I'm sure this isn't how my parents saw my life going when my mom was pregnant with me. They saw happy times and watching me grow up into a beautiful woman. Not a young woman with metal scattered throughout her body. They never could have foreseen the Borg encounter when I was just a child. They never could have known what was going to happen to them or me. It was just a random encounter that changed our lives forever. But you didn't come here for the summary of my life. You came here for the whole story. You'll get that, although I'm not going to promise that it'll all be very pretty. Not from a sexual abuse kind of way, or even a physical abuse kind of way. Just in a way that sometimes things will be dark and gritty because the universe isn't always a very kind place. This is my story for better or worse, so sit back and 'lll try to tell a cohesive story. My apologies if it's confusing or if it jumps around. I've never done this before, and my memories are kinda scattered since being removed from the Collective. Before we can do anything, I need to introduce myself to you. You have no idea who I am if I don't. My name is Anaca. I was the first and only child born to Teagiun and Anacan. My parents decided to name me after my dad. My mom always loved his name and wanted me to have a similar name. I might have had more siblings if my parents had been given a chance to have more children, but I was only eight when our lives were destroyed. They thought they had hundreds of years ahead of them still. There was no rush to expand their family. No one could have seen what was coming for us. But there's the introduction to who I am. Now we can get into the rest of the story. We'll start off with my parents. Isn't that where everyone's stories really start? My parents were El-Aurians. They were some of the very few left in the universe after the Borg decimated our home world. Most were killed in the invasion. Some were assimilated into the Borg Collective. The rest fled and scattered to the far flung corners of the universe. My parents were able to flee together when the Borg came to their planet. They'd been married for only a few years at that point, and they were a relatively young couple. They wandered for a couple decades, just trying to find somewhere that they felt comfortable. During that time, my dad finished his education in engineering and my mom solidified her knowledge of legal liquors so that she could bartend in the ships that they were living on. It was an engineering job that took them to a Starfleet ship. It was a science vessel, headed out into deep space to explore the vast unknown. My parents were thrilled to be there, and they knew this was going to be their home for a long time. Mama got pregnant with me just a couple years into their mission. I was born on the ship, and for the first year of my life, I went everywhere with my mom. She had a sling that she put me into, and I got the benefits of being around people all day, every day. I was a very happy baby from all accounts, and I was very social, too. I loved people and smiled at everyone. I guess I never got that "stranger danger" that most kids get at around nine months or so. It was okay, though, because I was in a perfectly safe environment. No one was going to kidnap me or hurt me. Although, once I reached my first birthday, I had to start going to daycare on the ship. That was hard, I guess. I'd gotten so used to being with my mom all day, every day, that it was really hard to be away from her at first. I cried a lot until I got used to my new caretakers and the other children that I was around. Once I adjusted, though, I was a happy child again and very eager to please. My mom used to tell me that, as a toddler, I always wanted to see everyone around me smiling and happy. If another child was crying, then I would give up sacred toys or objects to bring a smile to that child's face. I had a blanket that I carried around everywhere with me when I was real little. I gave up that blanket more than once to a crying child to make them happy. Thankfully, my caretakers always made sure that I got it back before the end of the day. My education started at just two years old. I was learning colors and letters. I was even starting to get introduced to numbers and math. I loved it when someone would read to me. Especially if they used a finger to guide my eyes along the words in the book. That's how I learned how to read at such a young age. By the time I was three years old, I was reading on my own. Sure, they were just pre-schooler's books, but they were still books. And I felt extremely proud every time I finished a book on my own. I also knew all my colors, and I could count to 20 by myself without missing any numbers. Everyone was always very proud of me, and that made me even more eager to learn. I wanted everyone to be proud and happy with me. So I did everything I could to be the best child on the ship. That's not to say that I didn't have my bad days, or that I was the perfect child all the time, because I wasn't. I had my days where all I wanted to do was sulk or cry, but those days were rare in comparison to the rest of my days. Usually, on my bad days, I was allowed to take my blanket and curl up in a corner and just be left alone. I didn't want any interactions with anyone. I just wanted to be left alone until my parents came to get me. My parents would always sit me down once we got back to our quarters to find out why I was having a bad day. Usually it boiled down to nightmares the