Ah, April Fools' Day.
Feb. 5th, 2008 04:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
qcontinuumOOC: Reposted from theatrical_muse from Apr. 1, 2004, with slight revisions for continuity with other posts.
Normally I find paying attention to assorted mortal calendars tedious to the point of absurdity, but I make exceptions for a small number of mortal holidays, and the humans' April Fools' Day is one of them. I've been a trickster god to enough species that I admit to getting all warm and fuzzy inside when I find a holiday that celebrates the trickster, and while modern humans have managed to bowdlerize their holiday until it's about nothing but puerile practical jokes, this day was originally about reversing the accepted order of the world, about chaos and misrule and *fun*. They used to turn their notions of everything inside out on this day, to play for a day at being someone they could never be in everyday life, to make kings into beggars and beggars into kings.
Of course, ever since we won the war the joke has been on me; it turns out that reversing the natural order of things and making the trickster, the court jester, the fool whose job it is to point out that the emperor has no clothes, *into* the emperor... well, in real life it's a lot less fun than when it's a game for a single day. I've been entirely occupied with inane stupidity, aka Continuum committee meetings, for... quite a while even in terms of this timeline. Somehow more than half of the most advanced species in this universe continue to manage to be complete idiots... it doesn't seem to matter who holds the most privileged positions within Continuum hierarchy. Except that now, I actually have to *pay attention* to these incredibly stupid ideas instead of simply mocking them and then boycotting the rest of the meeting. Frequently I think life was easier when I was a marginalized questioner of the status quo than now, when I'm one of the leaders of the Continuum. (Ouch. The phrase "I'm one of the leaders of the Continuum" still strikes me as an April Fool's joke all by itself.)
In any case, I'm back, and it seems the questions have improved somewhat in my absence. Or perhaps anything that isn't a meeting of the Continuum just seems much more pleasant now.
What is my favorite daydream?
One would think I wouldn't have one. Daydreams are fantasies of things you cannot do or have, or things you have not yet succeeded in doing or having. I can do or have almost anything I want, and usually it's instant, too. What would be the point to having a daydream if you can instantly realize whatever you fancy?
But I confess, I'm in truth only *nigh*-omnipotent. There are things I want that I cannot easily have. Or, possibly, cannot have at all, though that's a depressing thought I try not to think much.
Chiefly among those things I want and cannot have is Jean-Luc Picard.
Oh, get your minds out of the gutter. I don't mean for sordid mortal reproductive activities (or non-reproductive, as the case would probably be); I can't say I'd turn him down if he threw himself at me, but sex is hardly a necessity for me. I don't have hormones and I'm immortal and anyway, I've already reproduced and once was probably too much. I feel desire if and when I choose to feel it, which, as I'm not fond of frustration, would be when I think it might be fulfilled, which would not be in this case. It's not mortal sexual activity I want him for-- I'm far more ambitious than that. Please, if you were going to last eternity would you obsess over fleeting moments of physical pleasure?
I want him to become a Q. I want him to join me.
I have, I confess, *some* small smidgin of patriotic altruism to my motives. The Continuum needs Jean-Luc. The war clearly indicates to me that we've lost our way, and while we're struggling back to a path that allows us to change and grow, the fact that we're fighting the habits of billions of years is hurting us. Our society is predicated on the notion that no one in it is ever weak, is ever in need; we scorn compassion, and empathy, and fight to keep ourselves as separate from one another as we can, which was fine when the biggest threat came from us subsuming one another, but now that we have guns and we can kill each other, we're walking on eggshells. We don't know or understand diplomacy; we understand compromise, but we generally work by trying to steamroller each other, which, again, worked better before there were guns.
Humans have qualities the Continuum needs, if we're to survive without having another war. And Jean-Luc is the human who most embodies those qualities. I thought perhaps there were things we could learn from him *before* there was a war, and now I'm certain of it.
