“I understand this must be confusing for you.” The Brunali man reached forward, offering tea from an ornate jade tea-pot as the cherry blossoms rolled across the smooth stone terrace. A playful breeze licked across the surface of the nearby koi pond, their bulbous orange and white forms slowly dancing in wide arcs around the still water. Across the perfectly maintained rockery a cherry tree, fresh and pink as a newborn, rustled slowly in contemplation. 

“An accurate assessment. Also somewhat of an understatement.” Rana said, lifting her empty cup to receive a fresh drink without intending to. Her muscles moved without instruction and before she had mastered them again a full cup of tea was lifting to her lips. She eyed the brown liquid suspiciously as its aroma flooded her nose, a light oceanic scent, tinged with rich green tones filled her nostrils.

Noticing her hesitancy Brynn lifted his cup in salute. “It’s not poisoned or drugged.” He took a sip from his own earthenware cup, “It’s not even real… technically.”

Her curiosity overtaking her caution she sipped from the edge of the cup, sucking in the fragrant tea, warming her throat as it flowed into her heart. Soft and familiar, she felt the tension of her muscles ease, suddenly feeling unreasonably safe in this entirely unfamiliar place. The unexpectedly reassuring notes of the tea hung on her tongue as it ran around her teeth “I presume this is a simulation then.” Her eyes narrowed in suspicion whilst her body took another deep breath of the floral tea without her bidding.

“Not entirely. It is a facsimile. Or more accurately a memory.” He reached up to his mouth with a fingerful of rice balls. “Hers to be specific.” He nodded across the small pond as he devoured the delicate and delicious looking morsel. 

Opposite the pair, a young woman sat upon a stone bench, her long hair tied up in an ornate coif, crested with a masterly crafted bira-bira pin in the form of an Ume flower. Its delicate white enamel petals settled lightly on her head in stark contrast to her dark onyx hair. Her pale silk kimono, styled with swirling flower blossoms and dancing buds lay open as she practiced her calligraphy on a nearby easel, the gentle scraping of the brush strokes against canvas audible across the mute garden. 

“Namie was one of the first survivors to leave us. This…” he motioned around the serene garden, a warm sun filling the walled compound with gentle light “…was her gift to the Unimatrix.”

Her interest peaked further, Rana laid the cup down on the small table and returned her focus fully to Brynn. “Unimatrix Zero?”

“You’ve heard of us?” he smiled coyly. 

“I have. You are generally assumed dead following the actions of Voyager.” Rana had spent a great deal of time researching the logs of the legendary Starfleet crew following the Fourth Fleet’s recent mobilisation. 

Brynn furrowed his brow in mock injury. “We have struggled since the neurolytic phage, it’s true. Ironically it has been both our salvation and our knell.” He stood, dusting off a few crumbs of rice ball from his loose shirt. “Though we’re not yet dead.” Standing he tilted his head in summons as he crossed to a small wooden gate in the grey stone wall. With one last look across the pond to Namie, her confident hand calmly tracing ancient kanji on the fabric, Rana followed her unexpected tour guide. 

Darkness enveloped Rana as the gate slammed shut behind her with a deafening clang of metal on metal. An expansive sea of an empty, lightless void extended before her and panicked, she reached out blindly, stumbling forward as her blood pounded fearfully in her ears. Feeling Brynn’s large hands grasp her own, her panic subsided minutely. 

“I can’t see anything.” Fear threatened to rob her breath. 

“Wait.” Brynn whispered. 

A silent clock ticked away in Rana’s mind, her stomach rumbled with anticipation as the hairs on the back of her neck stood to attention. An unexpected excitement grew in her bones as she felt the tense anticipation of the room swell, threatening to burst through invisible walls, she begged for a release of which she had no knowledge; suspended in an eternal waiting. Then the room exploded. Brilliant white lightning cut across the midnight room as the sound of a thousand voices began to sing in unison as the beating of a bass drum underscored an alien melody; Rana realised she was far from alone. The room was filled with a thousand bodies, representatives of unfamiliar homeworlds, blurring at the edges through flashes of white stroboscopic lights as they pulsed rhythmically. An exultation escaped Rana’s lips, her mouth forming unfamiliar vowels and consonants as she joined the myriad voices in their chant as the rumble of the ground raced through her newly bare feet and in this strangers memory Rana began to dance. Wild, unchoreographed and unashamed, the Betazoid felt her body twist and turn in time with the chorus of voices, soon Rana herself danced willingly alongside the inhabitants of this memory.

Reaching out from the strobing mass of bodies Brynn took her hands in his again. “Tylek left us this memory!” he shouted across the rhythmic cacophony. “Wonderful isn’t it?”

