Outsmarted. Oh, the pain and humiliation.
Feb. 8th, 2009 10:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
qcontinuumOOC: Crossposted from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
theatrical_muse, today.
Prompt 269: Write about a time you were outsmarted.
Do I have to?
Oh, all right. They say a little humility is good for the soul... not that I have a soul, technically, and I'm pretty sure I don't have any humility either, but I'll try to fake it.
I need to start with a little background here. Some of you may actually know part of this story, so let me do some setup.
A few hundred years before Our Story starts, one of us ran into a Q from the future. Now we can only run into each other in the mortal universe's timeline; we can't actually travel in our own timeline, but we have a bad habit of spending time in the mortal universe, where, in fact, we can run into Q from the past or the future of the Continuum. The protocol is that if you're a past-Q, you don't ask, and if you're a future-Q, you don't tell. This asshole, however, made some wiseass comment about how human beings were going to radically change the Continuum. This, of course, freaked out a sizable number of us, mostly the ones who didn't want anything to change. I thought that change would be kind of nifty, but humans were pretty pathetic at the time, so I thought the guy was making a joke.
So two of us went to investigate humanity and find out what was so cool about it. The Continuum moves *very* slowly, most of the time; we had been observing humans for a few hundred years before two of us moved in to check it out.
They promptly fell in love with the species, and decided to live among humans as if they were human, and even have a kid. The Continuum did not appreciate this so much.
After we executed them for turning away from the Continuum (technically it was for continuing to use their powers, but we all knew they wouldn't be able to stop themselves; it was actually for rejecting us), I was furious with humanity, and loudly and frequently declared that one of these days I was going to deliver the species a serious smackdown. I was also at this point well known for, shall we say, being perhaps unduly harsh in my judgements of lesser species, when I was sent out to test them. (Lesser species had a terrible habit of falling to their knees trying to propitiate me when I came to test them, and I *am* the guy who dropped an asteroid on a planet for worshiping me too much.) So those individuals who really *wanted* to see humanity get a smackdown, lest the prophecy come true and these hairless monkeys actually manage to influence the Continuum, decided it would be a great idea if I was sent to test them.
Now, I'd had something of a, shall we say, dissolute youth. And in one memorable episode from my younger days, I spent some time hanging out with a rogue's gallery of disreputable characters, most of whom I couldn't stand but they were friends with a very charismatic fellow who'd managed to completely seduce me into becoming his protege (mostly because I had wheels and he didn't, but I digress.) As it happened, all three of these particular assholes (not the charismatic guy who'd befriended me, but his loser friends that I'd put up with because they were friends with him) had run-ins with a particular human, the captain of a starship called *Enterprise*, fellow named James T. Kirk. I thought it would be amusing to take him on... only trouble was, he was sort of very dead by then. (Well, not really. Really, he was hanging around in an old abandoned amusement park the Q built a billion years ago, but no one ever goes there anymore because old abandoned amusement parks are just as creepy to omnipotent beings as they are to you lesser creatures, so I wasn't actually going to go drag him out just so I could have some fun with him.) I *could* go back in time in the mortal timeline, but I didn't want to accidentally run into myself, because I'd been *very* active in mortal timeline during that time period.
So, you know, one human, another human, what's the diff? I decided to go after the current ship called Enterprise and the current captain of it, a stuffy French guy named Jean-Luc Picard, because hey, gotta start somewhere.
He refused to worship me. Or demonize me. Or even act as afraid as it would be appropriate to act when being kidnapped and tormented by an omnipotent being. He defied me, repeatedly, and told his second-in-command that he was going to do exactly what he would have done anyway, even though he knew I was watching him.
I found this very interesting. I also found it both intriguing and hilarious that he actually told *me* to test *him* before I'd gotten around to telling him that I was going to do it. This, I thought, was a pathetic, inferior hairless monkey that I could find really amusing. So I told him to go on the mission he was going to go on, because what he was going to run into would be a fine test. Also because the energy jellyfish he was heading straight for was whining so much and so loudly about the pain of its captivity, I figured that either the human would destroy it and fail the test or free it and pass, and either way it would shut the hell up.
