43Out of the Virtual, Into the Real
Missing Scenes from "Icheb" and "Destiny," by jamelia
Note: When I chose to write "Destiny" almost entirely from the point of view of either Icheb or Mezoti, I knew it would limit my ability to portray certain aspects of the story as I'd envisioned it. I could often get around this by having one of the other characters tell Icheb about what happened, or he could summarize the event in his Personal Log entries.
That wasn't something I felt I could do for two segments, however. The first was Admiral Kathryn Janeway's thoughts as she accepted the challenge of confronting the Borg Queen on her own turf. "The Last Log of Admiral Kathryn Janeway" tells that part of the story. It's already been posted.
I also wanted to show Seven reconnecting with Axum when they finally meet in person at the Rift. At first, I thought it would be a cute little "missing scene," placed after Icheb's suggestion that his mother fix Axum's faulty vocal processor. Icheb perceived that Seven's affections for Axum had not diminished, nor his for her. "Little" and "jamelia stories" are usually mutually exclusive, however. Although this story isn't as long as "Icheb" and "Destiny" (especially if the two are read together, as they should be), this one has also grown in the telling. We're going to journey back in time, to Seven's life as Annika Hansen, both before her assimilation, and after, whether she's cavorting with Axum and their compatriots in Unimatrix Zero or on living on Voyager. I hope you find it worth the trip. -jamelia
=/\=
"Axum!" she gasped.
"Annika, it is alsso good to ssee you oncse again."
It was impossible. Her cortical array must be malfunctioning, the way it did years ago, when she hallucinated over and over again and reverted to the personas of people who had been assimilated by the Borg. Those memories were still buried inside her head, along with so many other bits of Borg data that she usually could keep under control, but at that time, she could not. Yet there was Korok, too, and the being from the Species 8472 space station in the Delta Quadrant, who had taken on the shape of the gardener at Starfleet Academy.
How could this be happening? Yet surely, it was. She heard the Boothby replicant tell Captain Janeway they wanted to schedule a meeting. Peace talks, he said. They wanted to come on Voyager, and the captain said they could.
Axum. Here? Meeting face to face? It was impossible. He was so far away, on a sphere deep in the Beta Quadrant, they could never expect to meet. Yet in their last meeting in Unimatrix Zero, with that virtual reality sanctuary exploding all around them, he said he would find her. Here he was. Logically, it could never happen.
But now it seemed it would.
=/\=
Mama and Papa were arguing again. Mama kept saying, "We should go back. We have enough data."
Papa didn't agree. "Just a little more time. That's all I need." He left. But then he came back. "Fly, fly!" he cried.
Little Annika didn't know where they were exactly, but she did know one thing. They had traveled very far from home. Far from Aunt Irene, and strawberries, and bouquets of red flowers. Far from anyone she used to know, other than Mama and Papa. Where would they go? How could they fly away, if they didn't have a safe place to fly to?
All they had seen for many, many days, were stars, glowing beautifully into their ship through the windows, like the precious jewels Mama had shown her on their computer screen. Diamonds. Sapphires. Rubies. Amber and Topaz. But the stars were paler in color. Almost as wispy as the veils of gases Mama and Papa called nebulas, which sometimes enfolded their little ship and hid it from that other one. The big one.
The big, dark ugly cube thing they followed. Dark metal cube, studded with evil looking projections and holes like mouths, ready to swallow them, like the bad giants in the fairy tales Mama read to her sometimes. Those stories always ended happily. Jack would cut down the beanstalk, and the bad giant would fall to the ground and die.
Annika didn't know why, but today, she didn't want to think of bad giants. Mama's stories always ended happily for everyone but the giant. But this story was their own; Mama wasn't reading to Annika calmly. No, she was yelling at Papa to get out of there. She was frightened. And that frightened Annika.
She heard the many voices of the Borg echoing throughout the ship as they flew away, as fast as their little ship could fly, looking for a safe place. A place to hide.
Resistance is futile...
She wasn't sure what resistance meant. Was it good or was it bad? But then she heard Mama scream, and Papa was yelling at her, "Run, Annika! Hide!"
She tried to do what Papa told her to do. Annika found her favorite spot under the bulkhead, her hidey-hole where she could crawl back so far, she could almost disappear. Almost.
