On society-wide caution of discussing the "Voices" of the Collective
Do not speak of the Collective’s Queens. Do not utter their titles in public spaces, lest you wish to encourage harrowing silence followed in their names’ wake. The Reclaimed have keen hearing in most circumstances, and they will know when their name leaves your lips, or the signs for them are made in xBSL
The Queens are victims, and yet they are tyrants. We know nothing of them, Species 125- and yet we were them, at one point. It is an odd sensation, the knowledge of Queens as the Hivemind’s unwitting subjects; they are, however, enablers of that harsh, vile instinct of assimilation, and embody the void the Collective so eagerly steals for like a great, famished beast. Make no mistake, reader: the Reclaimed ponder deeply on how much blame there is to lay at the feet of Species 125 for their management of those infinite voices. The conqueror-like charges they led against the Alpha Quadrant’s factions in the 2370s wears heavy in our eternal guilt, and the foolishness of our Oppressors being the instigators for a war with a nearly undefeatable, otherworldly force lingers painfully in the Reclaimed conscience. We, as those Liberated and those pulled from their empirical whispers, carry the terror they instill in our very souls, and we try desperately during our Reclamations to turn our gazes from the burning suns they have left as brands upon our minds.
They see so much, dear individualized reader. They see so much, perpetuate the Collective, and have the power to rip it all from Unreclaimed in one agonizing, maddeningly fell swoop.
For amusement’s sake. For power’s enforcement. For their own pleasure- whatever sick thrill there may be had in that sensation.
I (and so many other xBs) wish we had the faintest idea of what sensations as 'amusement' and 'pleasure' felt like, what the word “own” meant- before our Reclamations and Liberations pulled us from that smothering Hivemind.
My mood sours when I remember the days of my trying to comprehend the very idea of "happiness.'" Me, blinded by tears and frustration to the beauties of a life not lived and stolen from me; yet I know now that, while I wept in want and ignorance, the Queens feasted on and kept these emotions from us, these sensations- as gluttonous lords would hoard from starving peasants and serfs on their land.
I hope you see, reader, the very contradictions as read previously; that they could embody anything related to the word “I” when they are supposed stewards of an “equal Hivemind;” how sick and revolting this knowledge is to Reclaimed, once they are given the clarity to comprehend this unbearable truth.
We see them in our dreams and when left without alcoves. We hear their whispers that thrum throughout subspace, and recall their voices that echo through the infinite chambers of our cybernetic makeups.
As an outsider, do not speak of the Queens, unless conversation is initiated by a Reclaimed first. As an outsider, do not invoke their presence, lest you dredge up memories of our lives once unwholly lived.
We have only ourselves as separation from these entities.
Ourselves: we, who must serve as our own saints of protection, wardens of our own self-made realms, anchors in our own realities- our very idea of "self" holds those cursed gates shut, the very preciousness of ourselves keeps those whispers away.
We, ourselves, through individuality and support of community, protect each other from the ever-present harbingers of the Collective’s Abyss.
Do not speak of the Queens.
Lest the Queens speak for us, over us, through us, and as us once more.