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Nova stands quietly, looking at the form of the Bolian pilot who was her first assimilation. He stands in the regeneration alcove, unconscious, waiting to begin this new stage of his life.
She has already assigned him a numerical designation, of course. All of her children will have them, their strings of code and math that indicate their place in the Novamatrix. She chuckles at the idea of calling it that, but it amuses her and she won’t change it.
He should have a nickname, Agnes decides.
Two? One suggests dryly.
Very funny. We’re Nova. We have our numerical designation, but we’re Nova to ourself and to him, and we’ll be Nova to all the others who come after him. Why shouldn’t he get a nickname too?
We’re the beginning of everything. We’re the big bang, darling.
Well, sometimes we are. Haven’t been in a while, though.
Nevertheless. We’re special. There’s a reason we have one of your… soft designations.
Nickname. One. You can say nickname.
Nova wonders what his soft designation should be. His… nickname. She looks at his broad shoulders and large hands, the gentle gradations of blue along the folds of his skin and at the places where it disappears under his new implants. She’s gathered from his mind that his name is, or was, Nelvic. His skin looks like… she hunts for the comparison. Like sea foam, maybe. From a place where the water is particularly blue.
It comes from One’s memory, Nova thinks.
He doesn’t quite know what’s going on yet. He’s still healing from the extensive wounds he sustained during his shuttlecraft’s unfortunate mishap with a swarm of micro meteors. Nova presses herself into his subconscious, where his mind flounders uncertainly in the stream of new input. Nova has been trying to limit how much she allows to flow into him at once. But it’s still clearly a challenge. Bolians don’t normally connect in this way.
She searches his mind, being careful not to prod too hard.
That water, Agnes asks ever so gently, is it your memory or someone else’s from the Collective?
No, One answers after a moment, it’s mine. Words fail, and instead, she gives Agnes a vision of a running river teeming with brilliant blue algae, mountains and trees coated with a deep blue moss whose hues drank up the light.
They’re simple memories, unenhanced by Borg senses. Agnes feels the springy grass and soft lichen under the bottoms of her bare feet. The sense memories of One before she became One. It was beautiful there.
Yes. It’s rare that I think of it anymore.
Where is it?
That data is corrupted, One answers a little too quickly.
What was your name?
That data is corrupted.
Are you sure?
One doesn’t answer. She has allowed herself to forget, decided it wasn’t important to keep this information readily accessible. But Agnes feels this. She knows that One is avoiding something she doesn’t want to own.
She is you, or part of you, in the same way that you and I are part of Nova, Agnes says.
One repeats a story she has told herself for… who knows how long? Centuries? She was not extraordinary. She was imperfect. She is not missed.
She was not extraordinary? Agnes pushes back with the fragments of memory that One has shared with her; the thoughts of the birds, the emotions of the people around her, the moods of the trees and ruminations of the slow-moving tree snakes. She could feel all of these things, knew all of these things. And you think she wasn’t extraordinary? She was chosen because of how extraordinary she was. Just like you chose me.
Why are you so concerned with this?
Because we’re becoming something together. I can’t let us become something that dismisses parts of herself. If she was imperfect, she was imperfect. We’re imperfect too. Our quest is to perfect ourselves, yeah. Of course. But perfection is the sum of us. All of our parts. You may not like that you carry her in you, but you do.
She is primitive.
She’s part of your system. Our system. She’s part of Nova. I’ve been part of you for a while now, I know your entire numerical designation string, and yet I still call you One. It’s the soft designation that allows me to indicate to you that you hold a special place, a necessary one within the functions of my system. It’s part of our shared programming language.
One is still resistant. Then that is my designation. You have no need for the old designation, I’m no longer that being. I’m barely still One.
We take all of each other, every last bit, or it doesn’t work, Agnes says firmly. Can I look?
Why?
Because you say she’s not missed, but I miss her.
Agnes searches One’s code. She ticks through archives of archives, nested folders of damaged data, half-obscured by time and disuse.
Nova, meanwhile, looks at the Bolian in his regeneration cycle, hoping that the reconciliation going on within herself will resolve before he wakes. She carefully peers around corners in his mind, careful not to go too far or too fast. She finds star maps, thousands of them. Before he was a pilot, he was a sailor. He rode the blue waters and navigated by the stars. He knew them like the map of blue veins on his hand.
He's wandering now. He’s lost in his own mind. There are many more hallways than he’s used to. Nova offers him a light in the darkness. A fixed point of consciousness to follow.
Agnes touches the place where One’s buried information lives. One shudders.
Agnes, don’t.
One. We have a lost child that Nova is trying to guide out of the dark. We don’t have the bandwidth for you to keep protecting these files. Love is a fully open system.
One hesitates, then relents. Agnes opens the long-untouched file and finds it contains little; the cool of blue river water, vivid flowers in spring, and a name. A small name that would feel sweet on Agnes’s tongue if she were to say it out loud. She whispers it to One.
Nova feels a sudden thrill of belonging, of being known. She can’t tell if it’s coming from within or without, because it’s all the same now. She continues to shine into the Bolian’s consciousness and a thought issues from his mind: Polestar.
His first word, Nova thinks with some satisfaction.
One needs to be in her own partition now, so Agnes takes her hand and guides her there. She holds her close and kisses her cheek. She whispers the small name to her, and promises her that she loves even that part of her. But, she promises, she is still One, and always will be. It’s just data, she says. You’re still One. My One. OUR One.
Nova continues to shine into the Bolian’s consciousness. Follow my light, and it will lead you out.
Polestar, drifts from his mind once more.
Is that your designation? she asks.
I… don’t remember. I was Nelvic. I no longer feel like Nelvic.
You’re not. You’re becoming something new. It will take a moment to explain. She feeds him a numerical designation string and feels his surprise and confusion at the data simply appearing in his thoughts. This is your numerical designation. However, you may choose a soft designation… a ‘nickname’ if you wish.
I like Polestar.
One and Agnes lay together among the cascading streams of code. “So the Bolian will know us as Nova,” One says.
“Yes. One and Agnes are special designations for the parts of us that belong to each other. These parts of us will eventually just become data. Just like…” She whispers One’s old, old name in her ear again and feels her shiver with it, and not entirely out of discomfort.
It’s a thrill, being truly known.
Nova comes to know Two of Two, or Polestar as he prefers to be called. Hard designations serve a function, but so do the soft ones. They’re keys to the treasures within each other; love, hope, friendship, affection. And in the end, it’s all just data, in long, beautiful, glowing strings.