The big man came. One of his eyes glowed red, as bright as the rubies on the computer screen. She liked red, but she didn't like the red beam of light that shot out of his eye when he looked underneath the bulkhead. She crawled away, as far in as she could, trying to hide.
His arm was too long for her to get away. Instead of a hand, he had a grasping claw that grabbed her by the leg and pulled her out. Metal tubes slipped out of the back of his other hand, like the claws of the gray-striped kitty cat that cousin Anna-Christina had in Sweden. Abby-cat, who scratched Annika on the arm when she tried to pet her.
The metal claws came up to plunge sharp needles into her neck. It hurt, it hurt so much more than Abby-cat's claws had! Annika heard screams. Screams from Mama. Shrieks of fear, coming from her own mouth. Pain! Pain! Worse than anything she'd ever felt before! Metal things sprouted out of her skin so quickly, she couldn't scrape them all away. Pain snaked throughout her body. What was happening to her? What did the evil giant do to her? How could she make him die?
The big evil man with a red laser light for an eye picked her up and threw her over his shoulder. He marched up to other evil giants. One held Mama around the neck, and another held Papa. But they didn't look like Mama and Papa anymore. Metal things were sprouting out of their skin, too. Their skin had turned gray slimy-looking. While their eyes were looking at Annika, they didn't seem to be able to see her as she screamed for them to help her. Their eyes were dead.
The evil giants didn't die. Mama and Papa must have died, instead.
The family of Magnus and Erin Hansen disappeared from The Raven in a wave of energy sent out by a transporter beam to bring them to the big, ugly metal cube. The one they had been following for almost as long as Annika could remember. The big evil giant with the red laser eye carried her through corridors that gleamed with ugly green light. The hallways were as ugly as the outside of the big cube. The giant stopped in front of a little door with a glass window in it. He pushed on a button that was just above it, and the door opened. The giant stuffed Annika inside a metal box, not much bigger than her hiding place on The Raven. The one that hadn't hid her away, even though she'd tried to do what Papa had told her to do. The giant fit some sort of mask over her head and face; then he threw the door closed so hard, the clanging sound reverberated all around her. Liquid began to fill the chamber. It deadened the echo as it climbed up around her, filling the chamber until the water rose over her head.
She couldn't be under water. Mama told her once that fishes could swim under water for days, for all of their lives, even, but people would drown without air to breathe. She tried to scream again, but when she did, something went inside her mouth, and the mask over her head wouldn't let her pull the thing out.
Annika began to hear whispers that grew louder and louder, until she realized they came from many voices inside her head, not through her ears. She could tell Mama's and Papa's were in there, but there were so many others, too, she could barely hear her parents. She could barely hear herself, with so many others shouting into her mind. The biggest voice, that loudest one, belonged to some other woman, not Mama. She was telling Annika that her distinctiveness was being added to her own. Annika didn't know what that meant, but suddenly, as if something had switched off, her own inner voice began to fade away. The voices told her it didn't matter. She should just relax. She didn't need to breathe. All she had to do was listen to the voices in her head. They would tell her everything she needed to know when she was grown.
When she was Borg.
=/\=
When Annika woke up, she was in the middle of a beautiful forest. Light dappled down through the leaves of the trees high overhead. She sat up. She didn't know where she was, exactly, but Aunt Irene had taught her a prayer to help her go to sleep when she visited her once.
"Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take."
When Annika asked where the Lord was going to take her soul, Aunt Irene said, "He'll take your soul to Heaven, Annika."
Was this Heaven?
She looked around for Mama and Papa, but she couldn't see them anywhere. At least she was out of that terrible metal hidey-hole filled with water. She didn't have anything over her face to keep her from breathing the clean, sweet air of the forest. The air in forests was so different from the air in spaceships. You could always smell a whiff of machine oil and metal on a spaceship. She had visited the woods in Sweden, and a couple of times on planets where Mama and Papa had brought her on a visit to what they said was "a natural world." In the forest, you could smell earth and grass and leaves and rain and, sometimes, flowers. Red ones, especially. Red flowers were her favorites.
Annika stood up so she could see better. She was standing next to a footpath that led in two directions. Which way should she go? She shrugged her shoulders and walked towards her right.
