qcontinuum | Recent Entries

OOC Note: Crossposted from theatrical_muse, today.

Prompt 255: BOO! How would you go about scaring someone?

You know, I'm actually inordinately fond of scaring people. I suppose that means I'm a bad person, but I don't really care.

( But it has to have a point. )
Muse: Q
Fandom: Star Trek TNG

OOC note: crossposted from theatrical_muse from Oct. 27.

Prompt 254: What was the longest day of your life?

I don't normally count my life in days. In the Continuum, we don't have a sun, or any external marker of time passing, and we don't sleep, so the only way to tell how long something has been is with our internal time senses. Which are fantastic, don't get me wrong -- unlike most of you, I can detect the passage of "time" in dimensions where time does not exist, since I carry the ability to generate time internally, with the appropriate senses to go with such an ability -- but they don't lend themselves to dividing time into "days".

There has been only one event in my life that I actually count in days, since I was mortal at the time. And yes, it was REALLY REALLY LONG. Even though, objectively, it wasn't actually a full day at all. The time that I was human, and powerless, seemed to last significantly longer than certain aeons I've lived through did. I suppose the old human adage, "Time flies when you're having fun", is true in converse as well -- time drags near-infinitely when you're more miserable than you've ever been in your existence.

So. What can I say about this experience that I didn't already discuss in detail, ad nauseam? It was horrible, it terrified me, and it took me quite some time to recover from the fear and regain my internal equilibrium. If you haven't yet read all the sordid details, I've already written about the experience itself, and about the depressing cowardice that I displayed for several years after the event. So what else is there to say?

How about this? I don't regret it.

( No, I'm quite serious. )
Muse: Q
Fandom: Star Trek TNG

OOC: crossposted from theatrical_muse, today.

Prompt 248: Would you make a good spy? Why or why not?

Briefly? No.

Firstly, among the Q, what one Q knows we all know. This really makes it quite impossible to spy on one another. And the one time I tried it, during the civil war when it was actually possible, I promptly got caught and put up against a tree to be shot. (Well, it wasn't really a tree. It was really a localized hard disruption of Continuum-space such that it would block approach from about half the possible angles. But I digress.) Among my fellow Q, I am... not stealthy. I am loud, vivid, imposing, the center of attention wherever I go, and James Bond fantasies to the contrary, this does not make for a good spy. At *best*, I could be the guy that distracts everyone so the real spy can get in and get the information. (I'd say I could also be the guy who makes the nifty gadgets, but jokes about my name are *so* overdone.)

Besides, my role within the Q, the functions I was born for, don't suit the life of a spy at all. I ask the questions... I don't ferret out the answers, and then keep them secret. I investigate and study mortal species, I explore and bring the bounty of knowledge home to my fellows to analyze, I conduct tests and experiments. I could be, in mortal terms, an explorer, a scientist, a detective, a prosecuting attorney, a judge, an anthropologist, a psychologist... and among my own kind, an activist, a rabble-rouser, an anarchist, a philosopher, an opposition leader... but spy? No.

Outside the Q, among mortals, I know everything, but I can't be bothered to share it with them. I'd really need to take sides in a mortal conflict quite egregiously to be bothered spying for them. I mean, sure, I might tell Picard where the cloaked Dominion warships that are planning to blow up his species' shipyards are... *once*. If he asked nicely. But if I was going to tell him everything he needed to win a war, why wouldn't I just go so far as to blink his enemies out of existence? As fond as I am of him, I would *never* take sides in a mortal conflict to that extent... and part of the reason I'm fond of him is that he'd never ask me to. I'd probably have to pull teeth to get him to ask me about the cloaked Dominion warships.

So no. I'd make an absolutely abysmal spy.

Muse: Q
Fandom: Star Trek TNG

OOC: Crossposted from theatrical_muse from Sept 12, 2008.

Prompt 246: What are the five steps to a successful negotiation?

1. Know your opponent. Know what they want and what they are likely to give. It does you no good to go into a negotiation with someone where you're prepared to give them something totally reasonable in exchange for your own totally reasonable request, but they are totally unreasonable and hate you so much they'd sabotage themselves to destroy you.

2. Start from a position of overwhelming force. If that isn't possible, pretend you have a position of overwhelming force. Or if it's pretty obvious that you don't, start from a position of overwhelming rightness, so that anyone who opposes your just and reasonable demands is an idiot. If you have any doubts about what you want, *don't start negotiation.* Or at least put them out of your head.

