“The extent to which we regard something as behaving in an intelligent manner is determined as much by our own state of mind and training as by the properties of the object under consideration.”

Alan Turing, (1948)

“Can machines think?”

This was a question that had predominated conversation ever since civilization had played at creator and built-up automata in their own image.

In his “Imitation Game”, the noted 20^th century mathematician & theoretical scientist, Alan Turing, devised the seminal benchmark for this hypothesis, with the eponymous test that sought to establish a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to that of a human.

The game presented a text transcript of a natural-language conversation to a human evaluator, whose job it was to determine which speaker was the human and which the machine. It was a test of indistinguishability in performance capacity.

This core tenet led to humanity (and any number of contemporary alien cultures that 20^th century man had yet to meet until First Contact in 2063) seeking to build machine intelligences whose progression was intended to build and better that factor of indistinguishability from one evolution to the next.

Humanity, in its desire to enhance the human component of evaluation, almost came undone when the progeny of the Human Genetic Engineering Project soon outpaced their ‘beta’-creators and the Eugenics Wars and resulting Third World war in the 21^st Century almost left the Machine – mind with no one to talk to.

So, the United Federation of Planets continued to develop mediums for the Machine – mind to thrive and flourish. They took to the stars in vessels that were more city than ship, ruled over by benevolent computers whose own intelligence bordered on the divine edge of AI (but never quite trusting them to evolve fully).

The seminal work of Dr Noonien Soong in creating the positronic brain that breathed life into the Soong-Type Synthetic intelligence Android, advanced that evolution and presented the galaxy with a life form that was (for all intents and purposes) self-aware, sapient and sentient and paved the way for a whole level of meaning for the Turning test.

Later still, in the 24^th Century, the rights of photonically-based holographic life-forms who gained autonomy, freed from their base commands of the pre-set entertainments that conjured them to life, opened up a heated discussion & fierce debate that centered around whether such projections could be considered self – aware and sentient in their own right. That debate still continued into the 25^th century.

And then there were the Borg.

In his wildest imaginings, when he had laid out the parameters of the ‘Imitation – Game’ all those years ago, Turing could have hardly been expected to conceive of a situation where machine – intelligence could and would be forcefully asserted into a biological body, to achieve hegemony over that being and form part of a vast, distributed computational matrix encompassing millions of souls.

The Imitation Game made an inverse mockery of itself.

If the original question was “Can machines think like a human?” and the parameter was indistinguishability in performance capacity, then how did the hypothesis endure in reverse?

Taken from the Borg perspective, once the process to separate the organic being from the cybernetic implants that connected it to an arguably higher state of being and connectivity were removed, the real question should really be;

“Can a human think like a machine?”

And in answer to that question, as Lieutenant – Commander Lane Hanley lay atop the knife – sharp edge of the snowdrift riven by the arctic howl, her battered EVA suit gathering the swirling flakes that settled in every crevasse facing the snowstorm until, she too, became a drift in miniature – a gentle glow of dancing golden light delivered into her midst the answer.

The transporter beam swelled in luminance, the complex energies depositing and reconstituting the individual component atoms of its traveler (in what one could only hope were the same order in which it had so meticulously teased them painlessly-apart) and receded into the snow – driven night, to reveal the Chief Engineering Officer of the USS Kirk.

Clad in a Starfleet Issue EVA suit that looked, on balance, like it had just come off the assembly-line in comparison to the battered and ill-used contemporaries worn by the CO and the Chief, from behind the faceplate that fogged internally with each breath, the single human eye of Lieutenant Vanya Anouska Petrovna peered down at the snow – clad forms of the away team, whilst the Borg ocular – implant that was socketed where her left eye had once been, shone impassively as the gold – hued device drank in a sea of data about what it was detecting and fed that information to the CPU that shared her cranium with her organic brain.

=^= “Greetings Captain.” =^= the young woman (who was actually over 50 years old) greeted Lane, her voice inflected by the round vowels of her Russian accent.

Hanley smiled, glad to see that her CEO had arrived in once piece and greeted her warmly as the cold winds endured.

=^= “We’re glad you could join us Six.” =^=

The former Borg – drone made a show of looking around at the snow – blasted landscape, the howling contaminated winds and the mass of dismembered frozen Romulan body parts strewn around the blood – soaked snow and she wrinkled her nose in discomfiture.

=^= “I wish I could say the same.” =^= Six frowned at the carnage.

Lane laughed bitterly and rose to her feet, causing a small, localized avalanche to issue forth from the slopes of her suit.

=^= “We sympathize with the sentiment, believe us.” =^= The CO of the Kirk nodded as the Chief and Professor Venrax also rose to their feet behind her. =^= “I can’t see this place getting many stars in recommendation as a travel – destination.=^=

Unsure of quite how to deal with spontaneous humor, Six looked slightly baffled and she rallied by holding out a Starfleet-issue equipment case in her hand, that Chief Harvey received from her.

