While everyone else around him was nodding approval, Kaz stared in horror. When the words exploded, it took him a second to realize that he was the one who was uttering them.
“You’re talking the equivalent of a lobotomy for these programs!” he cried.
Montgomery fixed him with his fierce gaze. “You bet,” he said. “That’s exactly right. Keep them stupid and docile. Should have done that in the first place. I don’t know why their programmers kept that kind of programming intact at all once they reassigned them.”
“Will—will this affect Voyager’s Doctor?”
[260] “He’ll be the first one we do,” Montgomery said. “We’ll make an example of him.”
“You can’t do that! He has knowledge of the Borg that could help us cure this virus!”
Montgomery heaved an exaggerated sigh and folded his arms across his broad chest.
“You know, Dr. Kaz, I’m getting mighty tired of you telling me what I can and cannot do. Your position is a coveted one. You do your job well, but one more outburst like this one and you will be reassigned. Do we understand one another?”
Kaz swallowed. “Yes, sir,” he said, the words almost choking him.
“Good. Knowing how slowly the wheels turn, it will take some time before I get approval to proceed, more’s the pity. But at least we can start letting the public, and more importantly that bastard Baines, know what we’re planning.” He squared his shoulders. “And now to something a bit less pleasant.”
He turned and touched some controls on the wall. A large holographic image of a globe appeared, hovering in the air above the twenty or so people assembled. Everyone craned their necks to look up at it.
“We’ve finally been able to get some estimates on what we’re up against. We had an original outbreak of seven. Four children, two adults past the age of ninety, and one man suffering from Iverson’s disease.”
Seven small red dots appeared on various places around the globe—four in the northern hemisphere, three in the southern. There was no discernable geographic link.
[261] “Within two weeks, it had risen to twenty-three.”
The dots spread across the holographic representation of the Earth, some manifesting hundreds of kilometers away from the original outbreak sites, others clearly occurring because of direct contact. A few of the adult Borg that were appearing were capable of assimilation.
“It’s now up to forty-six cases. Some have occurred within families, others are fresh, new outbreaks. We’ve got no knowledge of how it’s spread, other than the usual manner of assimilation through forced insertion of nanoprobes, and that only accounts for about ten percent of the cases. The rest just seem to appear out of nowhere. Let me reemphasize this—only ten percent are Borg created through traditional means. The other ninety percent seem to be spontaneously becoming Borg for no reason we can yet understand.”
“Is it still affecting only those with weak immune systems?” someone asked.
Montgomery glanced over at Kaz. “Care to field that one, Doctor?”
Kaz cleared his throat. “Thus far, yes. However, I’ve cross-referenced the virulence of the spread with that of other infectious diseases. By my calculation, it’s only a matter of time, perhaps just a few days, until healthy adults start manifesting symptoms.”
“And when that happens,” said Montgomery, “we’re looking at this.”
As if the representation of the Earth were a living creature that had suddenly been pricked with thousands of holes, red began to bleed across its landmasses. Even [262] though he’d been the one to help design this simulation, Kaz felt his stomach clench.
Mercilessly the red tide spread, blossoming like a deadly flower, until all but a few infinitesimal, isolated patches of land remained unconquered.
The Earth was covered with red.
Was covered with Borg.
About the e-Book
(AUGUST, 2003)—Scanned, proofed, and formatted by Bibliophile.
STAR TREK: VOY - Homecoming, Book One Page 21
