qcontinuum | How depressing.

So they're going to go ahead with it. Despite the fact that they have been warned by an OMNIPOTENT BEING, and their own analyses have told them that they're going to destroy their ship trying... Voyager is going to go ahead and try this slipstream thing, aka "that thing that's going to blow up their ship."

Bloody hell.

I could intervene and stop this. I'm really not fond of letting people I like blow up. Of course, most of them I couldn't care less about, but I think I would be very unhappy watching Kathy blow herself to smithereens.

To be honest, if it were the Enterprise I *would* intervene. But Kathy has specifically asked me not to help her with anything more than advice and the occasional coffee bean. The trouble with treating mortals as near-equals is that you have to more or less honor their requests. (Well, you don't *have* to, but I choose to.)

And, well, stupidity *is* its own reward. They wanted to get home on their own power, they didn't want any help from omnipotent beings, they didn't even want to take my advice, so, well, c'est la vie. Et la morte, in this case.

It is so very *frustrating* to befriend creatures who are so very, very stupid. Among other things, they cannot quite comprehend that I am smarter than they are. Oh, yes, they know it intellectually, but they don't *grasp* that I am to them what they are to chimpanzees-- or, perhaps, dogs. It's because they're so very lowly, they can't communicate with anything less sentient than they are, so they *have* no framework for understanding what it's like for me to talk to beings as stupid as they are. If you're mortal, imagine a conversation with your dog.

You: "Don't run out in the road to chase squirrels. You could get hit by a moving vehicle."

Dog: "Okay. SQUIRREL! Gotta get it! Gotta get it!"

You: "Hey, I said don't chase squirrels!"

Dog: "Gotta get squirrel! Gotta get squirrel!"

SCREECH

One dead dog eviscerated by a moving vehicle later, you realize that the best thing to have done was hold on to the leash, because dogs are too stupid to listen to reason. But then, the dog is your pet. We've learned the hard way that domesticating mortals-- controlling them, protecting them, and taking responsibility for their little lives-- generally destroys everything that's interesting about them. Sometimes you *have* to let them run into traffic and get hit, chasing the squirrel.

Somehow they have this idea that I sneer at their petty little technologies because I am a silly misanthrope. No, I sneer at their petty little technologies when said technologies are going to blow them up because I am smart enough to know better. My opinion of humanity isn't that they're inferior to me because I have an overinflated ego. They're inferior to me because they are-- that's just reality. I enjoy them greatly for what they are, but I'm afraid I keep overestimating them, after an initial period of underestimating them, because I *want* them to be smarter than they are. And, of course, they're not.

Why can't a human be more like a Q?

Obviously, of course, because they are billions of years less evolved than we are. So they are on occasion going to succumb to outrageous wishful thinking and blow themselves up.

You know what? I'm not going to watch this. I'm going to go to the other universe and shut off my higher faculties. It'll be like getting drunk, if omnipotent beings could get drunk. There's another Kathy there and she's actually willing to have sex with me, unlike this one. Besides, they're playing with the mirror universe, which is always good for a laugh.

OOC note: Q has the power to prevent Voyager from accessing a post of his; I do not, not without also locking out everyone who Q doesn't have friended. So if you're Voyager, go ahead and read but please don't reply; your character can't see this post.