“Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it!”

Johaan Wolfgang von Goethe. (1808)

They faced each other across a moment of stolen time.

Like all of her people, Taesin was a ‘listener’, possessing the perceptive ability extending beyond the space/time continuum and the instant the Q arrived within the holo-recreation of ‘Cotton – Bob’s’ Juke and stepped out from the shadows and trod those weathered hardwood floorboard, the El – Aurian captain of the USS Atalanta could feel relative time grind to a standstill.

The extra-dimensional creatures that inhabited the Q – Continuum were near omniscient, famously venal and endlessly capricious and arguable possessed powers that most people would consider to be ‘god-like’, although they were by no means as omnipotent as they liked to portray themselves to be.

This fact was born out by the fact that Taesin’s own race, fantastically long – lived and multidimensionally sensitive had, Milleneons ago fought a long and mind – twisting cocultured cold – war across multiple dimensions of the space/time continuum and had fought the unpredictable scions of the Q – Continuum to a stalemate that resulted in an uneasy truce and a pact struck over (of all things) a bottle of liquor.

That was not to say that the Q were in any means impotent or that their power (made so much more dangerous by the childish – glee with which they so indiscriminately wielded it) was by any means dismissible. The Q possessed the ability to alter, create, or destroy virtually any form of matter or energy, and to affect time in essentially any way they chose, and they often did so apparently for their own amusement or to indulge in some fleeting whimsey.

To say that the mind of a Q was Machiavellian would be the ultimate exercise in understatement.

It was fair to say that if a creature of the Q really loathed anything more in the universe, it was hard to find a thing they detested more than an El – Aurian.

The very existence of the ‘listeners’ not only provided to confound their plans and spoil their rightful fun to act as puppet master’s and make the universe their sideshow, but also constituted the most unforgivable transgression which was to remind the Q that they were not totally omnipotent, after all.

The Q that stepped forward wore a mask of casual distant, tinged with cloying amusement, as it stopped before Taesin (who was, of course unaffected by the time dilation that had frozen not only the Noble – class explorer, but effectively trapped the entire universe in that frozen – moment like a mosquito forever entombed in a glob of amber) and the avatar of the malevolent Superintelligence called ‘Chimera’ (who being a machine, was as frozen here as the hands on a broken clock) and folded its arms, addressing her contemptuously.

“My, My!” The Q sneered as it regarded the slim, pale young woman, as she sat across from the holographic representation of  1920’s bluesman ‘Blind – Willy’ Johnson, looking at her like something unpleasant it had stepped in.

“You’re just a mere Spratling! Do your parents know that you’re out hanging out in bars and drinking liquor, young lady?!” It tapped its finger mockingly on the neck of the bottle by which I had been summoned.

Taesin let the jibe pass and retained her composure. She was fully aware of how desperate the situation she had faced before she has unstoppered the bottle and summoned her peoples worst enemy to manifest here had been, but now facing her first Q for the first time, she knew that all it would take was one misstep and all sentient life in the galaxy would surely be doomed to destruction by the Ai Superintelligence that had infected all technology in this reality.

“If that’s the legendary humour of the Q on display, I must admit to being slightly underwhelmed.” Taesin replied evenly, adding…”I was expecting something more……more….”

The Q’s face adopted a mocking aspect as he pushed out his bottom lip and mugged.

“Well, by the time you graduate from your diapers, maybe mommy and daddy can explain to you the finer points of grown-up humour, little Sprat! As amusing as this is decidedly not, you’re obviously not old enough to drive, let alone drink in bar, so I will be taking my leave and, rest assured, it’ll be detention for, young lady, should you ever waste my precious time again!” The Q waved a dismissive hand to shoo – shoo her away and prepared to disincorporate.

“I invoked the pact and you are bound to honour that pact Q!” Taesin asserted firmly, not raising her voice but using it to anchor the petulant pan – dimensional preening God – child to this place.

The Q stopped and rolled its eyes theatrically and sneered at her thinly, fully aware that it was indeed bound by that oath and detesting this upstart childling (even though Taesin was already 200 years old) for reminding it of that duty.

Despite what they might like the universe to believe; the Q had many enemies besides the El – Aurians.

