Only Human: Part I, Section 8 of 10 Only Human An ST:TNG Alternate Universe Novel by Alara Rogers ONLY HUMAN is a work in progress, and it's very, very long. I have broken Part I (I think there will be six parts, total) into 10 subsections for ease of posting, and ease of other people reading; Part I is over 300 K, so I've broken it into sections of between 10 and 60 K so no one's newsreader vomits. These sections are done with some eye to logical breaking points, such as major scene changes, but the story was not originally written with the need for breaking points in mind. The separate subsections do not have individual titles; the chapter name for Part I, total, is "Starbase 56/Enterprise". This is, as yet, something of a draft-- if I find it necessary to revise based on what happens in parts IV-VI, or however many I end up writing, I will do so. The most recent version is available from various archive sites. Check out: ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/al/aleph/trek ftp://ftp.europa.com/outgoing/mercutio/alt.fan.q ftp://aviary.share.net/pub/startrek/incomplete (though maybe I will move it from incomplete, if I can figure out whether it belongs in TNG or other) http://www.europa.com/~mercutio/Q.html http://aviary.share.net/~alara http://www1.mhv.net/~alara/ohtree.html ONLY HUMAN is an Aleph Press production, not-for-profit, and not intended to infringe on anybody's copyrights. The universe, the Enterprise crew, and the main character were created by Paramount; most of the secondary characters were created by me, with the exception of yet more Paramount characters and some other people who know who they are. Any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is probably intentional. Send comments, criticism, praise and flames to aleph@netcom.com. Or post your comments here-- I have a very thick skin. * * * The dividing line between oblivion and self-awareness was the awareness of pain. It wasn't a great hurt; a tiny twinge, indefinitely located. But before, there had been no sensation at all. He had been blissfully unaware of his own lack of awareness. Now there was both pain and the knowledge of that pain. He fought to regain oblivion, an action too inherently contradictory to succeed. There was no way to banish the hurt if it would not go away by itself. Thinking about it only made it grow greater. His mind constructed dreams to explain the pain, tormented recursive structures of nonsense. In the dreams, he was tortured by the inescapable conclusion the pangs brought: he was not dead. There were many forms of death, but none of them involved pain. So he was not dead. He had failed. Before long, the dreams themselves became a torment, and he started to struggle against them, to fight his way to wakefulness. If he couldn't be dead, he would rather be awake. It was difficult; he kept dreaming that he *was* awake, and each attempt to force himself to wakefulness seemed to bring him into another level of the dream. Gradually, however, he became distantly aware of voices outside the dream, voices outside himself. "He's coming around, doctor. Should I increase sedative levels?" "No. He'll heal faster if we're not depressing his system with sedatives. Stand by with 10 cc's of allocaine." Suddenly the pain hit full force. It was like a savage animal tearing at his insides, ripping open his lungs, his throat, his belly. Q's eyes snapped open as sudden agony brought him to full consciousness. He gasped, bringing more suffering down on himself. His lungs were on fire and there was a wild animal chewing on the inside of his stomach, and every whimper he made worsened the sensations. "I was afraid of this. Give him the allocaine." A hypo pressed against the side of his neck. Almost instantly the pain started to subside. Being able to breathe without agony was almost a pleasure in itself. His vision cleared, and he registered the presence of two people by his bed: a young blonde woman with a hypo in her hand and ensign's pips, and a slim, scowling Asian man with graying hair. The man was Brian Li, Chief Medical Officer of Starbase 56; presumably the woman was a random nurse. "Don't try to talk," Li said. Q opened his mouth to ask "why not?" Before he could fully form the "why" part, he found out why not-- the pain returned, clawing at the inside of his throat. Instinctively he tried to put his hands to his throat, but his arms felt like leaden weights and wouldn't move properly. This time, at least, the pain faded rapidly. Li sighed. "I tried to warn you," he said. "Maybe you'll listen to me this time. You're lucky to be alive. If Counselor Medellin hadn't gotten to you so soon, there'd have been no way we could save you. As it is, you managed to destroy your throat and most of your respiratory and alimentary systems. We've implanted cloned replacement tissue, but until it all heals together the nerves are going to be very touchy. Now we can give you medication for the chronic pain, so you can breathe normally without hurting. But if you try to talk you're going to be in agony. As I think you just found out." He shook his head. "This habit of doing whatever people tell you not to do is going to get you killed one of these days." Q stared at Li in horror. He couldn't talk? For how long? How could he stay sane without being able to talk? He had chosen this particular method of suicide because he didn't think there was any chance of surviving it. If he *had* thought there was the slightest chance that he would live, and be rendered mute, he would never have done it. He tried to lift his arm again, desperately needing to know how long he was going to be like this and racking his brain for some way he could express the question in hand signals. But the point was moot-- he was too weak to lift his arm anyway. "How long?" he mouthed, careful not to actually speak. Li paid no attention. He turned his back on Q and started walking away. Violent, helpless