From: Mandy Gordon <75037.51@CompuServe.COM>
Newsgroups: alt.fan.q,alt.startrek.creative
Subject: TNG:  Test Questions  (P/Q) 1/1
Date: 1 Feb 1996 10:43:32 GMT
Organization: CompuServe, Inc. (1-800-689-0736)
Lines: 461
Message-ID: <4eq5gk$b8l$1@mhadf.production.compuserve.com>

I was playing around one night and this came out.  Thought it was kind of 
interesting so I decided to put it out here and see if anyone agreed with 
me  :)   It's set after "All Good Things..." but before "Generations."


Test Questions


     Q.  An odd name.  I wonder why he picked it?  What does it mean?  
Questions as old as the being himself perhaps.  He frowned, a new 
thought coming to him.  And what does it mean to be part of a 
"continuum"?  Is he even an individual?  Perhaps when he comes to me 
I'm really interfacing with an entire collective consciousness, like the 
Borg...
     The very idea made him shudder with revulsion, and even a little 
suppressed fear.  That was a time of literally unspeakable horror, a time 
whose brutality left him numb inside whenever he tried to recall the 
details of his captivity.  He closed his eyes, trying to unremember where 
his thoughts had just led him.  Control yourself, Jean-Luc, or she'll be in 
here faster than you can say "come."  There were times when having an 
empath on board was... intrusive.
     He snorted.  And having an omnipotent entity interested in you 
wasn't?  Why did Q keep coming back here - to this ship?  Was it for 
him?  As far as he knew, the being was only known to have interacted 
once with the Federation without focusing entirely on the Enterprise 
captain.  Maybe he's following O'Brien, he thought with a smile.  Still, it 
was confusing.  Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that he was 
the first human Q ever met, or so he supposed, seven years ago at that 
"trial."  What a farce.  Was Continuum justice really that... unjust?  And 
why should the Continuum care about humanity anyway?  The Klingons, 
the Cardassians, hell, even the *Ferengi* were allowed to go about their 
equally unevolved business without so much as a by your leave.  Why did 
Q single humanity out?  Why did he come to *his* ship?  It was difficult 
to speculate in the entity's absence.  Then again, it was practically 
impossible to speculate on anything other than his immediate proximity 
when he was present.
     He sighed and leaned back in his chair, uncharacteristically slouching, 
slowly crossing his ankles over his desk, the somehow illicit posture an 
unconscious expression of defiance.  Let him come.  Let him do as he 
would.  I'm not afraid...
     The door chime nearly knocked him off the chair.
     "Captain?"  It was her.  Damn.  Knew it would be.  She didn't sound 
like she was going to go away either.  He returned his feet to their 
customary place on the floor.
     "Come."  May as well get this over with, she wouldn't let it drop.  She 
never did.
     Deanna came in cautiously, looking around the small room as if she 
might actually find something there she hadn't seen before.  Satisfied it 
contained nothing unusual, she turned to the now upright man behind the 
spartan desk.
     "Sir," she began carefully, "I sensed a certain level of... distress 
from you just now.  Is something wrong?"
     He frowned, trying to intimidate her into leaving.  "Not at all, 
Counselor.  Nothing of any immediate concern.  Just reliving some old, 
uncomfortable memories."  He made his tone a dismissal.  Not surprisingly, 
she chose not to hear it.
     "I see.  Is it anything you care to talk about?"
     Ah, there it was.  The trap.  She always tried to get him like this.  
If he said "no" she would know something was bothering him and worry at it 
like a dog with a bone.  If he told her his thoughts she would insist on 
analyzing them into extinction.  Perhaps that fit her definition of mental 
health:  Kill the patient's anxieties with a verbal assault.  Dissect them 
until they were no more.  Well, not this time.  He would be direct.  
     "I think not."  He put conviction and a desire for solitude into his 
voice.  "It's a private reflection, Deanna.  I don't wish to expose it to 
another."
     She nodded, turned, and left quietly without another word.
     My God, why didn't I try that years ago?