3. Demand vastly more than you expect to get. That gives you the room to be negotiated down to slightly more than you wanted in the first place.

4. Do whatever it takes to win. Lie, cheat, rig the game? All's fair in love and war, and if a negotiation isn't a war, it's certainly quite close.

5. Stand your ground. When they undercut you to weaken your position, stay even more firm. Often I see people trying to conciliate, to sweeten the deal, because they understand that their position is weak. That's exactly the wrong way to go about it. When you're weakest is when you most need to pretend your strength is incomparable.

If you don't think you can do these things, don't start. You won't win. Taking less than you meant to get is a blow to your self esteem that will make it harder for you to win the next one. If you can't win, don't play; that saves your strength for the ones you *can* win.

Muse: Q
Fandom: Star Trek TNG

Prompt 244: Happy endings.

The essence of an ending is that something is done with. Kaput. Finis. As a result, the common mortal misconception that there can be a happy ending in a lifetime is almost absurdly misplaced.

There can be a happy ending to something that was awful to begin with. A happy ending to a struggle, for instance, or a war. A happy ending to a miserable childhood. A happy ending to an imprisonment. Perhaps even a happy ending to a bad relationship, if the participants can be mature about it (although most bad relationships are not noted for the maturity of the participants.)

But a happy ending to a life? Lives end in death. I know a fellow who thought death was his personal happy ending, but I continue to refuse to accept that. Death may be *acceptable*, but it is never *happy*. (At least not for the person who died. Some people deserve to have their graves danced on after they die.)

Given the choice between ending, and not ending, I generally think that *not* ending is the happier of the two.

Muse: Q
Fandom: Star Trek TNG

Prompt 245. What's the first thing you remember?

Existence.

I had been not, and then, in a moment, I was. And in the moment I came to be, I knew that I was a Q, and that the beings that surrounded me, watching me, their minds filled with joy and anticipation as I joined their number, were also Q. I knew that I was loved, and wanted, and created to serve a need in my creators.

Then they reached inside me and opened my eyes, and I saw the limitless dimensions of the universe, stretching out around me forever. I saw a vista with no horizon, filled with bright and shiny things for me to reach for, to touch and study. I saw the vague shape of time trailing backward behind me, the openness of time beckoning in front of me. And they spoke into my mind, and the words they said were "All of this is for you to explore."

And I was filled with a joy so profound it *hurts* to remember it, to know that I will never experience that joy again. Because the universe was limitless, and all of it was for me to explore. I had the power and the freedom to reach out for everything in the vastness that I wanted to understand, the power and the freedom to learn *everything*. I knew, then, that I was alive, and that I would love being alive, and that everything I could possibly want was right in front of me for me to enjoy.

Obviously, that is not how it worked out. To be fair to my newborn self, though... that *was* how I experienced my life for the first maybe two or three billion years. And then I *did* get everything I wanted. The universe wasn't as limitless as I thought it was when I was created. Eventually I ran out of new things to learn.

Through the totality of the Continuum I can also remember things that happened when I hadn't yet been created, such as the creation of the Continuum and the birth of the universe. But this one is *my* first memory, and I will treasure it for the rest of eternity.

Muse: Q
Fandom: Star Trek TNG

OOC: Crossposted from theatrical_muse today.

Prompt 243: If you could be in the Olympics (summer or winter), what event/sport would you want to do most? Why?

You know, it is sometimes *really really hard* for me not to snort in disgust and throw my metaphorical hands in the air at these questions. The *Olympics*? A contest of physical prowess, held on Earth for about 200 years, with solely human contestants? Am I supposed to care about such things?

*sigh* But, I am *trying*, very hard, to come up with answers to questions that seem completely ridiculous and have absolutely no connection to my existence, which frequently involves answering the spirit of the question if not the way it was actually phrased. So I'll tell you a story about a contest I participated in, which actually *involved* tests of physical prowess between humans and other humanoid sentients similar to Earth's Olympics, though I myself obviously didn't actively take part in those tests.

( Games are the mark of sentience. )

OOC: Crossposted from theatrical_muse today.

Prompt 234: Utopia.
Prompt 235: Show us where you live.

I find it a trifle ironic that these two questions were so close to one another.

( Eutopia is Utopia; the perfect place is nowhere )

Muse: Q
Fandom: Star Trek TNG

OOC: crossposted from theatrical_muse today.
Prompt 240: Discuss an individual who has scared you.