frustration overwhelmed Q. Li was doing this deliberately. Even if Q mustered up the strength to call out, his voice would be too weak to carry, and Li still probably wouldn't hear him-- which was probably exactly what Li wanted. Li wanted to be able to ignore Q completely, to do the minimum required to save Q's life and no more. Q raised his head slightly, trying to see his surroundings. He was, obviously, in sickbay, lying on a diagnostic bed with the diagnostic unit still lowered over his midsection. The unit extended from just below his armpits to just above his knees. He could feel nothing where it touched him; it was as if his body simply stopped where it began, and resumed where it left off. From his arms and the section of chest exposed, he could see that he was wearing some kind of pastel blue pajamas. They weren't a bad color. He nodded slightly, approving of them, and then smiled in self-mockery at his own vanity. *Obviously ugly pajamas would be a fate worse than death*, he thought, bitterly amused at himself. Li returned with two nurses and a good bit of electronic equipment on an antigrav cart. "I want you to know," Li said without preamble, "that I disapproved of this. I don't think coddling you is a good idea at all. But Counselor Medellin was adamant that you have something to entertain yourself with, since you're going to be confined to bed for at least a week." A week. Only a week. He could survive a week in bed. But a week in bed without being able to talk? Q watched with mingled fascination and frustration as the two nurses set up a computer terminal within easy sight range. How was he supposed to use a terminal if he couldn't talk? Li lifted Q's right hand and put something underneath it-- a pad with a rolling sphere imbedded. "This is a tracball. It's used to control computers for patients who can't talk and can't type. You should be able to move your hand enough to use it-- it wasn't your hand you damaged. Try rolling the ball with your fingertips." Q did so. On the terminal's screen, a little pointer moved as he guided it. Now he recognized the technology. *Astonishing. Technology from the dawn of the computer age. How quaint. * One of the nurses laid a smooth, skin-tight strip of what felt like tape across Q's throat. It itched slightly. "You can summon a nurse or me with the computer, or with a button on the left side of your bed," Li said. "And the device Nurse Wrigley's just put on your throat is a subvocalizer." Li placed a small flat box-like object on top of the computer, well out of Q's reach, and tapped it. "It'll pick up your subvocalizations, transmit them to the computer, and feed them out through this speaker, so you can talk in an emergency. Try it. Subvocalize something." "Is it my own voice?" Q asked, and was gratified to hear that it was-- somewhat flat and lacking in affect, but his own voice nonetheless. It was mildly unnerving to hear it coming from a source some distance away from his head-- for three years, his voice had come exclusively from his throat, and he'd gotten used to the arrangement. It was also strange to hear his voice as it actually was heard to other humans, without the factor of bone conduction interfering, for the first time in three years. The subvocalization itself brought a tiny twinge of pain-- bearable, for the sake of being able to talk, though. "Wonderful. I thought I was going to have to go through the next several days completely mute." "You are," Li said, and tapped the speaker, turning it off. Once more deprived of speech, Q could only stare in disbelief and fury. "This is for emergencies only. You could still damage your throat using it on a regular basis, and I don't trust you not to abuse it. The speaker stays off unless it's vitally necessary." As Li turned away, Q tried to sit up, to reach the speaker. He hadn't anywhere near the strength, and besides, the diagnostic bed would have gotten in his way. Immediately he reached over and pressed a button to summon a nurse. Li himself turned around and flicked on the speaker. "What is it?" "I want the speaker left on," Q demanded. "Too bad." Li flicked the speaker off again. "I'm not coddling you, Q. I'm tired of seeing you in here for suicide attempts. Maybe next time you decide to kill yourself, you'll remember how unpleasant it was recuperating and rethink your decision." *And maybe next time I'll just make sure no one rescues me until it's too late*, Q thought. Li turned and walked off again. Morosely Q turned his attention to the computer. Annoyingly cute little icons sat on the screen, describing the various functions and programs he could access. He flipped through the library, decided there wasn't anything he wanted to read, and then hit on an idea. The music library was accessible from here as well. He routed the speaker pathway to the main computer speakers throughout sickbay, called up "Also Sprach Zarathustra" from the music library, upped the max decibel level to close to the limits and lay back, smirking. The first three bars were relatively quiet. Across the room he saw Li turn his head, with a "what the hell?" expression on his face. Then the first crashing chord hit, at a sound level that was almost painful. The entire medical staff jumped, shrieked, or staggered. "Computer!" Li screamed. "Turn off that noise!" The music shut off. Li stormed over to Q, who grinned insolently. *No appreciation for the classics. Shame, shame, Doctor.