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theatrical_muse from 7/15/2005, 31 of 50.
Describe the place you grew up.
Oh, how can I even begin?
I came into existence in a place called the Q Continuum, a limitless dimension beyond the multiverse full of infinite energy. As you might possibly guess, "infinite energy" ordinarily would result in infinite chaos, but the Continuum is the unity of mind of all the Q (the name of our species. Also, the name each of us go by when we talk to mortals, or to anyone who isn't a Q, really. We don't need names with each other; after all, we know who we are.) With each of us linked together, sharing in a sort of super-mind, we are able to control, contain, and channel infinite energy in accordance with our will and our knowledge.
When I was created, the Continuum already existed; pioneers before my generation had created it, and having created it, created us to share in it. We were not angels, created by an all-powerful God to do His bidding and reflect His glory; we were children, created to assist our parents in the family business, which was the process of learning everything. These early pioneers were certainly puissant, and knowledgeable, but they were far from all-powerful and far from omniscient. They wanted to be, and that's where we came in. The rest of the Q were created by these pioneers as, well, teenagers -- we were fully sentient, had the full adult intelligence of one of our elders and the full power in theory, but we didn't know how to use it as well as they did. We were naive, and hungry to learn.
My first personal memory, in fact, is of my creators showing me how to expand my senses, to touch the outer limits of the Continuum, to sense the vastness of the multiverse beyond it. And their words were "All of this is for you to explore."
(To be honest, I have to say that that totally beats out "It's a boy" as the first thing said about a newborn sentient being. And as a phrase of creation, I like it a lot better than "Let there be light." Or "Go forth and multiply", for that matter.)
We were created to explore, and we did. We roamed the multiverse, studying, exploring, recording everything we perceived and sending it back to the Continuum. There, other Q, my cousins if you will, were taking the knowledge we explorers sent back, analyzing it, classifying it, storing it, making it available to all other Q to access at will. So anything we learned, the totality of the Q Continuum soon knew, and with many Q and many, many, many years to explore in, we learned... everything. Over three billion years or so, we mapped the universe we originated from, gathered a great deal of information about the rest of the universes in the multiverse, and learned how to use our powers to do absolutely anything we wished.
Except, of course, for the things that our cousins decided we weren't supposed to do. Because, see, while we were off exploring the universe, the Q we left behind in the Continuum got to be real good pals with each other. And because power in the Continuum is directly related to the connections between Q, the ones who stayed behind ended up running everything. And because they were sooo good at analyzing the knowledge we sent back to them, they decided that we were too close to our subjects, too tainted by our involvement in the material universe, and that they knew better than us how the Continuum should work. So we learned everything there was to know, and came home to find that we weren't equals any more. They had taken the omniscience we gave them, and decreed that they should have control over us.
The Continuum was never supposed to be us and them. In those first glorious years when the universe was new and we were newer, when there was still so much to learn, so much to see, we were all equals. Even our parents, over time, were equals. You can't be part of the family business for three billion years without Mom and Dad eventually recognizing that you've grown up, after all. We were a unity of mind, a Continuum, a joint project with a single goal held in all our individual minds and hearts. And then they became closer to each other than any of us were to them, or to each other for that matter; we were off exploring the galaxy and they were having coffee-klatsches and getting to be best buds with each other. And that was how the fracture started.
Nowhere left to explore. Nothing left to learn. The one thing in the universe that constantly renews itself, that changes all the time, was mortal sentience (and believe me, even that gets really repetitive after a while), but they told us to hold ourselves aloof from mortals. Test them if we liked. Study them. Help them move forward in their evolution. Tease 'em a little if it kept us entertained, anything to keep us from coming home and raising holy hell about how we were being treated. But don't live among them as one of them, don't care about them as more than a fun hobby, and for the sake of all that's eternal, don't love them. Or we'll throw you out of the Continuum. Which, of course, will strip away your power, your knowledge and your immortality, for all intents and purposes killing you. Did we mention we're going to do that to anyone who does things we don't like?
So. Glorious, ineffable, the source of omnipotence and omniscience, infinite, eternal, and BORING AS MUD. No, I take it back, mud occasionally flows with the rain and changes shape. The Continuum refused to. My beautiful home became a prison, my loving siblings became my jailers, my own power a monkey trap I couldn't escape, because I couldn't give up the power but to keep it I had to sacrifice my autonomy to people I was beginning to despise.