No.

( Fine, fine. I won't be a coward about it, after all. )

Muse: Q
Fandom: Star Trek TNG

Crossposted from theatrical_muse, today.

A pile of old questions this time.

( Seduction )

( A little respect )

( You can tell I don't mean what I say because my mouth is moving )

( Drunk mortals are too easy )
Muse: Q
Fandom: Star Trek TNG

Crossposted from theatrical_muse, today.

239: Hair.

What is it with humans and hair?

( The blessing and the curse of human hair )
Muse: Q
Fandom: Star Trek TNG and others

OOC: Crossposted from theatrical_muse today.

Prompt 232: Is there a situation where it's appropriate to be unkind?

How about all of them?

( Being unkind can be the kindest thing you can do for someone. )

Muse: Q
Fandom: Star Trek TNG

OOC: Posted to theatrical_muse, today.

Prompt 230: Black and white.

What's wrong with purple?

Or red. I'm actually quite fond of red.

Prompt 195: What makes someone a hero? What makes someone a villain?

The label on the action figure, mostly.

( Binary thinking in a tetradimensional world is... well... FLAT. Duh. )

OOC: Posted to theatrical_muse, today.

Prompt 231: "Everything passes. Nobody gets anything for keeps. And that's how we've got to live." Haruki Murakami.

I would say that this is mostly accurate whether you're mortal or immortal.

Everything in the universe is finite. Stars burn out, planets blow up, species evolve or die out. Mortals can possess something that lasts longer than they do, only because they themselves are so short-lived and fragile. Immortals, however, watch everything that isn't themselves or their fellows collapse or fade to dust.

And you cannot "have" another immortal. You can have a relationship with them, but that too changes over time. Aeons pass, and lovers become enemies, or worse, the bonds between you fade into indifference. Others that you were indifferent to once become your new friends or your new loves. No relationship stays the same.

It may not even be accurate to say that if you are immortal you have yourself forever. Who *you* are changes as well. And the act of not changing is itself a kind of death, so if you managed to have everything for eternity the *meaning*, the value of it would decrease to nothing, leaving you with effectively nothing even though none of it actually died or was lost.

It rather surprises me that a mortal came up with this quote, actually. Plenty of mortals have lived their entire existences in the same building, in the same town, surrounded by mostly the same people, with largely the same possessions. They get away with it because they die, but for any of us, mortal or immortal, a lifetime is all you get. Eternity is meaningless if you yourself aren't around to see it; all the time that is important to the individual is the time we are alive. So mortals *do* get to have things for "keeps", if by that you mean they get to keep them their whole lives, or even their whole lives and the whole lives of all the younger people they know. Of course, mortals who get to do such things usually live lives constrained horribly by hidebound traditions and stultifying stagnation; mortals with *interesting* lives rarely get to keep anything their entire life.

OOC: Crossposted from theatrical_muse, today.

Prompt 227: A friend asks you to recommend a book: which book would you choose and why?

That would really depend on the friend, now wouldn't it? I'm not exactly going to recommend one of those Cardassian twenty-seven book epics about a life of service to the state to Jean-Luc, for example.

Actually, I wouldn't recommend one of those to anyone. I can read an entire book in a nanosecond, and I still resent the loss of those 27 nanoseconds I spent reading one of those things.

You know what book I'm inordinately fond of, that I would recommend to anyone who wants to understand what it is I like about humans? Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis. Normally I have very little interest in Lewis, since most of his work is an elaborate fantasy about how humans get to live forever and the cosmic entities responsible for the universe's creation actually personally care for human beings and would even willingly die for one. Okay, I've been in a situation where I more-or-less willingly offered up my life for a bunch of humans, and I'm a cosmic entity, but I'm not responsible for the universe's creation (I've made a planet or two, but if I were responsible for the entire universe, it would be a *much* more entertaining place), and besides, I was a mere human myself at the time. The idea that something vast enough to encompass the creation of the universe would actually personally concern itself with individual humans is... well, it's quaint, and amusing, the way it's amusing when small children think the entire universe revolves around their lives.

But in any case. Voyage of the Dawn Treader manages to overcome this problem because it's not *about* the fantasy of immortality and benevolent gods. It's about the need humans have -- as personified by a talking mouse in the story, but hey -- to explore to the edges of what they can survive and beyond, their need to push themselves to learn everything there is to know. That need resonates powerfully with me, since I was created in order to learn everything there is to know (and then I learned it, and life has sucked ever since.)