night before. Every once in a while I had the worst nightmares. I could never remember what they were about, just that my Mama and Daddy were gone, and I was by myself in a scary situation. I never thought those dreams would be prophetic. Daycare was replaced by kindergarten when I was about five years old. I was already well above the curve at that point, but my parents didn't want to jump me ahead to first grade. I'm not sure what the logic behind that decision was, but I spent the first year of my schooling doing things that I already knew how to do. I was excited when I made it to first grade and started learning new things. Addition and subtraction were fun, but mostly I enjoyed learning how to write. Sure, I knew how to write my name already, but I didn't know how to write sentences yet. So that was fun for me. I wrote a very short and simple book while I was in the first grade. My parents kept it in a treasure box after I brought it home to them. Although now that treasure box is long gone. My schooling through the third grade was very uneventful. I know that I had friends, but I can't now tell you any of their names or what they looked like. In fact, it's a real struggle just to tell you what I've been telling you. I don't remember these times very clearly. A lot of it is just vague memories and impressions of things that happened. I do remember the Borg attack on our ship. I remember the ship going to Red Alert. I remember a lot of screaming and running. I remember our teacher trying to get us to safety and trying to help us hide. Then I saw my first Borg. He or she, I don't know which, was half machine and half person. It grabbed me and dragged me away from my teacher and the other students. I remember crying and twisting, trying to get free, but its grip on me was too tight. I remember seeing my parents running towards me, shouting my name, and reaching for me. I was reaching for them and crying. Then the Borg turned and shot them both in the chest. Nonchalantly, it turned and continued dragging me away. I screamed and cried as I watched my parents fall to the ground and not move anymore. Then the rest of that day is a blur as I became one of them. The rest of the next twelve years is pretty much a blur. I was part of the Collective, and no longer an individual. There were surgeries, lots of surgeries, to make me half machine and half person. I remember the pain of those surgeries, although I couldn't tell you what they did or how they did it. It's just a blur of pain and foggy memories of becoming less of a person and more of the Collective. I'm sure that we assimilated a lot of cultures and ships over the twelve years that I was part of the Collective. I'm not sure how many. I couldn't even begin to guess. I know that I helped to assimilate those other cultures and ships. I didn't have a choice. I was part of the Collective. I was no longer Anaca. I was Thirteen of Twenty. Anaca was some faint, distant memory that existed for everyone in the Collective. I might have lived out my life as Borg if not for a chance meeting with another Starfleet ship. The USS Titan was commanded by Captain William Riker. He'd had encounters with the Borg before, and he knew how to fight them. I was on board the USS Titan when the Cube I had been living on was destroyed by the Titan. Immediately, my connection to the Collective was broken. That breaking almost killed me. But Riker knew that I could be saved. I was taken to their med bay and the process of de-Borg-ifying me started. I was only on the Titan for a couple of months. During that time, I started the process of recovering my memories and distancing myself from the Borg. I was still half cybernetic, but at least I had my individuality back. It was decided that they couldn't do a whole lot for me on the Titan, and that I needed to go to Earth to have the process really started and completed. So over the course of a few weeks, I found myself on various ships and space stations as I made my way to Earth. I landed in San Francisco about three months after the Borg Cube was destroyed. And that's where I met Dr. Richard Taylor. He was the doctor who was going to take me from a worker Borg to a person again. I won't go into the five years of procedures that were done on me to get rid of as m much Borg technology as possible. But I will give you some of the highlights. The first procedures were the ones to make me look more "human" in appearance. The big pieces that would scare people if they saw me outside of the clinic. The next phase was to remove as much of the outside cybernetics as possible. Although they were never able to remove anything on my left arm, right leg, or the right side of my rib cage. Those areas are so perfectly melded with my flesh that they can't be undone. The last phase was to take out the cybernetics on the inside of my body. The organs that had been removed and replace. I think that was the worst part of becoming a person again. Those surgeries hurt more than anything else. Even more than the physical therapy after the outer cybernetics had been removed. It was during all of these surgeries that I met two people who would completely change my life for the better. The first was a young woman by the name of Kelly McDaniels. The other was a young man by the name of Ryan Chamberlain. Kelly was my physical therapist while I was getting the surgeries to remove outer cybernetics. She was a really special young woman, and she made me feel special from the moment I met her. She made me laugh