Considering how universally awfully they behaved, perhaps that was a fact that did not take much stretch of the imagination to believe; however, their meddling and overwhelming sense of entitlement had let them to be drawn into numerous conflict and the last thing they could afford was for those aggrieved parties to come together and form an alliance against the Q.

So it reluctantly held to honour the pact.

Hence the Q flopped down in the chair across the table from him and was suddenly wearing a faithful facsimile of a wealthy white southern land – owner, a choice of dress & inference that Taesin found instantly distasteful (given the setting of a Louisiana Juke – joint, where segregated black Americans chose to gather) and determined to ignore this as she took this as the Q trying to antagonise her.

“Well, little Missy?” The Q drawled with a rich southern twang and played with the sharp goatee beard it had just sprouted from its chin, whilst it tucked its other hand into the waistcoat of the cream three – piece suit it was suddenly wearing.

“What dat is I can do for ya, cher?” The Q leered, obviously amusing itself although Taesin just found it plain irksome.

“Now whose being childish?” She frowned and smiled an acid – smile in riposte.

The Q frown and made a face like curdling milk and instantly it was as it had been before.

“Oh! You people are just no fun at all! I was just trying to get into the ‘spirit’ of things!” The Q snapped smarmily. “That’s the problem with your whole accursed race ! Just no sense of humour!” He drummed his fingers on the top of the chipped and whiskey-soaked table and tried not to acknowledge the bottle between then that represented the pact.

Taesin did not deign this observation with an answer and let the long, uncomfortable silence draw out between them in the frozen pocket of time, knowing that both of them could effectively wait until the Federation itself ceased to be, before either of them spoke again.

Yet if the Q loved anything, it was the sound of their own voice and before long the Q snapped waspishly.

“Oh, for pity’s sake! Just tell me why you had the ill – judged audacity to summon me here and let’s get this tiresome charade over with, so I can go do quite literally anything more meaningful than whatever this is!” It curled it’s lip in challenge.

“Not that that would be hard.” It dismissed.

Taesin took a deep breath. It was impossible to understand the trepidation that she struggled with as she framed the words. The price she was about to pay was absolutely and unequivocally unthinkable to her race and to her knowledge no El – Aurian had never been as desperate as to have been forced into a situation where they had had to utter these words before.

But if the fate of every living thing in the galaxy hung in the balance, what would you be prepared to sacrifice to see them all saved?

“I summoned you here to ask for your help.”

The Q looked at her incredulously for a moment and then slammed both hands on the table and threw back its head and fairly brayed with uncontrollable laughter!

“You want…..you want MY help?!” It roared with amusement, disbelief in its voice and tears streaming down its face.

“Yes.” Taesin said in a quiet voice, as if the words had hurt her throat.

“YOU! Want MY…..HELP!!” It couldn’t contain itself.

Glowering and trying not to scream, Tae repeated “Yes.”

The Q laughed and laughed until it was read in the face, its braying amusement echoing around ‘Cotton Bob’s’ and grating at her nerves like a razor.

As suddenly as it had appeared, the Q’s amusement evaporated and revealed its falseness for what it was. In its pace was a look of pure, cold hatred.

“And tell me little Spratling, why should I ever lower myself to even think of entertaining such a patently repugnant and unlikely thing as deigning to help one such as you?” The Q hissed, the hatred in its eyes far more honest than the mummers farce of jocularity it hid behind.

Tae indicated the frozen avatar of Blind – Willy.

“Because if you don’t, he will destroy all sentient life in the galaxy.” She asserted.

The Q blinked and peered at the old Texan bluesman.

“Why? Is his music that bad?” The Q feigned ignorance.

Taesin had to clench her fists in her lap to maintain her composure and replied.

“He’s the representation of an Artificial Superintelligence that has taken control of my ship and is similarly entrenched in nearly every computational matrix throughout the quadrants. It’s quite psychotic and is driven by the one goal of the total destruction of all organic life.” She stated simply, even stating the eventuality of that future making her feel sick.

The Q blinked and said airily.

“And what is that to me?”” It shrugged noncommittally. “Goodbye and good riddance I say! Nasty, irritating microbes, the lot of them! It’ll be doing us all a favour!”

Taesin could not contain her anger any longer.