He was also kind of stuffy and hidebound, and tried to tell his first officer that he shouldn't go over and investigate that thing just because I said it would be a good idea to go over and investigate that thing. Since going over and investigating that thing was, in fact, the only way they were going to figure out what was going on, I thought maybe he was taking the "get thee behind me, Satan" crap over the top, and became slightly more interested in the first officer, who recognized that just because a good idea comes from the omnipotent asshole does not make it not a good idea.
Well, and then they solved the whole problem because I hadn't been paying enough attention to the fact that one of the humans wasn't a human at all, she was a half-Betazoid empath who could sense the thing's emotions. So I felt a little disappointed because they kind of cheated, but hey, when you're omnipotent and someone slips one past you, it's your own damn fault. I still thought they were interesting and fun (though I claimed that they were boring, because you never start out by praising the inferior life forms for *anything*, or they get swollen heads), and I had every intention of coming back for more, later.
As it turned out, I *had* to. Because I went back to the Continuum and reported that they passed, and the various Q who had wanted me to smack humanity down told me I was a cream puff, I'd totally lost it, and go back there and test them until they fail something. WHich is not the way you're supposed to do it, and this made me very angry. Who the hell were they, to tell *me* I'd gone soft because the species actually *passed* my test? I mean, okay, I didn't notice the half-Betazoid being all Empathy Lass and stuff, but the point was to see if they lived up to their ideals, and they actually did, and that's a passing grade. I can't help it if humanity isn't completely pathetic. (I can't believe I just wrote that.)
So, since I was really mad at the Continuum, I decided I was going to go seriously hardcore. I was going to create a test it wasn't possible for them to pass, and I was going to do it in a way that would stick the Continuum with having to deal with humanity for the rest of time *anyway,* *and* possibly fulfill that prophecy. I gave the first officer access to my powers, and told him that I was inviting him to join the Q Continuum, because his species scared the shit out of us and we wanted to investigate it more closely. This being almost kind of true, he fell for it completely. Picard didn't think he'd take the deal, in the end, and figured out that my opinion of humanity was not, in fact, as high as I was claiming to Riker that it was (to be fair I wasn't exactly trying to hide my contempt for the inferior life forms from *him*). I *knew* that no one could possibly resist being immortal and omnipotent, because being immortal and omnipotent myself, I *knew* it really was all that and a box of chocolates. The Q themselves couldn't resist the temptation to use their own powers when their lives were at stake, so how could a lowly human resist?
This is where the outsmarting part comes in.
Picard knew that humans are, for the most part, so in need of the approval of their peers that they will give up something wonderful just because other people around them don't think they should have it. He had Riker pegged, correctly, as someone who, despite supposedly being ambitious and driven, was more interested in keeping his friends and making them happy than achieving the greatest dream humanity can conceive of. He also knew that becoming a Q would make Riker an ass (to be fair, I don't know how I was expected to notice this, because a. Riker was already an ass and b. the Q aren't really equipped to notice other people being assholes with power for the same reason fish aren't really equipped to notice that a diver is wet).
Riker gave all his friends nifty gifts, most of which proved that he actually didn't know them as well as he thought he did, and some of which actually *were* really nifty but his friends turned them down anyway. This led Riker to decide he really didn't want to be a Q. Which, in retrospect, was a good decision because actually, he is too much of a twit for any of us to want to live with for all eternity, but I, uh, sort of wasn't thinking about that. Mostly I wanted to prove to the Continuum that I had not gone soft, prove to Picard that I could actually come up with a test that his people *couldn't* pass, and stick the Continuum with having to deal with a member who was formerly human as revenge for their criticism of my handling the first test. Instead, Riker gave up the powers and passed the test, Picard gloated a lot that he beat me, and before I could talk my way into weaselling out of the bet I'd made with Picard, the Continuum yanked me home to yell at me a lot for trying to make a human into a Q without permission, and then they kicked me out on my ass and told me not to come home until they were done debating what they were going to do with me long-term.
So there we go. That is how I was outsmarted by a lowly human with an IQ barely a tenth of mine. Trust me, it didn't happen again.
Muse: Q
Fandom: Star Trek TNG
theatrical_muse, today.Prompt 269: Write about a time you were outsmarted.
Do I have to?
Oh, all right. They say a little humility is good for the soul... not that I have a soul, technically, and I'm pretty sure I don't have any humility either, but I'll try to fake it.
