“Oh sure, Picard. I’m just practicing pantomime. Better yet, I’ve decided birds need more statues to poop on, so I’m obliging them. No, of course I can’t move!” I said in exasperation. “Do you seriously think I’d be posed like this . . . how am I posed, anyway?”
“Your arms are outstretched, and your right leg is forward of your left and slightly bent.”
“Wonderful. I look like an Irish step dancer.”
“May we safely assume,” asked Data, “that you have been frozen in place by your fellow Q, so that you cannot in any way interfere with the impending End of the universe?”
“That is a safe assumption, yes.” Outwardly, I maintained my normal air of sangfroid. Inwardly, I raged. Were I to voice the fury that was roiling within me, however, it might have come across in an extremely un-Q-like manner. Perhaps, in the final analysis, that was why I had wanted Picard with me in this adventure. As long as he was around, I would be disinclined to give in to the despair that threatened to overwhelm me. Stiff upper lip and all that good stuff.
“They appear to have put you on a pedestal, Q,” Picard observed. “Even in the face of oblivion, your fellow Q retain a sense of irony.”
“They can retain this!” I said, and I tried to make a lewd gesture but was unsuccessful.
“Can you break free?”
“If I could, do you think I would be standing here? Picard, this is getting us nowhere. This is just like that time with the fire,” I said.
Picard stared up at me in confusion. “Fire? What are you talking about?”
I hesitated at first, but then realized that with the End of Everything looming just over the horizon, there was no need for reticence. I was about to tell him the story when I heard a burst of laughter coming from the direction of Times Square. I wondered how many of my fellow Q knew that I was here. All of them, most likely. And how many of them cared? None of them, most likely. Well . . . perhaps one. But I knew I couldn’t count on his help.
“What were you going to tell me?” asked Picard.
“It really isn’t of much relevance to the situation, Picard.”
“Who knows what is and isn’t relevant, Q?” he replied.
“The important thing is getting me out of this . . . this situation.”
“Very well, Q.” He folded his arms and waited for a suggestion. Finally, he asked, “How shall we go about accomplishing that?”
“Nothing comes to mind,” I admitted.
“All right then. So . . . fire?”
“Yes, well . . .” and I let out a sigh. “You know the Greek legend about Prometheus?”
“The Titan. Yes, of course,” said Picard. “He brought fire to mankind, and for his transgression, the angered gods chained him to a rock and left him there for birds to eat his innards. Why?”
“Well . . . if you must know . . . I was Prometheus.”
Picard stared at me as if I had just admitted to bedding down his mother. “What do you mean, you were Prometheus? How could there be a—?”
“I assume you’ve heard of racial memory, Picard. Events so cataclysmic, so monumental that they inform us as to ‘who’ and ‘what’ we are. Fear of the dark: the first murder was committed in the dark, did you know that?”
“Did you commit it?” Picard asked stiffly.
“No, Picard, I didn’t. I had better things to do than club one of your prehistoric ancestors senseless for the privilege of sitting a hair closer to the fire. You humans invented murder all by yourselves. But fire, well . . .” I shrugged. Inwardly. Outwardly, of course, I didn’t move an inch. “You were such a pathetic little race when you first started out . . . not that you’re much better now, you understand. And there was a group of you, barely recognizable as human, sitting about and stating forlornly at the forest primeval where eyes stared back at you and prehistoric bestial lips smacked, anxious to dine on a late-evening snack of cold human. You seemed ready for a little ‘pick-me-up.’ So I gave you fire. I wanted to see what you’d do with it. Not surprisingly, the first human to see fire thought it was something to put on his head. It was hilarious to watch. With that inauspicious beginning, I wasn’t sure if you people would ever manage to harness its power.
