I did.
I was just in time to see the last of the poor souls sink beneath the dirt. Sinking into utter despair. The ground closed up behind then . . . and we were alone.
I looked down at the hole that we had dug. It was already deep enough for me to stand in. My son looked at me and began to weep. Even Data was stunned, since the grief around him was beyond his comprehension.
“Q . . . I’m sorry,” Picard said.
A hundred responses came to my mind. Almost all of them would have allowed me to give voice to the anger and bitterness that I felt, but the only words that seemed appropriate were . . .
“Thank you, Jean-Luc.”
I then held out a hand to my son, who took it firmly. I said nothing. There was nothing left to say.
We stood there for a while, deep in our thoughts, until Picard broke the silence.
“That light over there . . .”
“I saw it.”
“Perhaps it . . .”
“Perhaps it what, Jean-Luc?” I asked wearily. “Perhaps it leads to somewhere else, somewhere we can feel more helpless and watch more people die?”
“That is right, yes,” said Picard. He cocked an eyebrow. “Why? Do you have a better idea?”
I uttered a laugh tinged with the misery I felt. “No. No, I suppose I don’t have a better idea, and I certainly don’t want to stay here any longer.”
We walked in the direction of the light, and I wondered as we walked along if we were going to encounter the same problem that I had had with trying to touch my Lady Q. But that was not to be the case. We covered the distance with no difficulty. It was almost as if we were meant to get to the source of the light.
Strangely I began to feel my age, and when one has lived for as long as I have, that’s a lot of age to feel. It was subtle at first, but after a while every step was harder than the one before. My feet seemed leaden, and I found I literally had to command my legs to operate as I trudged along. I glanced at q and saw how tired and worn he looked. But he was remarkably stoic and didn’t complain. I stopped to lift him up with the intention of carrying him the rest of the way, but q squirmed out of my grasp and stood up straight as if he had found new strength. It was quite endearing.
“That’s all right, Father,” he said firmly. “I can manage on my own.”
I had never been more proud of him than I was at that moment. I caught Picard’s eye, and he was smiling. For some reason, I was pleased Picard liked my son.
We drew ever closer to the light. However, I found myself caring less and less what we would find when we got there or what we would do when we found it. All I could picture, over and over again, was Lady Q sinking beneath the dirt, embracing oblivion without caring one bit for life. I kept berating myself with “what if’s.” What if I had gotten there sooner, even by minutes? What if I had convinced her that I was truly alive. What if . . . ?
What if . . . she was right? What if I weren’t alive?
I pushed the thought away, but it came roaring back at me no matter how much I tried to keep it at bay.
“I see it,” Data said.
“What do you see?”
“A house, Captain. A small house with a white picket fence.”
“I see it as well,” said Picard, as he squinted into the light.
I could see the house too. A charming little house with a white picket fence and a brick path that led up to the front door.
And then my heart stopped, or leaped out of my chest, or got stuck in my throat, or any other expression of surprise that doesn’t begin to do justice at moments like this.
There, standing in the front door of the house was the Lady Q, waving. “Do you see her?” I whispered to q.
“Yes,” he said amazed. “She’s very pretty. Who is she?”
“Who—?” I didn’t understand. “That’s . . . that’s your mother . . .”
“No, it’s not Mother.” q was shaking his head. “It’s someone else . . . a pretty lady . . . with long black hair . . . she’s smiling at me. . . .”
Impossible. Perhaps the strain was getting to him as well, poor little guy. “Picard,” I said, “do you see her?”
“Vash,” murmured Picard.
“What?” I turned to him. “What do you mean? Where?”
“There! Right there!” Picard pointed at the house. This was amazing. I was seeing the Lady Q, my son was seeing some woman he didn’t know, and Picard was seeing Vash! I hesitated to think what Data was seeing.
“Vash,” he said, “I’m . . . I’m so sorry . . . I’m sorry I wasn’t here for you . . . do you see her Q?”
“No. I don’t. Apparently I don’t need to.” I tore my gaze away from the flickering form of Lady Q. “And you don’t need to see her either, Picard. She was a victim of this place, just like my wife. At least you were spared the sight of her sinking into her grave. Consider yourself fortunate.”
“Fortunate?” Picard looked at me with incredulity. “Fortunate? How can you say that? If I had been here—”
“Nothing would have changed. Nothing would have been any different. I see that now. Nothing we’ve done has made any difference. It’s all been one endless exercise in futility.”
“But . . . but that’s not true, Father,” q said. “What about me? You found me! You . . .”
“Yes, I’ve found you and that’s wonderful, but, honestly, son, I don’t think we’ll ever get out of here. We’re doomed.”
“No, we aren’t!” q said with fierce determination. “You’ll find a way. I know you will. You’re Q. You can do anything.”
The childlike innocence. The naïveté. Once I would have found it charming, invigorating. Now it simply seemed yet another burden for me to bear, another expectation I could not live up to. I looked back to Lady Q and saw that she was no longer standing in the doorway. She had vanished, and I could tell from Picard’s expression that Vash had likewise disappeared.
“Come,” I said. “Let’s see this farce through to the end, shall we?”
