New Description for Seize the Fire

[kkozoriz1]

Paraphrasing the old Far Side cartoon "Bummer of a birthmark, Jean-Luc"

 

[Sci]

Well, with respect to the Borg, there was always a floating question of "If you met the people who started the Borg, and you knew how dangerous the Borg became, what would you say to them?" I imagine it would be an awfully heated discussion.

But Destiny showed us that the Borg were started by the desperate fusion of a starving Caeliar and equally starving humans.

Um, no. Sedin forces herself on the Humans; they never chose to become drones. They were just her first victims; they didn't start the Borg, she did. (Or, rather, a degraded and irrational Sedin did.)

Well, the question still remains, does the general public of the Federation even know the story of the Borg's true origin? I don't think so. Hernandez related it to Captains Picard, Riker, and Dax. Starfleet Command and the UFP government probably know it. But it's premature to assume that it's common knowledge.

Well, we know that a random nobody ensign from the Aventine who was assigned to pilot Sonek Pran around knew about Humans' role in the origin of the Borg -- she claimed that violating the chain of command, as the MACOs did on Erigol, can result in horrible and unforeseen circumstances, and specifically cited the Borg as an example. So I do think it's highly probable that the Caeliar-Human origin has been released to the general public.

I wonder how people would react if they found out Picard refused to send Hugh back with the invasive program in I, Borg. "You had a chance to stop them and you didn't even try!"

I've wondered how the Klingons and Romulans would feel if they knew that Picard had a couple of possible opportunities to cripple the Borg and didn't. Would they feel the blood of their citizens were on Picards hands?

Improbable. Picard didn't just do nothing -- he specifically got Hugh re-assimilated because he theorized that Hugh's new sense of self-identity would spread and disrupt the Collective, thereby liberating the Collective's drones without killing them. And, in fact, it almost worked -- apparently at least a few cubes' worth of drones found themselves liberated from the Borg. The fact that the Collective managed to cut them off and thwart that particular "virus" from spreading does not mean that Picard did not attack the Borg.

And there's no particular reason to think that the virus La Forge was designing would not have resulted in the same situation -- a few cubes disabled before the rest of the Collective cuts them off to keep the thing from spreading.

And, in fact, it's also important to bear in mind that at the time, no one knew about the presence of the Queen within the Collective, meaning that they all assumed that the Collective functioned in a much more logical, automated way than it actually does -- the presence of the Queen personality within the Collective means that it's likely that the invasive program, which was based on the idea that the Collective would devote exponentially larger and larger amounts of processing power to solve a solution-less puzzle, would simply have been marked as something to ignore and delete by the Queen, who would be able to recognize it as a paradox with no solution the way a normal Human could.

 

[kkozoriz1]

I'm not suggesting that it would have worked, I'm wondering how people would react regardless. If someone's entire planet was warped out by someone who a)Had a borg in custody and allowed them to return to the collective without trying to destroy them and b) Was a borg themselves at one point, couldn't you see them being just a teensy bit peeved?

 

[Sci]

I'm not suggesting that it would have worked, I'm wondering how people would react regardless. If someone's entire planet was warped out by someone who a)Had a borg in custody and allowed them to return to the collective without trying to destroy them and b) Was a borg themselves at one point, couldn't you see them being just a teensy bit peeved?

But he did attempt to destroy the Borg. His weapon of choice was Hugh's sense of individuality rather than a computer virus, that's all. (I mean, seriously, would they think the Borg had never developed a decent anti-virus?)

 

[Christopher]

But he did attempt to destroy the Borg. His weapon of choice was Hugh's sense of individuality rather than a computer virus, that's all.

Exactly. It always bears repeating that the enemy isn't the drones, it's the collective computer consciousness that enslaves them. Fighting the Collective by killing the drones makes about as much sense as fighting the Nazis by bombing concentration camps. The drones are prisoners, slaves who need to be freed from the force that holds them captive and uses them to enslave others. Picard's plan in "I, Borg," Janeway's plan in "Unimatrix Zero," Hernandez's plan in Destiny -- these were the only ethical ways to fight the Borg, by attacking the program and freeing its captives. And -- this also bears repeating -- they worked a damn sight better than phasers and torpedoes ever did.

 

[TerraUnam]

I don't argue that. But if the true nature of the Borg was a fusion of the depravity of Sedin and the human she assimilated, then the humans which had a hand in setting up that situation do bear some responsibility.

Destiny was a predestination paradox. Each character managed to pull off an act of free will that was actually pre-ordained (according to the timeline).

It really depends on how far back you want to lay the chain of responsibility: to Sedin who invaded a few human minds, or the humans whose botched plan placed the Caeliar in that situation in the first place.

Theologians have been banging on about the difference between free will and predestination for centuries. Why shouldn't we?

 

[kkozoriz1]

If we get into predestination then where does that leave free will? If someone does something that someone in the past knows that they are going to do since they were from the future originally, can they actually have free will? (Tenses don't like time travel)

 

[Sci]

I don't argue that. But if the true nature of the Borg was a fusion of the depravity of Sedin and the human she assimilated, then the humans which had a hand in setting up that situation do bear some responsibility.

