Q

(For musing_way.)

"Do you have any family?" the child asked him.

Q is startled by the question. He's simply never considered it, one way or another.

What does "family" even mean, in this context? He examines the child's mind. To her, family means a unit of genetic continuity -- parents, siblings, grandparents. She's thinking of her own family, of a little brother and an older sister, of the parents of her parents, of the siblings of her parents and their children, her cousins. It's a small unit, isolated in her mind from the rest of her species, a special little group of "us" in a sea of "them."

Q does not have anything like that.

( What is family? )

OOC: Crossposted from theatrical_muse today.

Prompt 326: "Mourning is just extended self-pity."

The problem with having mortal friends, lovers or simply objects of interest when you're immortal is all the dying.

Mortals who make pets out of creatures with shorter life spans than they have know what I'm talking about. No matter how much you love your cat, there's a part of you deep down inside that's always getting ready to detach, because you *know* that unless a horrible tragedy happens to you, your cat will die in your life span. Which may be why mortal old ladies are willing to take on the burden of loving so many cats (or whatever... have you ever seen Vulcan matriarchs with twenty-seven chal'matyas running around their property? Sure, they *say* it's just logical because the quality of life of wild chal'matyas is so much lower than pet chal'matyas, and matriarchs whose great-grandchildren are adults can pass off all their duties to their families onto their own matriarchal daughters and spend their time rehabilitating wild chal'matyas... but come on. No one needs twenty-seven small, cute, fuzzy, venomous cat-lizard-things. But I digress.) Mortal oldsters know their own time might well run out before their pets' does.

This is not a situation I am ever in, for obvious reasons.

So I don't cry over dead mortals, because seriously, over billions of years that would be a whole lot of crying, and that would positively *ruin* my boyish complexion. Some have accused me of being utterly callous toward the death of other Q, however, because I don't seem to spend a whole lot of time mourning dead friends, either.

( Feel sorry for what you've lost all you want, but don't pretend it's nobler than that. )

OOC: Crossposted from theatrical_muse today.
Prompt 287: Prison

It may shock you to know that a fine, upstanding citizen of the Q Continuum such as myself has any acquaintance with anything resembling a prison... okay, okay, I can't keep a straight face through that one either.

Actually, I've been in prison, or something like it, multiple times. The incident I've talked about most often would be the time I was human, and Picard threw me in the brig. I have to admit, that was deeply unpleasant. But the fact is, it's not the worst prison I've ever been in.

( Other prisons I've been in )

Prompt 286: Under what circumstances, if any, is it acceptable to break the law?

I can't imagine why you might think that I would think it's ever acceptable to break the law. I'm shocked, shocked, I tell you!... Of course maybe it might have something to do with my having been in prison multiple times?...

( The law is frequently idiotic. )
Muse: Q
Fandom: Star Trek TNG and VOY

OOC: Crossposted from theatrical_muse, today.
Prompt 278: What are you wearing?

At the moment? A human body, male, dark haired, pale skinned, approximately late 40's or early 50's, not quite 2 meters tall but damn close to it.

The *body* is wearing whatever the person I'm talking to usually wears, unless I have a reason to adopt a different costume. To my pals in Starfleet, I wear Starfleet uniforms. Unless I'm trying to make a point, or play a different role. If I were having a conversation with 21st century humans I'd probably wear one of those dreadful business suits men were fond of in those days.

I'm actually inordinately fond of various costumes, but there's something very meta about it, since in fact any body you can see me in is a costume. Mortals can't perceive what I really am. I've manifested myself in their dimension as a glowing ball of light, but the truth is that's a costume too, albeit one that's a bit closer to reality, because what I'm made of is a form of energy that simply does not exist in the mortals' universe. I am made of the substance the Continuum is made of, and the Continuum is technically speaking a different universe, although very closely associated with the universe we used to live in before we made it. You can't see what I really am because I can't *be* what I really am anywhere that you could see me, and if you came to my universe the lack of anything that would resemble visible light, or in fact the laws of physics as you understand them at all, would require me to create a translation mechanism in your brain that would analogize everything you see, using metaphors you comprehend, so that you'd be able to see anything at all, or for that matter not go insane from simultaneous sensory deprivation and direct-brain-stimulation overload.

So whatever I look like to you is, in fact, a costume I'm wearing. The fact that my costumes wear costumes is just a further point of ironic amusement for me.

OOC: crossposted from theatrical_muse today.
Prompt 274: What question do you most dread?

Pretty much anything the Continuum is asking me.

Whether it's, "Q, why did you think making a mortal into a member of the Continuum was a good idea?", "Q, are you aware that your intervention on the Ceulan ethnic group of the Jinarii species has resulted in the Ceulans being nearly destroyed, and as a result they have become warlike and genocidal themselves?", "Q, when we asked you to remove yourself from this body so we could debate the best way to deal with your constant law-breaking, you attempted to form an unauthorized liaison with a mortal species, and when they refused you exposed them to the Borg. WHAT WERE YOU THINKING???"... or, well, anything like that... let's just say that I generally don't like what comes after that question, regardless of what I actually come up with as an answer.

Sometimes I dread some of the questions that come up here as well, mostly because they are so incredibly stupid when applied to my form of life. (3 AM? What do you wish you had a camera for? Come on.)

( Questions that I don't dread. )
Muse: Q
Fandom: Star Trek TNG and VOY

This is not a funny story. I realize that those of you who bother to read these things probably come here expecting a barrel of yuks. Not today.

( If sick in the head counts, or sick to the heart at myself and what I've done counts, then I suppose I've been sick before, or still am. )
( OOC: the credits )
Muse: Q
Fandom: Star Trek TNG and VOY

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 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 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