(Untitled)

[bredtokillborg]

The high-pitched whine of machine parts moving fluidly against one another sounds almost before the footsteps do, and Second of Five rounds the corner of Starbase Infinity, lost and nearly stumbling in his overwhelming confusion

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[psychette10]

"Whoah..."

Jackie had been standing at a computer screen in the wall, trying to figure out the way back to her quarters...apparently she'd wandered too far once again. But at the Borg's responses, she lost all interest in the screen and just stared, taking a hesitant step backward in reflex.

[bredtokillborg]

The drone turns towards her; he is missing his ocular implant, and his exposed eyes belay his fear confusion. "Species five-six-one-eight." He raises his hand, fingers extended where a complete drone's assimilation tubules should be - unfortunately (for him; fortunately for everyone else) First and Fifth of Five had been the only ones with that particular functional capacity. "Resistance is- resistance is--" he lowers the hand again, voice oscillating with alarming frequency. "You must add your distinctiveness to our own."

[psychette10]

She was wavering...run? stay? run? stay? He seemed a bit lost...

"...are...you ok?" Looks like she wasn't going to run yet, thinking more of helping him if he needed it first.

[bredtokillborg]

"We are Borg," he answers, which isn't really an answer at all but far be it for him to understand that, "We have been separated from the Collective."

First would be shouting at him, threatening deactivation for disclosing such information... but First is not present. Second is more alone now than he was even before, on the devastated Borg Cube. At least the other drones had been there, separated though their consciousnesses were.

"We are malfunctioning." He raises the same hand again, as though to show her what he means by establishing the fact that she is not currently Borging it up alongside him, "we must return to the Collective. We must add your distinctiveness to our own."

[psychette10]

Jackie knows who the Borg are...more scary in person really than just hearing about them. But this one, he seems so alone. Her inner medical assistant was fighting with her survival instincts to flee as fast as she could.

Swallowing hard, she takes a timid step forward towards him. "I'd...rather just be friends. Could I help you...get fixed?" It was an awkward term to use but she couldn't think of what the opposite of malfunctioning would be.

[bredtokillborg]

"Friendship is irrelevant," his hand lowers a second time, but he stiffens and looks directly at her with a kind of desperate intensity when she asks the question directly afterward. By 'fixed,' he assumes she means that she has a way to reestablish contact with the other Borg, of course. Naturally. They will reassimilate him. Everything will make sense again. "Yes--" he doesn't know where he learned the next word, but it slips from him before he even realizes he's speaking it, "please."

[psychette10]

"Friendship isn't irrelevant...friends tend to help each other a bit more than nonfriends." She wondered if he'd let her scan him with her medical tricorder on her shoulder and slowly unslung it from her shoulder into her hands to open the top.

That please is the clincher, she can't just leave him here. "Ok, I'll do my best...what's your name?"

[bredtokillborg]

"Explain," his rudimentary understanding of friendship does not include anything like... helping each other. He only knows it as something that the Borg do not need, as their singular consciousness is totally devoted to the betterment of them all.

"Names are irrelevant. I am designated Second of Five," He eyes her tricorder warily, but doesn't move to stop her from using it.

[psychette10]

"Explain a friend? Hoo boy....um..." She thinks for a second. "It's like...a sort of agreement between two people that like being around each other. They both like helping each other because of their friendship. You both look out for the other person's wellbeing and respect the other's decisions. Does that help?"

"That works for a name. I'm Jackie." She scans him for injuries or if he's sick...

[bredtokillborg]

"I do not know," he said, before frowning. Trying to relate her explanation with anything he could still recognize, anything that was Borg protocol. It didn't end up working quite right, but give the boy points for effort. "It is a Collective?" Not that the Borg drones make decisions to respect, really, but he can't come up with anything else.

"Jackie," he repeats, somewhat mystified; at first he takes a step back from the scanning device like he's afraid it'll hurt, before thinking better of it and returning. She might be able to read that he suffers a number of malfunctions in his internal cybernetic implants, nothing life-threatening, but a result of his having been ejected from the Borg maturation chamber before he was done being fully transformed into a drone. More importantly, he also carries a deadly pathogen, genetically engineered to kill Borg; it's currently dormant. "You are Species 5618. Species 5618 resists, even though it is futile. Why are you... helping me?"

[psychette10]

"...something like that. Only with humans, instead of taking parts from others, we work together as individuals. It's...nice...to have friends. Sort of gives you a sense of purpose." She was probably grasping at straws trying to explain this, but she was doing her level best.

She reads all of that on her scanner, but realizes he may not know about this himself so she keeps quiet about it. She smirks a bit at his next statement. "That's a big number for our species...out of curiousity, does that mean we're the 5,618th species the Borg has come in contact with?"

That question is the hardest to answer. She takes her time in answering. "Because...I want to."

[bredtokillborg]

"Only with humans?" Second considered that he was originally part of Species 2461, and as he lacks memory and basic understanding of life before he was a drone, he does not truly know if it is something that can be applied even to the Brunali. He paused, horrified at his own line of thought, and quickly adding, "Disregard that question. It is irrelevant." He is Borg. Not Brunali.

"Affirmative. The Borg have recently encountered Species 10142." He paused again, looking down in discomfort; he was to the point of volunteering excess information. Conversing out loud instead of through the hive mind was complex, difficult; First of Five would have been livid.

He tries to get back on track. "I do not understand. That is an insufficient explanation."

[psychette10]

She doesn't listen and answers anyway. "Well, not ONLY with humans...it's not exclusive to us. Many species have friends, even ones from different species can be friends with each other."

She notices his discomfort and hopes that it's not her causing it. "Hey...I didn't offend you or anything did I? I'm not gonna hurt you. I try to never hurt anyone if absolutely possible."

"It's a bit...difficult to explain further than that. I don't think I could explain it to where you would understand it." But she hopes she's wrong about that.

[bredtokillborg]

"Then it is a Collective," he affirms his earlier comparison, trying not to look too much like he's desperate to rejoin one. It's hard being alone in his own head, again.

"Offend me?" he doesn't appear to fully grasp the concept of this, after all, you cannot offend a drone. "Our objective is not to harm. We only wish to add to our perfection. To share it with all worthy species. You will understand, when you have been assimilated."

And god help him, he really believes it. "Oh." He shifts, glancing towards her tricorder, now that it has finished, "can you correct my malfunctions?"

[psychette10]

"Yes but..." How can she put this...?

"It's not right to impose on another person. I like being me, I don't want to have machine parts hooked onto me, I can live just fine without them. If I were...assimilated...I wouldn't be me anymore. I'd be just like the rest of the borg...decidedly UN-unique."

She sighs. "I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to. I'm used to helping fix people...er...organic parts, not machine parts. But I might be able to find someone who could help. There's a lot of clever people here on Starbase Infinity."

[bredtokillborg]

"Uniqueness is..." his brow wrinkles, and the whirr of mechanical apparatus is loud and jarring when he tilts his head, "irrelevant." All of his memories have been replaced with Borg protocol, but Second emerged too soon from the Maturation chamber to have been given the restructured, ordered Borg mind. Forced separation from the Collective didn't help either. He finds he cannot truly validate his reasoning to someone who doesn't want to be Borg, because he cannot fathom it.

He draws back then, startled by the concept. She'd said she would be able to fix him. He doesn't know anyone else here, clever or otherwise- he doesn't know that they wouldn't try to hurt him. "... No."