These are the Voyages

[The Borg]

Despite some initial… hesitation, the Borg had lurched through the gateway—a shimmering wall of energy that seemed to be obscuring something beyond it.  

Its feet touched down upon grass, and its sensors, both organic and the barely functioning inorganic components, detected a drastic climatic shift.  Aside from the small clearing in which it stood, the horizon was littered with massive, carbon-based lifeforms.  The destruction of the Collective had rendered the drone unable to access its vast and unrivaled databases on organic life.  For the moment, the giant constructs of green and brown remained still.  They were either sleeping or

The Borg continued forward and lifted its remaining hand.  With the failure of nearly all of its implants, its original biology was already beginning to reassert itself.  Its flesh had already started to lose its normal Borg pigmentation.  There was no telling what further exposure to vitamin D would do.

“We must regain our strength,” it spoke beneath its breath as it lowered its hand back to its side.  Its eye returned back to the scene laid out before the gate.  Something in its mind buzzed…

“Forest… Those are trees.  We—I—remember trees.”  The drone shook its head.  “We.  We remember.”

It wasn’t just the human physiology that was reactivating from its slumber.  Memories, knowledge, and thoughts started to coalesce in the void that was the drone’s mind.  It wasn’t the combined understanding of Species 5618… just the fragmentary intelligence of the drone’s former identity.  The fact that it was forced to rely upon an individual sickened the Borg, but there was nothing else it could do at this moment.  It had to utilize the resources available to itself or risk perishing and damning the Borg Collective to extinction.

“Trees,” the Borg whispered as it looked and watched a gentle breeze rustle the green orga—leaves—through the air.  It felt something brush against its flesh, but the tissue lacked the receptors to convey whatever sensation a warm gust of wind contained.  A glance down revealed ash-gray toes where a Borg would normally wear boots.  “Grass.  We are in a forest… a temperature biome.”  The drone stepped closer to the edge of the clearing and swept the area with its functional eye.  “What planet are we on?  Sol III?  Andalusia Prime?”

The Borg looked up at the sky.  It seemed Terran.  

“We require additional data,” the drone whispered as it made its way from the clearing and into the forest proper.

[The Borg]

It walked until the location of the sun had shifted. A deep red spread over the skyline, and the Borg’s field of vision shrank considerably as the light ebbed. There was no telling how long it would be before the drone would be unable to navigate the increasingly dense forest.

Despite that… limitation, the Borg had noticed a variety of oddities along its lurching march through the green terrain. It had anticipated its biological tissues to ‘resurface’ given the failure of all but its most rudimentary Borg implants. Additionally, the Borg had expected pigmentation shifts and even follicle growth, and both of those developments had already started in earnest. However, there were other things occurring on what had to be the subcellular level that the Borg could not understand. A glance at its stump of a left hand revealed what appeared to be the generation of fresh tissues at the site where the limb had been amputated during the assimilation process.

The drone knew that Species 5618 had no regenerative properties, yet it was clear to the Borg that fresh tissues were being created.

“Too many variables.”

The Borg scowled as it lifted a hand up to its face. The deformed tissues and empty eye socket weren’t as distinct as they had been a few hours prior. Within a few additional hours, it would be had for anyone to tell that the drone had once worn metallic implants over half of its visage. Such an appearance would make it easier for it to go undisturbed as it regained its strength, but what would be the unintended cost of such course of action? Was there a repressed human psyche waiting to surface beneath decades of Borg assimilation?

Before the Borg could get lost in that train of thought, a voice broke what had been nearly an entire afternoon of silence.

“What brings you to these parts, Traveler?”

The Borg turned to confront the other figure and saw that it was staring at something that look nearly human. Despite similar posture and frame, its features were too slender, and it had pointed ears.

Vulcan?

No. Species 3259 had similar pigmentation to humans. Despite having Vulcan traits, the female who stood ten paces from the Borg had almost purple skin.

“Can you speak?” She asked as her features tightened. The Borg was unable to tell if that was supposed to be concern or distrust on her countenance. “Are you injured?”

Converse. Gather intelligence. Solve variables.

“No,” the Borg spoke, but even the monosyllabic word slurred its way through desiccated lips. “We…” The drone shook its head. Blend. “I have not been here long. Cannot. Do not know where I am. This world is new. White. Now green.”

