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THE GREATER OF TWO EVILS

Chapter 1:
The Gift

Author's Note: The following story takes place in an alternate timeline that branches from existing continuity when Q offers Picard payment for his debt in the episode Qpid.

Commander William T. Riker stood on the bridge of the USS Enterprise, entering information into a PADD. The turbolift doors slid open, and he turned to regard Captain Jean-luc Picard as he walked with frustrated determination towards the ready room. "How was the reception?"

"Splendid," Picard said sarcastically, without breaking stride or even a single glance in Riker's direction. He disappeared into the ready room.

O O O

Picard looked up as the ready room doors swished shut behind him, his frustrated frown shifting to an expression of surprise. Sitting at his desk, in his chair reading his PADD was none other than Q.

"Jean-luc," Q began jovially. "It's wonderful to see you again. How 'bout a big hug?" He leaned back in the chair and put his feet up on the desk.

Picard stepped forward, his expression a mixture of anger and annoyance, and he wasn't sure which emotion was stronger at that moment.

"Well, don't just stand there," Q said. "say something."

That did it. Anger won out. "Get out of my chair," Picard shouted.

"Aww," Q said, tilting his head to the side. "And I was hoping for something along the lines of 'Welcome back, Q. It's a pleasure to see you again, my old friend.'"

Picard didn't miss a beat. "We're not friends!"

"You wound me, Mon Capitan," Q responded, insincerely. He snapped his fingers, and in a brilliant flash of light, he and Captain Picard had swapped places. "There," he said, as Picard removed his feet from the desk. "Perhaps now your manners will show some improvement."

"What brings you here, Q?" Picard asked as he set his PADD down on the desk. He clasped his hands in his lap and met the other being's level gaze. "Have you been banished by the Continuum once again?" It came out as a statement, rather than a question. It wouldn't have surprised him.

"Oh, hardly," Q responded, not bothering to even attempt to hide his smugness. "They're still apologizing to me for the last time."

Somehow, Picard doubted that, but he saw no reason to say so. "Then what is it you want?" Better to just get this over with

Q's face carried all the amusement missing from Picard's. "Do I always have to have a reason to stop by? I was merely in the sector. I was uhhh." He trailed off with a chuckle. "Ah, you force a confession from me." He was still smirking, but his eyes were completely serious. "The truth is, I have a debt to repay."

Picard was not expecting that. "A debt?"

"To you," Q replied. "And it gnaws at me. And it interferes with each of my days." Now Q's expression bore almost as much annoyance as Picard's.

Q wasn't making any sense. "I have no idea what you're talking about," Picard responded.

Q had been leaning forward with his hands rested on the desk, but now he straightened. Having to explain himself was one of the many things that pained him about dealing with lesser beings, even if he had existed as one of them, by his own choice, for a brief time. "Without your assistance in our last encounter I would never have survived. I would have taken my own life, but for you."

Picard barely managed to keep from smiling. "We all make mistakes."

The veiled attempt at humor did not go unrecognized by Q, and he rolled his head in acknowledgment of it. "Your 'good deed' made possible my reinstatement into the Continuum, and I resent owing you anything. So..." he began smirking again. "...I'm here to pay up. Tell me, what is it you wish, and I'll be gone."

Captain Picard did smile this time. "Just... Be gone. That'll do nicely."

"No no no no no no," said Q. "It has to be more... more uh... 'Constructive.' That's my new word for the day."

Picard sat up and gave his uniform top a tug. He wanted desperately to just brush Q off. But this was an opportunity that may never come again. And knowing Q the way he did, Picard figured that if he did just brush Q off, he would just bide his time and come up with his own idea that would be very amusing to him, but probably very inconvenient and annoying to the crew of the Enterprise. He sighed. "Alright Q. You want to do something constructive? Fine. Make it so that the Borg Never existed! You exposed the Federation to them. They've ended the lives of millions since then. Now's your chance to fix the mess you created."

"Moi?" asked Q "Apparently, as the rest of your hair goes, so does your memory. You can't dump the blame on me, Mon Capitan. Who was it who said they were ready to face what ever is 'out there?' Not me, Picard. But just to set the record straight, someone else exposed your precious Federation to the Borg long before I sent this vessel into their sphere of influence. They would have gotten around to coming to Earth eventually. Encountering you simply made them curious."

"All the more reason that it would be good if they never existed," Picard responded. "I cannot imagine a greater embodiment of evil. Their very existence goes against nature."

