Bioware and lace
What if you made her love you?
This is the thought that came when you met her in the corridor and exchanged
your subtext-laden greetings. She was on her way to the weekly immunosuppressant
- that a slow sustained release to knock out part of the thing she used to be.
That last part is the thing that triggered the thought that has derailed you
utterly.
If you made her, are her feelings real? You've always accepted - assumed - that
when Seven is cruel or callous it's the result of nature rather than nurture.
You used to know that Annika Hansen is a kind and gentle woman, empathic and
sensitive. The harsh edges are Borg, the bitterness implanted by heartless
metal.
After the terrible thought occurs, you know something new; Annika Hansen is
dead.
And it took you a long time to realise this, far longer than it should have.
Proof that you can't think clearly when it comes to her. You have a tall blonde
blind spot and too many responsibilities not to worry about that.
At first she was a child, a doll. You dressed her up, grew her hair out, taught
her how to paint her lips. Your parents always taught you that beauty is only
skin deep, but that little cliché lost its bite once everyone could have perfect
skin. And this, you realise, is why you showed her the Renaissance. You set out
to create a masterpiece, invented perspective and significance that wasn't there
before because it wasn't real.
You wonder if she dreams in binary. Backed up against a wall, plugged into the
machine. You wonder if she dreams with the ship.
Chakotay once told you that a surprising number of Federation worlds have a name
for the Borg that translates roughly into 'Wrath of God'. You didn't think it
was surprising. God is personal, intimate, almost voyeuristic. The Borg feel
almost tailor-made to make the Federation wake up in a cold sweat.
It's something you never realised before Seven came aboard. All of you hate
machines.
And that's the part of her that scares you. The implants, the nanoprobes, the
cold bite of metal when she touches you with that inhuman hand. Because you
know. You know she really is something more than you are, something so
terrifyingly different. Animal species, in the end, are hormones and neurons.
Anger and compassion and guilt and fear; the combinations always different, but
you always know how they think. You know why they think.
Annika Hansen is dead, the sort of dead that scares all the cultures you could
join back home. You'd take a biotech lung, you'd drink coffee that used to be
scrap metal. In a pinch you'd take someone else's blood. Those things are real,
those things are natural now. The real mark of disability these days is having
metal instead of skin.
Because what if it wakes up? What if it starts to think for you?
Your girlfriend thinks in machine code. And you thought, in that pancultural
nightmare, that you could overwrite this with hormonal language, something
organic. Something real.
And she adapted, of course, to the things you gave her. You gave her love, and
how could she not respond in kind? The Borg believe in perfection and harmony.
Seven is the not the sort of girl to be coy about sex, but she’s the sort to be
pragmatic. The things inside her are things that long to be cogs in a machine.
If one of the specifications is that Seven must love you, then Seven can be made
to adapt.
When you all of this, you realise something else; you're not sure if you want to
make her human.