold disappeared in a fountain of blue and violet with red sparkles.
Second was back in a proper alcove. Admittedly it was in Assimilation Workshop #8 and not the one specifically assigned to him, but it would not perpetuate the extensive rash on his back in the hollow between ribs and pelvis.
"And how are we today, 3 of 8?" asked Assimilation in a dull monotone. It was a voice which said as much interest would be paid to the subject as to the deck under one's feet.
"'We' are functional. 'We' are ready to return to our place in the sub-collective. 'We' are just fine," sarcastically answered Second.
Assimilation did not register the tone as offensive, or even notice the tone /was/ offensive, at least not externally. Due to his status as potential disease carrier, Second was not allowed access to the nets and thus could not read the other drone's mental signature. "Another regeneration cycle is necessary to make sure all traces of viral infection have been removed and appropriate neural pathways are re-established. No lingering urge to go home, to leave the Collective?"
"No," was Second's sullen reply.
Emergence from the wormhole had been to a chaotic scene of Cube #347 finding itself too close to the exit terminus. Not only had the speedster narrowly avoided smashing itself on unyielding hull plates, it had nearly been fried by thrusters opposing gravitonic flux output from the wormhole itself. Luckily the small rip in space-time had quickly evaporated when machines on the other end cut its power source, leaving behind only vague feelings of deja vu.
"Answer truthfully, 3 of 8...you do not resent your place in the Collective?"
Second felt the mental prodding and poking which was the assimilation hierarchy crawling along neural paths, evaluating answers and comparing patterns to the maintained "3 of 8" file. If Assimilation found something wrong, at best Second could hope for was reformatting, which would essentially erase his current personality and replace it with a newly assimilated drone. A new imperfectly assimilated drone. At worst, traces of the virus would be found to be interfering with Second's thought processes, and he would be terminated for the good of All.
"Maybe a little bit, stuck out here in the a** end of nowhere. Of course if the sub-collective wasn't out here, we'd be doing menial jobs with high risk factors. I know I am just a small redundancy of the Whole, but if that is where I belong, then that is where I belong. And it won't change no matter how much 'we' gripe."
Assimilation gave a noncommittal reply, then turned away. Obviously the interrogation was over and he had more important things to attend. Second hoped Assimilation's latest batch of gray paint congealed in its gray pail, and did not care if the other knew of his irrelevant wish.
After the confusion of the wormhole, it had been possible to call to Cube #347 and request reintegration. Before the speedster was tractored into a cargo bay, Second saw nearly half of the deflectors on the hull were in various states of melted goo, from slightly deformed to a solidified object which bore only the most fleeting resemblance to its original form. Teams of engineering drones were carefully unclutching themselves from supports and standing, peering to the cosmos in case another unforeseen anomaly was to emerge. Once inside, Second had been passed into the hands of Assimilation for evaluation. The last several time periods had been very boring, punctuated only by Assimilation's probing.
Second sighed. At least he was back and not to undergo vivisection, at least not until his next scheduled tune-up with drone maintenance, that is. A redundant cog among redundant cogs he may be, but at least together all made one slightly off kilter grouping able to accomplish tasks.
And besides, Second could still beat Captain at four dimensional chess any day of the week.
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