=^= “I’ve been monitoring your suit telemetry from main engineering and took the liberty of brining a repair kit that should be able to patch up some of the worth damage. Bio-readings of the planetary atmosphere and local weather conditions would mean that any loss of integrity would be ultimately fatal.” =^= Six recounted levelly and without a hint of irony and Lane loved her lack of guile so completely in that moment.

=^= “Very thoughtful, Six.” =^= Lane suppressed a smile, as Chief Harvey unpacked the contents of the kit and began to prepare a seal – patch and tend first to the suit of the Romulan who they had come to rescue. She indicated the entrance to the bunker, some 330 meters away, with its grisly portico of bodies.

=^= “I’m sorry to drag you away from your work, but I have a particularly difficult problem and I think that you might be the only one to solve it? =^=

Six of Eleven nodded and conceded.

=^= “Repairs to the Kirk would progress in a more efficient manner if I was physically able to oversee the work, but I have full confidence that my engineering team will be able to complete the works with the required level of competence, Captain. What appears to be the problem?” =^=

There was a brief pause as Lane linked her suit to that of Six of Eleven and then sent her the footage her suit had recorded when the Swarm had erupted from the arctic night and descended on the Romulan Free State away team, eviscerating them ill-fated soldiers in a matter of seconds.

=^= “A heuristic-entangled autonomous dispersal – kinetic weapons system.” =^= Six commented with a slight note of approval in her voice as she watched the recording of the Swarm as it flowed and murdered with graceful aplomb. =^= “Elegant in its simplicity.” =^=

Lane killed the feed and looked out into the blinding snowstorm to where the Swarm had retreated.

=^= “Would such a system be centrally controlled or would each component part act independently of the other?” =^=

The Engineer considered this for a moment, then replied.

=^= “More than likely, the answer is both Captain. =^= Six reasoned. =^= Considered together, each element of the cloud constitutes part of a distributed computational matrix. Orders are sent from a central processor, most likely secured within the bunker below and transmitted to the Swarm. The loss of any one individual component drone would not hinder the operation of the whole; thus, it represents a highly sophisticated defence mechanism with a high factor of survivability.” =^=

=^= “So, is it intelligent?” =^= Hanley persisted, after seeing the Swarm decimate the Romulan force in mere moments she knew that there was no way to engage the ancient defence – mechanism in direct confrontation. =^= “Can it be defeated?” =^=

Six shook her head.

=^= “There’s no need for it to be so sophisticated.” =^= the former Borg explained. “To imbue it with true sentience would be an inefficient waste of resources and processing. The system appears to utilize heuristic cognitive algorithms, learning from the reactions of its targets and reconfiguring its tactics accordingly in response. I would hazard that it is not much more intelligent that the reaction – buffers of a standard holosuite matrix.” =^=

From what Lane had seen of the way that the murderous, teeming cloud of drones had flowed through the air, it was hard not to attribute some level of anthropological juxtaposition to intelligence. The Swarm had seemed a thing half – alive in the way that it had hunted down the Romulan marines with what seemed to be ruthless prejudice.

=^= “Well Lieutenant, its essential that we gain access to that structure and secure the Repository that we believe houses the memory engrams of the people that started the war that decimated this planet and neutralize that target before the Free State mounts another attempt to do the same.” =^= Lane outlined the mission before them.

Six looked back at the mess of bodies that littered the ground in front of the bunker entrance. It was plain to see that all previous attempts to force entry had been met with the same fatal lack of success.

The Borg was silent for some time, as the wind swirled around her.

=^= “I believe I have the solution, Captain.” =^= Six nodded to herself and set off in the direction of the bunker – cap, adding over her shoulder as she began to descend the drifting slope, her passage craving great wounds in the virgin-snow.

=^= “It would be highly-advisable for you to remain in your current position.” =^=

Hanley was about to protest but caught herself before she said anything aloud to countermand the engineer and order her back. The facts were self-evident. They had to get into that Bunker and there was no way to do so with the terrifying power of the Swarm holding sentry. She had run out of ideas and Six represented her best, last option.

Sometimes you just have to trust your faith in your people.

=^= “Goddam, Captain.” =^= Chief Hanley rumbled as he worked on patching the damage sustained to the leg of her own suit, as they watched the lone figure make her way through the drifting snow towards the point where so many others had met their final moment.

=^= “Six knows what she’s doing, Chief.” =^= Lane assured Lucius and inwardly tried to convince herself that that were true. The truth was, she had no idea what would happen when the Swarm activated again.

Out in the blizzard, Six labored through the grasping snow, her boots sinking to the knee as she made for the leeward side of the bunker entrance. The foreboding black cap resisted any intention of the snow to form in drifts around or atop it. A cursory scan showed Six that the capstone had been manufactured from a highly-radioactive material.  Again, she appreciated the simple elegance of the engineering philosophy of the long – dead Garsedi. To fashion the entrance to the bunker so, meant that the entrance would never be buried beneath the accumulation from the ever – present snow & storms.

