I have been called many things since my heart first beat for the hunt. 

First it was ‘Son’, as my mother ran her fingers across my cheeks and crests, anointing me with the fresh warm blood of a corpulent Khyani. I still hear her soft songs in the dark as she anointed me son and successor. The prey’s corpse hung above my cot for the traditional 3 days; one day for the mother that bore me, the second for the father that would teach me and the third for the son I would one day usher into the hunt myself. Two of the three were lost to me when the Kremin chased us from their borders.

Then my name was ‘Orphan’ and ‘Mutt’, a runt sent to the deepest depths of the ship to scrape the waste and scour the panels. The Alpha who found us was a mockery of a Hirogen, his corpulent body too great and bulbous to stalk the prey, he instead sought to expand his wealth and prowess by stealing kills from his men. He filled his ship with the weak and the desperate, too afeared of a lonely life in the cold void to question his actions; too hungry to strike the fat hand that threw our food on the floors. One day he boasted to another Alpha too loudly and his honour was found at the end of the other man’s blade. We were taken in to another ship and made to serve our worth. 

In time my name was ‘Beta’, skilled tracker and relentless hunter. My crests bore the marks of dozens of successful hunts, each more satisfying than the last; whilst my walls were decorated with the relics of my prey, brought low by my own shaking hands. I claimed my place at the Alpha’s side, deserved in glory and second only to the man who had moulded me into his most precise blade. I spent endless nights huddled in darkened corners, studying the habits of our prey; the way they walked and ran, their preferences and fears, their joys and sorrows. I would become a bible for the hunt, all other thoughts excised from my mind as we prowled the waterless sea for our next trophy.

For a time my name was ‘Alpha’ when a Mynax beast gore our leader, dragging his wailing body into the undergrowth, a trail of blood setting us our course. We tracked for days until we found the beast, the entrails of our Alpha still handing on its tusks. His skull hung in a place of glory after I tore it from his body, a constant reminder of the cost that comes with the hunt, old age does not become the Hirogen. It was beneath that trophy I saw my Kaysh, her fiery smile and curvaceous features made a fool of me, whilst her quick wit and dagger sharp tongue spurred me to even greater hunts. When I presented her with the 12 pointed crest of a Nim’oa matriarch she became my woman, my confidant and later the mother to my son. 

‘Father’ was the name I was most grateful to the old gods for bestowing upon me. Even now I feel the warmth of his swaddled body as it held it close to my chest, his great cry matching my own as we sent his mother’s spirit to the eternal hunt. I hung a beast above his crib for three days, I praised the line of our forefathers and burned his name into my skin as we were taught by the old ones. He had barely begun to walk when the collective arrived, a million cold voices that declared ‘Resistance is futile’.  

For decades my name was ‘Three of Twelve, Secondary adjunct of Unimatrix 342’. I lie about my memories of those times. I do not tell them that in my dreams I watch my hands reach out to the throats of innocents, that I remember carving skin and bolting on machinery with the expert skill of a butcher, that I heard the last desperate whispers of a million sentient beings as they were dragged, screaming, into the unforgiving depths of the Hive Mind. I tell them it is a blank, a great dark spot on my mental timeline. It is a collective lie we do not question. 

Then my name was ‘Aramook’ once more, in secret sleeping visions. As my body stood regenerating, microscopic batteries charging with energy to keep my body alive beyond its time, my mind danced amongst Unimatrix Zero. There, we laughed beneath a virtual sky, filled with frankenstein constellations from a thousand memories. There, we drank sweet, half remembered honey wines as we danced to beloved songs. There, we found freedom from the Borg and the horrors of our daily lives, even if we would not remember it when we awoke, even if we could not resist.  

Then Annika Hansen returned and my name became ‘Spy’ & ‘Traitor’. One day I carried the memories of Unimatrix Zero into my waking, green hued world. Its sublime joy danced in my heart alongside the now reclaimed memories of life before the Collective. Had I not been surrounded by a hundred watchful eyes I would have wept that first night, for all I now remembered losing and all I had unwillingly done. Instead I found new strength in the truth of my existence as we began our work. Resist.

One cycle my name became ‘Survivor’. The great chains of the Borg that latched onto my soul cracked as the puppet strings of the queen were cut and I felt my lungs fill with air at my own choosing. I walked the arcing passageways of my sphere looking for signs of life, flashing screens and blank faced drones filled the winding corridors, devoid of anything but the most basic of life signs. They stared out from alcoves with empty eyes and waited in junctions for commands that would never come. My own position amongst their vast comatose ranks was avoided by virtue of an odd genetic anomaly, a microscopic variation to my DNA, a one-in-a-million chance to be minutely different. In time I found others who also managed to break free in the Queen’s last moments and together we resolved to start a new life; we were survivors, the Borg had not ended us and we would not allow their passing to drag us down with them. 

Then in a blink of an eye my name became ‘Last’ and ‘Relic’. ‘Final’ and ‘Ultimate’. A shining sun of green tinged fire, unwitnessed by mortal eyes, stole my new family away from me, casting their atoms to the lolling solar winds. I was alone again for a third day. Lonely child, mutt of the Hirogen; Lonely drone, drowned in a sea of voices; Lonely man, bent low in grief. Had my heart not been driven by mechanical frameworks and nanobot pacemakers, it would have broken twice to be so alone once again.  

Now a flickering light gifts me a new title, today my name is ‘Sentinel’and ‘Guardian’ of a new dream. The voices of my lost comrades continue within the Unimatrix beacon, carrying their thoughts from beyond their broken bodies and, with the help of Starfleet and the Federation, perhaps back into our galaxy. It begs the question of who else might continue to survive within the collective? Even now it skulks at the far edge of the galaxy, growing and shifting and adapting. Does my son still cry in his sleep aboard a distant ship? Has he carried my genetic freedom with him?  

I have been called many things. Now I am once again called ‘Father’, this time to a renewed Unimatrix, to a small group of xBs who have begun helping us develop new bodies for our family residing within the construct, to the possibility of a future free from the Collective. Resistance may be futile, Life is not.