“Of course, the other Q weren’t happy with me. I was supposed to have observed your race from a purely scientific point of view, and they felt I had gone too far. It was their belief that humans would have died off without my interference, and the planet Earth would have had cockroaches as its dominant species, as it was supposed to. They were very disappointed with me. So, to show their displeasure, they chained me to the side of a mountain, and assorted beasts of the wild came along and chewed on me. My body regenerated itself, of course, because this isn’t really a body so much as it is a conceptualization for the convenience of whoever’s looking at me. Every so often, some daring human would climb up to where I was chained, poke a stick at my liver, and run off, squealing with delight. I can’t begin to tell you how thrilled I was to provide entertainment for the first generations of humanity. There was one channel and I was the only thing on. That’s one of the reasons I find you such an annoying race. You have this disconcerting habit of reveling in other people’s pain. Someone hits his head—you laugh; slips on a banana and breaks his back—you guffaw. Come to think of it, not one of your mangy ancestors tried to free me. . . .”
Picard still seemed incredulous. “So am I to believe . . . that you were the basis of the myth of Prometheus?”
“In short, yes. Norsemen, on the other hand, embellished the incident in other directions and called me Loki, claiming I was chained to a rock with a snake dripping acid on me. Loki, the son of giants; Prometheus, the Titan. I suppose I seemed big to your ancestors. Then again, people were shorter back then.”
“Loki, the trickster god. Perhaps the Norse knew you better than you suspected,” said Picard. “Q, do you really expect me to believe your . . . outlandish tales?”
“You know, Picard, that’s the joy of being held in immovable stasis while the universe teeters on the edge of annihilation. With stakes like those, it doesn’t really matter all that much whether you believe me or not, does it? On a scale of one to ten, the importance of my credibility in the eyes of Jean-Luc Picard ranks somewhere in the negative billions.”
Data had been watching the entire exchange with nary a flicker of cognizance in his gold eyes, and then, all of a sudden, he came out of “sleep mode.”
“Let us assume, for a moment, that your description of history has some measure of truth to it,” he said.
“Oh yes, let’s,” I said sarcastically.
“It is clear that you are not at present still chained to a rock. Obviously you were released. Was that a collective decision of the Q Continuum, to release you?”
I cast my memory back to a time long ago, “No,” I said finally. “It was the actions of one Q who unilaterally decided he did not wish to see me continue suffering. He freed me and brought me back to the Continuum.”
Picard began to look hopeful. “Which Q? Do you remember? Could he free you now? Can we find him?”
“We already found him,” I replied. “He was driving the cab.”
Picard began to circle me thoughtfully. “Well, now, that is a bit of a coincidence, don’t you think? Of all Qs, the one that was sympathetic to you happened to be the one who picked you up in the cab. . . .”
“He has not been sympathetic to me, Picard,” I corrected him. “Believe me, no one in the Q Continuum cares about anyone else. We’re a rather self-centered lot, truth be told. And besides . . . if you’re implying that somehow that Q would be interested in helping me now, then you obviously weren’t listening. Didn’t you hear him waxing rhapsodically about the End of Everything? He’s obviously as enamored of the idea as everyone else.” I was getting very frustrated. When I was chained to the rock, or locked in Pandora’s box, I had been able to tell myself that this, too, would pass, because time was on my side. But now, time was not on my side.
And Picard was really beginning to irritate me. “Perhaps not, Q,” he continued. “Perhaps he was not embracing the End . . . so much as he was warning you. He may have been trying to let you know that he was no happier about it than you are. But he also knew to openly advocate doing something about it—to suggest something should actually be done to stop it—would result in disaster.”
There was something in what Picard was claiming that had possibilities.
He continued, “Think about what he was saying. Think about the qualifiers he used. He said things like, ‘Perhaps it’s glorious. Perhaps it’s everything we could have hoped for.’ Perhaps he’s anxious to see something done. And he also said that he ‘almost’ envied your not knowing what was happening. We may have misunderstood what he meant. He may have been trying to let you know that he was on your side.”
“It’s a reach, Picard. A desperate reach. But if what you’re saying is true . . . then why isn’t he here? Why is he off with the other celebrants? Why isn’t he . . .”
