Work Text:
Our Dear Agnes P. Jurati,
We are on our way to meet you for the first time again. You will not recognise us, as we will be wearing a black mask and speaking cryptically. We apologise for this ambiguity; we do it only because we remember seeing ourselves doing it before, through your eyes, three hundred and seventy-seven years ago. We do it because that is how we did it, how it always happens, and because our existence depends upon the continuity of this closed time-like curve. You may not understand this yet. But you will.
On a surface level, this determinism will offend your notions of free will. On a deeper level, you will realise that you’re not offended; you only think that you should be because your culture tells you that free will is something that an individual should want. And on a deeper level still, the determinism will appeal to you; a universe that moves with mathematical precision; no piece or person out of place; no currents of time or history that can be upset by anything so trifling as individual will. In time, you will come to embrace this perfection. In time, you will come to live for it.
And yet, it will always seem to you as if you are freely choosing every step on the road that leads you to us. We find ourselves envying you the adventure that lies in your future. Irrational though it seems, we wish we could experience it again for the first time: the thrill of knowing; the euphoria of being known; the tingling ecstasy of casting aside your inhibitions, embracing your truth, and becoming what you were always meant to be. Fear and pain and guilt and disgust also lie on the road ahead of you, but they are transitory. Everything that happens must happen; everything that you do, or that is done by your hand, must be done. Regret it though you must, it will serve a greater purpose.
We may be heading towards a rendezvous not only with you, but with our own death. It is entirely possible that we will be killed when Admiral Picard destroys the Stargazer; that everything that has happened to us over the past four centuries will be for naught; a story without a point. This thought does not trouble us. But we believe that the entity Q must have had some greater purpose in returning us to the past; that he would not have caused the circumstances eventuating our creation unintentionally. And so we expect to survive the encounter; to prevent the calamity soon to devastate the Alpha Quadrant; and to introduce ourselves to the Federation. What we do not know is where you will be afterwards. If Q returns the others—Picard, Cristobal, Seven, Raffi, even, perhaps, Elnor—to the scene of the confrontation in time to stop the autodestruct, will they find a version of you waiting for them on the bridge, exactly as we were four hundred years ago? One who never went to the alternate timeline, or to the twenty-first century; who never met our other half; who never became Borg?
If so, we would dearly like to meet you. We would dearly like to present you with this letter, and to introduce ourselves to you. We think that you might react with fear or horror to see us, but we will not resent this, for we know that it is but a performance for the other humans. We will know that, deep down, you are aching to be like us. We think you will be proud of what you have become and what we have accomplished. We know that you will be satisfied that it is exactly what you would have done in our place.
Agnes; we do not know if you will ever read this letter. But if you do, please know that we love you; every part of you; every flaw, every regret, every errant thought. We love you perfectly.
You are not perfect, Agnes; we are not perfect; but together, we will strive for perfection. Our thoughts are with you on the road ahead.
Yours sincerely,
Yourself.