NOTES:  For Alara, because she asked.  Alara, I hope this is what
you had in mind.

I may continue this storyline if anyone is interested in seeing
more of what might happen from this situation.  Please write if
you're interested.

SUMMARY:  TNG, P, Q.  Q faces up to his role as humanity's judge,
and seeks advice from Picard.


Raison d'Q, by Mercutio (mercutio@europa.com)



"Q, get off my ship!"

Captain Jean-Luc Picard folded his arms, staring at the omnipotent
being sitting on the couch in his ready room.  "Do you mind?" he
drawled.

"Mind what?" asked Q innocently.

"Letting *me* say my own lines?  If it wouldn't be *too* much
trouble?"

"I just thought I'd get all that nonsense and bother out of the
way," said Q light-heartedly.  "You know I won't leave and you
can't make me go, so it's just as well that you don't have the
chance to tell me so."

"I should have known," Picard muttered, sighing heavily.  "'All
good things must come to an end...'"

"Yes, yes, I remember saying that.  So?"

Picard fixed Q with a space-cold stare.  "And bad things never do."

"Very funny.  I must laugh.  Hah.  Yes, too funny.  Why, you might
even be acquiring a sense of humor."

"No, Q, I'm not."  Picard continued the stern look for another few
moments, then sighed, his features relaxing into a resigned muddle. 
"Well, what do you want?"

"Can't an old friend just drop by to say hello?"

"You never have," Picard answered dryly.

"Then this will be a first."  Q sprung up off the couch as though
by lounging there, he had somehow temporarily confined the energy
of seventeen suns into one small spot and only by exploding up off
of it could he relieve some of the driving pressure.  He leaned
over Picard's desk, hands spread on top of it, invisible darts of
energy breaking away from him.  "*Are* we friends, Jean-Luc?"

"I would like to say that we are not enemies," Picard answered
cautiously.  "You have done me and my ship both good and bad
services in the past.  I can't say that I trust you, but I don't
hate you or think that you're evil."

Q stared down at him for a moment, then swung away, pacing
feverishly.  "You're wrong about me.  So wrong that you cannot
know.  You should have trusted me before.  No, you should *not*
have.  You should not have done anything other than you did do,
because you did all you could have done with your feeble human
understanding.  But I should not have come to like or trust you."

Suddenly, Q stopped.  "You should keep that skepticism, Jean-Luc. 
It'll protect you."

"Protect me from what?"

"From what has to happen."  Q threw himself back onto the couch and
amused himself by creating small bursts of light and then
dissipating them harmlessly.  His head fell onto the armrest.  "Why
don't you like me, Jean-Luc?  I suppose I know."  He waved at
Picard, who had come around politely to take a chair.  "It's all
there in your head, in your manner, in everything you've ever said
to me or thought about me.  You dislike my unrestrained nature, my
flamboyance, the way I don't kowtow to the infinite variety of
rules that you have hedged about yourself."

Picard cocked his head.  "Q, what the devil are you talking about?"

Q turned his head, discontinuing the discharges of energy for the
moment.  "I asked you if you liked me."

"I heard that.  I'm afraid I don't understand the question.  Why
are you asking if I like you?"

"Sexual attraction," Q said flippantly, closing his eyes and
creating more colorful explosions between his hands.

Picard eyed him skeptically.  "And you came to me looking for a
sexual partner?  Is that it?"

"I can feel the disgust in your mind," Q said, not opening his
eyes.  "You don't have to tell me you find the idea ridiculous and
repugnant."  His voice was very calm, the voice of a person who is
attempting to very sincerely apologize for something that they do
not regret.  "I withdraw the question."

"Very well," Picard said.

"Don't be so cold and polite.  It makes my skin crawl."

"It seems I have nothing else to say.  You've denied the
possibility that I can have you removed from the Enterprise,
refused to disclose the nature of your business here, and now
excluded the option of my being polite to you.  I suppose I must
consider this conversation to be at an end."

He made to stand up, and Q let him.

Picard made it to the window before he realized that Q was still
there and not leaving.  "*Did* you want to talk to me about
something?"

"Of course not.  I simply adore lolling about on this uncomfortable
couch for no reason."

"Then why the devil don't you get to the point?"

"Why the devil," asked Q, mimicking Picard's tone exactly, "don't
you get a new swear word?  You're so repressed.  It's a wonder what
I see in you."

"And what do you see in me?"

