Alternate origin of the Borg

[Dark Reality 0]

The PC/Xbox game Deus Ex 2: Invisible War seems to make a reference or hint to the Borg. Maybe it's just the Trekkie in me making a bit of a stretch, but it seems appropriate.

 

I'm not sure how the Borg "started" (is anyone?) but I know they are over 900 years old, according to a Voyager episode in which people are revived from a 900-year stasis and the Borg were around then, so they actually predate the events in Deus Ex 2, which I believe takes place in the mid to late 21st century.

 

If you're unfamiliar with Deus Ex, JC Denton and brother Paul are the latest in 'nanotech' biomodified humans. They're human, but with implants. Think Seven of Nine. They take injections full of microscopic machines that build components within their bodies that augment their performance. In the first game, you play as JC and try to stop the mother of all government conspiracies. IMHO it's the best PC game ever, though a bit dated. The second one isn't as good, but this is where the suggestion is offered, I suppose. You play Alex D (can be male or female), and of course D is for Denton... a clone, not an offspring. At the end, like the first one, you can choose between several endings, depending upon where you place your alliance.

 

If you follow JC Denton's advice, you activate a machine which integrates everyone on earth into a collective consciousness, installs the biomods remotely into everyone, and creates a perfect global democracy. Sounds like mass assimilation to me. If you follow the game, JC's motives seem pure and good enough, until his ideas carried out to the ultimate extreme means converting all of Humanity into a knockoff of the Borg.

 

Like I said, the timelines don't match up; there are numerous paradoxes. But in a universe with infinite possibilities, who's to say events very similar to the Deus Ex games didn't happen on some alien world, and some crazy guy made his world perfect, founded the Borg. It's as good a theory as any, outside an official explanation.

[Takara_Soong 4]

The Borg had been around for much more than 900 years before Voyager. In Q Who? Guinan said the Borg had been evolving for thousands of years.

 

I'm not familiar with the game so I can't comment on that part of your post.

[3 of 7 0]

The Borg had been around for much more than 900 years before Voyager. In Q Who? Guinan said the Borg had been evolving for thousands of years.

 

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Actually, Guinan says that the Borg have been evolving for thousands of centuries, which makes at least two hundred thousand years!

 

[Dark Reality 0]

If the Borg had been around for so long, why didn't they conquer Earth when we were all cavemen? After all, isn't Earth in "Sector 001"?

 

A possible explanation is that before the Big Bang, there existed a whole other universe which came before, completely different, of course. The Borg were created there, back then. The universe was destroyed somehow, to account for the nothingness that must have preceded the Big Bang. Somehow the Borg must have survived it. That seems impossible, but perhaps the Borg Queen survived, as a super-nanite which retained a lot, but not all, knowledge the Collective possessed in the first universe. It would have retained ship and drone specs, star charts -- they started in Sector 001, why else would it be called 001? Arguably it's their starting sector. Anyway, somehow the super-nanite found a humanoid to assimilate, and from there rebuilt the Collective.

[Takara_Soong 4]

The Borg had been around for much more than 900 years before Voyager. In Q Who? Guinan said the Borg had been evolving for thousands of years.

344973[/snapback]

Actually, Guinan says that the Borg have been evolving for thousands of centuries, which makes at least two hundred thousand years!

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I thought that was what she said but wasn't positive. Too lazy to get my DVDs out then too. Thanks for the clarification.

 

If the Borg had been around for so long, why didn't they conquer Earth when we were all cavemen?  After all, isn't Earth in "Sector 001"?

 

A possible explanation is that before the Big Bang, there existed a whole other universe which came before, completely different, of course. The Borg were created there, back then. The universe was destroyed somehow, to account for the nothingness that must have preceded the Big Bang. Somehow the Borg must have survived it. That seems impossible, but perhaps the Borg Queen survived, as a super-nanite which retained a lot, but not all, knowledge the Collective possessed in the first universe. It would have retained ship and drone specs, star charts -- they started in Sector 001, why else would it be called 001? Arguably it's their starting sector. Anyway, somehow the super-nanite found a humanoid to assimilate, and from there rebuilt the Collective.

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The Borg Queen said in ST:FC that the Borg were once completely organic beings but evolved to include the synthetic. How long it took them to reach that stage of their evolution is unknown.

 

I believe it was also said in Voyager that the Borg did originate in the Delta Quadrant.

