The Q Who Fell To A Nearby Location And Became Just A Human Being, by
Alara (aleph@netcom.com), Jeanita (jeanita@cpcug.org) and Mercutio
(mercutio@europa.com)


"Oh, woe, woe, woe is me," Q thought, suicidally depressed again. 
Not only had he, in the past three years, been shot at, stabbed,
poisoned, strangled, attacked by a swarm of killer wasps, nibbled
by ducks, and forced to watch 300 consecutive hours of The Smurfs,
but now he had discovered that Captain Picard, his first contact
with humanity, had had a tragic accident with a mechanical
rice-picker, and was now a mental vegetable... a carrot, to be
exact.  "Now I'll never get to have sex with him," Q thought,
deeply depressed, and decided to kill himself.

At that point T'alara, Vulcan psychologist, telepath, cook and kung
fu fighter entered the story.  "Who are you?" Q asked.

"I'm Lieutenant Mary Su... ahem.  I am Dr. T'alara, your new
psychologist."

"Why do I need a psychologist?  I'm perfectly fine," Q said
belligerently, forgetting that he had been just about to swallow an
entire bottle of gasoline and then light a match.

"You think you're fine.  But you really aren't fine."

"I am so fine."

After three hours of this argument, Q admitted that he wasn't fine,
and broke down in tears.

"There, there.  Don't cry," T'alara said, rubbing his back and
hugging him at the same time, which she could only do because of
her superior Vulcan dexterity.  She thought to herself, "He's so
tragic and vulnerable when he's crying like this... but I must not
take advantage of my position.  I am a highly ethical therapist,
despite the fact that I've slept my way across the Alpha Quadrant
and charged admission, despite the fact that I spent a year on
Romulus using my body to steal secrets from the Evil Empire, and
despite the fact that I murdered my husband in a jealous rage
because he had fallen in love with the engines of the new starship
he'd been transferred to, but I must not let Q know that because if
he knew any of those things he would make fun of me, and then my
Vulcan discipline might crack and I might cry, or throw him out an
airlock."

"I'm so lonely," Q bawled.  "Nobody loves me, everybody hates me,
think I'll eat some worms."

"Those are very bad for your diet," T'alara said sternly.  She
strapped him into his high chair, much to his consternation, and
brought over a meal of strained spinach, peas and carrots.  "Now I
want you to eat all of this, and then go to bed like a good little
boy."

"Don't wanna! Don't wanna!"

Q used his secret knowledge of computers to escape from the high
chair and threatened to make T'alara eat the strained spinach. 
This, however, was no problem for our dauntless heroine, who being
a Vulcan loved strained spinach.  She ate the peas and carrots too,
and then she ate Q's dessert, which annoyed him.

"That was very rude of you," Q told her sternly.

T'alara shrugged.  "I answer rudeness with rudeness and tact with
tact."

"You know, that really sounds like one of those seemingly profound
aphorisms you'd find inside a Chinese fortune cookie."

"Where do you think I got it from?"

****

In the shadows, a new player watched the banter with apprehension
and consternation.

"They're bantering, and that's good... I like witty banter... but
it's been 300 pages and they haven't had sex yet!  I've got to do
something."

When T'alara went off to a Character Building Interlude that would
display her complex interactions with her Bajoran boyfriend, K'neth
Tris, while dropping all sorts of tantalizing hints to the reader
about her Mysterious Past, the new character stepped from the
shadows.

Q stared at her.  "What are you doing in my room?"

"I live here now," she said.  "My name is Naomerci and I'm going to
single-handedly save you from depression, despair and celibacy."

"I don't *want* to be saved from celibacy."

"Yes you do.  You just don't know it yet."

"I don't like you and I don't want you here.  Go away."

"Can't make me."  Naomerci plopped herself down on the carpet and
helped herself to the remains of Q's dessert.

"I could pick you up and carry you out.  You're only about three
feet tall."

Naomerci acknowledged that this was true.  "But then you'd have to
touch me, and then you would be overwhelmed with desire and realize
you want to have sex with me."