* "What did you think you were doing?" Li snarled. "There are sick people in here!" Q jerked his head toward the speaker. Li shook his head. "Oh, no," he said. "I'm not falling for it. I don't care what your explanation is." He took the tracball and jerked it out from under Q's hand, setting it on top of the terminal next to the speaker. "Your computer access is revoked until you can behave like a civilized being." It hadn't occurred to Q that Li would do a thing like this. Without computer access, he was doomed to crashing boredom, and when he was bored it was far too easy to think about how depressed he was. He couldn't even protest. For a fleeting spiteful second he thought of talking anyway, forcing his voice to work despite the pain, and hopefully ruining as much of Li's work as he could. But it was immediately obvious that it would hurt him far more than Li, and while Q was perfectly capable of cutting off his nose to spite his face, he was also very bad at dealing with extreme pain. His protest would fall on deaf ears anyway. As Li left again, he stared at the computer in despair. Without the hand-held device, it was simply a boring screen with icons on it, hardly more than a few seconds of visual stimulation. He pressed the button for the nurse. No one came, so he pressed it several more times, and finally leaned on it for half a minute before a nurse finally came over to him. She flicked on the speaker. "Yes?" "I'm hungry, I'm bored and I want my computer back. I promise to be good." "You're not hungry-- the diagnostic unit is feeding you intravenously. I'm sure you are bored, but there's nothing I can do about that. Dr. Li says you're not to get the computer control back until tomorrow morning." She switched off the speaker before he could say anything else. He pressed the call button. Exasperated, she put the speaker back on. "What *now?*" "I want to see Commodore Anderson." "The Commodore's asleep." "Asleep? What time is it?" "It's late." "Then I want a sedative." "You've been under sedation for three days. Dr. Li doesn't want you given any more for at least another day." "But my throat hurts." "That's because you're talking." She switched off his speaker again. "*Now* your throat won't hurt." Q pressed the call button again. The nurse reached down, pulled a restraint out of the bed, and pushed his left hand into it, so he couldn't reach the call button. "You've just cried wolf once too often," she said firmly. "In an hour, I'll take you out of that restraint. You'd better not have a genuine emergency before then, because come hell or high water I'm not answering that call button, not even if you manage to wriggle free and use it. The diagnostic unit ought to take care of any biological needs, so there's no reason you should need me for an hour or so. Maybe you might want to think about the cost of abusing your privileges." In disbelief, Q watched her go. These were medical personnel? How could they call themselves healers, when they abused their patients like this? He tried to move his trapped hand, but in his weakened condition he had no hope of escaping the restraint, not that he'd have much hope even in good condition. He still had one hand free, but there wasn't anything he could do with it-- he was too weak to move it much, and there was nowhere to move it to. He couldn't sit up, turn over or even lift his head much, there was nothing to look at and nothing to do-- he couldn't even sleep, for fear of the nightmares' return. And weak as he was, he wasn't particularly sleepy anyway. It was going to be a very long night. Early in the morning Anderson came to see him. He had been half-asleep, drifting, fighting to avoid both the boredom of full wakefulness and the nightmares attendant on full sleep. It had been less than successful; he had suffered from strange and disturbing dreams all night. The footsteps near his bed alerted him that someone was there, someone who might well give him back his computer or his voice. He opened his eyes, and saw Anderson towering over his bed. With the light at her back brightening her short fair hair and transforming it into a halo, she looked oddly like a mourning angel, her face somber as she looked down at him. She shook her head slowly. "I came down here with every intention of chewing you out for this stunt," she said quietly. "But it occurs to me that if you're desperate enough that you needed to do this, nothing I could say would make much of a difference." *It would make a great deal of difference if you turned on my speaker*, Q thought at her. Anderson, neither telepathic, empathic nor overly sensitive in the mundane sense, made no move toward the speaker. "I'm sorry it got this bad," she said. "God knows you're not my favorite person, but you don't deserve... this." She gestured, taking in the bed, the diagnostic unit, the entire situation. "I can't even imagine the kind of pressure that makes drinking acid seem like a good idea." Q stared up at her sullenly. He didn't want her sympathy. He wanted his voice back. *Can you imagine what it's like to be mute, Eleanor?* "In any case. There's someone to see you, a Vulcan named T'Laren. Obviously I'm in no position to force you to talk to her, but I would appreciate it. I'm going to talk to Dr. Li, and get him to agree to turn your voicebox back on so you can talk to Dr. T'Laren, if you choose. You can move your head for yes or no." In order to get his voice back, Q would have talked to anyone. He nodded vigorously. Anderson smiled slightly. "Thanks," she said. "I don't think you'll regret it." She turned and left. Q watched her go for a few moments, and then resumed staring at the ceiling, feeling furious and resentful. Thus they sucked him back into their web. As badly as he wanted to die, as little as he cared about anything anymore, he still feared boredom and helplessness, and like any human, he could be controlled with what he feared. He hated that about himself. He had tried, time after time, to muster up the courage to tell Anderson to go to hell and take her damned scientists with her. In fact, he *had* told her so, several times. But he could never stick to his guns. In the end, he always gave in. Even now, when he lay apathetic and near death in a sickbay bed, Anderson could make demands of him, and he had to give in. Well, he'd make this T'Laren pay for it. If she was enough of a vulture that she would come interrogate a man on his deathbed, she