She reached the entrance without issue, stepping over the dismembered body parts and focusing instead upon the structure itself.

The efforts of the Romulans to breach the security of the bunker evidenced an entirely different approach to engineering philosophy. The Free States teams had sought to force entry and attempted to violate the technology and materials that made up the bunker – cap. To an engineer of her caliber and possessing the more subtle technological acumen of the Borg, Six knew that the path to success lay with Assimilation.

Most people could only view assimilation through the lens of how they perceived the borg – the brutal seizure of individuality and loss of identity.

Yet Six of Eleven had spent over 25 years as Tertiary Monitor for Unimatrix 8 and her relationship and understanding of the concept of assimilation was far more intimate than that crude misconception.

Assimilation was the process of taking in and fully understanding information and ideas. It was the process of absorbing and integrating people, ideas and culture into a wider context.

It was about becoming.

Six used her ocular implant to scan the frame around the heavy, impenetrable doors that had so far thwarted any attempt to dislodge. To her human eye it was merely a squat obsidian – like structure without feature, yet to her ocular – implant it was as the intricate cellular structure of a plant.

Admittedly, there was precious little power left in the sophisticated conduits of that long dead system, but to Six the structure of the machinery hidden beneath that surface was like reading passages from a universal language of which she was the codex.

From between the knuckles of her non – prosthetic hand, sharp – ended Borg nanotubules erupted from the skin like bloodless eels (instantly anesthetizing the wounds and coating the exit points in anticoagulant), they carried on through the confines of her EVA suit glove (similarly piercing and replacing the seals as they went with only a minute drop in suit pressure) and snaked out to interact with the long – dead circuitry of the portal.

The effect of that intrusion was instantaneous.

With growing horror, Lane became away of the hideous noise that sounded like the approach of a chittering cloud of locusts as the snow – clouds around the bunker-cap rolled back and the nightmare terror of the Swarm burst darkly forth, it’s swirling mass coiling through the air as the seething black mass tore through the intervening space towards Six of Eleven.

=^= “SIX ! LOOK OUT!” =^= The Chief cried and raised his phaser-rifle, but Hanley’s firm gloved hand pushed the barrel firmly back down towards the snow.

Six of Eleven did not turn to face the onrush of death, as the writhing stream of tiny, razor-sharp drones bore down upon her. The engineers attention seemed intent upon the entrance. It took every power of self-discipline that Lane possessed not to draw her own sidearm and fire upon the weapon as it teemed towards her crewmember.

Down it flowed and on it came. Thousands of lethal black orbs, matt-black carapaces jostling but never colliding, tiny red – sensor light in a mad kaleidoscope of motion, the Swarm hurled itself at the back of Six of Eleven.

And then stopped.

It was as if the flowing weapon system had suddenly hit an invisible wall. The drones in front went from hundreds of feet per second to an absolute stop. The proceeding drones behind that vanguard burst like a black wave behind them, flowing through the air like a frozen explosion as they took evasive action, as they regained thier equilibrium, their behaviour pivoted from the frenetic violence of motion that had consumed the Romulans and began to flow languidly around the former Borg drone.

Lane Hanley was speechless.

Professor Venrax made a small sound.

Chief Harvey just breathed =^= “Well, Godamn!” =^=

Six of Eleven turned around from the entrance to the bunker, as the massive doors hissed back into their recess, as if this was the lightest effort, revealing the darkness of the shaft inside. As she turned, the Swarm reacted to her movement like some suspicious animal, flowing around in the space around her like it wasn’t sure of what to do next.

Lane’s voice evidenced her abject shock and confusion.

=^= “Six?” =^= Hanley managed hoarsely. =^= “What did you just DO?” =^=

Six put her hand down as if to stroke a pet and the Swarm reacted to her touch and flowed gentle around the arm of her suit and around her hips and legs.

Lane thought that, if she died right now, that she’d never live to see anything quite as unexpected and outlandish as what she had just witnessed.

=^= “The solution was apparent , Captain.” =^= The Russian woman commented as if she had just solved a particularly challenging cryptic crossword clue. =^= “I isolated the resonant carrier – frequency that motivates the Swarm and imprinted a copy of the control algorithm onto my own signal matrix. The Swarm now thinks that I am a component drone of their whole and therefore no longer qualify as a threat. I exercised my new prerogative as part of the swarm and painted you all as “friendlies” as far as thier IFF protocols are concerned. You should be safe, as long as you make no hostile actions.”  =^=

=^= “You mean to say that you Assimilated the Swarm !?” =^= Lane wondered aloud, the implications were staggering.

The suited figure of Six of Eleven considered this statement as she looked down at the black mass that swirled languidly around her like some murderous pet desperate for affection. She looked back up and her head went to one side.

=^= “I think that it’s more accurate to say that I have just joined a new Collective.” =^=