I walked up the brick pathway leading to the front door of the house. When I placed my hand on the doorknob, I paused and wondered what new trap we were walking into and whether I even cared.
I swung open the door.
The room was empty . . . except for four chairs. Four simple metal chairs. There was a door at the far end of the room and I moved toward it. As I walked, I continued to wonder: Is it now? Is it the end? Will I know when it happens? Will I know after it’s happened. Will q suffer? Except for him, I really didn’t care.
The only thing I wanted was for the end to come quickly.
I made it to the door at the far end and turned the handle—It was locked.
“Data,” Picard said, and pointed to the front door.
Data crossed quickly, but not quickly enough. The front door slammed shut. No manner of pushing or prodding would budge it. “It’s locked, Captain, and I cannot budge it,” he said.
“Very well,” said Picard after a moment’s thought. “All the door would do is just lead us back outside anyway. I think we. . .”
And he stopped talking. I turned to see what could possibly have caused the loquacious Picard to clam up, and I immediately saw the problem: the front door was gone. We were now in a house with one locked door and one vanishing front door. The situation was not improving.
“Now what?” asked q.
I looked around the room and said, “It doesn’t matter.”
And I sat down in one of the chairs. I had no strength left in me at all.
Picard walked up to me. “So . . . that’s it?” he asked skeptically.
“Yes, Picard,” I told him. “That’s it. We’re done.”
“We are not done,” Data said. “There is much yet to do. There is . . .”
“No.” I shook my head. “There’s no point.”
“There’s your son,” Picard said angrily, pointing at q. “He’s enough of a point for trying to continue, don’t you think?”
; I didn’t say anything.
“You know, Q, you’re fortunate. I have no son . . . no family. In this entire universe, I’m alone. At least you have a son to fight for. I know the loss of Lady Q was a crushing blow . . . but that doesn’t mean you have to let yourself be crushed by it.”
“Fine, Picard. Whatever you say.”
My reply clearly surprised him.
“What do you mean by that?” he said.
“I mean I’m tired of arguing with you. I’m tired of fighting through one pointless obstruction to the next only to find things getting worse and worse.”
“That doesn’t mean we quit.”
“Well, you know what, Picard? Let’s say that it does. Let’s say that maybe, just maybe, I’ve lived far more lifetimes than you could possibly conceive. And let’s say that maybe, just maybe, I know a bit more about the situation than you do. Picard . . . it’s hopeless. All right? Do I need to spell it out for you? You said it yourself, we’ve hit bottom. And here’s a thought: what if we haven’t? What if there’s worse beyond this? Eh? What if whatever we encounter next makes this . . . this horror seem like a family vacation by comparison? If that’s so, I’m not interested in finding out. There’s no point, all right? No point at all.”
“We need to find out who’s behind all this . . .”
“You see, q?” I said to my son as if Picard hadn’t spoken. “That’s the amazing thing about humans. Their lifetimes are so pathetically short—barely the time it takes for you or me to blow our noses—and yet they will do anything, deny anything, rather than accept when it’s over. But fortunately . . . I do. I’m saving us time, aggravation, misery, and more misery.”
“In exchange for what?” demanded Picard. “For sitting here? For waiting?”
“Picard . . . one of two things is happening,” I said. “Either the universe is ending through entropy . . . or it’s ending at the behest of some being or force. In either case, I accept it. All right?” I raised my voice and shouted to the heavens. “I accept it!! Do you hear me? I accept it!” I looked back to Picard. “I refuse to keep running around like a rat in a maze. It’s an exhausting and pointless way to spend one’s last moments. And I’m just not going to do it.”
My voice faltered. It was as if that final speech of mine had drained all the energy from me. I put my face in my hands. I couldn’t even stand to look at Picard anymore. I felt q next to me, putting his arms around my leg, and then he hugged my leg tightly—partly out of compassion, I think, and partly out of fear for what was to come.
“Q . . .”
“What?”
“I was thinking . . .”
“Oh joy, oh rapture.”
“You are in the depths of despair,” Picard said with that annoying degree of authority he always seemed to carry. “If there is another level, it may very well be acceptance. If that is the case . . .”
“Picard . . . I don’t care. I just . . . don’t care.”
And then I stopped talking.
Picard tried to get through to me. He encouraged, he cajoled, he threatened, he stormed . . . he ran the entire gamut of human persuasive techniques, but I simply had nothing left within me with which to respond. I just didn’t give a damn. My son knelt mutely next to me, apparently content to watch the back-and-forth . . . except it wasn’t really much back-and-forth. Picard would yammer, I would sit, and that was the extent of the discourse.
Finally, even Picard gave up. Data stayed out of it. He was smart.
It took me a while to realize no one had said anything for a while. Picard had dropped into the chair across from mine, apparently exhausted by his efforts. He merely stared at me, shaking his head. He had the air of a man who had given his all and come up short. Seated in the other chair was q. He was watching me rather intently, but there was a look of hopelessness in his eyes as well. Data stood directly behind Picard, as if waiting for further instructions.
“Run out of things to say, Picard?” I inquired.
“There’s nothing else to say,” he replied.
“Good.”
