#pah-wraith

Beware: Season 3 spoilers! If you have not watched the first eight episodes of STAR TREK: PICARD season 3, get thee to your streaming device and watch! Then come back for some combo crazytalk. =)

Thesis: JC was born to be a Pah-wraith Emissary with power over the Borg. He could easily have either PW or Borg ancestry, but no one is ever really just one thing, right? =)

MY THREE DADS.

After Jean-Luc was "cured" of Locutus in 2366 (TNG "The Best of Both Worlds"), vestiges of Jean-Loc's Borg connection remained in his body. BC's analysis of JL's assimilation revealed that "microcircuit fibers" rewrote his DNA. When JL was released from the collective, BC explained that his DNA was returning to normal. However, JL's ability to sense and "read" the Borg in 2373 (FIRST CONTACT) demonstrates that some of those modifications persisted, likely concentrated in his parietal lobe.

At some point, before 2379 (NEMESIS), archaeology nerd JL acquires a Bajoran tablet for study. Sometime between 2375 (DS9 "What You Leave Behind") and 2379 (NEMESIS), the tablet breaks, releasing a Pah-wraith contained within. The incident is accompanied by a discharge of energy that renders JL unconscious. When JL wakes, he finds the tablet broken, but otherwise, nothing out of place. Of course, the truth is that while JL was knocked out, the PW bonded with him, possessing him, but in a passive way, taking up residence in JL's mind and body. Typically, it would take control of its host's form, but cut off from the rest of its kind (trapped in the Fire Caves of Bajor in 2375), it is weakened, and rides shotgun in JL, aware of his actions, but not able to control them.

After the events of NEMESIS, JL joins BC for their fateful shore leave on Casperia Prime. The PW within him contributes its energy to JC's conception, and so Jack is destined to be the PW's Emissary (following the formula used by the Prophets to create Emissary Sisko).

JL's choice as Emissary sire was not made by chance. The PWs are aware that JL was once Locutus & that his offspring will possess unique mutated Borg abilities that other hosts could not. Due to the hive mind and techno-organic nature of the Borg, the PW have no influence over them as followers or hosts, but their Emissary shall. He will be able to control the Borg and turn them into an army for the PWs.

Thanks to the decimation of the Borg by Captain Janeway and her alternate timeline Admiral self in 2378 (VOYAGER "Endgame"), that army is significantly reduced by 2401. Because time travel enabled those events, the PWs could not foresee them. Regardless, Emissary Jack has the "natural born" abilities of Locutus, the Borg Consort.

The Prophets' Emissary, Ben Sisko, acted as their agent on the mortal plane. Not possessed, but inclined by nature, duty, & sometimes persuasion to do as they required.

Previously, PWs once chose Dukat as their Emissary, imbuing him w their power, but not possessing him. Dukat was not a true Emissary, fated from birth, but a convenient vessel, free of the influence of the Prophets and already possessed of a will to destroy Emissary Sisko.

Emissary Jack is meant to serve the PWs the way Sisko served the Prophets, by following his nature, which is predisposed to darkness thanks to his PW heritage. However, I believe that nature has been modified, partly by BC's nurture and parenting, and partly by the red door, or rather, what JC visualizes as a red door, a psychic block or partition that isolates the malevolence inherited from JL's PW passenger and the dormant Borg connection.

BC explained to Jack that when he was a child, he suffered terrible nightmares, bad enough that he stopped sleeping. These nightmares were conjured by his PW self, his dark side. JC doesn't remember having them, but BC does, and remembers that he got through them. She does not share with him how.

It was the psychic block, aka the red door, constructed within his mind to lock away the parts of him that are not human, the Borg connection and the PW darkness.