And then I fought a war, and everything changed. But that's another story.
theatrical_muse from 7/15/2005, 31 of 50.Describe the place you grew up.
Oh, how can I even begin?
I came into existence in a place called the Q Continuum, a limitless dimension beyond the multiverse full of infinite energy. As you might possibly guess, "infinite energy" ordinarily would result in infinite chaos, but the Continuum is the unity of mind of all the Q (the name of our species. Also, the name each of us go by when we talk to mortals, or to anyone who isn't a Q, really. We don't need names with each other; after all, we know who we are.) With each of us linked together, sharing in a sort of super-mind, we are able to control, contain, and channel infinite energy in accordance with our will and our knowledge.
When I was created, the Continuum already existed; pioneers before my generation had created it, and having created it, created us to share in it. We were not angels, created by an all-powerful God to do His bidding and reflect His glory; we were children, created to assist our parents in the family business, which was the process of learning everything. These early pioneers were certainly puissant, and knowledgeable, but they were far from all-powerful and far from omniscient. They wanted to be, and that's where we came in. The rest of the Q were created by these pioneers as, well, teenagers -- we were fully sentient, had the full adult intelligence of one of our elders and the full power in theory, but we didn't know how to use it as well as they did. We were naive, and hungry to learn.
My first personal memory, in fact, is of my creators showing me how to expand my senses, to touch the outer limits of the Continuum, to sense the vastness of the multiverse beyond it. And their words were "All of this is for you to explore."
(To be honest, I have to say that that totally beats out "It's a boy" as the first thing said about a newborn sentient being. And as a phrase of creation, I like it a lot better than "Let there be light." Or "Go forth and multiply", for that matter.)
We were created to explore, and we did. We roamed the multiverse, studying, exploring, recording everything we perceived and sending it back to the Continuum. There, other Q, my cousins if you will, were taking the knowledge we explorers sent back, analyzing it, classifying it, storing it, making it available to all other Q to access at will. So anything we learned, the totality of the Q Continuum soon knew, and with many Q and many, many, many years to explore in, we learned... everything. Over three billion years or so, we mapped the universe we originated from, gathered a great deal of information about the rest of the universes in the multiverse, and learned how to use our powers to do absolutely anything we wished.
Except, of course, for the things that our cousins decided we weren't supposed to do. Because, see, while we were off exploring the universe, the Q we left behind in the Continuum got to be real good pals with each other. And because power in the Continuum is directly related to the connections between Q, the ones who stayed behind ended up running everything. And because they were sooo good at analyzing the knowledge we sent back to them, they decided that we were too close to our subjects, too tainted by our involvement in the material universe, and that they knew better than us how the Continuum should work. So we learned everything there was to know, and came home to find that we weren't equals any more. They had taken the omniscience we gave them, and decreed that they should have control over us.
The Continuum was never supposed to be us and them. In those first glorious years when the universe was new and we were newer, when there was still so much to learn, so much to see, we were all equals. Even our parents, over time, were equals. You can't be part of the family business for three billion years without Mom and Dad eventually recognizing that you've grown up, after all. We were a unity of mind, a Continuum, a joint project with a single goal held in all our individual minds and hearts. And then they became closer to each other than any of us were to them, or to each other for that matter; we were off exploring the galaxy and they were having coffee-klatsches and getting to be best buds with each other. And that was how the fracture started.
Nowhere left to explore. Nothing left to learn. The one thing in the universe that constantly renews itself, that changes all the time, was mortal sentience (and believe me, even that gets really repetitive after a while), but they told us to hold ourselves aloof from mortals. Test them if we liked. Study them. Help them move forward in their evolution. Tease 'em a little if it kept us entertained, anything to keep us from coming home and raising holy hell about how we were being treated. But don't live among them as one of them, don't care about them as more than a fun hobby, and for the sake of all that's eternal, don't love them. Or we'll throw you out of the Continuum. Which, of course, will strip away your power, your knowledge and your immortality, for all intents and purposes killing you. Did we mention we're going to do that to anyone who does things we don't like?
So. Glorious, ineffable, the source of omnipotence and omniscience, infinite, eternal, and BORING AS MUD. No, I take it back, mud occasionally flows with the rain and changes shape. The Continuum refused to. My beautiful home became a prison, my loving siblings became my jailers, my own power a monkey trap I couldn't escape, because I couldn't give up the power but to keep it I had to sacrifice my autonomy to people I was beginning to despise.
And then I fought a war, and everything changed. But that's another story.