"Hope," Q said succinctly.

"Hope for what?  For some sort of relationship?  Q, I don't want to
be impolite, but I don't believe that I've ever indicated that..."
Picard ran out of words, and indeed, concepts to describe what he
meant.  The idea had simply not occurred to him.

"You're lovely when you're disconcerted," Q said.  "But, no, you've
refused.  I... nevermind.  You're the lowly human and I the
omnipotent immortal.  It wasn't why I came here anyway."

"But you *are*... err... interested in me?"

"Forget I said anything on the subject."

"But..."

Q regarded him with an interested gaze.  "You *do* realize that I
can force you to forget if I want, and if you keep annoying me in
this fashion, I may very well do it."

"You won't," Picard said firmly.  "You mentioned it for some
reason, and you wouldn't have said it if you didn't have a motive. 
You're too entrenched in your plots and schemes to do that."

"O, ye of too great faith.  How little you know me."

"You said you had another reason for coming here.  What was it?"

"Picard, do you know what you're for?"

"Excuse me?"

"Why you were made.  What the purpose of your existence is.  Do you
know?"

"Are you going to tell me why you're here or not?  Q, I'm losing
patience with this conversation and your irrelevant asides.  I have
important work to do..."

"Do you?" Q asked, making a motion towards the desk.  A flame of
light reached towards it from his cupped hands.

Picard started.  "Please..."

"Save your petty work?  It's all quite meaningless, you know.  Or
you would know if you had any idea of the purpose of your
existence."

The flame had retreated the moment that Picard said the word
'please'.

Picard turned away from the view of the stars.  "You do not have to
demand my attention, Q.  Only give me a good reason for your
presence here.  Explain yourself.  It isn't necessary to compel my
attention with displays of power or cloak your meaning in riddles. 
Get to the point."

"Ah, but the riddle is the point, Jean-Luc.  The heart of the
solution is in how it was done.  You could no more grasp my meaning
from the bare statement of it than you could hope to comprehend
Mozart from listening to the last note of each of his
compositions."

"Very well."  Picard sat back down in the chair.  "You asked what
my purpose in life is.  I would say that, at this point in time, my
purpose is to serve the Federation and the people it represents to
the best of my abilities."

"A cog in a cosmic chain."

"Perhaps."

"I'm afraid that isn't good enough."

Picard stiffened, and asked coldly.  "Is this some sort of test?"

"No, it's not.  Not yet.  Or at least, not in any form you would
recognize.  Your answers are meaningless, pre-determined."

"Then why ask me?  Why put me through this?"

Q started to give what looked to be an angry response, then stopped
himself.  "Are you my friend, Jean-Luc?"

"I believe I already answered that question."

"You not-answered it in your finest oratorical form, you mean. 
Avoided giving an answer with great diplomatic skill.  That's why
I like you, you know.  One of the reasons, at any rate.  You've
always had such a way with words.  A Q could learn a lot from a
human like you."  He created a deep blue glowing radiance and
allowed it to remain within his fingers, staring at it
meditatively.  "You *are* a friend, Jean-Luc.  As good as any I
have, perhaps better.  I... if I could hope that you might come to
accept me and not send me away, but rather come to enjoy my company
as much as I enjoy yours, then you'd be a much, much better friend
to me than any of my fellow Q.  That's why I came to you."

"Why you..." Picard raised his brows.  *Is something wrong with Q?* 
The idea was almost unthinkable, but... "Is something wrong? 
Clearly, you haven't lost your powers... at least..."

"At least, you hope I have not," the entity finished for him,
bluntly.  "No, I haven't.  It's something worse.  I... I have
discovered why I was made."

"Made?  I thought that the Q were born, like Amanda."

"A special case.  An unnatural contrivance in an otherwise
unblemished record of Q reproduction.  You humans could reproduce
entirely on the created level right now if you so desired.  I don't
know why you don't.  You could greatly improve the species that
way."

"While we do correct genetic abnormalities, we prefer to reproduce
the natural way..."

"Pshaw.  You mean you prefer to chance all to luck, giving away
your best opportunity to speed up your evolution."

"Mankind has had unfortunate experiences with genetic engineering."

Q nodded.  "Ah yes.  Man and superman, with superman losing to man. 
How humiliating.  Well, I suppose that's that for your race.  The
monkey-men again win out over the evolved man."

"And you think that the Q have found a better way."

"Yes.  Or no."

"Which is it?"