The female’s expression softened as she lifted one of her oversized eyebrows. “You arrived via the Fountain of Infinity?”

“That is the name for the white?”

She nodded here head. “The Nexus. That’s where he drops all primes.”

“Define ‘he’.”

“Omni. He is the one who created this place. The one who brought you here.”

This place.

“What world are we on?” The Borg inquired.

The woman shook her head. “World? This is the Omniverse.”

Alternate timestream? Reality? Parallel universe? Regardless of the new parameters, the mission remained the same. The Borg purpose always remained the same.

“What is this place?”

“This place?” The purple woman repeated. “This is the Tangled Green. You got…” she pointed a steel-tipped weapon in one direction. “The Animus River that way…” She pivoted her body to gesture in another direction. “Ambrosia that way.” She pointed in a different cardinal direction. “That way to where it gets a little more mountainous. You can find some pathways that will eventually take you toward Yggdrasil.”

“Understood,” the Borg answered.

“So, did you see him?” The woman inquired. When the drone’s expression remained unchanged, she furrowed her brow and continued to stare as if she were watching an experiment of some kind. “Did you see Omni? Did he introduce you to the Omniverse.”

In its mind, the Borg recalled what it had initially passed off as neural trauma. After its severance from the Collective, it had experienced flashes of some entity speaking to it—speaking at it. Fragments of the creature’s words coalesced in the drone’s mind as it tried to piece together what had once been a shrouded memory. Something about an orb of colored lights.

Omnilium?

“Omnilium,” the Borg muttered as it glanced down at its slowly regenerating stump. “Rainbow. White man. ‘You will be… reborn’.”

The female creature smirked—a smug expression that may have carried a tinge of jealously. “A prime, then.” Just like that, she suddenly relaxed and her muscles slackened. “Do you know where you are going? Do you know where you would like to go? I can accompany you.”

“Why would you help me?” If it had eyebrows, the drone would have lifted one of them. “We have nothing to offer you.”

A gentler expression spread across the purple-skinned woman’s face. “You’re a prime. You have plenty to offer me. We can help each other, you and I.” At that, she reached out a hand—a strangely human gesture that the drone understood. “My name is Iyari. I’m a night elf.”

“I am,” the Borg clasped her hand. “I am Borg.”

“Fun name,” she muttered as they shook hands. When the gesture of goodwill was completed, the ‘night elf’ gestured with her head. “Let’s move. This area can get a little too occupied after the sunsets.”

[The Borg]

The Borg exhaled.

Iyari scratched the side of her head. “You’re certain you saw Omni? You didn’t just hit your head on the fountain and develop amnesia? That stuff can happen to people in this place.”

“I am certain.”

With a shake of her head, the night elf gestured to the space above the Borg’s upturned palm. “You can see nothing in your mind?”

A scowl spread across the drone’s visage. Over the last eighty years, its mind had been a sea of beautiful, sonorous voices speaking in perfect harmony with one another. The silence that pervaded the Borg’s mind was deafening and bordered on debilitative. How was it supposed to create thoughts when such actions had been irrelevant for nearly a century with the Collective? The purple-skinned creature failed to comprehend the challenge of its task.

For its part, the Borg tried to focus its thoughts on a single task or object. Again, the drone experienced a jarring sensation and found itself recoiling as if struck in the head with blunt object. “I cannot,” it spoke as it glanced at the creature. “Perhaps a side-effect of my arrival here?”

“Possibly,” Iyari replied before falling silent to mule over a thought in her head. When it took shape, she opened her mouth once more. “Maybe you just need more omnilium. You might not have enough right now to summon anything… primes are supposed to naturally accumulate the stuff.”

“That is the only way?”

Iyari shook her head. “Can also extract it from stuff, is what I’ve heard. I saw a prime in Yggdrasil extract the omnilium from a broken-down house and use it to create a new one. Can also use the stuff to heal bodies and fix objects.” At that, she pointed with one of her lithe fingers to the stump that had once been the Borg’s other arm. “That’s probably why your arm there looks so raw. New skin or something? Since you arrived here?”

“Correct,” the Borg muttered. A look at the limb showed that It had regrown to the wrist. Turning from the night elf, the drone brought its other hand to its face and felt only smooth flesh. Its fingers probed at the spot where its other would be and found a flap of skin over the socket.