“Don’t be so coy, Q !” She spat her ire at the uncaring creature. “What is a universe without someone or something to torment! We both know that, without an audience to ‘ooh’ and ‘aahhh’ at your puerile cavorting’s, you are nothing! Try to picture an eternity with just a series of Zero’s and One’s as your only adulates? Somehow I don’t think even you would find that amusing after the first few million years!?”

The Q looked blankly at her and sniffed as it dissembled.

“Oh, I don’t know. It could be fun having an appreciating audience for a time and, besides, something amusing would slither out of the primordial muck and climb up the evolutionally ladder far enough to provide some reasonable sport in good time, your kind are nothing if not pathetically predictable!”

“I can be patient when the need suits me.” Its flashed a withering grin that held no humour at all. “I’ll even save you a seat so you can enjoy the show, as long as you get a note from your parents that is?”

Taesin was dismayed.

The entire crux of her last – ditch stand to help stave off the destruction threatened by Chimera all hinged upon somehow convincing her worst enemy to come to her aid. Yet predictably the Q remained recalcitrant and, even if it was minded towards assisting her, would rather let her suffer than intervene with its God – like power. The hate between their people ran long and deep.

As if to punctuate her defeat, the Q made a show of dusting off the legs of the pants it appeared to wear and stood up, adding,

“Well, this has been really, really average!” It sneered an insincere smile. “Good luck with your pending Apocalypse. It really couldn’t happen to a more deserving recipient! Have fun with that!”

Her pale blue eyes flashing, Taesin also sprung to her feet. As her mouth was forming the words, every atom in her body was screaming at her to cease, but it was too late. Her brain had already sent the signals down her synapses to her vocal – centre and she could feel her larynx already starting to marshal the air and form the fateful words.

“You’ll help, because if you do, then I’ll owe you a favour!” She shouted desperate and was instantly appalled at the gravity of her offer.

The Q stopped dead in its tracks and Taesin felt her blood run cold.

It turned its face to peer at her, over its shoulder, with a reptilian look of calculation it its eyes.

“What did you just say?” It asked softly, not hoping to dare that it had heard what it had heard.

Her very being writhing with loathing and despair, Taesin repeated the words that would damn her to an eternity at being at the capricious and vindicative creature’s beck and call. An eternal life sentence doomed to being its pet, its plaything. No El – Aurian had even taken such a debasing action in all of their long history of opposition to the Q.

Her mother would be appalled.

“I said. If you help me remove the threat of Chimera, completely and utterly as though it had never existed, then I will….. owe you a favour.” She managed. The words were even worse to say a second time.

A broad smile of absolute victory began to spread across the face of Q, then it froze and he asked suspiciously.

“If I choose to do this, and that’s a big IF mind you, what’s to stop you reneging on our deal?” The trickster – god asked shrewdly.

“I could ask you the same thing?” Taesin countered, crossing her arms to quell her sense of trepidation and despair. “You could not hold up your own end and you’d lose your plaything wouldn’t you? We’ll just have to take a chance and trust the other to hold true to their word?”

This seemed to genuinely amuse the Q and it thought on this for the longest moment and then it’s smile grew to megawatt intensity and it crowed.

“Then we have a deal, my feisty little Sprat!!” The creature grinned, spitting on its hand and holding the apparent – appendage out to her, whilst its projected good – cheer made her think of cancer.

“You will manipulate the space/time thread going back to the M-5 Incident and ensure that Dr Richard Daystrom does not return to his work with the Multitronic prototype at the Institute and that it never develops into Chimera.” Taesin bargained. “And don’t try anything cute with alternate timelines or anything else, as you know that I’ll know if you do.”

The Q looked at her levelly, as if they were bargaining over the price of apples and it sniffed dismissively.

“Yes, Yes. As long as you hold up your end of the  bargain, then I will be the very picture of grace and civility!” Q shrugged reasonably, then its dememour went hard again.

“But there’s a little wrinkle of time that I cannot iron out. Whatever your wayward tin – man monster did on its way to here has to stand, including any that it has killed.”

Taesin thought of the 256 members of her own crew, starting with Thierry LaValle, the poor unfortunates that had been lured into the lifepods and those who had fell defending main engineering against Chimera’s holographic attackers.