It's not just that, though. Yes, I love my people and I want us to survive, but I am fundamentally a selfish entity. I want Jean-Luc to become a Q because I want to teach him everything there is to know about the universe. Because I want him to be there for me to argue with in ten billion years-- let alone another hundred. Because he's the first mortal that's really, truly interested me in millennia. And while I'm less stunningly bored than I used to be now that i have my child and my expanded duties to the Continuum (or, perhaps, equally bored but with far less free time to try to occupy with something less boring), the idea of losing one of the few things in the universe I find genuinely fascinating has no appeal.
But Jean-Luc Picard will probably never agree to join the Continuum. Because *I*, in an unparalleled fit of stupidity, "proved" to him that humans can't handle the power... by making WILL RIKER, of all people, a Q. The truth is, Picard couldn't be a Q now-- he's too tied to his mortal existence. But someday, he'll be old, he won't be able to be a starship captain anymore, and when his body's failing him and he's bored and alone and tending grapes to give himself something to do... I'll still be there, and I can offer the limitless possibilities the universe has to offer. And he'll turn me down, because Will Riker couldn't handle being omnipotent, as if one has anything to do with the other. And he won't agree to let me preserve his life. And he'll die, as mortals do.
My daydream is that he'll accept, and join me. It's a daydream, rather than a plan for the future, because I'm very much afraid that I know better.
What is the most important decision I ever made?
Things have a way of interlocking. You do something small and stupid, but it sets you up for far more important events to occur later on.
I chose to test humanity because two close friends of mine thought so highly of the species, they ended up disobeying the Continuum and being executed because of their desire to emulate humanity. Someone was going to get around to it, and I was bored, so it was me. I picked Picard because he was the captain of a ship called Enterprise, and a previous captain of Enterprise had, to my great amusement, gotten the better of three old... acquaintances... from my ill-spent youth. And because he was headed to Farpoint, where this energy jellyfish was whining so loudly and incessantly about the pain of its captivity that I was either going to send it some help or annihilate it just to get it to shut UP.
A complete whim. I hadn't researched Picard much ahead of time. But because I chose him, I ended up setting off a chain of events which not only changed *my* life profoundly, but indirectly transformed the Continuum. I would never have had the strength or the courage to go up against the entire Continuum if I hadn't had the experience of trying to sacrifice my own life to save other mortals, when I was mortal myself... and I wouldn't have done that if I hadn't chosen Picard's ship to be mortal on, and I wouldn't have chosen his ship if I hadn't tested him in the first place. If I hadn't been interested in humanity, I wouldn't have been on hand when Kathy inadvertently let Quinn loose, and if Picard hadn't passed my final tests I'd never have put such an important decision as the life of a Q in the hands of a mere mortal, and if I hadn't done that the war wouldn't have happened...
I've done very significant things, recently. I chose to have a son. I chose to fight in a war rather than surrendering. I chose to challenge the status quo until they went to war to stop me. But the most significant thing I have done, the thing that triggered all the rest of it, was my entirely whimsical decision to test Jean-Luc Picard on his Enterprise's maiden voyage.
What important decision that I have made would I change?
None of them. I'm not that stupid.
Do I regret? Hell yes. I believe I mentioned how deeply I regret what I did with Riker. I regret... I regret exposing Jean-Luc to the Borg in a way that would make them personally interested in *him*. I regret having the child that I did have, because as it turns out, he worked for one of the reasons I wanted to have a kid but has totally failed for the other reasons.
Would I go back in time and change any of these decisions? No. (This is actually one of my few limitations-- I *can't* go back and change my own decisions without creating a very destructive paradox. But if I could I still wouldn't.) I am, I think, reasonably satisfied with who I am today. Satisfied enough, at least, that I don't want to play craps with the universe. See, what mortals generally don't realize is that everything they have done-- everything any sentient with free will does, mortal or no-- goes into making them who they are. Go back and change what you did, and you change who you are-- and I would at the *very* least want precise information about who I was changing myself into before I did such a thing, and such information is damn hard to come by for oneself even when one is a Q. I can look up a mortal's possible futures with no difficulty, but looking up my own runs into feedback loops.
If I went back and changed what I did, I would change myself, in unpredictable ways. And overall, much as I complain about it, I prefer what my life is now to what it once was, and I don't regret the changes I instigated in the Continuum. So no. I would not change anything.