“You’ll probably just want to rely on gaining your strength, if that’s what causing your issues… most of the time sucking the OM out of something usually requires about as much effort as generating it. Probably would help if we find something to eat, though. Dunno if you’re hungry or not, but I’m starving. You’re not a vegetarian, are you?”

The Borg shook its head. “No.” It left out the fact that it did not require sustenance. The female creature’s remarks about omnilium swirled in its head. It had left out the fact that it now recalled the entirety of its conversation with the white creature. If it was to revive the Collective, the drone would have to acquire more the material.

'Anything you desire can be yours.’

“Follow me.” Iyari instructed. “It shouldn’t be that hard to track something down in this part of the woods.”

[The Borg]

It was some type of terrestrial quadruped with antlers. The drone’s recollections from before its assimilation kept repeating the word ‘deer,’ but the animal that lay vivisected and chopped up didn’t exactly match the description. For one, its antlers weren’t those of a deer, and its fur was all wrong. Either way, it had put up very little fight once the night elf huntress sank an arrow into the side of its throat.

To play the part, the Borg found itself consuming the cooked flesh and meat. Despite the strange settings and its severance from the Collective, the drone felt zero need to consume any macromolecules. Even so, it understood the important role played by keeping up pretenses, so it spent a fruitless thirty minutes chewing over bits of flesh and muscle. Was it supposed to experience some kind of sensation? The woman kept inquiring about taste, but the Borg received zero positives as it gnashed the chunks of tissue around its mouth.

Despite the futility of this exchange, the drone did note that its other eye had recovered functionality. With both of its eyes working, the Borg could see the world in shinier detail. Who would have thought binocular vision could be so helpful? Beyond the recovery of its eye, its previously amputated hand had nearly recovered as well. All that remained were fingers, which were still little more than lumps of unformed tissues at the ends of its palm.

“So, what’s your world like?” Iyari asked after nearly forty minutes of enjoyable silence.

The Borg paused to force down its current mouthful of sustenance. That interval also gave it the time to prepare an adequate response to the purple-skinned creature. “A lot of blue and green,” it responded before taking another bite of the meat slab in its hands. The punctuating gesture was intended to defer additional conversation, but in that regard, it failed.

“I was actually summoned,” Iyari replied. “They expanded the settlement around Yggdrasil a few years ago, and boom, here I am,” she said with a faint smile.

The Borg furrowed its brow. “You were created? You are a construct?”

Iyari shook her head. “No, I’m flesh and blood,” she answered. “But, like this elk, that flesh and blood was given shape by omnilium. Everything’s omnilium,” she added with a faint laugh.

“Acknowledged,” the drone muttered as it looked at the slab of meat. Omnilium was supposed to be an integral resource in this location so did that mean there was an ancillary logic behind imbibing this mass of lipids and proteins?

Better yet…

The drone looked at the night elf. If her words were accurate, that made her an additional source of omnilium, did it not? She was a more complex creature so would have mean more of the material had gone into her construction? The Borg’s eyes wandered. A rock rested a few feet away from its position. Iyari’s focus had gone to something else—her almost whimsical gaze reflecting upon the darkened forest around them.

“There is motion,” the Borg muttered, standing up and lifting its almost-arm to gesture behind the purple woman’s location. “Are the leave supposed to rustle like that?”

Iyari scowled and glanced over her head.

The drone stepped forward, bending to scoop the rock from the ground. As the night elf turned her head back at the sound of thuds on the ground, the Borg slammed the rock into the side of her face. Facial bones imploded as the force twisted her head back toward the shoulder. A spray of blood hit the air as the top few layers of skin were sheered away by the blow. In a rapid motion, the Borg peeled the ensanguined stone away and delivered another thunderous strike that liberated a few teeth as it caused the woman to crumple backwards.

Dropping the rock, the Borg picked up the woman’s spear. As it stepped over her, it caught a look in her on her bloodied face.

Fear. A long time since fear.

Fear was fun.

The spear tip plunged down through the night elf’s heart. Her corpse seized a few times before falling still. Leaving the spear sticking down through her ribcage, the Borg took the knife from her belt and started to slice into her body. Until it discovered a more effective means of retrieving the omnilium, it would have to stick to a tried and true method.