deserved the worst he could do. She was a Vulcan, so it would take some work to find her weak points-- but even Vulcans had them, and when you put the right kind of pressure on Vulcans' weak points they cracked completely. He would test her limits, see quite how controlled she really was. Q smiled, a thin, vicious expression. He hadn't spent thousands of years testing people for nothing. A slight commotion drew his attention. Painfully he lifted his head enough to look over at the other end of sickbay. Anderson, Li, and a slender, curly-haired woman were making their way over toward him, arguing. The woman looked short next to Anderson, but then so did everyone except Q himself; she was actually about Li's height. Li was talking. "...solution is not to coddle him," he was saying. "He doesn't *need* to be able to talk yet, and he's risking permanent damage to his vocal cords." "Doctor." It was the curly-haired woman. "Permanent damage to his vocal cords is something of an irrelevant fear if he kills himself in the next month. And in what sense is this 'coddling' him?" "I mean you're coddling him. Your insistence on giving him the computer interface back, even though he's abused it; you want him free to talk for half an hour or more, despite the damage it might cause... This is a man who has put himself in sickbay for self-inflicted injuries three times so far. I don't see any good coming of making sure he's entertained while he's here, at the expense of his health and the well-being of other patients!" "Do you honestly believe that Q will refrain from attempting his own life again simply because sickbay bores him?" the woman asked. Q studied her with interest, trying to place her accent. She wasn't wearing a Starfleet uniform, and her voice was precise enough, her coloring swarthy enough, that she could be the Vulcan he'd been told to expect-- except that she had curly hair and a Texas accent. He couldn't see the ears under the hair. "Perhaps you believe that he's merely trying to get attention?" "Well, it's worked every time, hasn't it?" Li said sharply. "Every time he tries to kill himself, he comes here, gets fussed over and babied-- that's certainly incentive." Q fumed at the blatant untruth in that statement. The last time he'd ended up here, the last thing he'd gotten was sympathy. He wished desperately for a voice to protest the unfairness. In the next moment, the woman voiced his protest for him, saying, "Do you truly believe that he would have drunk a bottle of etching solution to *get attention?* When his survival depended on such an improbable chain of circumstance that it's frankly unbelievable he lived? When a person attempts suicide as a cry for help, they *don't* drink acid." "No. They cut their wrists or overdose on pills." "Q's previous suicide attempts have no bearing on this one. Are you this insensitive to all your patients, Doctor? Or is it just that you despise Q so much, you can't see the truth?" Q's eyes widened. Whoever she was, she was good. If she *was* T'Laren, she'd just earned a conversation on whatever topic she wanted. Probably she was only defending him for the sake of his intellectual value, but he appreciated it nonetheless-- and appreciated the skill and viciousness of her defense as well. He lived for challenging verbal combats. This woman could be a worthy opponent. Anderson shook her head. "That was uncalled-for, T'Laren." "I'm sorry if I sound cruel, but I think Dr. Li is failing to understand. Q is desperately, mortally ill. His illness is psychological, not physical, but it's no less dangerous than Phaedian viral leukemia or Mistarin blood fever. You have taken a man dying of ennui and despair, locked him away from all human contact for the sake of protecting his voice, and deprived him of anything to take his mind out of its destructive inward focus. If a man with a broken leg lies in the path of a moving vehicle, it may well damage his leg to crawl out of range, but what would that matter if the vehicle crushed him? I want to be absolutely certain that Dr. Li is truly acting out of the best interests of his patient, in refusing me permission to speak to Q, and not subconsciously acting on his dislike for Q." "For a Vulcan, you play dirty pool, Doctor," Li said angrily. "Actually, that's dirty pool for a human. Or anyone." "If my words hurt you, I apologize. But consider that words rarely cause pain if there's no grain of truth to them." "Fine. You can talk to Q. What concern is it of mine if he destroys his voice permanently? I'm just his doctor." Li took a deep breath. "Keep it under half an hour a day if you can. He can't be trusted with his own well-being-- he lives in the present, no concern for future consequences at all. And if you think there's any hope at all of him surviving the next few years, I would like to suggest that he might want to use the nerves in his throat sometime in the future, and that *you* are responsible for making sure he doesn't permanently damage them now." He stalked off. Q grinned. Anderson looked over at Q, and back at T'Laren. "Did you need to do that in front of him?" she asked quietly, jerking a thumb at Q. "Dr. Li will understand, once he's had some time to calm down," T'Laren said. "He would be considerably more vitriolic in defense of a patient, were the situation reversed. I truly didn't intend to hurt him... but Q's well-being takes precedence over his hurt feelings. I can try to smooth it over with him later..." "That ought to be fine. He doesn't hold grudges," Anderson said. "Which is probably why he doesn't have the ulcers I do. I *do* hold grudges, Doctor. I understand your reasoning here... but don't pull a stunt like this with me, understand?" "I have no intention of doing so, Commodore. You wouldn't respond to such tactics, and they aren't necessary with you." "Good. In that case, I'll leave you to it." Anderson left. T'Laren approached the bed, tapping the speaker to turn it