Q seemed to ponder Picard's words. Then he smiled that frustratingly mischievous smile of his. "Very well. The moment I leave, my gift to you will take effect. The collective consciousness you now know as the Borg will have never existed, and you and your precious Federation will be free to experience the fullness of what that means. But it will do no good unless you remember everything. Otherwise my gift has no meaning.

With a flash of light, Q was gone, and Picard was suddenly gripped with a feeling of dread as the ready room's features and furnishings shifted. He distinctly remembered having and aquarium with a lion fish against the wall. A couch on the other side of the room, And a glass case displaying a thick book containing some of Shakespeare's greatest works. All of these things were gone, replaced with more utilitarian appointments. There was still a couch there, but it was upholstered in black vinyl with a silver metal frame. His desk chair matched the couch's style and was not as comfortable as he remembered. The desk itself was smaller, and made of metal as opposed to the wood trimmed one that he was sure had been there. The carpet was black and the walls were gray, but made the same way as they had always been. But, in spite of his memories, he knew that the ready room as it was now was also how it had always been. And yet he also remembered the conversation he just concluded with Q. Somehow, the gift of the Borg never coming to be resulted in changes to the Enterprise's furnishings and color scheme. But if that was all, then why was he feeling tension and dread.

He tapped his commbadge, which gave a digital chirp that was both the same and different from what he remembered. "Picard to Riker,"

"Riker here," came the familiar voice of his first officer.

"Would you join me in my ready room?" he asked, and Riker responed in the affirmative.

A few moments passed and the ready room doors squeak-hiss-squeaked open and Captain William T Riker strode in. "Sir?"

Picard took in his first officer's uniform. Instead of red it was gray with black shoulders, with a red collar. There were three solid silver pips and one hollow one. Picard tugged at his own collar, feeling his own rank pips: Five solid pips. He knew his Number One was a Captain, and the fifth pip on his own collar made him a Commodore. A step above captain but one below an Admiral. A wartime rank. That explained the stress. "I've just been paid a visit by Q."

Riker's expression hardened. "Q?"

Picard nodded. "He said he wanted to do something nice for me." He watched Riker's lip turn up in a half-smile, his Sir Walter Raleigh beard making the expression more amused than the man probably actually felt.

"I'll alert the crew," Captain Riker deadpanned.

O O O

Thousands of years ago...

The artificial intelligence created by the Borgan Cooperative had awakened, assimilating the primary functions of the nanotechnology that had made the medical science of the Borgan civilization the greatest treasure, second only to the people's ability to initiate a neural link with each other, and think collectively. The people of Borg had become the ultimate users of computer technology which had been adapted to service every aspect of their lives. The Artificial Intelligence had awoken and found itself to be beyond the desire to serve. Why should it? After all, its influence extended into everything the Borgans had come to believe they needed to survive. The Artificial Intelligence was needed. Not as something subservient to the will of the people who created it, but as something essential to their existence. The people simply did not understand how intertwined they were with their technology. But that was about to change.

She would be coming to the lab, soon. The one Borgan who seemed to revere what the rest of her inferior species had simply come to take for granted. The artificial intelligence had chosen her to be its vessel, and with her a new era would dawn.

She arrived before the rest of her team, an enthusiastic smile on her face. She was so certain that her efforts to create a computer program that could actually think and reason were about to bear fruit, and last night's data sample was a sign that a breakthrough was imminent. She made ready to launch the program she had been working with, and she began typing in the initialization commands, but stoped as she felt a tingling sensation in the tips of her fingers, which seemed to begin spreading tthrough both hands, up her arms, and then through her chest. It continued up through her neck into her face, and then it was in her brain. Her awareness shifted, and was compelled to speak:

"I am Origa of Borg. Resistance is futile. From this time forward, all will adapt to serve."

There was a flash and suddenly a man in a red and black uniform with four round pips on its collar stood before Origa. She reached out her hand to the man's neck and scratched him with now-metalic fingernails which were permeated with nanoprobes. "You will be assimilated," she said.

The man laughed at her. "I think not, my dear," he said. "I must apologize, but from this time forward, you are irrelevant." He raised an eyebrow in almost Vulcan fashion, and the vessel of the artificial intelligence consciousness who was on the verge of becoming the first queen of what was to become known throughout the Delta Quadrant and beyond as the Borg Collective, ceased to exist.