I need to start with a little background here. Some of you may actually know part of this story, so let me do some setup.
A few hundred years before Our Story starts, one of us ran into a Q from the future. Now we can only run into each other in the mortal universe's timeline; we can't actually travel in our own timeline, but we have a bad habit of spending time in the mortal universe, where, in fact, we can run into Q from the past or the future of the Continuum. The protocol is that if you're a past-Q, you don't ask, and if you're a future-Q, you don't tell. This asshole, however, made some wiseass comment about how human beings were going to radically change the Continuum. This, of course, freaked out a sizable number of us, mostly the ones who didn't want anything to change. I thought that change would be kind of nifty, but humans were pretty pathetic at the time, so I thought the guy was making a joke.
So two of us went to investigate humanity and find out what was so cool about it. The Continuum moves *very* slowly, most of the time; we had been observing humans for a few hundred years before two of us moved in to check it out.
They promptly fell in love with the species, and decided to live among humans as if they were human, and even have a kid. The Continuum did not appreciate this so much.
After we executed them for turning away from the Continuum (technically it was for continuing to use their powers, but we all knew they wouldn't be able to stop themselves; it was actually for rejecting us), I was furious with humanity, and loudly and frequently declared that one of these days I was going to deliver the species a serious smackdown. I was also at this point well known for, shall we say, being perhaps unduly harsh in my judgements of lesser species, when I was sent out to test them. (Lesser species had a terrible habit of falling to their knees trying to propitiate me when I came to test them, and I *am* the guy who dropped an asteroid on a planet for worshiping me too much.) So those individuals who really *wanted* to see humanity get a smackdown, lest the prophecy come true and these hairless monkeys actually manage to influence the Continuum, decided it would be a great idea if I was sent to test them.
Now, I'd had something of a, shall we say, dissolute youth. And in one memorable episode from my younger days, I spent some time hanging out with a rogue's gallery of disreputable characters, most of whom I couldn't stand but they were friends with a very charismatic fellow who'd managed to completely seduce me into becoming his protege (mostly because I had wheels and he didn't, but I digress.) As it happened, all three of these particular assholes (not the charismatic guy who'd befriended me, but his loser friends that I'd put up with because they were friends with him) had run-ins with a particular human, the captain of a starship called *Enterprise*, fellow named James T. Kirk. I thought it would be amusing to take him on... only trouble was, he was sort of very dead by then. (Well, not really. Really, he was hanging around in an old abandoned amusement park the Q built a billion years ago, but no one ever goes there anymore because old abandoned amusement parks are just as creepy to omnipotent beings as they are to you lesser creatures, so I wasn't actually going to go drag him out just so I could have some fun with him.) I *could* go back in time in the mortal timeline, but I didn't want to accidentally run into myself, because I'd been *very* active in mortal timeline during that time period.
So, you know, one human, another human, what's the diff? I decided to go after the current ship called Enterprise and the current captain of it, a stuffy French guy named Jean-Luc Picard, because hey, gotta start somewhere.
He refused to worship me. Or demonize me. Or even act as afraid as it would be appropriate to act when being kidnapped and tormented by an omnipotent being. He defied me, repeatedly, and told his second-in-command that he was going to do exactly what he would have done anyway, even though he knew I was watching him.
I found this very interesting. I also found it both intriguing and hilarious that he actually told *me* to test *him* before I'd gotten around to telling him that I was going to do it. This, I thought, was a pathetic, inferior hairless monkey that I could find really amusing. So I told him to go on the mission he was going to go on, because what he was going to run into would be a fine test. Also because the energy jellyfish he was heading straight for was whining so much and so loudly about the pain of its captivity, I figured that either the human would destroy it and fail the test or free it and pass, and either way it would shut the hell up.
He was also kind of stuffy and hidebound, and tried to tell his first officer that he shouldn't go over and investigate that thing just because I said it would be a good idea to go over and investigate that thing. Since going over and investigating that thing was, in fact, the only way they were going to figure out what was going on, I thought maybe he was taking the "get thee behind me, Satan" crap over the top, and became slightly more interested in the first officer, who recognized that just because a good idea comes from the omnipotent asshole does not make it not a good idea.