She hadn't walked too far before a lady came from the other way. She was an alien lady, with bumps on her forehead and chin that weren't like a human's. She smiled when she saw Annika, though. Her mouth and her teeth looked almost the same as Mama's. Her smile was friendly. The lady called out to her, "Hello, little one. Do you know where you are?"
"Am I in Heaven? I need to find my Mama and Papa."
"Well, let's look for them together." They walked along the path for a little while. The lady didn't ask any more questions at first, but then she asked, "What's your name, little one?"
"My name is Annika Hansen. My Mama's name is Erin Hansen. Papa's name is Magnus Hansen. Do you know them?"
"You know, I just met your mother a little while ago. I know where she is. She's been looking all over for you, little Annika. I'm so glad I found you so I could bring you to her."
The lady was telling the truth. When they came to a place where two paths ran in different directions, the alien lady brought her along the lower way, leading to an open clearing where a lot of people were sitting around. At first, it seemed none of were human. but then Annika saw her. "Mama! Mama!"
Mama's head turned around. The sadness flew away from her face as she ran towards Annika, even faster than Annika ran to her. They hugged each other so tightly, Annika didn't know if she'd be able to breathe in the smells of the forest anymore. But this was better. This was Mama, and she smelled like she always did. Whether they were inside The Raven or in forests like this one, Mama always smelled faintly like roses because of the perfume she wore.
When Mama let her go, Annika rested her body against her mother's, while Mama gently stroked the hair off Annika's forehead. Everywhere she looked, the people in the clearing were smiling at them. They must be happy to see a mother find her daughter. But someone was missing.
"Mama, where's Papa?"
"I don't know, sweetheart. I haven't found him yet, but I'm so happy to find you here."
"I'll help you look for him," Annika said.
"I'm sure you will."
"He might be looking for us, too. I was scared when the giant with the red light for one eye grabbed me and put me in the hidey-hole filled with water. If he was put into a hidey-hole like that, he might be scared, too."
Mama didn't say anything. When Annika looked up at her mother's face, she saw the tears. "Don't cry, Mama. We'll find him."
Erin Hansen sighed and hugged her child closer to her again for a moment before looking around her and calling out to the alien lady that had found Annika. "Pennia, I can't thank you enough for finding her. I was so afraid . . ."
"I'm glad I found her, too. It's a big adjustment for any of us." Pennia came close and whispered in Mama's ear, "You do realize she's in a maturation chamber, don't you? She's safe as long as her cube is, so don't worry. You'll be able to visit with her whenever you're both regenerating. She won't be here all the time. Even in the chambers, there are awake periods as well as regeneration times."
"What's a maturuhshun chamber, Mama?"
"Little ears!" Erin exclaimed, laughing.
"She must have very sharp hearing in the real, if she could hear me whispering to you in here," Pennia laughed back ruefully. "I thought I was only talking to Erin. You are a curious little female, aren't you, Annika."
"Yes, I am," Annika replied firmly. "So, what is a matur . . ."
Pennia sighed. "A maturation chamber is a place where children grow up and learn what they need to know to be . . . little one, do you know what a Borg is?"
"I do. Papa and Mama were studying them." She hesitated and looked up at her mother. "What does it mean that I'm in a . . . matur-ra-tion chamber?"
"Honey, you know we tried to get away from the cube Papa was studying, right?"
Annika nodded.
"Well, we didn't make it."
"You mean the bad giants were Borgs, and they susassimilated us?"
"Yes, sweetheart. They assimilated us. We're Borg now, too."
Annika sat down on the grass next to the pathway. Her mother sank to the ground next to her and pulled her into her arms. Pennia walked a little away from them, to give them time to absorb this new, terrible knowledge.
After a short time, Annika climbed into her mother's lap and brushed the tears from her cheeks. There were a lot, so she wasn't able to wipe them all away, but she did the best she could. Erin smiled at her daughter and said, "Thank you, honey. It's so good you're here with me."
"Mama, it will be okay. It's not so bad being a Borg. It doesn't look anything at all like the inside of the cube where they took us. They must have brought us to a nice planet to live instead of being bad giants like them."
"Oh, honey, we are inside the cube. Pennia told me all about this place. We're lucky to be here. We have something called a mutation in our bodies that allows us to visit this place in our minds while we're regenerating. We won't remember being here when we wake up, but the next time we regenerate, we'll come back. We can be together again then."