Although *not* giving Riker Q powers is an awfully tempting might-have-been...
Normally I find paying attention to assorted mortal calendars tedious to the point of absurdity, but I make exceptions for a small number of mortal holidays, and the humans' April Fools' Day is one of them. I've been a trickster god to enough species that I admit to getting all warm and fuzzy inside when I find a holiday that celebrates the trickster, and while modern humans have managed to bowdlerize their holiday until it's about nothing but puerile practical jokes, this day was originally about reversing the accepted order of the world, about chaos and misrule and *fun*. They used to turn their notions of everything inside out on this day, to play for a day at being someone they could never be in everyday life, to make kings into beggars and beggars into kings.
Of course, ever since we won the war the joke has been on me; it turns out that reversing the natural order of things and making the trickster, the court jester, the fool whose job it is to point out that the emperor has no clothes, *into* the emperor... well, in real life it's a lot less fun than when it's a game for a single day. I've been entirely occupied with inane stupidity, aka Continuum committee meetings, for... quite a while even in terms of this timeline. Somehow more than half of the most advanced species in this universe continue to manage to be complete idiots... it doesn't seem to matter who holds the most privileged positions within Continuum hierarchy. Except that now, I actually have to *pay attention* to these incredibly stupid ideas instead of simply mocking them and then boycotting the rest of the meeting. Frequently I think life was easier when I was a marginalized questioner of the status quo than now, when I'm one of the leaders of the Continuum. (Ouch. The phrase "I'm one of the leaders of the Continuum" still strikes me as an April Fool's joke all by itself.)
In any case, I'm back, and it seems the questions have improved somewhat in my absence. Or perhaps anything that isn't a meeting of the Continuum just seems much more pleasant now.
What is my favorite daydream?
One would think I wouldn't have one. Daydreams are fantasies of things you cannot do or have, or things you have not yet succeeded in doing or having. I can do or have almost anything I want, and usually it's instant, too. What would be the point to having a daydream if you can instantly realize whatever you fancy?
But I confess, I'm in truth only *nigh*-omnipotent. There are things I want that I cannot easily have. Or, possibly, cannot have at all, though that's a depressing thought I try not to think much.
Chiefly among those things I want and cannot have is Jean-Luc Picard.
Oh, get your minds out of the gutter. I don't mean for sordid mortal reproductive activities (or non-reproductive, as the case would probably be); I can't say I'd turn him down if he threw himself at me, but sex is hardly a necessity for me. I don't have hormones and I'm immortal and anyway, I've already reproduced and once was probably too much. I feel desire if and when I choose to feel it, which, as I'm not fond of frustration, would be when I think it might be fulfilled, which would not be in this case. It's not mortal sexual activity I want him for-- I'm far more ambitious than that. Please, if you were going to last eternity would you obsess over fleeting moments of physical pleasure?
I want him to become a Q. I want him to join me.
I have, I confess, *some* small smidgin of patriotic altruism to my motives. The Continuum needs Jean-Luc. The war clearly indicates to me that we've lost our way, and while we're struggling back to a path that allows us to change and grow, the fact that we're fighting the habits of billions of years is hurting us. Our society is predicated on the notion that no one in it is ever weak, is ever in need; we scorn compassion, and empathy, and fight to keep ourselves as separate from one another as we can, which was fine when the biggest threat came from us subsuming one another, but now that we have guns and we can kill each other, we're walking on eggshells. We don't know or understand diplomacy; we understand compromise, but we generally work by trying to steamroller each other, which, again, worked better before there were guns.
Humans have qualities the Continuum needs, if we're to survive without having another war. And Jean-Luc is the human who most embodies those qualities. I thought perhaps there were things we could learn from him *before* there was a war, and now I'm certain of it.
It's not just that, though. Yes, I love my people and I want us to survive, but I am fundamentally a selfish entity. I want Jean-Luc to become a Q because I want to teach him everything there is to know about the universe. Because I want him to be there for me to argue with in ten billion years-- let alone another hundred. Because he's the first mortal that's really, truly interested me in millennia. And while I'm less stunningly bored than I used to be now that i have my child and my expanded duties to the Continuum (or, perhaps, equally bored but with far less free time to try to occupy with something less boring), the idea of losing one of the few things in the universe I find genuinely fascinating has no appeal.