on. Up close, Q could see the ears. "Oh, very good," he said, as soon as the speaker was on. "Consider yourself applauded. I'm impressed." "I'm glad you think so." "I was prepared to tear you apart for being such an incredible vulture. But after a performance like that... you've earned whatever information you want. Ask, and ye shall receive. I just want to ask *you* something first." "Go ahead." "What is a Vulcan doing with a Texas accent?" "I grew up on Earth. Mostly in Texas, to be exact." "Really. Ever consider changing your name to T'Ex?" T'Laren let a beat pass, studying him. Finally she said, "I'd been informed you have a remarkable wit. I must assume it's your injury responsible for that one, then, or else I've been misinformed." She *was* good. "What would a Vulcan know about wit?" "Apparently more than a million-year-old entity knows of tact." Q shrugged weakly. "If one would be a vulture, one cannot complain about the smell of the carrion." T'Laren raised an eyebrow. "Vulture?" "A carrion-eating bird, on Earth--" "I know what a vulture is. I was wondering what bearing the analogy has on me. You've called me a vulture twice, and I'm not sure I understand your reasoning." "You must not be all that bright, then. I'd think it would be obvious. You needed whatever scientific or historical information or whatever you came for *now?* You couldn't wait until I was off my deathbed?" "A deathbed's where you go to die, not where you recuperate from dying. And *you* are missing the obvious." "I suppose that being that I'll try it again when I get out, and so you need to get what you can out of me now? That's certainly logical, but then so's eating carrion." "I'm not here to pry information out of a dying man, Q. I'm here to try to prevent you from dying. Anderson didn't tell you what I am?" "She said you were a Vulcan. That much appears to be correct." "I'm a psychologist. I'm here to help you." Abruptly her attack on Li made a lot more sense. Q frowned. "Then why do they keep calling you Doctor and not Counselor?" "Because I'm not Starfleet. Counselor's a Starfleet designation." "How long was I unconscious?" "Four days or so; why?" "It seems like they sent you remarkably quickly." "Remarkably indeed, considering that I got here the day you did it," T'Laren agreed. "It's been suspected for some time that you might do something like this. I was hired and sent here on the assumption that you were planning to kill yourself, though I certainly didn't expect you to try it a few minutes after I arrived." "It was suspected by whom?" "Starfleet's very worried about you, Q. Counselor Medellin's a good woman, a talented counselor, but she's become too personally involved to do much good." Or in other words, she was incapable of counseling him properly because she despised him. "So they sent you, as a theoretically objective person." He frowned. "How good could a Vulcan psychiatrist possibly be? I wouldn't imagine you'd be much on empathy." "Few Vulcans were raised on Earth. I understand humans better than I understand my own kind, sometimes. Besides, true mastery of emotions isn't possible without thoroughly understanding them; don't let any Vulcan tell you differently. My field is actually xenopsychology; I've specialized in human, but I've treated Betazoids, Andorians, Thurali, I have experience with Romulan culture, I've met numerous aliens, including one or two near-omnipotent entities... I think it's a reasonably good bet that I can figure you out." "Why'd Starfleet send a civilian psychologist?" "I used to be Starfleet. In addition, there are certain obvious advantages to using a Vulcan for this." "What? That whole nonsense about you being too logical to take offense? I assure you, Vulcans are some of the easiest races to provoke in the entire galaxy. All you need to do is imply that they have emotions, and they'll furiously deny it. Which is something of a self-defeating proposition, don't you think?" "Certainly. But why is it so important to you to be able to provoke people?" Q shrugged again. "I'm obnoxious and disliked, you know that's so." "You're avoiding the question. Your obnoxiousness is a result of your desire to provoke, not the cause of it. Why do you consider provoking people a priority?" "It entertains me. And my life is so unutterably tedious, I need all the entertainment I can get. Truly unflappable people are truly boring." "I'm surprised you find human existence so boring. I would think there'd be far more opportunity to become jaded as an immortal being who nothing can harm." "Ah yes. I've read numerous stories about humans becoming immortal and growing bored with their lives. I think it's something you mortals desperately want to believe, to justify your deaths. But the sad fact is, mortality is much more tedious. And when it's not tedious, it's downright unpleasant. There was so much more to see when I was omnipotent, so much more to do..." "Wouldn't omniscience entail boredom?" "Omniscience is not an exact term. In the case of the Q, it's more that we can find anything out if we want to. Even then, study and personal involvement can amplify what we learn-- rather like the difference between reading a summary of a book and reading the book oneself. It's a big universe. I could have gone for millions more years simply in this matter-based universe without growing bored." "There are things to do and see and learn as a mortal as well. You simply haven't done any of them. For three years you've stayed on a single starbase, traveling nowhere, experiencing very little of what mortal life has to offer. One would almost think you deliberately resist trying anything that might make you happy." "Why would I do that? Not only is it counter-productive, it's hardly necessary. Nothing *could* make me happy." "Why not?" Now she was beginning to sound like Medellin. Medellin with a harder, colder edge to her voice and a faint Texas accent. "You mortals persist in