Bullshit. A person is not responsible for other people's choices. The Humans that were trapped with Sedin are not responsible for Sedin's choices. They're responsible for having attacked the Caeliar, yes; they are not responsible for Sedin's choice to mind rape them.

 

[Christopher]

I don't argue that. But if the true nature of the Borg was a fusion of the depravity of Sedin and the human she assimilated, then the humans which had a hand in setting up that situation do bear some responsibility.

Yeah, if that were the case. And if Scotty's grandmother had wheels, I have it on good authority that she'd be a wagon.

I mean, "depravity?" What? Sedin wasn't "depraved," she was non compos mentis. She'd lost her reason and was reduced to instinctual hunger. And the two humans she assimilated (or rather, the two out of three that she allowed to live) weren't "depraved" either, they were just starving to death and too weak to resist. The Borg aren't the result of some kind of moral turpitude. Their state isn't punishment for a sinful life. They're just driven by an overpowering instinct to absorb and survive.

In fact, as I recall, the most violent and malicious one of the three, Pembleton, was the one who was sacrificed to feed the others. So it's not like "depravity" was something selected for in the process of their creation.

It really depends on how far back you want to lay the chain of responsibility: to Sedin who invaded a few human minds, or the humans whose botched plan placed the Caeliar in that situation in the first place.

Again, wrong. The humans didn't cause the time warp. The future offshoot of the Caeliar did. And if you want to move back along the chain of responsibility, why stop with the human mutineers? They only did what they did because the Caeliar had chosen to strand them there. And they only ended up in that situation because the Romulans attacked them.

Theologians have been banging on about the difference between free will and predestination for centuries. Why shouldn't we?

Because you seem to be determined to pin the blame on the humans. You're starting with your desired conclusion and selecting evidence and arguments in order to force it. That's just arbitrary human-bashing.

 

[ProtoAvatar]

As I already mentioned - Starfleet/Earth/The Federation won't be blamed for the borg invasion because of some event lost in the mists of time, who may or may not be classified (humans taking part in creating the borg), but because Janeway's (human, starfleet captain) actions - destroying a borg transwarp hub - directly caused the borg to invade en masse, a lot sooner than they would have come otherwise, and to kill rather than assimilate - a recent, determinant for the borg invasion and known incident.

 

[BrotherBenny]

Christopher, a number of us seem to be under the impression that the Columbia crew's botched attack resulted in the temporal shenanigans which brought about the future offshoot of the Caeliar who then deliberately caused the re-creation of the accident which brought them about and in turn, indirectly, caused Sedin to go nuts and create the Borg.

I think.

Could someone provide me with a timeline of Destiny events so I can get this straight in my head. It is starting to bother me.

 

[Christopher]

^Well, it's a circular loop. The Caeliar had already detected this other civilization and were trying to contact it before the humans got there. Then, shortly after the humans' raid, that other civilization attacked the Caeliar and triggered the destruction, and subsequently the Caeliar figured out who that civilization had really been and why they'd done it. In a time loop like this, there is no "starting" point, no "re-creation." It only happens once, but it loops back and starts itself.

I've just skimmed over the relevant chapters again. There's actually a significant gap of time between the mutineers' raid (which is actually unsuccessful) and the feedback pulse from the distant galaxy that triggers the destruction. They're two separate events. The only way in which the mutineers' actions could be said to contribute to the process is that their sabotage created errors in the Caeliar's computer systems, which slowed down their evacuation, causing more of them to lose their lives in the event, and which may have played a role in causing them to travel back through time (because the calculations on their subspace tunnels were off). In that case, yes, it could be argued that the mutineers' actions contributed to the time loop and its consequences, but in a peripheral way.

 

[BrotherBenny]

I seriously need to reread Destiny again.

 

[Thrawn]

^ I did this summer. Totally worth it.

 

[TerraUnam]

Theologians.... Centuries...... And around we go.....

Anyway, more topically on Seize the Fire, I maintain that the most logical meaning for the tip

"But of everyone serving aboard Titan, Commander Tuvok may be the only one who understands how dangerous such planet-altering technology can be, even when used with the best of intentions. . . ."

implies that Tuvok was involved in the events of Star Trek II and will have flashbacks in this book about it. I can't remember any other terraforming project that went so awry and "quick terraforming" was the Genesis modus operandi.

 

[David cgc]

Anyway, more topically on Seize the Fire, I maintain that the most logical meaning for the tip

"But of everyone serving aboard Titan, Commander Tuvok may be the only one who understands how dangerous such planet-altering technology can be, even when used with the best of intentions. . . ."

implies that Tuvok was involved in the events of Star Trek II and will have flashbacks in this book about it. I can't remember any other terraforming project that went so awry and "quick terraforming" was the Genesis modus operandi.

The Caretaker Array seems like a more reasonable explanation for that reference.

 

[BrotherBenny]

^Agreed.

Though the former could also be true. If Tuvok has knowledge of both Genesis and the Caretaker, then he is Titan's resident expert on (experimental) terraforming technology which goes horribly wrong.

 

[DimesDan]

So Seize the Fire, sounds like an interesting read, I'm personally glad that it's not just the Federation out there and exploring.