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qcontinuum) wrote2008-02-10 01:57 pm
qcontinuum) wrote2008-02-10 01:57 pm
Entry tags:
The weight of history, or something like that
OOC: Reposted from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
theatrical_muse from 10/24/2006, 47 of 50.
Ancestry and inheritance mean something rather different to immortals than to mortals, I imagine.
Talk about something you inherited. (It could be an object, a physical attribute, a belief, etc.)
My entire nature as a Q was built into me by the actions of my creators/parents/ancestors. Everything that I am, I could say I inherited from them. And yet, they are mostly totally lame. See below.
What do your ancestors mean to you?
The Q ones, or the pre-Q ones?
The beings that my species were before we were Q were pretty damn impressive as mortal creatures were, if I do say so myself. They were shapeshifters who developed sentience by eating each other. No, I'm not making this up. I'd say look it up for yourself but since they ceased to exist about seven billion years ago, that would be a little hard for anyone not as puissant as I am, and we guard our history jealously -- obviously, if someone mucked with time before we came to exist, we might not exist, which doesn't really thrill any of us for obvious reasons, so we don't encourage visitors to our past.
In any case, after conquering what was the known universe at the time, they got bored with the joys of mortal existence and decided that they wanted to know everything and be all-powerful. That's where we came in.
I have described the origin of the Q Continuum before, but only briefly. My ancestors tamed a negentropic dimension of limitless energy and total chaos by transforming themselves from mortal shapeshifters to beings made of the stuff and substance of that dimension, creating an overmind -- the Continuum -- to channel infinite power. Pretty impressive stuff, sure. But what have they done lately?
See, my Q ancestors are as immortal as I am. The pioneers who created the Continuum are still here, doddering around the place and regaling us with stories about how the young whippersnappers like us have it better than we know, and when they were young there wasn't any of this comprehension of infinity stuff, and boy how they wished then that they could have the kind of problems we have now. Of course that is the problem -- they wished for the kind of problems immortality and omniscience bring, and now we're the ones stuck with the mind-numbing boredom. Thanks, Granddads and Grandmams.
I continue to disagree with my dead pal Q about the value of death to the Continuum, but if anyone needed to die for the rest of us to move on to whatever might lie ahead of us, I think those guys are number one on the list.
What keeps you up at night?
My superior nature that does not require sleep, if you mean this literally, but I'd simply rip all my hair out in frustration at the mortal-centric nature of these questions if I always took them literally, and as much as the look becomes mon capitaine I would look awful bald, so I'll interpret this to mean what worries the hell out of me.
What I fear is that this is all there is. That we won't move forward, because there's no forward to go to. That for the rest of eternity all we will ever be is what we are now. Because what we are now is nifty keen, don't get me wrong, and I certainly don't want to be less than a Q... but it's boring, to be eternal. If you're going to be unchanging, then what was the point to not dying? Aren't you essentially already dead, that way? Only sentient enough to understand it? I mean, at least when mortals die, they no longer are aware that they're dead... or else they do change state and become something other than what they were. If you are the same throughout eternity, you're living dead. That's not the eternity I want for myself, or my people, or my son.
theatrical_muse from 10/24/2006, 47 of 50.Ancestry and inheritance mean something rather different to immortals than to mortals, I imagine.
Talk about something you inherited. (It could be an object, a physical attribute, a belief, etc.)
My entire nature as a Q was built into me by the actions of my creators/parents/ancestors. Everything that I am, I could say I inherited from them. And yet, they are mostly totally lame. See below.
What do your ancestors mean to you?
The Q ones, or the pre-Q ones?
The beings that my species were before we were Q were pretty damn impressive as mortal creatures were, if I do say so myself. They were shapeshifters who developed sentience by eating each other. No, I'm not making this up. I'd say look it up for yourself but since they ceased to exist about seven billion years ago, that would be a little hard for anyone not as puissant as I am, and we guard our history jealously -- obviously, if someone mucked with time before we came to exist, we might not exist, which doesn't really thrill any of us for obvious reasons, so we don't encourage visitors to our past.
In any case, after conquering what was the known universe at the time, they got bored with the joys of mortal existence and decided that they wanted to know everything and be all-powerful. That's where we came in.
I have described the origin of the Q Continuum before, but only briefly. My ancestors tamed a negentropic dimension of limitless energy and total chaos by transforming themselves from mortal shapeshifters to beings made of the stuff and substance of that dimension, creating an overmind -- the Continuum -- to channel infinite power. Pretty impressive stuff, sure. But what have they done lately?
See, my Q ancestors are as immortal as I am. The pioneers who created the Continuum are still here, doddering around the place and regaling us with stories about how the young whippersnappers like us have it better than we know, and when they were young there wasn't any of this comprehension of infinity stuff, and boy how they wished then that they could have the kind of problems we have now. Of course that is the problem -- they wished for the kind of problems immortality and omniscience bring, and now we're the ones stuck with the mind-numbing boredom. Thanks, Granddads and Grandmams.
I continue to disagree with my dead pal Q about the value of death to the Continuum, but if anyone needed to die for the rest of us to move on to whatever might lie ahead of us, I think those guys are number one on the list.
What keeps you up at night?
My superior nature that does not require sleep, if you mean this literally, but I'd simply rip all my hair out in frustration at the mortal-centric nature of these questions if I always took them literally, and as much as the look becomes mon capitaine I would look awful bald, so I'll interpret this to mean what worries the hell out of me.
What I fear is that this is all there is. That we won't move forward, because there's no forward to go to. That for the rest of eternity all we will ever be is what we are now. Because what we are now is nifty keen, don't get me wrong, and I certainly don't want to be less than a Q... but it's boring, to be eternal. If you're going to be unchanging, then what was the point to not dying? Aren't you essentially already dead, that way? Only sentient enough to understand it? I mean, at least when mortals die, they no longer are aware that they're dead... or else they do change state and become something other than what they were. If you are the same throughout eternity, you're living dead. That's not the eternity I want for myself, or my people, or my son.