"I do *not* want to have sex with you.  Sex is disgusting, dirty
and besides no one could possibly be attracted to me."

"But it's lots of fun," Naomerci wheedled.

Q thought about it.  "Oh, all right."

****

When T'alara returned from the Character Building Interlude, which
had taken seven hundred pages and an entire epic cycle of spinoffs
beginning with her mother's conception, she discovered that
Naomerci and Q were snuggling.

"I must accept this.  It is his decision," T'alara thought with
Vulcan equanimity, and went off to her room, where she started
bawling.

Just then something she ate in the last part of the Character
Building Interlude caught up with her, and simulated the effects of
Pon Farr.

T'alara stalked back into Q and Naomerci's bedroom and stood over
Naomerci.  "Get out."

"Make me."

T'alara reached down to pick her up.

"You wouldn't dare," Naomerci challenged.  "I'm much smaller than
you are, and human besides.  You would never dare to beat up a
small, weak human."

T'alara smiled ferally. "*I* am in the grip of Pon Farr and not
responsible for my actions, so I can do anything," she said.  She
then picked up Naomerci, deposited her outside the room, and locked
the doors.

Q woke up.  "T'alara?  Why are you here?"

"I've waited three hundred pages for this," T'alara snarled, and
leapt on Q with a feral cry.

****

Outside the room, Naomerci used her vast and sophisticated
programming skills, as well as all her talents at bribery and
blackmailing important officials, to get into the room.

Q was covered with bruises and bite marks from the ferocious
Vulcan's depredations.  He looked up fearfully at Naomerci as if he
expected her to leap on him too... well, maybe not all that
fearfully.  But tiredly, definitely.

"Oh, you poor thing," Naomerci said.  "We have to take you to the
hospital."  There, Naomerci would be able to show her talents at
scathing wit when she ripped the incompetent doctor to shreds, and
then she would get to tend Q in his injured state for weeks and
weeks and weeks, and in the process have lots of sex and snuggling
and getting to feed him.  She couldn't wait.

Just then the Bad and Nasty Aliens invaded, despite an entire
armada of Starfleet ships dedicated to protecting Q, and somehow
managed to slip through all Starfleet's defenses and transport Q to
their ship.

T'alara woke up.  "What's happened?"

"Oh, nothing, nothing," Naomerci said, thinking, "You couldn't
possibly protect Q the way I can, you cold, heartless creature,
you."  "Everything's just peachy."

She took the first opportunity to slip out and go to Q's rescue. 
Despite the fact that she was only two feet tall and weighed twenty
pounds, Naomerci was a ferocious creature who had the ability to
shred the egos of anyone who didn't like Q.  The Bad Nasty Aliens
didn't stand a chance against her.

T'alara, however, after investigating and discovering what had
happened to Q, was outraged.  "She thinks *she* can rescue him? 
She's impugning my professional authority!  Not to mention that the
author has spent a great deal of time building up my martial arts
ability, so I had *better* be able to use it some time in this
story."  She borrowed a spaceship off Q's brother and took off at
high warp.

She and Naomerci arrived at the alien encampment at the same time. 
Q had been tied to the train tracks, and was struggling and
writhing, yelling, "Help!  Save me!  The plot's gone haywire -- you
can't *have* train tracks in space!"

"He's *mine*," Naomerci snarled at T'alara.  "You beat him up and
you don't comfort him *nearly* enough.  *I* should get to rescue
him!"

"He was mine first," T'alara said.  "And *I* don't coddle him and
let him continue his obnoxious behavior to everyone he meets."

"So?" Naomerci asked.  "Obnoxious behavior is entertaining and
holds the interest of the reader.  No one would want to read about
a *nice* Q.  *You're* cruel to him!  And you didn't even have sex
with him *once* in 300 pages!  I deserve to rescue Q!"

"*I* deal with important emotional issues in his life, while all
you *do* is feed him and have sex with him!"

"Is there anything else?"

