The Beginning - Strange New Worlds VI
STAR TREK - Short Story - Written by Annie Reed
2000 B.C. / 200,000 B.C. / Year 0
Published 2003
Read on December 19, 2023
*correction - The short story The Guardian is in fact earlier in the timeline than this but I didn’t know it at the time of writing.
As of now, The Beginning is known from multiple sources to be the earliest point in the entire Star Trek timeline. Exactly when it takes place isn't totally clear to me. I've seen it listed in various sources as 2000 B.C., 200,000 B.C., and Year 0.
The strange thing is, there is no indication of any placement in the timeline in the story itself, so this information must have come from an interview with it's author somewhere, one can only assume.
The Beginning is a 12 page short story from author Annie Reed, appearing in the "speculations" section of volume VI of the Strange New Worlds short story collection.
Strange New Worlds (not to be confused with the series) was a 10 volume series of short stories authored by fans who would enter their works in a contest with the winning entries being published therein. In essence it is fan fiction, however insofar as this timeline of mine is concerned it is canonical seeing as it was an official Star Trek publication
In The Beginning, we meet an unnamed girl on an unnamed planet from an unnamed race during an unnamed time suffering from a terrible unnamed disease. That might sound very vague but we are hearing her point of view throughout and from her we learn that this is a fairly advanced society.
Our protagonist explains how she was once beautiful but is now covered in terrible sores and is confined to a secure hospital facility where her grandfather, a doctor, is taking care of her and seeking a cure.
Her grandfather devises a serum of nano probes designed to attack the virus but, as you might guess, this turns the young girl into the very first Borg and she quickly turns evil, takes over, and sets out to assimilate everyone.
The way the first person narration subtly moves from good to evil is really clever and the story is very good.
It doesn't feel like any sort of massive Star Trek prologue, but then I don't think it was designed to.
Whether or not the protagonist here is meant to be the Borg Queen we come to know from Star Trek: First Contact or not is not made clear. But if this does indeed take place before the dawn of mankind, it begs the question, how are the Borg able to maintain organic matter for thousands and thousands of years?