[The Borg]

The flesh and meat had, much like the elk, been an exercise in endurance, but the drone preserved. Within an hour, it found itself staring at what remained of the night elf hunter. Underneath the purple skin, her anatomy had been strikingly similar to that of Species 5618.

We feel no different.

Even so, the Borg could flex a fresh set of fingers. They weren’t functioning properly just yet, but they still worked. With any luck, they would be operating within acceptable parameters by the return of the sun. Once the day cycle started again, the Borg wasn’t sure what the next step would be. Should it seek out additional informants? With the night elf’s knife and spear at his disposal, the drone believed it had sufficient means to defend itself in the event of ambush. The primitive implements would have to serve due until more advanced armaments could be secured.

What now?

The Borg was still in a hostile realm with no access to the might of the true Collective. It needed additional intelligence in order to deduce the rules of this world. It needed…

We require additional drones.

In the event that the ‘elves’ words about onmilium were invented, the Borg would have to assimilate new species if it had any chance to restore the Collective. One vessel could not house the Borg. For now, it would have to… survive. Such a concept felt almost wrong for the Borg. Borg do not just survive. Borg adapt. Borg assimilate.

The rules are different. We must play smart. We must protect the Collective. We must not fail. We are Borg.

“Acknowledged,” the Borg spoke out loud as it retrieved the spear from the pile of ensanguined bones and festering organs.

[center]***[/center]

Time had passed in the forest. The Borg had been unable to follow the exact flow of time-space. Efforts had been made to do so initially, but after a period of time, it had realized that the rules seemed to have changed. The Borg had tried to keep track of the minutes, but a period of forty minutes had wound up being nearly three days. Despite its own internal systems not reflecting this lapse, the environment showed indications that ninety-six hours was the accurate assessment. Trees had lost their leaves. Insects had gone through their larval phases.

The Borg had chalked this up to its weakness, yet even as it grew stronger, time failed to follow its usual logic. Even after the drone’s physical form ceased to show any lingering signs of damage, the world continued to operate under its alien physical and temporal rules. After additional practice, the Borg had managed to ‘summon’ something. While it kept both of its hands as organic implements, it had implemented a means to shift a hand into a blade. The tool had been welcomed after the elf’s spear had failed to injure the hide of a rampaging quadruped.

With its body sturdy, strong, and seemingly capable of interacting with most foreign elements in the jungle, the Borg had set its sights on its larger mission—the Collective. Over the last [unknown period of time], it had stalked various settlements in the region. In many ways, the drone had adjusted to its ‘unique’ existence as the one ‘We.’ It had tapped into the knowledge and memories of its casing, and while the information it contained was only partially valid, it nevertheless had been a wealth of helpful data.

From the small cavern it had inhabited for the last [unknown period of time], the Borg had watched and taken notes on over a dozen different intelligent species. It had seen more of the purple, Vulcan-looking elves, many various individuals of Species 5618, and countless strains of hulking, green-skinned bipeds. It had watched floating creatures with furry heads and tiny wings bob around in the rivers. A large civilization near to the gate that connected to the White Space housed at least two dozen individual species on its own. Who knew how much those various cultures could add to the Collective, but the Borg would find that information out in due time.

For now, it had narrowed itself down to a known quantity. In units of four, the elves patrolled a stretch of the river every two weeks on foot. The Borg had seen them come and go at least ten times, and each and every time, they never varied their strategy or their course.

On this occasion, the Borg would engage them in combat. It would slay three of them for omnilium fuel, but it would preserve the fourth.

That individual would receive the ultimate gift.

It would be assimilated.

[The Borg]

The Borg stared at the creature that lay on the ground beneath him.  From his research, he understood that this was a ‘traditionally beautiful’ specimen, or at least it had been before the spear tore open its abdomen.  Now, the purple elf creature was gasping for breath and trying her hardest to prevent her entrails from splashing out onto the forest floor.

“Why do you resist?”  The Borg inquired, tilting its head as it stepped forward and crouched in front of the dying beast.  The drone lifted its left hand and stared briefly at the blood that dripped from the blade.  As it watched, the metallic implement quivered before morphing back into a set of functioning digits.

The night elf, one hand still grasped around her ruptured stomach, reached her other set of quivering fingers toward her short sword.  “I… I didn’t attack you.  My sisters, they didn’t attack you.”