     Always wondered that myself, mon capitaine.  But then, she's no worse 
than any of the others you choose to saddle yourself with.  Better than 
that red-headed shrew I suppose.  Infinitely so compared to the cretin you 
have manning your weapons systems.  Perhaps I'd even rate her above 
that hairy excuse for a first officer.  Never understood why you didn't just 
call him Number Two anyway; that is what he is, isn't it?
     The being was obliged to fight down his species' equivalent of nausea 
at the remembrance of one of his own kind's attraction towards the burly 
human.  He'd conveniently purged the memory of his own feelings for the 
man many years ago without even consciously being aware he had done 
so.  He'd have been genuinely surprised if anyone had the knowledge, or 
the temerity, to remind him of them.  If a Q wished to disallow some part 
of his existence, or anyone else's for that matter, he did so and woe be it 
to any creature foolish enough to try and change it back.  Oh well, the 
hairy human hadn't worked out anyway.  The bald one however...
     Q continued to study Picard from his position quite outside this 
particular universe.  Distance meant nothing to him, nor time, nor the 
fabric of the Great Page.  These things were meaningless, his essence a 
thing apart.  He could study this person, anything he liked in fact, from 
any vantage point he was capable of imagining.  It was an interesting 
limitation actually:  anything he was capable of imagining.  He'd never 
told anyone of this perceived obstacle to his claim of total omnipotence.  
After all, if you can't imagine it how can it be done?  He wondered if it 
was possible to pass beyond the impasse or if it was in truth an intrinsic 
barrier, the inevitable checkmate at the end of the game.  How 
unsatisfactory.
     He focused anew on the man in the small room of his ship.  He was 
thinking again; well, inasmuch as those sluggish electrochemical reactions 
might be called thought.  Amazing they managed to understand anything 
at all really.


     Q.  Here he was again.  Back where he started.  Thinking about him 
was much like being with him; it was impossible to get anywhere, even 
with his enigmatic name.  Q.  Why not X?  Or Z?  They had the same sort 
of exotic quality to them, the rarity of use in his language.  He made a 
face.  Perhaps it was Q for question.  Damn being raised enough of them.  
And why was he so obsessed?  Oh certainly, Q was an interesting enough 
fellow, annoying, immature, but interesting for all that.  How could 
someone who knew everything there was to know not be?  Then again, 
how could a multi-million year old intelligence be so childish?  Putting 
them on trial indeed.  If the Continuum wanted humanity extinguished 
why not just do so and be done with it?  Why go through the motions?  It 
made absolutely no sense.  He snorted again; when had anything he could 
remember Q doing made any sense?  He smiled at the thought that 
perhaps humanity had been misspelling capricious all this time...


     It does make sense, Jean-Luc, but I can't just give you the answer.  
They won't let me.  You wonder about my childishness; I wonder about 
their obtuseness.  "Test humanity."  What a moronic directive.  Whatever 
for?  We already know everything there is to know about your puny 
species.  Besides, the "trial" wasn't to test you, mon ami, it was to test 
me - us.  But then you'd hardly understand that.
     The entity shifted his mental energies.  The lack of understanding 
bothered him in a way he found difficult to acknowledge, much less explain. 
The test had shown him too much.


     And why did Q help him, that last time?  Why did he sabotage the 
Continuum's attempt to test him with that anomaly?  And he'd been so... 
so... almost *friendly*, there, at the end.  A little uncharacteristic given 
their generally adversarial relationship.  Then again, that business with 
Corey and the Nausicans had been somewhat unusual as well.  The 
understanding the episode had given him of his own character and 
motivations, the road that led to his personal growth as a commander of 
others -- he was grateful.  Why hadn't he said so at the time?  To Q, 
when in the solitude of his own quarters?  He'd have heard, surely.


     Of course I'd have heard.  I know everything about you, mortal, you 
have no secrets from me.  I can do anything to you, with your permission 
or without, with your knowledge or without, by merely snapping my 
fingers.  And why haven't I?  Why have I played this charade all these 
years?  It's part of the test, yes.  It always comes back to the damned 
test.  Will they never end it?  Will you ever succeed?


