Newp.Jim wrote:So... what was the origin of the Borg? V'Ger?
It's very convoluted.
The Caeliar are this incredibly advanced species who are fiercely isolationist. They're very hard to find, and typically those who find them are either displaced to some distant galaxy where they can't trouble the Caeliar or tell anybody about them, or simply kept prisoner forever. That's what happens to the NX-02 - the ship is badly damaged in a Romulan attack, the survivors make it to the Caeliar home planet, and most of them are kept there ever after. The Caeliar even suggest that if they did escape they would displace the whole human race to another galaxy to keep them from spreading information about the Caeliar.
The Caeliar technology is based on "catoms", which are able to rearrange matter on pretty much any scale or level. They can build or rebuild pretty much anything, including their own bodies, just by thinking about it.
In an attempt to escape from the Caeliar homeworld, some of the NX-02's MACOS damage an important machine, part of the Caeliar's "great work" - a machine designed to be able to scan every part of the entire universe simultaneously. In damaging it the machine detects a feedback pulse from a species in a distant galaxy that destroys the machine and causes the sun to go supernova. Most of the Caeliar cities are destroyed, but two are thrown through space and time. One goes back to the early universe... and ultimately evolves to become the species that sent the pulse in the first place, which they did in order that their own existence could happen as it did originally!
The other is a tiny handful of survivors, a few Caeliar and a few MACOs, who are thrown some thousands of years into the past in the delta quadrant. They are stranded on a planet in an arctic environment. The Caeliar catoms were powered centrally from an Omega molecule reactor, so with no power for them and no food for the MACOs they're all in a bad way. The Caeliar suggest that they could bond with the MACOs and use their neural energy to power the catoms, but the MACOs refuse. They all spend a few weeks there gradually starving to death, to the point where the Caeliar cannibalise one another. The last Caeliar left is eventually reduced to a "state of pure hunger" - with the catoms failing it's lost all memory of what it is, lost most of it's personality, and just become this limitless hunger for more energy. It forcibly bonds with the surviving MACOs, converting the remaining catoms into much larger and cruder (and less energy dependent) nanoprobes to do so. The bonding destroys their individuality and creates the first Borg.
This is why the Borg are so driven to assimilate - because deep inside the collective is a hunger that can never be satisfied. It's also why the Borg are so obsessed by the Omega molecule - that's their original energy source, and they ahve a dim sense that they could get it all back if only they had that power again.
Erika Hernandez lived with the Caeliar for a long time and converted her own body to use catoms. In the end she allows herself to be assimilated by the Borg so that her catoms can join with the Borg nanoprobes and allow the Caeliar to join with the collective in one giant group mind. The Caeliar dissolve the remaining shreds of the original Caeliar within the collective, removing its desire to assimilate. They then dissolve all of the nanotech in every Borg drone, freeing them all. End of the Borg, for good.
The Caeliar technology is based on "catoms", which are able to rearrange matter on pretty much any scale or level. They can build or rebuild pretty much anything, including their own bodies, just by thinking about it.
In an attempt to escape from the Caeliar homeworld, some of the NX-02's MACOS damage an important machine, part of the Caeliar's "great work" - a machine designed to be able to scan every part of the entire universe simultaneously. In damaging it the machine detects a feedback pulse from a species in a distant galaxy that destroys the machine and causes the sun to go supernova. Most of the Caeliar cities are destroyed, but two are thrown through space and time. One goes back to the early universe... and ultimately evolves to become the species that sent the pulse in the first place, which they did in order that their own existence could happen as it did originally!
The other is a tiny handful of survivors, a few Caeliar and a few MACOs, who are thrown some thousands of years into the past in the delta quadrant. They are stranded on a planet in an arctic environment. The Caeliar catoms were powered centrally from an Omega molecule reactor, so with no power for them and no food for the MACOs they're all in a bad way. The Caeliar suggest that they could bond with the MACOs and use their neural energy to power the catoms, but the MACOs refuse. They all spend a few weeks there gradually starving to death, to the point where the Caeliar cannibalise one another. The last Caeliar left is eventually reduced to a "state of pure hunger" - with the catoms failing it's lost all memory of what it is, lost most of it's personality, and just become this limitless hunger for more energy. It forcibly bonds with the surviving MACOs, converting the remaining catoms into much larger and cruder (and less energy dependent) nanoprobes to do so. The bonding destroys their individuality and creates the first Borg.
This is why the Borg are so driven to assimilate - because deep inside the collective is a hunger that can never be satisfied. It's also why the Borg are so obsessed by the Omega molecule - that's their original energy source, and they ahve a dim sense that they could get it all back if only they had that power again.
Erika Hernandez lived with the Caeliar for a long time and converted her own body to use catoms. In the end she allows herself to be assimilated by the Borg so that her catoms can join with the Borg nanoprobes and allow the Caeliar to join with the collective in one giant group mind. The Caeliar dissolve the remaining shreds of the original Caeliar within the collective, removing its desire to assimilate. They then dissolve all of the nanotech in every Borg drone, freeing them all. End of the Borg, for good.