But Jean-Luc Picard will probably never agree to join the Continuum. Because *I*, in an unparalleled fit of stupidity, "proved" to him that humans can't handle the power... by making WILL RIKER, of all people, a Q. The truth is, Picard couldn't be a Q now-- he's too tied to his mortal existence. But someday, he'll be old, he won't be able to be a starship captain anymore, and when his body's failing him and he's bored and alone and tending grapes to give himself something to do... I'll still be there, and I can offer the limitless possibilities the universe has to offer. And he'll turn me down, because Will Riker couldn't handle being omnipotent, as if one has anything to do with the other. And he won't agree to let me preserve his life. And he'll die, as mortals do.
My daydream is that he'll accept, and join me. It's a daydream, rather than a plan for the future, because I'm very much afraid that I know better.
What is the most important decision I ever made?
Things have a way of interlocking. You do something small and stupid, but it sets you up for far more important events to occur later on.
I chose to test humanity because two close friends of mine thought so highly of the species, they ended up disobeying the Continuum and being executed because of their desire to emulate humanity. Someone was going to get around to it, and I was bored, so it was me. I picked Picard because he was the captain of a ship called Enterprise, and a previous captain of Enterprise had, to my great amusement, gotten the better of three old... acquaintances... from my ill-spent youth. And because he was headed to Farpoint, where this energy jellyfish was whining so loudly and incessantly about the pain of its captivity that I was either going to send it some help or annihilate it just to get it to shut UP.
A complete whim. I hadn't researched Picard much ahead of time. But because I chose him, I ended up setting off a chain of events which not only changed *my* life profoundly, but indirectly transformed the Continuum. I would never have had the strength or the courage to go up against the entire Continuum if I hadn't had the experience of trying to sacrifice my own life to save other mortals, when I was mortal myself... and I wouldn't have done that if I hadn't chosen Picard's ship to be mortal on, and I wouldn't have chosen his ship if I hadn't tested him in the first place. If I hadn't been interested in humanity, I wouldn't have been on hand when Kathy inadvertently let Quinn loose, and if Picard hadn't passed my final tests I'd never have put such an important decision as the life of a Q in the hands of a mere mortal, and if I hadn't done that the war wouldn't have happened...
I've done very significant things, recently. I chose to have a son. I chose to fight in a war rather than surrendering. I chose to challenge the status quo until they went to war to stop me. But the most significant thing I have done, the thing that triggered all the rest of it, was my entirely whimsical decision to test Jean-Luc Picard on his Enterprise's maiden voyage.
What important decision that I have made would I change?
None of them. I'm not that stupid.
Do I regret? Hell yes. I believe I mentioned how deeply I regret what I did with Riker. I regret... I regret exposing Jean-Luc to the Borg in a way that would make them personally interested in *him*. I regret having the child that I did have, because as it turns out, he worked for one of the reasons I wanted to have a kid but has totally failed for the other reasons.
Would I go back in time and change any of these decisions? No. (This is actually one of my few limitations-- I *can't* go back and change my own decisions without creating a very destructive paradox. But if I could I still wouldn't.) I am, I think, reasonably satisfied with who I am today. Satisfied enough, at least, that I don't want to play craps with the universe. See, what mortals generally don't realize is that everything they have done-- everything any sentient with free will does, mortal or no-- goes into making them who they are. Go back and change what you did, and you change who you are-- and I would at the *very* least want precise information about who I was changing myself into before I did such a thing, and such information is damn hard to come by for oneself even when one is a Q. I can look up a mortal's possible futures with no difficulty, but looking up my own runs into feedback loops.
If I went back and changed what I did, I would change myself, in unpredictable ways. And overall, much as I complain about it, I prefer what my life is now to what it once was, and I don't regret the changes I instigated in the Continuum. So no. I would not change anything.
Although *not* giving Riker Q powers is an awfully tempting might-have-been...