     It was almost over.  Will would be in soon to deliver the day's report.  
Not that he'd need to if his captain had bothered to spend any time at all 
outside his ready room today.  Lazy.  Perhaps Will would worry, think 
there was something going on Picard was purposely keeping from him.  
He'd be able to tell the minute his first walked through the door; the 
direct gaze, the little furrow in his brow, the complete focus on Picard's 
face.  He could always tell.  Made him look like a nervous parent afraid 
his offspring was being beaten up at school and wouldn't tell anyone.  It 
was one of the few character traits the captain found annoying in his first 
officer.  Cluck, cluck, as he'd said in the past.  Of course, this ability 
to tune in to the moods of his commander was also what made him one of 
the best firsts he'd ever had.  Still, Q did have a point.  Will had become 
almost intensely serious since growing that beard; the weight of his 
responsibilities had made him so.


     For once I can sympathize with the big ape.  The weight of my 
responsibilities is a little frightening as well.  No wonder the Continuum 
has become so rigid with me; there is so much at stake.  The mind having 
that thought drew its energies in a little closer in a vain effort to 
comfort itself.


     Surprisingly, Riker's report was uneventful, the man not having picked 
up on his superior's pensive mood.  He was brisk, professional, and 
warmed Picard with a smile of genuine friendship.  Despite the odd 
annoyance, he had to admit he liked his first officer tremendously.  A 
good man.  One worthy of the trust invested in him.  As were all his 
senior officers.  Indeed, his entire crew.
     Picard made his way slowly in the direction of his cabin.  He hadn't 
really meant to go there, did have passing thoughts of finding Guinan so 
they could explore his recent disturbance together, but instead his feet 
took him inevitably to where he could think without interruption.  Think 
more about Q.
     

     Yes, please do, Captain.  Time is not inexhaustible, even for me.  If 
you don't get it soon I fear it may come too late.  Then again, perhaps I 
was wrong about you and it will never come at all.  Will you know when 
it's over?  Will you care?  
     He couldn't see in that direction and the blindness frightened him even 
more.


     His cabin was dark, cold, a little forbidding.  He should have found 
out Guinan after all, relaxed in the warmth of her presence; he was not 
happy here in the emptiness of his quarters.
     He sighed with the unease the day had brought him and went to the 
replicator for another cup of tea.  How many had he drunk today?  Five?  
Ten?  Come to think of it, had he done anything else?  He couldn't 
remember.
     Why this preoccupation with Q?  Always his thoughts returned to the 
all-powerful being who regarded him as something of a pet.  He felt his 
face flush with an old anger.  Pet, indeed.  How galling.  But how did he 
want Q to think of him?  As a friend?  Well, that would be better than an 
enemy.  Maybe.  Q had a way of "playing" with his friends that wasn't 
much fun, and more than a little dangerous.  Just ask the 18 crewmen Q 
introduced to the Borg.  Damn, the Borg again.  They were as pervasive 
today as Q himself.
     He settled into the corner of his couch and picked up the volume lying 
opened across the arm.  It was Shakespeare.  If often was, of course, but 
he couldn't remember starting this particular play:  Much Ado About 
Nothing.  How appropriate.  Not that Q could be considered nothing, not 
by any means, but this fixation on him certainly was.  Maybe it was even 
dangerous, like thinking of the devil, the very mention of him might be 
enough to bring him around.
     He actually groaned out loud.  Just what he needed.  Q, here.  Then 
he stopped.  Was that it?  Was his absorption with the capricious being a 
subconscious desire for his company?  Good Lord.  What a thought.  
How far had he gone?  He really should have found out Guinan, this was 
getting ludicrous.


     Was that an invitation?  Should he go?  No, not quite.  Jean-Luc 
wasn't ready yet.  Would he ever be?  They weren't going to wait forever.