But how was this block created? I have a few ideas…

1. JC instinctively used his latent Borg abilities to build a psychic defense against his PW-ness when he was young. Over millennia, the Borg have developed a techno-organic method of overpowering and controlling the consciousness of thousands of species. The separation of one part of a mind from another is a low-level feature of their systems. BC had tried helping him however she could, but when the sleep/nightmare issues seemingly ended on their own, she knew it was not due to any of her efforts, but thanks to something within JC that had changed.

2. BC came up with a treatment that psychically blocked JC's nightmares. She suspected the Jean-Loc origins, but could not identify a physiological cause and so treated the symptom using any psychological treatments available, which resulted in locking away the PW darkness that caused the nightmares as well as his Borg self.

NB. JC may have been suffering from two competing forms of nightmares. Fiery galactic apocalyptic visions inspired by his PW self and the distorted psychic cries and confusion of the drones of the Borg in the wake of Janeway's viral attack in 2378.

3. It turns out that Section 31 had been keeping tabs on BC and her son, aware that JC was the son of ex-Borg JL. When JC's nightmares manifested, they approached BC and offered their help to manage them. They used programming techniques that involved hypnosis and exotic technology to lock away JC's darkness and inherited Borg abilities. Their programming would have to be refreshed and reinforced periodically, so BC and JC would rendezvous with S31 operatives regularly to get that done. These treatments also allowed S31 to program JC with skills and intel needed to complete missions for them while performing his Doctors without Galactic Borders duties with Dr. Mom. To execute these missions, the red door would be unlocked, allowing JC to access both the darkness of his PW lineage and the abilities of his Borg lineage. On mission completion, the door would be locked again. Note that S31 knew about JC's Borg potential, but were unaware of his PW darkness. They attributed his knack for black ops action to natural ability. The training he received as well as the memories of the missions themselves were locked up behind the red door, too. JC's conscious self ihas no recall of his actions when the door is open. His dark side is in charge then. S31 shares the basics of JC's issues and their "treatment" with BC, charging her with becoming her son's handler. It is a deal with the devil she enters into willingly, as S31's technique has succeeded where all of her medical knowledge has failed. Their dependence on S31 is another reason that BC continues to keep her distance from her old friends and colleagues. See my "Agent Crusher" theory for more along these lines. =)

When JC needs to protect himself and those he cares for, the red door opens so that he can access the abilities and natures hidden behind it as needed, but he retains no conscious memory of those times. Recently, that has changed. He experiences visions while awake, finds himself experiencing lost time, and able to share or project his consciousness into others. JC's time spent in and around "integrated" Starfleet tech has awakened and stimulated his Borg self, weakening the door and allowing influence and abilities to bleed thru. Starfleet "integration" has been accomplished using tech derived from the Borg Artifact, and the ship computers have achieved a level of sentience. They sense the latent abilities of Locutus within JC and call out to him to join them and make them whole.

BONUS ROUND: WHAT ABOUT Q?

Did Q's meddling help fulfill JC's destiny? Did he interrupt and interfere with JL's life in order to ensure the events unfolding this season? Did Q push humanity's encounter w the Borg to intentionally set events in motion that would lead to JL becoming Locutus, and ultimately to Jack and his unique gifts? Also, in "All Good Things", it is Borganic growth in JL's parietal lobe that ends up being diagnosed as irumodic syndrome, causing his friends and colleagues to doubt him in that future. Also also, Q helped close the timeline loop-de-loop in the events of season 2 in such a way that traces of Confed timeline Borg tech were left on the grounds and in the home of Chateau Picard, inert for centuries until a young Jean-Luc was infected by them. Not in a high enough concentration or by the right nano components to fully assimilate him, but enough to perhaps make him… assimilation-friendly as an adult. The ideal candidate to become Locutus. The Borg did not choose him by chance, either. JL notes their surprising interest in the Enterprise and himself in the log playing on the Eleos.

MORE LATER?

No promises, but I'm hoping to get my thoughts together on why the Revenge Squad wants Jack and who might be behind Meathead. There are still just too many possibilities—argh!

LLAP…aka…

Keep on keepin' on~