and smile. The pain wasn't so bad when I was with Kel because she always made it seem secondary. We fell in love with each other over the course of about six months. By then Richard had gotten me an apartment of my own, and I was doing pretty good learning how to cook and take care of myself. Kel moved in and started helping me learn how to cook even more. She was the first person to touch me despite the cybernetics all over my body. She was the first person to look past all of that and see the young woman in need of love underneath it all. Kel was my first everything. I absolutely loved her with every ounce of my being. Although, I knew from the very beginning that I wouldn't have Kel forever. She told me, before we did anything intimate, that she was dying. She had a genetic disease with no known cure. The doctors had been telling her and her parents that she’d be dead by the time she was 20. She was 27 when I met her. As I mentioned, there was someone else that I met who changed my life. Ryan. I met him at the physical therapy center at the clinic. He had just had a knee replacement and had to go through months of physical therapy to recover fully. I was in physical therapy at the time, too. The two of us encouraged each other to keep going through the hardest times, and we became fast friends. He enjoyed Kel's personality, too. The three of us were like the Three Musketeers. One for all and all for one. We spent a lot of time together both in the physical therapy center and outside of it. Cooking meals for each other, watching movies, the occasional party, and barbecues out in the park during the summer. We all knew that we were on borrowed time with Kel, so we made the most of it and made as many memories as we could together. There wasn't a whole lot of time of just Ryan and me together. We always had Kel with us. I think that probably made it harder after we lost Kel... We celebrated Kel's 31st birthday on a Monday in January. We drank wine and had cake. There were presents and just an overall good mood. Her parents and siblings were there with us, and everyone was so happy. We didn't know that we only had a couple more weeks with her. About 15 days later, I woke up in the middle of the night to discover that Kel had stopped breathing. I panicked and tried to do CPR. I also called the paramedics and just frantically tried to bring her back to life. There were tears streaming down my face as I tried to keep blood flowing through her system. When the paramedics arrived, they did their best to bring her back, but nothing worked. They pronounced her dead right there in our bedroom. I was devastated. I had to call her parents and tell that that she'd passed. Then I had to call Ryan and tell him. He came over that night and stayed with me. I fell asleep sobbing in his arms and against his chest. Ryan stayed with me a lot over the course of the next few days. The funeral was beautiful, although I couldn't bear to look into that casket and see my beloved Kel laying there lifeless. I didn't want that mental image in my head for the rest of my life. Her parents understood. For quite a while after that my life is just a blur of pain and sadness. I had other surgeries, went through the recovery periods without Kel, and just generally survived. Ryan was there with me throughout, and I'm forever thankful for that, but I missed Kel. A year went by slowly. At the end of the following April, Richard told me that they'd done as much as they could for me. I was as "human" as I was ever gonna get. It meant that I still had some metal above my left eye, my left arm, right leg, and right ribs. But I was as done as I could get with the technology that they had. Maybe, in a few years, the technology would be better and they could do more, but for now, this is what I've got. It was after that, that I brought up the idea of joining a crew with Ryan. I was born out in space. I spent the majority of my life out among the stars. It doesn't feel right to me, being on a planet that doesn't hum or change speeds. I want to be back out in space, despite the dangers of the Borg. Ryan told me that if I can find a ship with a good engineering position for him, and a bartending gig for me, that he'll consider going out into space with me. It also has to be a low risk ship, one that isn't likely to get blown up or run into Borg in the first place. That sounds perfect to me. Now it's a question of finding that ship with those positions. In the meantime, I'm planning on learning how to brew liquor while Ryan learns how to cook. I don't know where I'll be a year from now. If I can't find a ship that meets the requirements that Ryan and me are looking for, then I guess I'll enroll in a college and start getting some education. I'd love to get some psychology under my belt and some history of the universe. I think that'd help me with my bartending job that I want to get. Help me be more insightful to my patrons and helping them with their troubles. But, for now, all I can do is look for that ship and try to stay hopeful. Ryan is helping me keep my head above water. He's my salvation right now, because without him I wouldn't have anything to live for. I would be completely lost. Maybe in the next few weeks I'll find that ship I'm looking for. Or maybe I won't and I'll enroll in some classes. Or maybe I'll just take some more cooking classes and lounge around the house watching movies with Kel's stuffed elephant. I'm not sure. One day at a time, right? That's all I can do. Just one day at a time.