Q glared at him.  "Why so many questions?  Can't you ever figure
anything out on your own?  Why do I always have to provide the easy
answers for you?"

"No, then."

Q subsided.  "That's why I like you so much.  Underneath that
Starfleet brainwashing, you aren't really as stupid as you look. 
It's a perfect system, you know.  Child-Q created from their
parents' substance, carefully selected to fulfill a purpose in
their generation, no unauthorized reproduction allowed so that all
variances could be those already planned for.  A tidy flow of
continuation from one generation to the next."

"*You* have a purpose?" Picard asked, just now realizing exactly
the meaning of Q's point.  "You mean that you were created to...
to... test and *judge* us?  To badger me and let my crew be
killed?"

"No.  Not exactly.  Or yes, I suppose, depending on how you look at
it."

"And how do you look at it?" Picard asked, his jaw clenching as he
thought of the crew members who had died when Q gave them over to
the Borg.  It was long ago now, and much had passed between he and
Q since, but it still hurt when he thought of it, as it hurt all
good captains to have people under their command die, even when it
was necessary, as it most decidedly had not been.

"Those were minor aspects.  Symptoms.  Small parts of my overall
purpose."  He stopped making lights and looked soberly at Picard. 
"I have discovered what I am for and it terrifies me."

"What is it?"

"I am the final arbiter of the human race.  I was created to
understand you."

"Excuse me, I don't understand.  I thought you said you were far
older than humanity, that you had existed long before we were even
'goo', as you put it."

"Yes, I was.  Are you really this stupid?  After all you went
through to correct your own mistake, you still can't understand a
simple thing like this?"

Picard thought hard.  'Your own mistake' had to be a reference to
the paradox that had almost uncreated the universe.  So...  "Time
isn't linear.  That's what you're trying to tell me, isn't it?"

"Yes.  Humanity was assessed -- yours is a fast-growing and
vigorous -- if vigorously stupid -- race.  I was created after you
were evaluated, and raised before it ever came into existence so
that I should be old enough to enmesh myself in such a snare as
this one."

"Snare?"

"Conundrum, riddle, parable.  It's a pallid concept in your
language.  Humans are so stodgy and unwilling to challenge their
assumptions."

"Haven't you already tested us enough?"

"The test never ends," Q solemnly intoned and then laughed
ironically.  "How wrong I was.  Yes, I have tested you enough to
make up my mind, if I ever needed to do so.  Judging humanity is
what I am for, and if I had but known it, I could have saved
everyone a great deal of time and made my decision the first time
I met your toy ship.  But I was unaware of it, and fulfilled my
purpose unthinkingly, naturally.  The same thing applies to the
second time.  It comes naturally to me.  Too naturally."

"What are you trying to tell me, Q?" Picard asked, almost white. 
"That you *are* the final arbiter of our fate, and that you're here
to wipe the human race from existence?"

"Do you know, Jean-Luc, that the hardest thing about knowing what
you're for is not liking it?  You have your purpose, and you enjoy
it.  But would you still like it if your parents had built you to
be a Starfleet captain?  If every event in your life had happened
for the express purpose of shaping you to this end?  Can you
conceive of waking up one day in that engineered existence and
realizing that you didn't like it?  What would you do then?  You
*are* a Starfleet captain.  You do it well, and can do nothing else
so well.  Your engineered society has no other place for you, and
now you realize that this is what you *must* do whether you like it
or no, and you must with self-examined hate continue in the same
position you formerly loved.  How could you react?"

"I do not know," Picard said levelly.  "But I would find some way."

"Ah, ah, ah," Q said chidingly.  "I don't believe that you would. 
You found your existence as a lowly carrier of spears humiliating
after you so charmingly altered your future.  You kicked against
the pricks, did you not?  You would not stand so idly in the traces
and allow yourself to be maneuvered about.  You would find a way
out or resign to despair."

"Perhaps I would.  I can't say.  I hope I would find some way to
come to terms with my situation."

"You and I both know what you'd do, Jean-Luc.  I could show you
again by way of a reminder, but I find it uninteresting and
pointless.  And you would dislike me for it.  I find that... right
now I..." he looked up at the ceiling.  "I must judge you,
Jean-Luc.  You and all humanity.  I have already judged you, have
found humanity wanting from my first meeting with your ship, and
before."

Picard asked the quiet, necessary, question.  "What will you do?"