The Borg couldn’t help it, but a faint smirk spread across its face as it lifted its eyes.  Just yards away from this dying night elf, the other three members of her ‘squad’ lay twisted and broken in the underbrush.  All had been unmounted.  The Borg had watched the ‘patrols’ that combed this area for weeks and committed their schedules into its memory banks.  It knew where they would be, and that this particular unit would be without the nighsaber creatures.

***

The setup had been a combination of luck and careful planning.

While not particular adept at combat from close quarters, the Borg had surprised the quartet of female fighters.  As they had passed through the area, they unwillingly triggered a trap that caused a nearby tree to collapse onto them.  In that initial confusion, the drone had managed to stab one of the elves through the base of the spine and land a deep slash across the abdomen of a second.  The other two, alive and composed following that initial ambush, drew steel weaponry.  Although shaken by the wails of their injured companion, they were still hardened soldiers who pressed the attack.

The Borg, its bladed appendage at the ready, fell back as its adversaries advanced to close the gap.  The pair of slender creatures would outclass the drone once they managed to regain their calm and composure.  Under normal circumstances, the Borg philosophy was a frontal assault, because Borg rarely encountered species that could match them.  In this instance, the drone understood that such tactics were inappropriate, so even as the blade-wielding elves advanced, it retreated once more.  The steps, however, were calculated and preplanned, taking it backwards over a small patch of half-dead shrubs.

The lead elf came forward, and her foot stomped down hard through the unimposing plant.  Before the leg came back up, the warrior woman felt the bit of metal that she had stepped onto.  Her eyes quickly spotted the small piece of twine that now lay limp across the ground—one end wired to the small bit of metal and the other terminating somewhere in the trees.

Instincts were just too little, too late.  A sharpened tree branch slung down from the other copse and crashed into the elf, punching clean through the right side of her ribcage and carrying her nearly fifteen more feet.

The final woman kept her eyes on her companion a little too long, and when she looked away, the blade had already met the flesh at the base of her neck.  With a gurgling rasp, she clutched at the wound even as blood started to bubble down into her lungs.

***

“Whatever you are, you will be found,” the night elf whispered between labored breaths.

“The Borg want to be found,” the drone replied as it walked over to a bush and bent to retrieve a case it had crafted in preparation for this encounter.  When it returned, the Borg set the small metal container next to the dying creature.  The biological vessel that the drone had once been would have called the object ‘a briefcase,’ because it had a small handle and little clasps to keep it shut.  With the depression of a nearby button, the latches popped free.  Inside the case was a collection of syringes filled with murky, oil-colored liquids.  The Borg picked up one from the middle and tilted its head.

“We’ve tested these on smaller variants of organic life.”  The drone depressed the plunger to insure there wasn’t any air in the tip of the oversized needle.  “Naturally, they perished; however, unintelligent life is unfit to be Borg.”

“Just let me die,” the night elf groaned as she tried to squirm away.

“Do not resist, Species 12031,” the Borg muttered as it leaned forward and heartlessly slammed the syringe into the chest of the night elf.  She let out a hideous, ear-splitting scream as the slushy of liquefied nanocytes burned through her heart and into her bloodstream.  “Resistance is futile,” the drone muttered as the injected elf sagged back onto the forest floor.

After returning the empty vial to the case, the drone sat and watched.  It had tested the concoction of nanoprobes for the last few weeks using this planet’s strange energy source.  Through use of the omnilium technology, the Borg had crafted a virtually identical copy of the actual Borg nanites.  As the hours faded away, the Borg remained focused on observing the creature, trying to visualize the work of the nanites.

The drone understood that this first attempt would be harrowing and difficult.  At various times, it felt sharp pangs and electrical jolts in its brain.  Yet, it was important that it did not fail.  Failure meant the end of the Borg Collective.

The Collective will not end in this strange world. This Omniverse, with its twisted physical laws and bizarre form of renewable energy, would be tamed like thousands of other worlds.

As the hours melted away, the Borg saw that its efforts and the work of the nanintes was not without results.  The wounds that the night elf had attained prior to its collapse had mended, leaving a curved scar across its flat stomach.  Bits of metal decorated certain parts of the physique that had to be reinforced to handle the added Borg structures beneath the smooth, pale violet flesh of the creature.  The right side of its face had the foundation of the visor-like tech piece that served as an advanced interface and an anchoring point for the underlying myo-neural cortical array.

Almost there.