believing that I've lost something extra. Some addition, that I can easily do without. After all, you think, you've lived all your lives without being omnipotent, so why can't I? It isn't like that. My senses once covered the entire electromagnetic spectrum, the psionic bandwidths, the macroscopic and microscopic scales, gravitons, quanta, time itself-- at least the past-- the infinite resources of the universe, and now? I am limited to five very narrow senses, only one of which I can shut off at will. I feel pain, when I never did before. I can *feel* my physical body decaying around me. I can operate on the world around me only with two very blunt instruments, where before I had only to think a thing and it was done. Can you understand? Mortality is normal for you. It's crippling for me. There is no equivalent analogy. A human can't lose as much as I have even by dying. A human in a persistent vegetative state is closer to what he used to be than I am. And you ask me why I'm unhappy? How could I be expected to be happy?" "And so you've decided to end this unhappiness by killing yourself." "Exactly." T'Laren turned away, pacing. "Pathetic," she said. Q's eyes narrowed. "'Pathetic?'" "Your Continuum told you that if you helped them collect information on humanity by becoming human, they might eventually reinstate you. Am I correct?" "They never meant that," Q snarled. "I haven't heard from them in three years. If they haven't given me any feedback in that long--" "In *how* long?" T'Laren asked sharply, turning back to face him. "Three years is nothing to the Q Continuum. You should know that far better than I. It shows how far your judgement is compromised by your depression that you would think such a thing. Eighty years would be nothing. They could wait an entire human lifetime and take you back on your deathbed." "I can't live like this for eighty more years!" "Yes. That is what's pathetic. Q, I am mortal. I long ago came to terms with the knowledge that I would die, like all mortals. I don't know if I would even want to be immortal. But if I wanted it, and I believed that suffering eighty years of pain would give me a good chance at becoming a goddess, or even an undying being-- and if the alternative was not a life of happiness, but an early, pointless death-- I would choose the pain. Almost any mortal would. Obviously you Q are not so advanced as you think you are, if bearing pain is so impossible for you that you can't hold on a mere eighty years." The words struck a painful nerve. Q's eyes went hard and flinty, masking the pain. "Don't try to shame me into staying alive, T'Laren," he said. "I know I'm a coward. It's one of the reasons I'd rather be dead." "So you do feel shame at your own weakness." "I feel shame at all my weaknesses. But I know them, and they're immutable. I can't change who I am. And don't judge the entire Continuum on the basis of me. There's a reason they threw me out, you know." "Do you know that your weaknesses are immutable? Have you tried to change them?" "I've tried. I've tried so hard, you can't imagine what it costs to try to break the habits of several million years but I've tried. And this is as far as I've gotten. Besides, things are only going to get worse. Already I look like hell. I was reasonably good-looking when I first took this body, as humans go-- at least *I* considered this form attractive, it's why I picked it. In three years, I've seen it begin to decay. I'm far too thin, I have lines on my face, I'm losing my hair. I ache constantly, and when I complain about it Li tells me to stop whining, all humans have little aches and pains. These don't feel little. If these are little aches and pains, I don't want to be around when the serious pain starts. All things considered, I'd just rather be dead." "But it's hardly any wonder that your health is so poor, when you've abused it so," T'Laren said. "You eat like a child-- you live on chocolate, bread and pasta. If your nutritionist hadn't programmed the base replicators to automatically place dietary supplements in your meals, you'd have come down with a deficiency disease or two a year ago. You take a sedative to sleep almost every single night, and then consume seven or eight cups of caffeinated coffee in the course of the next day. You have resisted several offers to participate in some sort of physical exercise program. You have even resisted opportunities to learn self-defense, something that a man in your position should learn. In your time on Starbase 56 you've been stabbed, shot, poisoned, attacked by a swarm of stinging insects, beaten more than once, and then there are your two previous suicide attempts. Were it not for the miracles of modern medicine, you would be in far worse shape-- even a hundred years ago, you'd have come down with several illnesses by now. Your poor health is not the cause of your death wish, Q. I would rather say the converse is true." Q shrugged. "I hate the demands this body makes on me. I've been engaged in a cold war with it for three years. Recently I escalated it into a hot war... but my body's got meddlers like Li and Medellin on its side. It still won." "You can't win a war with your own body, Q." "It's not my own body. It belongs to a man a century dead. I copied it without his permission; that doesn't make it mine." T'Laren paused for a second, as if choosing her next tactic. "What was the reason for your two previous suicide attempts?" Q laughed bitterly for a moment, until the pain hit. He had forgotten how much it hurt to laugh. For several seconds he lay gasping, trying to regain his equilibrium. The pain subsided, and he contented himself with a bitter smile. "Didn't you talk to Li? He can tell you all about it." "He told me it was an attempt to get attention." "Wasn't it?" "You would know better than I. I'm inclined to believe that they were serious attempts, however, and you just didn't understand the mechanics of suicide