"Humanity is guilty.  There is no question what I must do to a
guilty child-race.  I must destroy your capability to influence any
other races, by taking away your space capability, and ensuring
that you do not seek outside contact again until your race is ready
for it, and ready to handle it in a mature manner."

"But we can only progress with contact," Picard said seriously,
with dignity and power.  "Our history shows how much we have
accomplished since our progression from Earth.  Our ascent into
peace is a direct result of our development of warp drive and our
contact with other species.  We have accomplished a great deal in
the past two centuries.  We can accomplish more with more time. 
Don't destroy the best hope we have of progressing further."

"You have no hope, Jean-Luc, and no time.  Humanity's actions are
manifest and plain.  You *are* exactly as I named you, childish and
savage, and you must be stopped and confined."

Picard shook his head.  "I cannot agree with you."

"You're human.  I wouldn't expect you to agree."

"It's not that.  Or not entirely.  I honestly believe that the
Federation is an enlightened coalition of planets and races.  Our
standards are high, and we do our best to meet them in an honorable
fashion.  The Prime Directive..."

"Oh, please.  Don't mention the Prime Directive.  Anything but
that."

Picard continued stubbornly on.  "The Prime Directive is an
excellent example of how we have enacted strictures to protect
other cultures from outside influence.  We stand for peace and
justice.  Our actions may not always be the best, but our
intentions are nothing less than pure."

"I actually think you believe that."

"Of course I believe it."  Picard stared at Q, who seemed engrossed
more with his light sculptures than the conversation.  "In any
case, *why* are you compelled to judge the human race?  Humanity
has risen out of its savage period -- I will freely admit that we
have been savage in the past -- and we are now progressing steadily
towards a peaceful future.  There are other races that seem far
more suited to judgment than ours, the Borg, for instance or the--"

Q looked up sharply.  "Don't blot your copybook further by
attempting comparisons.  You aren't them, and you aren't entitled
to know what their sins are or their punishments for those sins. 
I was created for humanity, not for any other race, and I will not
and cannot tell you what their judgment is or will be."

Picard examined him.  "If you were created for humanity, what will
happen to you after you pass judgment on us?  You won't have much
of a purpose left then."

"I don't know," Q said simply.  "Presumably the issue will come up
again.  The human race seems incapable of accepting defeat even
when it could learn something by it.  I'm sure my perpetual
vacation will be interrupted again sometime."

"But *why* are you doing this?" Picard asked, almost demanding the
answer.  "Why are you condemning us to this fate?  You've given me
vague answers too often, Q."

"Because it's necessary.  Because of your savagery and your
immaturity.  And your stamina.  Do you realize that the Federation
has in the past hundred years transformed its most terrible enemy
into an ally and subdued the second most terrible, causing that
race to sink into ruin and degradation?"

"If you're referring to the Klingons and the Romulans," Picard said
stiffly, "I believe that the Federation acted properly..."

"By its own standards, perhaps.  But not by higher standards.  The
kind of standards that the Q Continuum holds.  You have choked off
the growth of one race and subjugated the other, stifling its own
evolution.  And those are merely the most promising races."

"*Promising?*" Picard choked.  "If you call us savage, then the
Romulans surely..."

"I can't make a judgment on them, Jean-Luc.  And don't ask me to. 
I wasn't created for that.  But I can say that they were growing in
their own fashion -- and you stopped them.  *That* is the act of a
child-race, make no mistake.  You have homogenized hundreds of
other species into your 'Federation', forcing them to grow in
unnatural patterns.  And all under your guidelines.  And you wonder
why I laugh at the notion of your Prime Directive?  Hah.  The only
directive of the human species is to take all and keep it for
itself."

"And this is why you are doing what you're doing?  You consider
this to be adequate motivation to completely stop our
civilization's growth?  Q, you must see that..."

Q held up his hand, and spoke painfully.  "Stop trying to convince
me, Jean-Luc.  You... you speak cogently, and I can't help but love
your words -- but... I am what I am.  Your arguments can't stop me
from *knowing* that humanity has failed, is failing.  I cannot
*not* make my judgment."

Picard started to say something more, then nodded uneasily.  "I
can't convince you."

"No, you can't."

"Then why tell me at all?  You have the power to act, and you seem
to have made up your mind.  Why come to me?"

"Because I must.  Because I cannot destroy Sodom without taking Lot
first, to paraphrase one of your religious references.  Because...
I don't want to."