"What is this place?"
Erin looked up at Pennia, who came closer and told them, "We call this Unimatrix Zero."
"Will Papa visit here, too, Mama?"
"I don't know, sweetheart. We'll keep looking for him whenever we're here." Erin glanced away from Annika then, coughing to clear her throat of the tears that threatened to choke her again.
"Mama, If I'm safe, why are you crying?"
"Oh, dear, you are safe now, but nothing is the same. Nothing. You'll have to be strong and brave. We'll have to learn to adapt, like all the people have in Unimatrix Zero."
Erin hugged her daughter close for a few moments, but then her body stiffened. "Oh, sweetheart, I feel so funny. What's happening to me?" She looked up towards Pennia. "Help me!"
"It will be all right, Erin. You're just waking up on your cube. You won't remember being here when you do, but the next time you regenerate, you'll be back. Annika will be here again, too."
Mama didn't feel like Mama anymore to Annika. She seemed to get all spongy all of a sudden, and then, like the way pictures on the computer screen suddenly fade away into nothingness when it's turned off, Mama flickered away, too. Annika suddenly fell to the ground. Mama had disappeared.
Annika started to scream for her mother. Many people ran towards her, but Pennia was there to pick her up off the ground and carry her inside one of the cloth tents that fluttered in the breeze around the glade. She sat down on a bench, holding the desolate little girl on her lap, and began to sing very softly in a language Annika had never heard before. Slowly, the meaning of the words began to come to her. Pennia was singing everything would be all right soon. Just stay calm. Morning will be here before Annika knew it. All would be well. She promised it would.
Annika stopped crying. She tried to put the pieces of what Mama and Pennia had told her together so she could understand what had happened. She was Borg. She was inside a little hiding place filled with water with a mask over her face and head, but she was here, too. Pennia said Mama would come back again to Unimatrix Zero. They would be together again. Would Papa find them? Maybe he would come to study them, too. She sighed. She didn't understand, but she hoped that she would, someday.
Annika stayed with Pennia for a long time, but then Pennia said, "Annika, I'm going to be going away now, too, like your mother. I'm waking up in the cubicle on my sphere. Will you stay with that boy over there until you wake up and leave, too?"
Annika said she would. Pennia called to the boy, who seemed to be much older than Annika. He started to walk towards them, but Pennia began to go all spongy, too, just like Mama. Before Annika had the chance to take another breath, she thumped down hard on the bench. Pennia was gone. Annika began to cry again.
"Hey, It's okay. I'm here. I'll take care of you," the boy said as he sat down beside her. "I just got here. My regeneration cycle just started. I'm willing to bet you'll be the one who disappears before I do. And when you regenerate again, you'll come back here and find your mama here, too. I don't know your name . . ."
"Annika," she said hesitantly. "My name is Annika Hansen."
The boy had a kind face. He was an alien, like everyone else in the glade, but he wasn't the same kind of alien as Pennia. His forehead was very broad from side to side, and it went up very high. She could hardly see the hair on the top of his head from where she was sitting. His forehead had a shape like a long, flat spoon running down middle of it. She thought it looked a little like the mountain that Papa showed her on the computer, the last time he gave her a lesson in geology. He called it a mesa. Otherwise, he looked almost like a human. Mama had told her she had to be strong and brave, so she asked him, "What's your name?"
"My name is Axum."
"Are you in a matur . . . maturation chamber, too?"
"No. I never was. I was old enough to become a drone right away. I'm Five of Twelve when I'm awake. But when I'm here in Unimatrix Zero, I'm just Axum. Why don't we go over to the shelter on the other side of the pathway. There are young children there you can play with. That's the shelter I go to whenever I'm here. I'm not a grown-up Ioronian yet, so I still like to play sports and games with the other children. Some are young, like you, and some are older, like me. The ones who are about the same age as you are also in maturation chambers. Come, let me introduce you to some of them."
She stopped crying and wiped her eyes. He held out his hand for her. Together, they went to the shelter he'd pointed out. He was right. There were other children there. Annika thought there must be a lot of Borg in maturation chambers.
She had no idea then just how many there were.
=/\=