My voice trailed off and, just on a hunch, I reached out. (Not physically! Thought you’d catch me, didn’t you?) For we Q do remain sensitive to each other’s whereabouts, and even though we are capable of masking our presence, such a deception is virtually impossible if one Q thinks that the other is there. So as an experiment—and I do so love experiments—I reached out and probed, allowing myself to believe beyond all doubt that he was there, that he was right nearby, observing the entire discussion. . . .
He knew I’d found him. He was hiding behind the big chestnut tree. He had, at least, the good grace to emerge before I called out to him. What Picard and Data saw was the pigeon who had treated me in such disgraceful fashion before, fluttering down from overhead and settling on my shoulder. He regarded me with bland curiosity. And then the pigeon opened his beak and said, “I was wondering if you were going to start listening to the human. It seems you listen to everyone else’s advice except mine. You have a very odd sense of priorities.”
“Not as misplaced as yours,” I retorted. “Do I have to talk to a bird!?”
The pigeon vanished in a burst of light, to be replaced by the smirking Q, still in his cabby outfit. “You look quite . . . statuesque,” he said.
“Now is not the time for levity, Q,” I shot back. A pathetic joke called for a pathetic response.
He shrugged. “There’s no time like the present, especially when the future seems doubtful.”
“Is what Picard said true?” I demanded. “Are you sympathetic to my cause?”
“Sympathetic? That time the Calamarain almost killed you, I advocated your losing your powers, remember. As for your cause . . . What cause? From where I stand, all I see is you up to your same old stubbornness. Refusing to believe that the Continuum’s philosophies and decisions apply to you.”
But even as he spoke, I saw something else in his eyes. Doubt, uncertainty . . . and more than that. It was almost as if he were faced with a decision so brutal, so overwhelming, that he had no desire to make it. So instead, he was hoping and praying that I would make it for him.
“All right,” I said evenly. “I suppose that’s it.”
And then I clammed up.
It was, of course, the perfect angle to take. He stood there, waiting for me to pick a fight, to challenge him. Instead I said nothing. Finally he was forced to say, “So you’re prepared to accept the decision of the Continuum, is that it?”
Picard—as much as I hate to admit it—became something of a mind reader at that moment. “Silence implies consent,” said Picard. “If he voices no objection, then obviously he accepts it.” Q regarded him with a piercing stare, looking something like a bird of prey as he did so, as if he were planning to bore deeply into Picard’s bald pate. “That doesn’t bother you, does it?” Picard continued.
“Not at all.” Q shifted uncomfortably in place.
“Because, frankly, you seem rather bothered. . . .”
“Hey!” He stabbed a finger at Picard. “Don’t you presume to judge me. You don’t know what’s going through my mind. You don’t know . . .”
“No. He doesn’t know. But he has a sense of it,” I said. “It’s true, isn’t it, Q? You don’t want to see this happen. Do you?”
“It’s not up to me, Q. Nor is it up to you. It’s up to the universe,” said Q. His hands were moving in vague, fluttering patterns reminiscent of the bird’s wings he’d been sporting earlier. “For all our power and all our omniscience . . . we can’t second-guess that.” Then, after a moment’s hesitation, he added, “She would tell you that if she were here.”
“She. The Lady Q.”
“Of course.”
“You think that she would agree with the Continuum’s viewpoint?”
“Absolutely.”
“I think you’re wrong,” I said immediately. “I think she was happier about the birth of our child than she had been about anything in her existence. I think she wanted to see him grow up and claim his heritage. I think, if for no reason other than our son, she would want me to do everything within my power to stop this disaster. But you don’t really care about her. She’s gone, vanished into a pit, and you haven’t done a thing to rescue her or even find out where she is. You have no idea what my feelings are toward her, how could you . . . ?”
“Shut up! Do you think you’re the only one who had feelings for her?”