Picard steadfastly ignored the second comment.  "If you don't want
to, can you give us more time?"

Sadly, Q shook his head.  "I don't see improvement in your future."

"*Can* you see the future?" Picard asked boldly.  "I don't believe
that the human race -- or any race -- is preprogrammed into a
destiny.  We can change and we do change.  You cannot dismiss us so
easily."

"I'm not dismissing you.  I'm making an accurate assessment of your
past behavior."

"What about our future?"

"You won't have a future," Q predicted.  "Or rather, humanity
won't.  For you... for you, I have a choice.  I-- if you want it--
you can come with me.  I can protect you from humanity's fate." 
His eyes were dark and compelling.  "If you want it."

"I appreciate your offer, Q, but..."

Q cut him off.  "But you can't accept, blah blah blah, devoted your
life to serve humanity, blah blah blah."

"Do you *mind*?" Picard said, not happy with the intrusion into his
mind.

"Yes, I do.  I prefer not hear you turn me down in so many words. 
It's humiliating enough hearing you think it."

"I would still like to say it myself."

"Why?  So you can humiliate me further?  Let the sting soak a
little more into my bones?"

"No.  So I can put it my own way.  Q, I do appreciate your offer,
but I am not the kind of person who gives up his responsibilities. 
And I do have responsibilities to Starfleet, and by extension, to
the Federation."

"Even when those bodies will cease to have any meaningful
existence?"

"Yes," Picard said simply.

"An honest man.  Diogenes would be sick.  Do you know what would
happen to you, Jean-Luc?"

"No, I don't.  But I'm willing to see."

"Resisting the slings and arrows of fate to the end.  I see."  Q
sat up, clapping his hands.  "You won't reconsider?"

"No."

"And I have no choice."

"You always have choices."

"That wasn't a question, Jean-Luc.  That was a bald statement of
fact.  And believe me, I know bald."

Picard said nothing as Q's joke fell flat.

Q sighed.  "There's nothing to be done then."  He asked once more,
voice resigned.  "Could you like me, Jean-Luc?  Is there any
possibility that we could be friends?"

Picard considered him carefully.  "No.  Not while you stand in
judgment over humanity."

"I see.  This is your final word?"

"Yes."

Q nodded and disappeared.

Picard stayed in the chair, looking at the now-empty couch.  There
seemed to be no point to moving.  If Q did have the power of
judgment and had made up his mind, then all of the work attendant
to running a starship had become suddenly irrelevant.  Soon it
would be no more, and they would all be in much different
situations.  He might become a farmer, like his father and his
brother before him.  If Earth could even support the weight of her
returning billions upon billions.  The human population had grown
far past the point where Earth alone could support them, and not
all colonies were self-sufficient.  Life would be desperate and
miserable for many.

There was a flash of light, and Q reappeared suddenly.  "I have a
proposition for you."

"I haven't changed my mind."

"No, it's not that.  Not precisely.  I-- You care greatly about
humanity.  I find... I can't destroy it as long as you are part of
it.  Not now.  I can wait -- *will* wait until you are no longer
part of it."

"That's not acceptable, Q."

"It's the best that I can do.  I was *created* to pass judgment on
humanity.  And this is the only judgment humanity deserves."

"Cannot the Q evolve?" Picard asked, not persuasively, but rather
quietly, letting the words settle into the air.  "You ask that
humanity evolve in order to be worthy of continued existence and
expansion.  Should not the Q be held to the same standards?  Can't
you change as well to become more than what you were made to be?"

"I don't know.  It never occurred to me to ask."

"Maybe you should try."

"They'll say you suborned me," Q said, a little sadly.  "And yet,
I get nothing out of this.  I let humanity live a little longer,
and yet, you..." he trailed off.

"Nothing but the satisfaction of knowing you've done what's right."

Q gave him an enigmatic look.  "Such beautiful words.  Really,
Jean-Luc.  I think I come here just to listen to you talk."

"Then why do you do most of the talking?"

"Habit."  And he disappeared again, the light fading slowly and
unwillingly behind him.

This time there was no reappearance, and Picard was not expecting
one.  He had seemingly saved humanity again -- by talking a
reluctant Q out of doing something that Q didn't want to do in the
first place.  Not a large accomplishment.

And he never had answered Q's question about how he felt towards
the entity.  Not even in his own mind.

With a troubled heart, Picard left the work on his desk alone and
went to bed.


-the end-