"Hello?" Q called, as the train headed down the tracks toward him. 
"Hello, if *anyone's* going to rescue me, now would be a good
time..."

At that point a third character entered the story.  "I'll rescue
you, and that way we can sue the train company and make a great
deal of money,"  Rillita said.  "In the process I'll find myself
drawn to you, even though you're an obnoxious little cockroach, and
you'll end up growing up some and getting your act together so you
can marry me and your lover the emotionally damaged restauranteur."

At the word "marry," both T'alara and Naomerci spun around.  The
plot didn't require either of *them* to marry Q, and they knew it.

"It appears we have some competition," T'alara said dryly.

Naomerci nodded.  "Let's get her now."

Fortunately Rillita was prepared.  She reached into her Macy's
shopping bag, whipped out a package and held it in front of Q's
face.

"'Jean-Luc Picard inflatable dummy'," Q read.  "Where do I sign?"

"Right here."  Rillita reached into her bag again and pulled out a
three foot long contract and a pen.

"Uh, do you think we could do this *before* the train grinds me
into sausage?" Q asked desperately.  Beads of sweat popped off his
forehead.  T'alara and Naomerci, distracted by the words on the
inflatable dummy's box that claimed 'Every feature life size!' had
temporarily forgotten Q's dilemma.  Rillita eyed them wistfully. 
She wanted to play with the contents too, but she had to work.  She
always had to work.  No real reason why -- she just did -- or Q
wouldn't look like a dissolute playboy next to her constant
self-righteous drudgery.

Muttering under her breath, she reached into her handy Macy's bag
and pulled out a pair of scissors.  She snipped Q's bonds and he
rolled away just in time as the train hurtled past them only
seconds later.

Q brushed the dirt off his pants.  He reached out and tried to
snatch the box from T'alara and Naomerci who were now drooling over
it.  "That's mine!"  he shouted.

Never one to miss an opportunity, Naomerci held the box out to him
while simultaneously backing away and winking and grimacing at
T'alara and jerking her head in Rillita's direction.  Q followed
the box like one of the zombies in Dawn of the Dead.  "Johnny,
Johnny, come to me, Johnny," he said over and over again, not even
noticing Naomerci's strange facial gestures.

T'alara and Rillita watched Naomerci skeptically, wondering if
she'd fallen prey to a sudden neurological disorder.  Finally
T'alara got the message.  She leapt into a karate stance, holding
her hands in the air just like a real kung fu person.  "The
legitimate ox triumphs over the unambitious starling, Grasshopper,"
she said to no one in particular.

"What?  Are you making fun of me because my mother can't read?"
Rillita demanded.  Not that she was paranoid or anything.  She
didn't know why she put up with this.  She was going back to Rigel,
you bet.

"I never met your mother," T'alara said, "but they always say stuff
like that in the movies right before they beat up the villain.  At
least, they always did in Texas.  Y'ever bin tuh Tayuxsis?  Y'know
Elvis moved tuh Tayuxsis after he faked his dayuth.  Most people
don't know it but's true, Ah swayer."

Rillita wondered how T'alara's accent changed so quickly.  And who
was this Elvis, a friend of Q's?  Maybe T'alara had multiple
personalities.  While she pondered these and other mysteries of the
universe, T'alara glanced out of the corner of her eye, noticing
that their clever ruse was working.  Naomerci had whipped a Twinkie
out of her pocket and was slowly luring Q away from the Picard doll
while Rillita was distracted.

Unfortunately, Rillita noticed that Q was getting away from her. 
She thought quickly, then reached into her bag and pulled out a
small restauranteur.

The restauranteur immediately started to cry.  "I love you, Q, but
I can't live this way!  I have to leave."  He immediately walked
off in the opposite direction.

Q turned, a look of desperate anguish on his face.  His brow was
furrowed, his mouth pulled down into a grimace.  Smoke came out of
his ears.  "Morad wait," he cried.  "From now on *you* can play
with the rubber duckie!"  He turned and started to follow Morad.

T'alara and Naomerci looked at each other, both speaking at the
same time.  "Damn, almost had him!"