There was dead silence for a moment. But just to show you how obvious Q’s emotional state was, how raw, how utterly lacking in subtext . . . it was Data—Data—who made the next deduction. Data, who got his emotions through a chip, who only recently had begun to try to incorporate emotional thinking into his hardwiring.
“You are in love with her . . . are you not?”
The statement hung there, daring refutation. I couldn’t think of anything to say. Instead I simply stared at Q in mute astonishment. Q, for his part, smiled ruefully.
“Were you in love with her?” I demanded. “For how long?”
“Forever. For always. But you were what she wanted, Q!” As much as I had been endeavoring to repress my rage, the blond-haired Q was making no such efforts. One could almost sense storm clouds gathering overhead in response to his building ire. “You were what she wanted. She trusted you to protect her, and you blew it, didn’t you, Q?”
“I didn’t . . .”
He wasn’t going to let me get a word in. He kept right on going. “You stood by and let her and your son get sucked down into some pit, and you did nothing except rescue these two.” He pointed angrily at Picard and Data.
“It wasn’t as if I had a good deal of choice, Q,” I said. “Believe me, if the choice had been between saving Picard or my spouse, Picard would have gone down the chute in a heartbeat, with Data right behind him.”
“Thank you, your loyalty is heartwarming,” Picard said.
“Oh, don’t get sanctimonious with me, Picard. If both Data and I were being sucked into a black hole and you were faced with an either/or, you’d save Data—You’d save your toaster oven before you’d save me, and don’t bother telling me you wouldn’t. Look . . . Q.” I turned my attention back to my associate. “If everything Picard has said is right . . . that you want me to take some sort of action to stop this, that you want me to get involved, that you want me to find the Lady Q . . . then get me out of this! You know you can do it. Release me. What have we to lose? If it’s hopeless, then my departure means nothing. If it’s not hopeless . . . then how can you stand by and let this happen? Do you think,” and I turned the screws further, “that this is what she would have wanted?”
He glowered at me, and I could only guess how conflicted he was. We think we know each other, we Q, but I was starting to understand just how much we were deceiving ourselves. There was every possibility that we were just as capable of self-deception as humans are, and I, for one, found that a most disturbing possibility indeed.
“You,” Q said to me, “are a screwup. That’s the simple truth.
Since virtually the beginning of time, you have screwed up one thing or another, including entire civilizations. I’m probably not in my right mind, but . . .”
He passed his hand in front of me, and I stumbled off the pedestal. Data caught me as I stood on unsteady legs, trying to fight the feeling of disorientation that was sweeping over me.
Q took a step toward me and continued his harangue. “In the past,” he said, “your misjudgments have had negative consequences for you alone or the poor unsuspecting species with which you’ve meddled. But so help me, Q, if you botch this up . . .”
“You’ll what? Kill me?” I asked, rubbing the back of my neck.
He shook his head and smiled sadly. “No. You will have killed us. The stakes are too high this time, Q. Do right by her, and don’t make a mess of it, or—”
Suddenly there was a massive thunderbolt from on high. Q had just enough time to let out a shriek, and then . . . he was blown from existence. I shielded my eyes from the intensity of the flash, and when the light subsided, I ventured a look. There was nothing left of Q but a small pile of ashes.
I couldn’t believe what I had just seen, and obviously neither could Data or Picard. I guess the Q on high were upset. It kind of makes you pause when one moment you’re having a friendly conversation with someone and the next moment he’s a pile of ashes. Data was checking to see if he had a specimen box on him to gather samples, when I suggested that it was probably best that we move on. The very air around us seemed charged with raw fury, and black thunderheads were converging on us. And these were not just any clouds. They had shaped themselves into a dark and fearsome face . . . the face of the Q we had met at HQ. He didn’t look happy at all. I would even go so far as to say he looked pissed. And since he had just turned my buddy, my friend, my newly discovered coveter of my wife into a few flakes of carbon, it was really time to go.
Picard, who also recognized the cloud-faced Q, agreed. “Now,” he said with characteristic understatement, “would be a superb time to be situated elsewhere.”
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