     Q, here, with him.  The idea played seductively across his mind, 
drawing him ever closer to the truth of his feelings for the being.  It 
would be nice to talk with him, explore his understanding of the ultimate 
nature of the universe, of existence itself.  If only he could be induced to 
behave, to refrain from causing damage or injury.  A big if.  As far as he 
could tell Q thrived on conflict, created as much of it as he possibly 
could, then sat back to enjoy the show.  Why couldn't he just *talk*?  
Play nice, his mother would have called it.  Instead, Q was like Robert, 
his older brother and the bane of his childhood.  Robert the bully.  But Q 
wasn't a bully, not exactly, more like a force of nature.  Everyone 
suffered when a hurricane swept through inhabited areas but no one 
blamed the storm -- it just was.  No, that wasn't right either.  No one 
blamed the storm but they certainly blamed Q, for everything.  Even 
things he perhaps wasn't guilty of.  "The galaxy's whipping boy" he'd 
once called himself and maybe he was.  Who could judge the almighty?
     He put the book down and propped his feet up on the table.  The 
second time today.  Was his body trying to tell him something with its 
unusual posturing?  Tension and conflict.  He wanted Q here and yet the 
being was disaster incarnate.  The risk to others too immediate to put 
aside.  Shame, really.  While he could trust Q to spare his own life, 
almost, the utter disregard with which he treated the rest of his crew was 
one of the main things that made him so unwelcome.  Everyone else knew 
they held no value for Q at all and it made them afraid.  Understandably 
so.


     Of course they hold no value for me!  Why should they?  Useless 
tag-alongs.  Couldn't find their way out of an anomaly if gravity itself 
dragged them through.  Probably fight it even as it was pulling them 
under the exit sign.  Imbeciles.  Primitives.  It's humiliating to be 
dependent on one, even one with as much promise as this one.  I like this 
one though, I find him... stimulating.  Provocative.  It's too bad they 
never let me give him the Powers, would've been a fascinating experiment.
     Q felt the prickle at the back of his mind indicating the Continuum's 
disquiet, the apprehension building among its members as the test drew 
nearer its conclusion.  Q felt it himself, and hated it.  Fear was an ugly 
thing, unworthy of a being such as himself.  The others were prodding 
him now, do something, but it wasn't time, not yet.  He wasn't ready.  
Humans took such a *long* time to change.


     Picard stretched himself along the length of the couch and closed his 
eyes, thinking.  He could hear the quiet hum of the engines deep within 
the ship's bowels, the lighter hiss of the air replenishment system, the 
occasional sound from the passageway.  That was a little unusual.  Most 
people were careful not to make disturbance near the captain's quarters.  
He didn't mind.  Helped remind him his ship was a living thing, not a 
metal/composite construct created in a shipyard, uncaring whether it lived 
or died.  He cared, of course.  The ship was everything.  The ship was life 
and purpose, the very essence of everything he was.  Q never understood 
that.  Never understood how integrally his being was tied to the welfare 
of this vessel.  Perhaps the very concept was inconceivably alien to him; 
after all, the Q had no material needs or possessions he was aware of so 
the affection he felt for this creation of duralloy and optical fiber was 
no doubt incomprehensible.  Poor Q.  No teddy bear when he was young.  
No wonder he was so maladjusted.  The idea made him smile.
     How did the Q live?  What was the Continuum like?  An energy place, 
he supposed.  But it couldn't be regular energy, not energy of this 
universe.  Conservation of matter and energy and all that.  Impossible.  
Then again, nothing was impossible with the Q, but it made little scientific 
sense that the Continuum would have its essence tied to any one universe.  
They probably existed outside it.  How?  What was Outside?  Possibly the 
most tantalizing question humanity had ever asked itself.


     Like you'd understand even if I told you.  Being of time and space.  
How could you possibly understand concepts so totally incompatible with 
your own oh-so-limited existence?  You'd die if I took you Outside.  You 
don't even know what it means.  Outside.  What a stupid speculation.  
What a partial half-truth.  There is no Outside, *Johnny*, any more than 
there are barriers to dimensions, or subspace as you call it.  You just 
can't exist in that direction.  Whyever does your kind persist in thinking 
of universes as separate things?  That they somehow manage to dwell 
completely independently of one another?  It's like trying to explain 
relativity to an amoeba.  You people can't even conceive of what you're 
missing you're so blind.
     But then, that was the point of the test, wasn't it?  


