Fanfic/ derivative work: Star Trek: Voyager (1995-2001)

The Doctor said something interesting today.

He said the additional hours I’ve spent regenerating in my alcove are having a deleterious effect on my overall health – that eight hours is sufficient, and anything in excess of that introduces inefficiencies into my cortical node.

He also noted that my tendency to sequester myself in the astrometrics lab is… unusual, and perhaps worrisome. I cannot feign ignorance: Solitude spares me from the inconveniences of communicating outside the Collective, but it… weighs on me in a manner that is hard to define. I tell the Doctor this is because I am Borg. He tells me it is because I am Human.

Furthermore, he reminds me, as though I have forgotten, that my human biology has reasserted itself such that I am now capable of taking normal material sustenance.

“Food,” he says. “Eating.”

The reality of engaging in such a laborious, inefficient process is faintly nauseating, but I admit to a curiosity around the ritual of mealtimes. Lieutenants Torres and Paris seem almost fanatical about their joint trips to the mess hall for coffee or dinner. Having missed one such meeting, Paris was outcast from Torres’ affections for a week. I admit to being mystified and somewhat intrigued by the pageantry of it all.

Many times now, the captain has asked me to join her in her quarters for dinner. Seeing my hesitance, she attempts to bait me with caveats: We will go over your latest discoveries in recalibrating the slipstream core, or I’d like to discuss your thoughts on the silicon-based nebula we passed in the Aliterian system. But I have no interest in sitting across from Captain Janeway while she chews and swallows and eyes me expectantly, waiting to see whether her rump roast or pasta bake will spark some memory of my early life. If she wishes to discuss my work, we may do so in her ready room.

But the Doctor’s urgings have had their impact. I must eat food. I must seek out more social contact. Perhaps it is time I study the meal.

I tell the Doctor I am willing to try, but that I’d like to make my first attempt a simple one– I will dine alone, in a simulation of a restaurant. Once I have acquired a sense of the process of meal, I will add complexity to the situation by testing my skills against mealtime companions.

I ask the Doctor for a holodeck simulation of a restaurant I have often heard Lieutenant Commander Tuvok describe: A Vulcan establishment at the base of an active volcano, in which the diners engage in silent meditation while attendants bring them trays of psychoactive roots to heighten the effects of their trances.

The Doctor, to describe it accurately, snorts. He tells me I am missing the point. He rifles through a stack of discs on his desk and hands me a holoprogram: “Try any one of these. Lieutenant Paris’ personal collection. He tells me Captain Sisko’s family restaurant in New Orleans is very worth a visit.”

I take the disc and depart.

In the holodeck, I see the disc contains 433 programs: An Argentine cafe in CE 1873; a Himalayan ashram in CE 934. “Computer,” I say, eager, as Paris would say, to cut to the chase: “Choose a program at random.”

The holodeck flashes to life. Suddenly I am standing on a cobblestone street, flanked by wide footpaths on each side. They are lined with tables, some of them enclosed in tents of clear plastic– against inclement weather, I presume. People push past me in droves, seemingly full of direction, but their destination is unclear to me. Most appear young, and many are dressed in bright, inefficient decorations– shoes that constrict a natural gait and jackets cropped too small to provide any real protection against the elements. I presume that, like so many things garish and nonsensical, they are a matter of style rather than function.

In the Collective, I contained the knowledge and memories of thousand-year-old trill and children as young as 3. The Doctor tells me I am 24. I suppose many of  the people streaming around me are of a similar age. I wonder, for a moment, how I seem to them. I seem to catch the eye of one or two, but they all slip past me with little acknowledgement. 

I see an open table outside an establishment and sit, as I have seen crewmembers do in the mess hall. There is a laminated card in front of me explaining that there is an “early bird” special: Two courses for twenty units of tender.

I am unfamiliar with ‘Triple dunk trio’. I am unfamiliar with ‘hot poppers’. I am unfamiliar with ‘cauliflower wings’. Wherever I am, whenever I am, the Borg have assimilated nothing about the local fare.

I am considering ending the program and returning to the astrometrics lab when a man wearing a plastic visor over his face approaches me. “Hello,” he says, without meeting my eye, a pencil poised over a notepad.

“Hello,” I respond.

“What can I get you?” he asks, looking up quickly, then back down at his pad of paper.

“Hm,” I say, glad for a chance to try out a conversation. “It all looks… good. What should I eat?”

He cocks his head to look at the menu in front of me.

“It’s all good,” he says, unhelpfully. Irritation rises within me. I’d like this to be over quickly.

“Fine,” I say, scanning the menu quickly and selecting an option at random. “Flamin’ hot onion burger.”

“Drink?” he asks.

I quickly scan the menu.“Water. Coffee. Tea. Synthehol.” I say, wishing to sample some of the drinks I see most often ordered in the mess hall.

“Synthehol?” the man asks. “We have beer. IPA or lager.”

“Lager,” I say.

“Right. One burger,  water, coffee, tea, and a lager.” He smiles a little. I fear I have erred, but he does not elaborate on my mistake.

“Correct.”

“Right, thanks,” he concludes, and takes the menu from my table.

In the Collective, there was no unhelpful man in a visor, no indifferent stream of people, no unmet desire to be seen and heard. There was only a kind of unified togetherness that was as comforting as it was powerful. I realize, with an unfamiliar and unpleasant stab I can only call sorrow, how deeply I miss it. How… alone I am. I know the Doctor is right about my additional hours spent regenerating, about the hours spent alone in the astrometrics lab. I know that I am engaging in behavior that will undercut efficiency and can only be described as maladaptation. If I were part of the Collective, I would be considered a malfunctioning drone and be disposed of.

I admit to a fantasy I sometimes have that Captain Janeway and the crew of Voyager will one day decide that their experiment has failed; that the benefit of my accumulated knowledge is not worth the resources required to power my regeneration alcove, to keep my implants in balance, to teach me how to be human in the precise way they think best. That they will finally realize the truth: Trying to assimilate a Borg into Voyager has been inefficient to the point of insupportability.

Then, they will do what the Borg would have done: Dispose of me.

Perhaps those hours spent alone are a kind of encouragement to that fantasy. Perhaps, as much as I wish to join, to be together, to be part of the many, I sense the futility of my efforts. Perhaps I hope that by keeping my distance their suspicions of me will grow, and their rejection of me will, ultimately, be total. The experiment will end. They will be free of me, and I will be free of my inability to be one of them.

On the street, in the opposite direction of the stream of people, a barefoot man with a drum saunters along, stopping at small clusters of people as he bangs his drum in a pleasant rhythm, seeking acknowledgement from, or perhaps a welcome into, their collective. I watch as he makes the attempt three separate times, at three different groups. He is either faintly acknowledged or ignored at each.

As he makes his way farther up the street, I do not avert my eyes, and he has seen me seeing him. This, he must assume, is an invitation. He begins his approach, the rhythmic banging of his drum growing louder as he crosses the street and the throng of people, making his way to my table. He stops on the footpath 1 meter from me. He doesn’t speak, but he bangs his drum pleasantly and contorts his face into a shape I cannot comprehend. It is clear I am expected to act, to signal something to him. I do not know what. I do not know what he wants from me, and I do not know what signal to give. In the Collective, this gully of uncertainty, bottomless in its depth, does not exist. In the Collective, there is only belonging– and where adaptation to belonging fails, oblivion swiftly comes.

But I am not in the Collective. And neither is the man with the drum.

“Computer,” I say, “End program.”

Perhaps another day.