She thought of the 80 frozen souls ejected from the USS Condalejo to a sudden cold end in the vacuum of space. She thought about the loss of the crew of the USS Arsenio, obliterated in an inexplicable warp – core breach and all of the other unexplained and anomalous deaths that were likely attributed to the malevolent Superintelligence as it weaved its way throughout civilised space and covered its tracks.

The cost was too much.

Then again, when weighed against countless trillions of lives, these were the stakes with which she had to play her hand against. Yet she could not bring herself to pass up those souls so lightly.

“That’s BULLSHIT and you know it Q!” She raged, finally letting all of the frustration that she had pent inside, flow forth like a thunderstorm.

“You can easily restore those people to life! It’s well within your power and you know it !”” She seethed.

Q just arched an diffident eyebrow and pretended to inspect a fingernail, commenting flatly.

“Well let’s just say I choose not to then.” It preened cruelly. “Call it learning a hard lesson about the follies of trying to play God and creating minds in your own image. Look where THAT hubris gets you at the end of the day.”

“No Spratling, my offer stands as is and is decidedly non – negotiable. I will do what you ask and you will keep your promise to me and the dead will stay as dead as dead can be!” It warned with a note of harsh finality in its voice.

Taesin’s thought of the last dinner party she had attended that had been hosted by the urbane Thierry LaValle and his charming husband Jonathan and all of the lives that had been lost and her heart was heavy with leaden – regret, yet she knew this was the only way Chimera could be defeated.

“Very well. I agree.” She said in a small voice.

They shook on it.

Q smiled an alligator smile and his voice mocked.

“There. Not so hard now, was it?” The insufferable being chided her and then he clicked his fingers with a sharp snap.

And it was done.

Taesin could feel the disruption to the Space/Time Continuum as the influence of the Q ruptured and teased and manipulated the very fabric of reality itself. The very ease with which it could do so was absolutely terrifying to her. Why in creation would you gift such power to creatures as wholly unsuitable as these, she wondered?

It was like giving an atom – bomb to a baby to play with.

The Q did as it was asked and the passage of time was causally but monumentally altered and re – written. Dr Richard Daystrom did not conduct any further work with the M-5 program, following his release from Psychiatric care, instead going on to pursue other works of scientific insight and merit that would frame the legacy of the latter part of his career in a more altruistic light and make him an inspiration to enquiring minds for years to come.

There in the Holosuite projection of ‘Cotton – Bob’s’ Juke, the avatar of Blind – Willy Johnson slowly faded from view and Taesin knew that the threat of Chimera had ended, as it had never come to pass in this new and altered timeline.

Yet she, who because of her birthright, stood apart and inviable from the Space/Time Continuum, knew she would remember all of the dead and forever mourn their loss.

It was often said that time is like a rubber sheet and snaps back into its original shape whenever it can. The same was arguably true of the human mind. In the greater universal picture, the actions of the Q could not help but to create some degree of temporal paradox, as the universe sought to re-order the sequence of events and self – heal the wounds Q’s actions would cause.

Thierry LaValle would remain dead, but his death would not (could not) be due to the fact of his sudden discovery of Chimera (which now had never existed), instead Jonathan LaValle would mourn the loss of his beloved due to a rare, but perfectly explicable Turbolift accident, meaning Time did not like to stray far from the original plot when it made amends.

Captain Taesin Girau steeled herself for the inevitable. She had sold her metaphorical soul to an actual devil and now it was time to pay the price her sacrifice had cost her.

“Very well Q. You kept up your end, now what will you have of me?” Taesin asked bravely.

The Q looked at her with an amused, yet unreadable look on its triumphant face. Maybe it was enough to revel in the shame of her debasement and defeat for now? Take time to enjoy the prospect that a member of the race of one of its most hated enemies was now in its pocket? To have Taesin owe it a favour was truly a prize beyond compare and she was under no illusion that the impossible creature would wring every last drop of self – amusement out of her predicament it could, for as long as it could.

“So many possibilities.” The Q sighed happily, obsequious in its triumph. “But one can’t have too much fun in one sitting! I think I just might keep you in my pocket for a rainy day!” It smiled insincerely.

Then it added, just before it disappeared from that dimension and left Taesin alone (for now) with the gravity of her choice.

“But one day it’s going to rain down hard and, when it does, then you’d better get a – swimming little Spratling, else you get lost in the flood! Until then, farewell & sayonara for now!”