well enough to do it efficiently." "Really." She was the first person Q had met who had made that guess, and he wasn't sure how comfortable he was with that. There was a kind of safety in being perpetually misunderstood. "So if you know so much about it, why don't you tell me why I did it." "Very well." She walked over to the bed and sat down beside it, gazing at him evenly as she spoke. "You are consumed by an overwhelming guilt and self-hatred. You hide this from those around you with great success, possibly even from yourself most of the time. Perhaps you manage to convince your conscious mind that the blame for what's happened to you all belongs to others. But inside you know that you brought this on yourself. You find this existence unbearable, and you believe that the Continuum would not have so punished you if it were not justified. Thus, you hate yourself for bringing yourself to this pass. You believe that you are fundamentally superior to all mortals, and experience nausea and revulsion at the demands of mortal life, frequently. But you see that mortals are much better than you are at interacting with other mortals, and you see it as a failing in you personally, not a flaw in the Q as a whole. You compare yourself to other Q, as well as to mortals, and find yourself wanting. You also want desperately to make social contact with mortals, since that's the only social contact possible to you now. But because you feel yourself superior to mortals, you refuse to 'lower' yourself to their level, and refuse to show your own emotional needs, or try to fill theirs. As a result, they hate you. You exacerbate the situation because negative attention is still attention, but it's a poisonous kind of attention and it only magnifies your own self-hate. You have been self-destructing since you became mortal. Possibly since before that, as it seems strange to me that such an ancient and knowledgeable entity as yourself would do something as foolish as anger the beings who provide his power, but I'm not qualified to talk about that. In any case, it seems obvious that you have been subconsciously self-destructive your entire mortal life, and that occasionally your death wish becomes powerful enough to break into your conscious mind, causing a suicide attempt." Q stared at her in shock. What she said was nonsense. Complete arrant nonsense. He had no need to have mortal friends, his bad health was not the result of a desire to self-destruct, and he didn't hate himself. It was ridiculous to imagine. He didn't-- He-- He swallowed hard, against a sudden inexplicable desire to weep. Part of him recognized that description, resonated to it, and why did he feel as if part of him was surging to the surface, desperate to be recognized, when the whole thing was so ridiculous? It hurt to swallow. Dry-mouthed, he summoned as much sarcasm as he could and said, "And what if I told you you're totally wrong? That I did it for attention?" "Then I'll give you another scenario," she said. "In the first place, it's belittling to say you did it for attention. Though the description may be accurate, the connotations of the statement are completely wrong. No one ever attempts suicide simply because they'd like a bigger share of the limelight. Some fundamental need in you was not being filled. You may have tried to express this need in some other fashion for a while before the attempt, but eventually it came to the point where the only way you could ask for what you needed was to risk your life. Obviously the need was desperate enough that you considered the risk justified. Just as obviously, no one listened. You called for help the only way you knew how, and when you were ignored twice, you despaired of ever getting what you needed. So you became genuinely suicidal, feeling your life unbearable with this need unfulfilled, and tried a much more drastic suicide method in hopes of seriously ending your life." She leaned forward. "Which scenario is it, Q? Or is it both?" Q shook his head. "You paint very pretty word-pictures, T'Laren," he said. "I'd love to have you as my advocate anytime-- you could melt a stone's heart with stories like that. But that doesn't make them true." "Perhaps you'd like to give me a different explanation, then?" "Suppose your second scenario *were* true. What is this putative lack I have that's strong enough to kill me?" "On a guess, I'd say some kind of positive social contact. As much as you try to hide it, you have the same social needs any human does." "That's ridiculous. You think I want to kill myself because no one likes me? I have a little bit more strength of will than *that*." "We're not talking about your strength of will. I have no doubt that you could do anything you truly wanted to do. The need we're discussing affects what you want, not what you're able to do about what you want. The emotional climate on Starbase 56 is killing you by inches, Q. If you're to have any hope of recovering, you need to leave the starbase." "It isn't the emotional climate here that's killing me! I could be surrounded by smiling happy people who positively adore me, and it wouldn't change anything! Mortality itself is killing me!" "That's a tautology. Obviously mortality is killing you. Mortality kills all of us." "That's not what I meant-- don't play word-games with *me*, woman, I've been doing it longer than your species has existed. I don't think the knowledge that I'll die is what's destroying me-- after all, obviously it's possible for the Q to die, or I couldn't be in this position, could I? I always knew I had the potential to be dead, and it never bothered me before. No, as I said before, I am crippled, deaf, blind, and retarded. I'm sure living among people who dislike me exacerbates the situation, but there's nothing I can do about that. No matter where I go, what I do, people will dislike me. And their dislike is not the root cause of my desire to be dead. The fact that I