Just then, more big bad aliens arrived.

Fortunately, Rillita was armed with a briefcase full of subpoenas. 
She pulled out a handful and brandished them before the fearsome
creatures whose names constantly changed in order to protect the
innocent.  "Back, back!"

They cowered before her, and she stepped forward.  "Go back to
where you came from!  Or I'll make you jurors for the appeals on
the Menendez case!"

The aliens fled yelping in the opposite direction, but when Rillita
turned to face her newly made partners-in-fiction, she found only
T'alara, who was lying on the ground moaning.

"What's wrong?" Rillita asked, kneeling next to her, careful to
avoid the watermelon seeds.

T'alara swallowed the last of the watermelon.  "Naomerci... she
tricked me with fruit," the Vulcan moaned weakly.  "It's bad for
the digestive system to eat it at this time of day.  I... I must
lie here and moan until my own author can take over and end all
this silliness."

Rillita did what she could to comfort the fallen Vulcan, stuffing
a stack of subpoenas under her head for protection in case the
aliens came back, then straightened up.  She had to go after
Naomerci.  And Q of course.  Who knows what trouble they could have
gotten into?  Without her to keep Q firmly on track, he could have
posed naked for girlie magazines again, or lost all of the money
she'd gotten him to unscrupulous young men with gorgeous eyes, or
worse -- fathered someone *else's* child.

Without a look back, she set off.

****

Somewhere in the next quadrant, Q laid on a picnic blanket with
Morad, happily being fed grapes.

"And I escaped from all of them," Q said, pretending to swoon
dramatically so that Morad would fuss over him more.  "They only
wanted me anyway for their own personal ends.  None of them cared
about *me*.  They only wanted to act out their disgusting passions
for someone who doesn't even exist.  They..."

"I care about you!" a high squeaking voice interrupted.  Naomi had
been shrunken so many times over the course of the plot that she
was now two inches tall, and very very peeved about it.

Q looked down.  "Ick!  It's a mouse!  Get rid of it!"

Morad picked the eensy teeny tiny Naomi up, then set her down on
the ground with an upended plastic basket that had been holding the
grapes over her.

Naomi clung to the sides of the basket, watching the happy scene. 
"That should have been me!" she thought.  "This isn't any fair!  If
only I could have a reasonable height.  If only everyone didn't
insist on shrinking me.  Short people are people too, you know!"

Two figures materialized in the meadow.

"That was an interesting mode of transportation," T'alara observed.

Rillita looked smug, as well she might, having used her super-
lawyer abilities and intimate knowledge of every single race in the
universe to blackmail the AliensWithoutANameBecauseTheAuthorHasn't-
ThoughtOfOneYet (or the Awanbtahtooyians, for short) to bring them
here.  She'd offered the Voyager crew a chance to come home as
well, but they hadn't wanted to sign the 435 page contract which
would have granted her rights to all of the media coverage which
would have surrounded their return, not to mention the licensing
rights behind the one-of-a-kind sexual holodeck programs they'd
been developing during their long journey.  So she'd left them
where they were.

T'alara spoke the magic words which returned Naomerci to her proper
height, upsetting the wine, and immediately, a three way wrangle
started.

"As much as I'm grateful to you for rescuing me," Naomi said, "Q's
*mine*."

"He's mine!"

"No, he's mine," T'alara said.  "*I* am the original Mary Sue, and
therefore he belongs to me."

"Yes, but I'm cuter."

"And I got him more money," Rillita added, not to be left out. 
"*And*, if I ever get a sex scene, it'll be far better than any of
yours."

Naomerci stuck out her tongue at them.  "He's mine."

"I'm not anybody's," Q said stubbornly.  "I love Morad and he loves
me and we're going to get married and that's final."

Naomerci turned to the real competition.  She looked meaningfully
at Morad, who immediately shrunk back.  Elaborately she studied her
wrist, which bore an anachronistic timepiece characteristic of the
late 20th century, or more specifically, a Swatch watch.  "Isn't it
about time for your restaurant to open?"

