Q

OOC: Reposted from theatrical_muse from 6/18/2005, 30 of 50.

If you could meet any famous personality, living or dead, and smack them in the head with a large trout, who would it be?

I have to pick just *one?*

I did once smack M'thaa of Anteron in the cranial carapace with a tubat, which is more like a crab than a trout, except that it has an endoskeleton instead of an exoskeleton and its skin is soft and squishy. Really, he was asking for it. M'thaa, I mean, not the tubat.

When in your life did you feel the most alone?

After one of my best friends tried to murder me and I spent forty years in solitary, sensory deprivation, recuperating. My people put me there because in my weakened, damaged state, I wouldn't have been able to protect myself from unscrupulous other Q who might want to forcibly alter my mind and personality (I was famed for my charm even then. :-)) It was the right thing to do, but I came very close to going insane. I could hear the Continuum, distantly, but I couldn't communicate back -- no matter how loudly I called, no one could hear me.

I was pretty damn lonely when I lost my powers, too, especially when Picard threw me in the brig, but that was a day, not forty years, and I was mostly surrounded by people, just people who didn't like me very much. And considering that they didn't like me all that much in the Continuum either back then, I didn't see much difference.

OOC: Reposted from theatrical_muse from 4/15/2005, 28 of 50.
This is actually an unusually decent crop of questions. I'm amazed.

Describe what your "happily ever after" would be like.
( Happily ever after ended a few billion years ago... )

What does the word 'love' mean to you?
( A score of zero in tennis. )
Have you ever regretted a wish you made? Why/what happened?
( Regrets are for people who can't see how screwed up their alternate realities could have been )
What is so important to you that without it, life would not be worth living? Why?
( Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. )

OOC: Reposted from theatrical_muse from 3/31/2005, 26 of 50.

If you could change one person's mind about something, who and what would it be?

I'm tempted to bring up Kathy and my attempt to convince her to have my child, but as it happens, she was my second choice anyway, and the kid I had with Q is working out reasonably well. So naah.

No, I'll go for the obvious. If I could change one person's mind about something, I would convince Jean-Luc Picard that...

...that what? That he should trust me? He shouldn't, and I'd think less of him if he did. That I'm not his enemy? I think he already knows.

Maybe, that when I said he was the closest thing I had to a friend, I actually meant it.

Maybe, that a human who became a Q wouldn't have to become corrupted by power like Riker did.

Maybe, that I...

Maybe that I talk too much. Some things, I'll keep to myself, thank you very much.

OOC: Reposted from theatrical_muse 1/27/2005, 24 of 50.

What's the furthest away you've ever been from the place you were born/created? How did you get there? Why did you go? Did you return or even want to come back to where you came from?

What's the furthest away I've ever been? As far as there is.

( So far away... )

OOC: Reposted from theatrical_muse from 12/31/2004, 22 of 50.

I'm not sure why I keep coming back here. I must be bored.

Of course, I'm *always* bored.

( A pile of pointless questions )

OOC: Reposted from theatrical_muse from 8/23/2004, 18 of 50.

Do you believe in an afterlife?

For who?

I am a being of pure psionic energy. I am *very* difficult to destroy. I don't age, I don't get hurt-- something actually has to be actively *trying* to destroy me to do it.

All mortal sentiences have within them a psionic energy core, a *thing* that is the essence of their selfness, which is generated by the activity of becoming sentient, but once generated cannot be destroyed any more easily than I can. Mortals-- sentient beings made of matter, especially those made of meat-- can age, and die, because the stuff they are made of is fragile. That core of them, however, is as immortal as I am.

So do mortals have an afterlife? Sure they do. What they do with it, mind, is up to them. It differs from species to species, from individual to individual.

The Q, however, cut out the middle-matter and took our immortal souls straight up. We *are* our immortal parts. (So are mortals, but since they can't see that part, and since their matter existence is profoundly different from their energy existence, it's understandable that they get confused on the issue.) If I choose to manifest myself in meat, I and everyone I manifest to know it's an affectation, that the "real" me is the psionic part. I hate the term "soul"-- it's so redolent in primitive superstition. But that is, in essence, what I am.

There are ways to destroy one's immortal essence. And if that happens, there isn't anything left to *have* an afterlife. The Q have always, in the past, conducted executions with mercy-- instead of attempting to destroy a Q essence, we simply enflesh a criminal in meat and cut them off from the Continuum, which makes them mortal, for all intents and purposes, and their essence as a Q will live on the way mortal souls live on after the meat they are in is destroyed.

But during the civil war, we found a way to actually annihilate one another's Q essences. For the first time we brought true death to the Continuum.

So do I get an afterlife? That entirely depends on how I die-- *if* I die, which I plan not to. If I were made mortal and then killed, yes. If I were killed as a Q... then no. Those of my comrades who died during the war are dead forever.

We can bring mortals back to life. It's easy to reconstruct matter around an existing psionic energy core. But if that core is itself destroyed... well, all the Q's horses and all the Q's men won't be putting *that* back together again.

OOC: Reposted from theatrical_muse from 7/7/2004, 16 of 50.

What do you most regret losing?

There are many things I've lost, throughout my lengthy existence, and usually, the loss has come with a commensurate gain. For instance, recently I lost a good bit of my free time and became chained down to responsibilities I never used to have to deal with. On the other hand, I gained power and status within my society, and I have a son, who is both simultaneously the most annoying creature in my existence and the best thing that ever happened to me. I lost my innocence and sense of wonder at the universe so long ago I'd practically forgotten I ever had it until I saw it again in my son, but I gained knowledge and power and an understanding of the universe.

I lost friends during the war. Some of them, I killed myself. Others died for the beliefs they shared with me. That's extraordinarily painful-- these are people I've known for billions of years, people I never expected to see die-- but they died for a reason, and I believe the cause was justified. My civilization has a chance to escape stagnation now. I can't regret that.

No, the only thing I've lost and never gained anything by...

( you're all on tenterhooks, I'm sure... )

OOC: Reposted from 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.

( It's the end of the world as we know it )