     What would it like to be an energy being?  He'd done it, once, many 
years ago when the seductive call of a lost intelligence took over his mind 
and persuaded him to help it return to the matrix from which the 
Enterprise had unknowingly ripped it.  Picard had helped.  Scared hell out 
of Riker and the others, but he'd risked his entire command to help that 
frightened being go home.  And in return it promised a life of unparalleled 
discovery, as one of them, should Jean-Luc wish to join them.  The idea 
was compelling and he'd been unable to resist; unfortunately, the 
experiment hadn't worked.  Human thought patterns were apparently 
inextricably tied to the material processes from which they were born and 
he very nearly died.  Would have if not for the quick thinking of his crew.  
Still, the ill-defined memory haunted him from time to time; spells like 
this when thoughts of energy beings, and most especially Q, wandered 
through his mind.  Did Q exist like that?


     Hardly.  


     But then, Q had another unknowable dimension to his existence, 
didn't he?  He was part of a continuum.  Still couldn't figure out what 
that meant exactly.  Perhaps individual Q were the various solutions to an 
equation representing the entire Continuum?  Or maybe they were spikes 
in the field of their existence, like the points of functions at which they 
became undefined, unable to be mathematically manipulated -- by human 
science at least.  What sort of link did Q maintain with his brethren 
anyway?  Did they share thoughts?  Worries, loves, triumphs, losses?  Did 
they even care for one another or, given Q's adversarial nature, did they 
fight constantly for supremacy?  *Was* any one Q in charge?  He almost 
burst into laughter at the sudden thought of King Q, trying to rule a body 
of completely unrulable subjects.  Would serve him right.
     No, his Q wasn't in charge.  Those punishments the Enterprise crew 
had been allowed to see were evidence of that.  Q was very much 
subjected to some form of discipline, it just didn't work very well.  Or 
then again, maybe it did.  It's not like he knew very much about 
Continuum standards.  Guinan had intimated on occasion that not all Q 
were like theirs.  (When had he started thinking of the Q they all knew 
and loved as being theirs?)  Some were, as she put it, almost respectable.  
Presumably they didn't go around putting lesser species on trial or 
exposing them to threats it was beyond their current stage of evolution to 
counter.  He would never forgive Q those 18 deaths.
     

     Oh, please.  It's not like there aren't plenty more where they came 
from.  *Bacteria* would have trouble keeping up with your reproductive 
rate.


     Of course, that didn't mean they were nice people.  He only knew one 
other Q and she could hardly be considered representative of her kind.  
Amanda was born human, lived as a human, until well into adolescence.  
She was bound to be more mature than the others, or different anyway.  
He wondered how she was doing, whether she'd been accepted into the 
Continuum, whether she had any friends.  He hoped so.  Relationships 
with others was the cornerstone of human existence.  Or perhaps she 
didn't need that kind of reinforcement anymore.  Perhaps, like his Q, she 
now found it "difficult to work in groups."  Apparently omnipotence did 
that to you.
     Had they always been that way?  All-knowing, all-powerful?  Or did it 
evolve over time, from some less overwhelming state?  If they did, 
indeed, exist somewhere outside of time and space as he knew it then it's 
possible they didn't evolve at all, were always part of whatever it was that 
constituted reality.  But hadn't the Traveler told Wesley that thought is 
reality?  That we define the world in which we live ourselves?  Isn't that 
what Beverly's son was off doing right now, learning to define reality 
with the power of his mind?  To use it to shape things as he would have 
them?  Sounded a lot like Q to him.  A helluva lot like Q, in fact.  What 
an interesting idea...


     Q did the equivalent of leaning forward, his attention totally riveted 
on the primitive mind struggling with the new, to it, concept it had just 
conceived.  If it were possible he'd be holding his breath.  As it was his 
energies were almost static, a very rare state for him indeed.
     Come on, Johnny.  It's not such a big step now...


