Joran walked through the pine forests where he grew up at the height of summer black flies buzzing around him biting as he moves. He wondered without direction in a daze for what seemed like hours with the forest never seeming to change around him. At first, everything seemed perfectly normal, no different than any other walk he had taken when he was a kid growing up. The longer he walked things began to feel more and more ‘off’. Looking around he knows that something was off, the forest was wrong to some degree or another; the sounds too distant, the colours either too bright or too dull were the first to stand out.

The moment he starts to become aware of the forest shifted in a heartbeat to that of the depth of winter. Snow now came up to over his knees and the sky went black with the aurora borealis giving the only source of light. He had a bare few seconds to look around before the freezing cold hit him almost making him drop to the ground in shock. “Whaaat? Wwwhhhhat isss gooooiiinnnnggg on?” he said shivering almost instantly. He looked around him and as he did dark shapes seemed to appear and disappear between the trees at the edge of his vision, the low crackling of the aurora borealis changing into a clicking and its light taking on a sickly green glow that made the forest look wrong on every level as a sense of dread began to creep into his mind. He continued to push through the deep show as the clicking grew and took on a metallic sound, the cold continued to cut into him and he began to stumble. Leaning against a tree he looked behind him and could seethe dark shapes clearer in the green light; large insectoid creatures jumped and skittered in the shadows. “Shhhhhit, shiiiiit, shitttt. So.. cooollld. Wwwhhhhat iiiis happening? Wwwhhhhatare those things?” he muttered to himself before pushing off the tree and turning away from the shadows. Taking a step forward as he turned he stumbled forward as the snow and cold vanished completely.

He fell to the ground, no floor he realised as he looked around him and recognized it as a doorless corridor from a Starfleet vessel. Standing up, still shivering he glanced behind him and saw that the forest, was gone and the corridor ended in a turbolift door.

‘Forest, why was I thinking about a forest.’ he thought to himself as he started to walk forward. Within moments the clicking sounds appeared again and the dread returned turning into a panic deep in his gut. Picking up speed he ran forward as the sounds continued to grow closer behind him but whatever was making them remained just out of sight around the bend behind him. Stumbling he glanced forward and realized that the corridor ended up ahead in a large double door but before he could reach it the hallway shock and alarms started to scream throughout the hall instead of the regular red light the alarms flashed a sickening green that gave the corridor a tainted appearance. Abruptly the clicking sounds grew louder causing Joran to glance behind him where dark insectoid forms were gaining on him. Reaching the door he hits the door consol to open the door but nothing happens. Turning to look back behind him he puts his back to the door continuing to press the door release button as the dark forms close in on him; the lights in front of them winking out so he cannot get a good look. 

Just as the forms were about to reach him the door behind him opened and he fell backwards landing with a loud thud in a black room, the door nowhere in sight. Trying to sit up he found he was unable to move as thick straps help his arms and legs down. His eyes began to focus and adjust to the light he saw which all sentient beings would dread, Borg. Standing above him, red beams streaking from their augmented eyes stood several Borg drones.  Joran attempted to struggle as one of them lifted an arm with a small circular saw attached to it; “This cannot be real, how did I get here” he gasped as the blade began to spin moving closer to his face.  The drones spoke as one, “We are the Borg. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to…” before they were cut off as large insectoid shapes dropped onto them accompanied by the loud clicking before everything went dark.

Joran’s eyes opened to an alien-looking corridor of weaved conduits and tubing meshed, he could barely focus as his head throbbed and the continual clicking sound remained. He tried to focus but something climbed across his vision and his eyes rolled back in his head and he passed out again.