Morad jumped up, a horrified expression on his face.  "Oh, you're
right!  I'm late!  I'm late."  He looked over at Q.  "No time to
say hello, goodbye, I'm late, I'm late, I'm late."  And then he
disappeared down a rabbit hole, leaving Q emotionally bereft and
anguished.

Naomerci sank to her knees and cradled Q to her bosom and then
looked up at the jealous faces surrounding her.  "*What*?"

"Don't play innocent with *us*," Rillita said threateningly.

"Oh, like you would ever have comforted him when he felt
depressed," Naomerci retorted.  "You let him get eaten alive by
society witches, waiting for him to come to you."

T'alara cleared her throat.  "It's not *good* for Q to be
comforted.  It deprives him of the ability to stand on his own, and
also solves his problems too neatly, preventing pages and pages of
important soul-baring exposition."

"Yes, but what fun is baring your soul?"

At that point, Lhoviri suddenly appeared.  "This wasn't what we had
in mind at all."

"Q!" Q cried.

Lhoviri looked disapprovingly down at Q, who was tangled up with
Naomerci.  "Chasing women was *not* what we intended for you when
we took your powers away."

"I had nothing to do with it!  I was tricked into it!"

"Riiiight," Lhoviri drawled.  "And I'm a walrus."

T'alara swaggered over, recognizing from the name that this was her
particular version of Q2, and thus, that she had the advantage.  "Q
is not completely well yet.  He requires more time in my care, far
away from distractions," she glared at Rillita and Naomerci, "where
I can allow him to be tortured by aliens and then heal his psyche
using Vulcan logic, and of course, lots of sex."

"She's lying!" Naomerci said.  "She doesn't actually intend to have
sex with him!  She just says that so that people will keep
reading!"

"Get her to sign something," Rillita said practically.  "You *do*
have a legal contract for her services, don't you?"

Lhoviri held up his hands.  "I have a solution."

All three women fell quiet, waiting.  Q looked apprehensive.

"I'll give Q his powers back, and then he can make the choice."

"You can't do that!" Rillita said, stricken.  "He isn't ever
supposed to get his powers back in my story.  He's supposed to
remain legally dependent on me to keep him from falling into the
hands of the Federation who want to torture him because he's
impossibly innocent about how people want to get back at him and
steal all of his money.  He has to marry me and raise a child yet."

T'alara looked a little bilious.  "And he leaves me when he get his
powers back."

Only Naomerci seemed unaffected.  "Sounds like a good deal to me."

"Oh, stop gloating because your author likes a happy ending,"
Rillita said spitefully.

T'alara nodded.  "There is no such thing as a happy ending.  Only
stories that end too soon."

Naomerci stuck out her tongue again.  "Shows what you know."

Lhoviri sprinkled Q with magic fairy dust.  "Now, just think happy
thoughts and you'll be able to... no, wait.  Wrong story."  He
waved his hand.  "You got your powers back."

Q sprang up, did a happy jig, turned Lhoviri into a walrus, put
himself in a carpenter's suit, and did a half-hour of karaoke
before settling down and turning to the more serious issue at hand,
namely, what to do about the three women who were each claiming
sole rights to his affections and/or depressions.

"So which of us is it going to be?" T'alara asked.

Q smiled evilly.  "Why, none of you.  Now that I've got my powers
back, I can resurrect Jean-Luc from being a mental vegetable and
restore his mentality to what it once was, feeble though that might
be.  We've got a lot of good sex stories to do -- none of which
will be written by any of your authors."  He looked over at
Naomerci.  "A pity, but really, you were just wasting your time, my
dear.  Your paltry efforts were nothing compared to what the
GiffAndStein people are going to do to me, once I have my dear
little Johnny back to play with.  Ta ta!"

And with a wave, he was gone.

"Now what do we do?" Naomi asked, infinitely depressed.

Rillita glanced over at Lhoviri, who was balancing a bright red
rubber ball on his nose.  "Oh, I have a few ideas."


-the end-