     Picard mulled the connection over in his mind slowly.  Wesley trying 
to become like Q -- how would he tell his mother?  He suppressed the 
smile and turned it around some more.  Thought and reality.  Reality and 
thought.  The combination made him think of gravity and curved space, 
the one affecting the other in a constantly changing relationship.  Add 
mass and it caused space to curve; curve space and it caused mass to 
move, thereby changing the curvature of space again and the way in 
which the mass was moving -- a never-ending loop of energy interacting 
with spacetime.  He could imagine thought and reality similarly 
intertwined.  Change reality and the mind interpreted it differently; change 
the way the mind was interpreting something and the reality of it changed 
as well.  Was that what Q did when he made things happen?  Simply 
changed his mental relationship to them?  Surely that was too easy.


     Of course it is!  Think harder!
     The spill-off from Q's concentration caused a nearby infant universe to 
implode.  He didn't even notice.


     Well, perhaps that was part of it.  Clearly Q's abilities were 
inextricably linked to his mental understanding of what he was doing.  He 
remembered Beverly telling him about Amanda's "training" sessions with 
Q, back when he was preparing her to come with him to the Continuum.  
She had complained to the doctor how Q kept telling her to "imagine it 
so" whenever she was trying to make something happen.  How even 
when she did things hadn't always turned out the way she imagined they 
would.  He remembered her frustration well.  Q was good at provoking 
that feeling.  But he succeeded, didn't he?  Eventually.  Amanda seemed 
quite competent when she cleared that planet of its ionizing pollution, 
despite promising Q not moments before she would refrain from using her 
powers in order to stay with her adoptive race.  Turned out Q was right, 
Amanda did belong in the Continuum after all, but what was it he taught 
her?  How did she learn to control her power, to make it do as she wanted?
     Humans didn't have this power, obviously.  No doubt Hitler or Khan 
would have reveled in it, and yet... what about Wesley?  He certainly 
knew something the rest of them didn't, but was it endemic to him only?  
Was the rest of his race unable to share in his new-found abilities?  Too 
bad he wasn't here to ask.  A good kid, that.  No, he corrected himself, a 
good man.  Possibly he wouldn't even tell Picard if he knew; it was likely 
humanity simply wasn't ready for that kind of power.  Probable, in fact.
     He sighed.  Useless speculation.  It was late.  He was tired.  Time to 
give his now sluggish mind a rest and get some sleep.  They would be in 
position to begin the mission in the morning and he needed to be alert.  
Q could wait.


     So close!  So *close*...  Damn the man!  How could he sleep at a time 
like this?  With so much at stake!  How very like this particular human to 
do this to him.  How very typical.  Only Picard could reduce the Q to an 
intellectual exercise.  Only Picard could label all the wrong things 
important.  Still, it was his own fault for believing in him.  Stupid.  
Desperate.  That's what it was.  How could he possibly expect anything 
more from a mere mortal?
     If he could have cried out with frustration he would have.  As it was 
he simply targeted another nearby nascent universe, a quite promising one 
actually, and ripped it apart with mental claws.  Would that he could do 
the same to his dear friend *Johnny*.
     The rest of the Continuum rippled in reflected anger and focused their 
attention on the next chance.


     The Oldest One assigned to monitor this particular experiment 
watched it all with tolerance, albeit a slight disapproval for the Q with 
the bad temper.  Such a promising race.  So powerful, so capable.  Now, if 
they could just show a little understanding and some ability to teach.  If 
they could only make their existence worth the effort and trouble of 
keeping them.  Still, it wasn't over yet.  There were other Q with 
interesting candidates.  Other possible material lifeforms with potential.  
Not everything rested on this one and his carbon-based protege.  And 
besides, even if this "Continuum" failed the test, the essence of the Great 
Page would no doubt offer up more candidates for its inspection.  So 
many omnipotent species, so few had proved worthy....


*****
Mandy Gordon
75037.51@compuserve.com
agrdonpp@corcom.com
February 1996