More silence. More of a creeping sense of hopelessness.
There was light within the room, although I had no idea where it was coming from, for there were no windows and no apparent means of illumination. But now the light was slowly starting to fade. Before long, we would be sitting in the dark. Fine. That was fine, too. It didn’t really matter. Nothing mattered. More silence.
Then Data spoke up. What he said, however, was not designed to prompt anyone’s heart to swell with joy.
“The far wall is 2.343 centimeters closer than it was before.”
The three of us looked. Data was right. The wall was getting closer.
“That’s not good,” said Picard.
The wall continued to move. It did so in utter silence. There was no scraping, no sounds of gears turning; it was all very quiet.
It did not take long for us to realize that if this continued we would soon be crushed.
“We have to do something!” Picard said.
“Why?” I asked.
Picard looked at me with poison in his glare. “I’m a mere human, Q. I don’t have the option of simply throwing up my hands and giving in.”
“Maybe you’re just too stupid, Picard,” I said, but I was on my feet as well. I had no idea what the purpose of fighting back was. We were in a clearly hopeless situation, and nothing that we were going to do, no last-ditch effort to combat it, was going to improve it. But I was on my feet anyway!
The wall continued to move toward us. Picard put his hands up against the wall and began to push. Data did the same. It was pointless. It was as much of an exercise in futility as anything else we had encountered. That did not deter Picard and Data in the slightest from pushing against it even harder. If I hadn’t held their efforts in so much contempt, I might actually have joined them.
“Q, damn you, get over here!” shouted Picard.
My son looked to me and said nothing. Clearly he was waiting for me to take the initiative. With a sigh I stepped to the center of the wall, and q immediately followed me. I placed my hands against it; then with all my might I pushed.
No luck. My feet kept sliding out from underneath me. I continued to shove back as hard as I could, but I knew in my heart that it was all in vain.
Picard was panting from the exertion, a thin film of sweat covering his head, the dirt caked on his face starting to trickle down in filthy rivulets. “Don’t give up!” he shouted. The wall was closer; only a few feet now stood between the back wall and the front. “We can do this!”
“Picard . . . you’re an idiot!” I grunted. “It’s hopeless! This is it! Don’t you understand anything, you foolish human? This is it!”
“You want to know . . . what I understand?” shot back Picard, never slacking in his efforts. “I understand . . . humanity . . . Q! You . . . with all your claims of omniscience . . . you don’t understand us today . . . any better than you did . . . when you first met us! I’m human . . . I never stop fighting . . .”
“You will when you’re dead,” I said as I continued pushing. We were close, so close now to being crushed between the walls.
“Not even then,” shot back Picard. “I won’t surrender—”
“You surrendered your ship the first time you met me, Picard! So don’t get high and mighty on me!”
“I surrendered when I thought there was something to be gained . . . lives to be saved.”
The opposite wall was right behind us. We turned, braced our back against the wall, and brought our feet up in a last, pointless endeavor to halt the movement. Data did the same.
And during all this the man was still talking . . . still talking. “But there’s . . . no point in surrendering now! Nothing to be gained! No point—!”
“Perhaps,” I said. “But sometimes there’s nothing to be gained by fighting. And this . . . is one of those times. . . .”
“Q—!”
We were right up against it
now—the wall and the locked door. We were being crushed to death. I took q in my arms and tried to protect him. “I’m sorry, Picard . . . I guess you’ll just never understand.”
I then kissed my boy, closed my eyes, and surrendered to my fate.
And that was when the door sprang open.
We tumbled through, q and I, even as I heard the horrific slam of the two walls together and a nauseating crunch of flesh and bone. We had gotten out. Picard and Data had not been as fortunate. And I . . . I, who should have been relieved to be free of his yammering . . . I felt as if I’d just lost my best friend.
q and I fell forward . . . into a puddle. A pothole, actually, and all around us were shouts and cheers, and the deafening noise of people counting. “Ten . . .” they cried, “nine . . . eight . . .”
There was the honking of horns and a general air of celebration.
I looked around in confusion.
We were back in Times Square. Back in the Q Continuum. Back where we had started.
And Q, the blond Q who had aided me in my escape, the one who had been blown out of existence by a bolt of power from above, drove up in his taxi and grinned lopsidedly. “Nice to see you finally accepted the inevitable, Q. You’re just in time . . .” He pointed at the huge black ball at the top of the building which was starting to drop, “. . . for the big finale.”
Think of the . . .
Think of the letter “Q.” The symbol of our Continuum.
You start at the lower right, and you proceed around it counterclockwise. You travel around and eventually you wind up right back where you started . . . at which point you simply tail off.
I understood. Our letter was a symbol, a very potent symbol. It was a prophetic way of preparing all of us, and me in particular, for this day. This final day. I understood everything now.
“You let me go,” I said to the blond Q, “with the full knowledge and understanding of the others. You did it to keep me busy. You were the ones who created that rift . . . and everything in it . . . just to occupy me so that I wouldn’t be able to get in the way . . . get in the way of the End, right?”
The chanting was increasing, the other members of the continuum packed in so tightly together that no one could move. “Seven . . . six . . .”
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