As she smiled her agreement, a rare wide grin stretched across her face, as she was jubilantly transported back to the nights of her youth. Orphaned after the Dominion invasion she had struck out on her own as soon as possible; despite an excellent care system on Betazed, remaining on the world of her families demise was simply too much for her. Finding comfort in the neon lights of the border planet’s clubs, she had danced long into the slowly turning planets night, alongside a myriad of strangers, where she allowed her telepathic abilities to calm her weeping soul. In the darkness a strangers memory Rana found herself once again joined in catharsis alongside a thousand chanting souls.

For the first time in many years, she openly wept.

Eventually Brynn grasped her hand gently as he tugged her across the dance floor to a large exit door, illuminated with a dazzling white frame. 

“It’s easy to get lost in there.” He offered her a cold drink from the nearby table as the simple grass door swung closed behind them. 

“What are these?” Rana asked, her scientist mind racing for a simple explanation.

“Unimatrix Zero was formed as a shared visualisation between drones during their regeneration cycles.” He crossed to the two low recliners along the beach front, inviting her to sit next to him. “We were never sure where the original design for the Unimatrix came from but in our attempt to re-create it we have used our own memories as a foundation. Each member gifting a place dear to them for the common experience, not quite as nuanced as the origional but striking never the less. Don’t you agree?” Offering her a small glass, complete with bobbing pink umbrella, he smiled. “This one was left to us by Shey’dán. Apparently she met her life-mate on this beach.”

“I am not Borg, I do not share the neural infrastructure to join your new world.” Where Rana had initially felt panic, a sense of calm had descended upon her, in the face of an almost inexplicable reality it seemed wasteful to worry instead of attempting to learn more. 

“We made some modifications to the Vinculum to facilitate the new Unimatrix, it can’t support quite as expansive a construct as the original but it can work as a library of places.” He took a long sip from his own drink as Rana eyed him suspiciously, he had still not answered her question. “I suspect that it reached out to your telepathic abilities. The communications of the hive mind are complicated and, in all honestly, we only retain a portion of that information after the neurolytic pathogen. I would expect a combination of the deep space interplexing beacon we were using to call for aid, overlapping with the unity modifications we have made to facilitate the Unimatrix link.” Bryyn turned to face the astral form of the Betazoid and offered a shrug. “Or maybe it’s just meant to be.”

Rana dug her toes into the soft black sand beneath her, feeling the deep heat suffuse into her aching feet. “You keep saying left to you. Like an epitaph.” Despite her focus remaining on the twin sunset in the distance she sensed the man’s confident smile falter. 

“Borg components are not designed to last forever.” He sighed. “In the collective we probably would have been recycled decades ago.”

“The Unimatrix is failing. The last days is what you said.” The warmth of this memory felt muted, distant, like a faltering recollection of a moment.

“At our peak we were 40 members, now we are down to a half dozen. The ship is failing, we’ve taken significant damage that we are not in a position to fix, the regenerative capabilities of the nano-tech and the sphere were significantly reduced by the pathogen.” A tense silence filled the air between them with an unasked question. “To continue the Unimatrix would necessitate the partial assimilation of other beings. Which is something most of us are unwilling to do.” 

“Most?” Rana’s shoulders tensed, perhaps this was an elaborate trap to assimilate the crew of Daedalus and extend the dying gasp of the Unimatrix. 

“All but one. In his true heart Aramook wouldn’t wish assimilation, however partial, on anyone but he refuses to pass on to the next hunt quietly. Hirogen can be stubborn.” He smiled reassuringly. “Instead we voted to come toward the Federation, to the utopia that Janeway and Seven of Nine promised was waiting at the other end of the galaxy.” Another deep sigh of defeat escaped Brynn’s lips. “I fear we are too late. As you and your crew will no doubt have realised the sphere’s infrastructure is failing and we cannot travel any further through deep space.”

“A recent conflict with the Turei.” She recollected the unwarranted explanation on the bridge.

“Indeed, we took advantage of their under space corridors, but they were not able to see past their hate and pursued us aggressively.” Brynn directed her attention to the distant horizon, where the memory seemed hazy and fractured. “”Our home is failing and with us our way of life.”

“It would take Borg technology to continue the Unimatrix in its current form.” Rana asked, a wave of comprehension lapping at her toes like the white froth of the sea. At the corner of her eye she saw Brynn nod. “And with that comes the risk of the Borg reasserting themselves.”

“The Borg are already reasserting themselves.”

“We all suffered from Frontier Day.” Even amongst this relaxing vista, a tension crept up her spine at the fresh sting of Starfleet’s recent failure.

A slow shake of the head chilled Rana to the core. Brynn turned to the woman, the last of the failing sun on the horizon casting his face into a ghoulish, sickly visage; a vision of the lifeless drone he had once been. His lips parted to speak, a whispered confession in the final grasping rays of sunlight. 

“Brynn. Starfleet has arrived. We require your prescence.” A deep voice interrupted the man before he could speak. 

Taking a final swig from his glass he stood and made for the grass door, where he paused to turn back to the woman reclining in the chair, the moon filtered through her long waves of hair like a goddess of old myth. “Come Rana, let us see what your Federation has to offer.”