( The future's not all it's cracked up to be )

OOC: Crossposted from theatrical_muse, today.

Prompt 152: Road trip. / Prompt 168: Party!

By Earth's calendar, today is April Fool's Day, which, as I've mentioned before, is my favorite holiday. So my son and I are going on a time-traveling, universe-hopping road trip. We're going to hit every April Fool's Day party we can find containing remotely interesting people, until we've spent a full 24 hours of linear time at April Fool's Day parties.

The rules of the road trip are:

1. We alternate who gets to pick the next destination.
2. If either of us experience more than five linear minutes of boredom, we can call it for the next destination.
3. Whoever picked the destinations that produced the most minutes of entertainment before someone called it, wins.

Of course the boy doesn't know that I've spent the past sixty or so years of Continuum time mapping out the best April Fool's Day parties, so I am totally going to *annihilate* him in this contest. But now that he's essentially an adolescent, he can finally put up a fight, so it's actually fun to totally crush him in a contest now.

If any of you out there are throwing an April Fool's Day party... I might drop in. Or I might not. Plenty of parties out there in the timeline, after all.

OOC Note: Crossposted from theatrical_muse, today.

Prompt 174: Would you ever kill a human being (or if you are not human - would you ever kill a being from your own species?)

( There was a time when no one Q could kill another Q... and I wish it had stayed that way. )

OOC Note: Crossposted from theatrical_muse today.

Prompt 175: Who's your best friend, and why?

I have had several best friends, in my existence. It's a little difficult to differentiate them when conversing with mortals, though, because all of them are named Q.

( Somehow I never manage to keep a friend all that long. I wonder why not. )

OOC: Crossposted from theatrical_muse today.

I swear I didn't put those time-traveling invisible aliens all over your engine room, Picard. No, I mean it. Pinky swear. I mean, seriously, why do you always blame me for these kind of things? It's like you see me and immediately think, "Oh, Q must be the explanation for all these mysterious things that are happening!" and never bother to explore it any further. Really, Jean-Luc, I expected better from you.

Let's be realistic, now; have I ever bothered to create a scenario and dump you into it, instead of just watching with amusement as the universe itself presents you with a puzzle? Okay, yes, Robin Hood, but that doesn't count; it was obvious that it was me, and I admitted it. Yes, yes, I did send Riker and your bridge crew to that planet with the animal things, but I admitted to that one too. And okay, fine, I sent you back in time to your past, and yes, I did expose you to the Borg, but you *knew* I was doing those things. I never created some situation and then left you to puzzle it out on your own for hours or days before showing up, now did I?

Okay, yes, you got me, that's exactly what I did with that temporal anomaly test. But, well, I didn't invent that jellyfish at Farpoint, now did I?

I'm not making this argument well, am I?

Right, then. Jean-Luc, you'll just have to trust me this time. I did *not* in any way entice, allow, induce or otherwise facilitate those time-traveling invisible aliens to invade your ship, and no, I didn't create them either. I'm just here to watch you defeat them. And eat popcorn. Want some? It's got extra butter.

OOC: Crossposted from theatrical_muse today.

Prompt 220: If you could buy a magic potion, what would it be?

Magic potion? I have no use for such things – I'm omnipotent. Anything anyone could possibly need a magic potion to achieve for them, I can do for myself – if I haven't obtained something I want already, it's because doing so would conflict with my ethics or my other goals, and a magic potion would have the same problems.

But since I've vowed to at least *try* to answer the questions that don't apply to my personal life, let me tell you a little story about a magic potion. It wasn't me who sought the potion, of course, and the person who did didn't exactly *buy* it, but... well, let the story speak for itself.

( How I *coughcough* I mean, a wizard and a young hero saved the planet Hialtha with a magic potion )

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Q

Lifestyles of the Bored and Omnipotent

Recent Entries

Scaring people for fun and benefit. Well, mostly for fun.

The Longest Day

Spy vs. Spy

Negotiations.

Happy endings are usually a contradiction in terms.

First memory

Let the games begin

Utopia doesn't mean what you think it does.

Scary people

Old questions

Oh, gimme a head with hair... or don't

Ya gotta be cruel to be kind...

Binary thinking is an oxymoron.

Everything passes

Books, and the future

Going on a trip.

Kill or be killed

Best friend

Prompt 223: "I swear..."

A little story about a magic potion.