am incapable of doing any of the things I might want to do is killing me. My life is utterly pointless and I don't see it going anywhere but downhill. I just want oblivion." T'Laren shook her head. "Except for one brief week aboard the Enterprise, you've spent your entire mortal life on Starbase 56. You have no objectivity. You can't say that you would be no happier off the base, since you have no basis for comparison. And the fact that you so resist the notion that leaving might help you indicates to me that you don't truly want to be happy. You want to wallow in your misery and die of it." "How can you say that?" Q was furious. His throat ached fiercely, both from the amount of talking he'd done and from the effort it took to keep his speech subvocalized, not to shout at her. "I tried! I fought this for three years!" "If you truly wanted help, you'd grasp at anything that might offer hope, however small." "There speaks someone who's never been in my position. Do you know how much it hurts to hope, and struggle for something, and find out all your hopes are a fool's dream, a mirage that evaporates and leaves you with less than nothing?" "Yes. I do." "*How* can you? You're a Vulcan! Intellectual understanding of an emotion isn't understanding at all!" "I tried to kill myself two years ago." That brought him up short. Q stared. A Vulcan, attempting suicide? "Why?" "It isn't important, why... I hated myself, and I hated my life, and I was being devoured by guilt for certain acts I'd committed... and the only logical solution to my pain seemed to be death. I was offered rehabilitation, healing, constructive methods of handling my grief. I refused them. I hated myself, believed I deserved my suffering, and would not part with it." She was silent for a moment, staring down at her clasped hands. "I don't hate myself, T'Laren. I hate this shell I'm trapped in. There's a difference." "Perhaps I'm projecting myself onto you a bit," she said. "But there is no logical reason for you not to try something, anything. Even if you don't think it will work. After all, you can always kill yourself afterward, if the solution failed. If you kill yourself first, you're throwing away any hope that you could ever live and be happy." "Humans aren't logical creatures." "I'm well aware of that. But their illogic follows patterns. If you refuse to even try letting yourself be helped, there must be a powerful if illogical reason. And self-hate is the only reason I can think of that would be that strong." Q sighed. "I can't leave Starbase 56. I made a deal with Starfleet; they'd never let me go. Besides, how would I survive? I've got enemies out there, you know. That's why I'm here." "What I'm suggesting is that you come with me. Ketaya is a small, prototype vessel; it's not so well-armed, but its shields are magnificent, and it can go faster than anything the Federation has. For that matter, faster than anything the Borg had. It's mostly automated; one person can run it, though for safety's sake it'd be best to have two. I'm the only crew it currently has. We could go anywhere you want; you won't have to deal with anyone besides me on a regular basis, and we can outrun anything that Starbase 56 could conceivably protect you against." "That doesn't sound very safe." "Why do you care? You want to die, don't you?" Q frowned. Why *did* he care? "It's different," he said. "If I kill myself, that's my decision. If I let someone else do it, that's also my decision. But if someone just comes in and kills me-- You know some of these aliens have absolutely horrible execution methods." "Worse than swallowing acid?" "Much worse. I admit that hurt quite a bit, but it was over very quickly. If it wasn't for Medellin and Li rescuing me, I'd hardly have suffered at all. I don't want pain, you understand. I'm not a masochist. I'm trying to *escape* pain." "Starbase 56 hasn't proven to be the safest of places, either," T'Laren said. "I've studied the files. How would something like-- say, the Maierlen assassin and his swarm of insects-- get aboard a starship with only two crew members? Our shields are proof against anyone's transporter technology. Besides, right now I think the far greater danger to you is yourself. If you could leave the base, get back out into the galaxy, go where you wanted, and if that proved to be what you need to want to live again, you would be in considerably less danger than you are here, despite the manpower and resources dedicating to protecting you." By now his throat hurt an amazingly great deal, and he was beginning to feel exhausted. "Why would Anderson let you take me?" he asked. "Or is she trying to get rid of me?" "She'd hardly try to get rid of you, Q. As annoying to her as you are personally, you as a commodity are the reason for Starbase 56's importance. Without you, this base is a nondescript backwater starbase, just like a hundred others, and the crew she's recruited won't stay in such a place. If you left permanently, most of the crew of 56 would transfer elsewhere. Anderson herself would probably leave. But she knows that the Federation won't get any more use out of you as you are now... and Commodore Anderson is basically a compassionate woman. For all the conflicts you two have had, she doesn't want to see you suffering like this. She's given me permission to take you, if you're willing, because she knows you can't stay here." That covered all the holes in her argument he could think of. Undoubtedly there were more, but he was too tired and weak to find them. It did seem that what she offered was his only hope, that if he resisted he was only proving her point that he hated himself, but he was too well-trained in debate and browbeating to give in to anything when he was so tired. "I'll think about it," he said. "I need to rest." "All right," T'Laren said. "I'll be back tomorrow." She flicked off his speaker and left. Q closed his eyes and drifted back into half-sleep.