Well, and then they solved the whole problem because I hadn't been paying enough attention to the fact that one of the humans wasn't a human at all, she was a half-Betazoid empath who could sense the thing's emotions. So I felt a little disappointed because they kind of cheated, but hey, when you're omnipotent and someone slips one past you, it's your own damn fault. I still thought they were interesting and fun (though I claimed that they were boring, because you never start out by praising the inferior life forms for *anything*, or they get swollen heads), and I had every intention of coming back for more, later.
As it turned out, I *had* to. Because I went back to the Continuum and reported that they passed, and the various Q who had wanted me to smack humanity down told me I was a cream puff, I'd totally lost it, and go back there and test them until they fail something. WHich is not the way you're supposed to do it, and this made me very angry. Who the hell were they, to tell *me* I'd gone soft because the species actually *passed* my test? I mean, okay, I didn't notice the half-Betazoid being all Empathy Lass and stuff, but the point was to see if they lived up to their ideals, and they actually did, and that's a passing grade. I can't help it if humanity isn't completely pathetic. (I can't believe I just wrote that.)
So, since I was really mad at the Continuum, I decided I was going to go seriously hardcore. I was going to create a test it wasn't possible for them to pass, and I was going to do it in a way that would stick the Continuum with having to deal with humanity for the rest of time *anyway,* *and* possibly fulfill that prophecy. I gave the first officer access to my powers, and told him that I was inviting him to join the Q Continuum, because his species scared the shit out of us and we wanted to investigate it more closely. This being almost kind of true, he fell for it completely. Picard didn't think he'd take the deal, in the end, and figured out that my opinion of humanity was not, in fact, as high as I was claiming to Riker that it was (to be fair I wasn't exactly trying to hide my contempt for the inferior life forms from *him*). I *knew* that no one could possibly resist being immortal and omnipotent, because being immortal and omnipotent myself, I *knew* it really was all that and a box of chocolates. The Q themselves couldn't resist the temptation to use their own powers when their lives were at stake, so how could a lowly human resist?
This is where the outsmarting part comes in.
Picard knew that humans are, for the most part, so in need of the approval of their peers that they will give up something wonderful just because other people around them don't think they should have it. He had Riker pegged, correctly, as someone who, despite supposedly being ambitious and driven, was more interested in keeping his friends and making them happy than achieving the greatest dream humanity can conceive of. He also knew that becoming a Q would make Riker an ass (to be fair, I don't know how I was expected to notice this, because a. Riker was already an ass and b. the Q aren't really equipped to notice other people being assholes with power for the same reason fish aren't really equipped to notice that a diver is wet).
Riker gave all his friends nifty gifts, most of which proved that he actually didn't know them as well as he thought he did, and some of which actually *were* really nifty but his friends turned them down anyway. This led Riker to decide he really didn't want to be a Q. Which, in retrospect, was a good decision because actually, he is too much of a twit for any of us to want to live with for all eternity, but I, uh, sort of wasn't thinking about that. Mostly I wanted to prove to the Continuum that I had not gone soft, prove to Picard that I could actually come up with a test that his people *couldn't* pass, and stick the Continuum with having to deal with a member who was formerly human as revenge for their criticism of my handling the first test. Instead, Riker gave up the powers and passed the test, Picard gloated a lot that he beat me, and before I could talk my way into weaselling out of the bet I'd made with Picard, the Continuum yanked me home to yell at me a lot for trying to make a human into a Q without permission, and then they kicked me out on my ass and told me not to come home until they were done debating what they were going to do with me long-term.
So there we go. That is how I was outsmarted by a lowly human with an IQ barely a tenth of mine. Trust me, it didn't happen again.
Muse: Q
Fandom: Star Trek TNG
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Date: 2009-02-15 04:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-15 05:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-15 05:31 am (UTC)I'm not sure if the Q are subject to time paradoxes or not, but it seems like that Q may have actually caused his comment to come true.
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Date: 2009-02-15 06:05 am (UTC)Of course, I really can't imagine *why* a Q could *possibly* have wanted to create a timeline where the Continuum is transformed through the influence of humanity... One would almost think that such a being would have to be both desperately bored *and* highly enamored of the concept of change, while also being at least mildly fond of humans. I can't *imagine* a Q who meets all *those* criteria...
no subject
Date: 2009-02-15 07:09 pm (UTC)