 

The universe is huge. It is certainly plausible that the Borg could be in the Delta Quadrant for 200,000+ years without knowledge of Alpha Quadrant species.

[HRH The KING 0]

If the Borg had been around for so long, why didn't they conquer Earth when we were all cavemen?

 

They may not have felt it was in their interests to assimilate such a primative culture at that point in history. Later as humans evolved, they would have changed this opinion.

 

Remember, they don't assimilate every species they encounter. They choose not to assimilate the Kazon.

[Takara_Soong 4]

If the Borg had been around for so long, why didn't they conquer Earth when we were all cavemen?

 

They may not have felt it was in their interests to assimilate such a primative culture at that point in history. Later as humans evolved, they would have changed this opinion.

 

Remember, they don't assimilate every species they encounter. They choose not to assimilate the Kazon.

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Right. The Borg's goal is perfection and assimilating "lesser" species (like primitive humans or the Kazon) would detract from that goal.

[Dark Reality 0]

Oh yeah, I remember (and had a good laugh) when Seven of Nine said the Kazon were unworthy of assimilation.

 

I do recall hearing that the Borg originated in the Delta Quadrant. But this conflicts somewhat with Earth occupying Sector 001. Unless they have the whole universe mapped out and Earth just happens to be in the first sector by coincidence. If that were the case, Sector 001 would be their first target, as they call the Queen's home "Unimatrix Zero-One (01)". It would make sense they'd want Unimatrix 01 in Sector 001. And the Borg have transwarp, and the network nodes (what Voyager used in Endgame) all over the universe. If the Alpha Quadrant didn't know about the Borg, I would think it's because the Borg for some reason wanted it that way.

 

The Borg are just full of surprises, though. Like how they don't attack unless provoked. You'd think with Starfleet officers roaming their ship, they'd assimilate one with a tactical position, shut off the shields, and assimilate the whole crew. They did part of that in Voyager's "Unimatrix Zero" episode (assimilated Tuvok and used his codes against Voyager).

 

For the Borg fans, here's the Wikipedia page on them. It's really extensive!

[zipkirk1966 0]

There is one thing that I heard about in Star Trek the motion picture some say that vger was on the borg home world and they understood what voyager 6 was but some say it's not. It would be cool if voyager 6 did land on a borg world and they build a ship to do what it has to do but that's just me :-).

 

Brian

[Angela 1]

That was the premise of one of shatners books I think it were specrt.

[HRH The KING 0]

Nah, this "V'Ger-Connected-Somehow-To-The-Borg" idea comes up from time to time and I've never liked it.

 

I wouldn't like TMP to be connected to the Borg because I actually liked TMP and its story.

 

I tend to think that the Borg started organically and over time they began to integrate technology into themselves and evolved along those lines gradually to what they eventually became.

 

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[Angela 1]

001 is the federation designation for the the secotor earth is, we don't know the borg designation, or if they have perhaps taken the federation designations for earth.

[Dark Reality 0]

Well, the Borg do seek order and perfection. It could be that they didn't have a system to divide up the universe as the Federation did, and got that information from assimilating helmsmen, engineers, astronomers, captains, etc.

 

I thought the Borg Queen may have made references to Earth being in Sector 001, but if they're just using the Federation designation, that fits.

 

As for the Borg just evolving into what they are.... that's pretty much exactly what happens in that ending of Deus Ex 2. Humans are already bio-augmented via nanites. The conversion from human to what JC Denton is, is much like assimilation. He doesn't have implants per se, but machines augment his abilities. So he's not the spitting image of a Borg, but the idea of part-man part-machine is the same. And when he mass converts every human on earth to what he is, he basically assimilates Earth. Then by creating a collective consciousness and perfected democracy, the Collective is born. If you play both games and let that ending play out, it's pretty easy to figure out what happens, with a Trek slant. All of Earth is now a collective, and everyone starts growing implants. These work their way into the DNA and whatnot, so babies born after that are born with implants. We then evolve, and implants get more and more complex, as they're tied into the DNA and are subject to evolution. Once "adaptation" is acquired through evolution and modifications, it's on... And of course, DX could take place in an alternate reality. The Borg broke into fluidic space, and have messed with time travel. Time and again we see the Borg with something beyond anything the Federation has. Maybe they can cross realities or at one point did.