The end of it all
Feb. 6th, 2008 03:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
qcontinuumOOC: Reposted from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
theatrical_muse from 6/18/2004, 14 of 50 posts. Slightly revised.
The world is ending tomorrow. What do you do today?
You know, the ironic thing about this question is that this already happened.
The universe was ending, and my fellows in the Q Continuum decided to throw a really big party. Go out with a bang, so to speak. It was obvious to all and sundry that there was, for all our power, absolutely nothing we could do about it, so why not boogie till dawn?
I, however, was one of only two beings left alive in the Continuum with a personal investment in the future-- I had a son. Who had been sucked into the Maelstrom, the vortex that was eating the universe. (The other such being, my ex, who was still my active mate and companion at the time, had also been sucked in, and I have to admit I was a trifle concerned for her fate as well. But mostly, we assume other Q can take care of themselves; it was my son I was really worried about.) If it had just been me, I probably would have agreed with my fellow Q that there was no point fighting the inevitable, and a party was a splendid way to see off existence. But I had chosen to have a child, and it seems to me that you don't bring a new life into the universe and then let that universe be destroyed before that life has a chance to grow to adulthood.
So I recruited Data and Picard on the grounds that if you need someone to stop the universe from ending, and it's completely hopeless, you may as well get some folks with experience in defeating hopeless odds to help out. Also, if the universe was ending I wasn't going to turn down an opportunity to annoy Picard one last time. :-) (Also, I just happened to run into them. I might not have thought of it if they hadn't needed rescuing from the same phenomenon that ate my family.)
I did find my son, successfully. (And my ex. Although in retrospect, I rather wish she'd stayed lost.) And as you can see, we're all here, so obviously the strategy of trying to stop the impending apocalypse was better than the strategy of having a party (though I hear it was a really *good* party, and if the stakes hadn't been quite so high, I might regret missing it.) But I think that was my one act of heroism for the aeon; how *do* mortals (or even immortals) pull off doing this kind of thing all the time? That was hard. And it wasn't actually any fun at all. If it weren't for the fact that it worked I'd say I completely wasted my time.
OOC note: Q is referring to the events in the Star Trek novel "I, Q" by John de Lancie and Peter David. Although normally I don't treat novels as canon, the fact that this question precisely addressed the plot of that book made it so I couldn't resist. :-)
theatrical_muse from 6/18/2004, 14 of 50 posts. Slightly revised.The world is ending tomorrow. What do you do today?
You know, the ironic thing about this question is that this already happened.
The universe was ending, and my fellows in the Q Continuum decided to throw a really big party. Go out with a bang, so to speak. It was obvious to all and sundry that there was, for all our power, absolutely nothing we could do about it, so why not boogie till dawn?
I, however, was one of only two beings left alive in the Continuum with a personal investment in the future-- I had a son. Who had been sucked into the Maelstrom, the vortex that was eating the universe. (The other such being, my ex, who was still my active mate and companion at the time, had also been sucked in, and I have to admit I was a trifle concerned for her fate as well. But mostly, we assume other Q can take care of themselves; it was my son I was really worried about.) If it had just been me, I probably would have agreed with my fellow Q that there was no point fighting the inevitable, and a party was a splendid way to see off existence. But I had chosen to have a child, and it seems to me that you don't bring a new life into the universe and then let that universe be destroyed before that life has a chance to grow to adulthood.
So I recruited Data and Picard on the grounds that if you need someone to stop the universe from ending, and it's completely hopeless, you may as well get some folks with experience in defeating hopeless odds to help out. Also, if the universe was ending I wasn't going to turn down an opportunity to annoy Picard one last time. :-) (Also, I just happened to run into them. I might not have thought of it if they hadn't needed rescuing from the same phenomenon that ate my family.)
I did find my son, successfully. (And my ex. Although in retrospect, I rather wish she'd stayed lost.) And as you can see, we're all here, so obviously the strategy of trying to stop the impending apocalypse was better than the strategy of having a party (though I hear it was a really *good* party, and if the stakes hadn't been quite so high, I might regret missing it.) But I think that was my one act of heroism for the aeon; how *do* mortals (or even immortals) pull off doing this kind of thing all the time? That was hard. And it wasn't actually any fun at all. If it weren't for the fact that it worked I'd say I completely wasted my time.
OOC note: Q is referring to the events in the Star Trek novel "I, Q" by John de Lancie and Peter David. Although normally I don't treat novels as canon, the fact that this question precisely addressed the plot of that book made it so I couldn't resist. :-)