*THE STORY OF SHOCKWAVE (PART 1)*
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N.B: This story takes place 42 years before the events in Star Wars: A New Hope, when Obi-Wan is merely a young fledgling undergoing Jedi training.

[ENCOUNTER LAB]

It was a dull, dreary lab in the middle of some unknown conuty on some obscure planet that the man with the greatest powers in the universe sat. It was in no means an impressive lab; several hundred computers ringed the walls of the five-story structure.

The man looked around at the glass-metal-and-marble lab and sighed. He should have been destinied for things greater than this, he thought. Just having control over half of this miserable planet wasn't enough for him; he wanted entire galaxies; he wanted control of the entire *universe*.

But the last time he'd tried that, the Q had sent him back in time in exile on this forsaken planet. If he should ever try again, god knows what kind of punishment they'd inflict on him....

"Mr Gates,sir?" asked his aide softly from behind him. 'We are recieving some kind of-"

Suddenly there was a bright flash of light, and in that instant, the lab seemed to degenerate before him. In his mind's eye, he saw something rip apart, and in that rift, something drifted across... a monstrous ship....

Computers peeled loose from the walls of the lab. His aide was attacking himself in a fit of anger. The fabric of the space-time continuum was falling into chaos and he had been oblivious about it!

Then a strong swift feeling rushed across him, and suddenly, he felt just as whole as he'd ever been... his powers were back. His plan had worked! The chaos had caused the Q Continuum to be so distracted as to forget about him, and by the time they'd realised it, he'd be gone.... He morphed into his true form, Bill Gates, the renegade Q, and he laughed, a rich, evil laugh that resonated aroung the wreck of the lab.

"Bwaa ha ha!" laughed Gates. "With my powers, nothing in this universe can stop me!" And off he plunged into the midnight, leaving a trail of confused destruction behind him.


[JEDI COUNCIL MEETING]

The universe was falling apart around them. Chaos raged like a Math teacher finding out that half the class (or more) had not done their homework.

Obi-Wan was developing a huge headache from listening to everyone around him raving as well as from trying to download Shockwave properly onto his shipboard computer's Netscape Navigator 500.6. Since the recent chaos had started, the Jedi Council had required a Padawan learner to take *minutes*- could you believe it? such a primitive method!- of thier meeting. He'd given up on that task somewhere near and hour ago and had settled on the equally impossible task of downloading shockwave. However his patience was running out on that too. He was just about to start reprogramming the hard disk with his lightsaber when there was a bright flash of light around him.

"Ah-ha!" he said, "I think I just managed to finish downloading
Shockwave Flash!"

"Don't be stupid, *General* Kenobi," came a condescending voice from beside him.

Obi-Wan nearly jumped out of his skin. "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaugh! Who in the world are you?"

The strange apparition refused to answer his question and instead wandered over to the console. "Wow, you are trying to download Shockwave! How very brave and noble."

Obi-Wan glared at him. "I'll leave the judgement of my nobility to the Jedi Masters, thank you very much. Now who in the world are you?!?"

The apparition sniggered at him. "I am the morning and the evening star. I am the alpha and the omega. I am the beginning and the end. I am the great, the powerful, the invincible-"

"Bill Gates?" guessed Obi-Wan, recalling a passage out of his History book.

The apparition gave him a withering look. "*No*, you idiotic
bantha-brained moron, my name is Q! An you just wrecked my nice opening speech!"

Obi-Wan rolled his eyes at the pompous Q. What a jerk, he thought. By now, the entire members of the Jedi Council had their attentions rooted on Q, who suddenly felt like he was back in school, undergoing his orals....

Q jerked himself out of his daydream. The entropy of the space-time fabric was affecting him more than he thought. And he hadn't even taken any orals before! Maybe now he was becoming emphatic....

He turned and looked around, and saw, to his horror, that the head of the Jedi Council was Tinky-Winky.

He turned and whispered to Obi-Wan. "Let's make a deal. You follow me, do whatever I say, and I give you 50 000 credits."

Obi-Wan gave him and incredulous look. "What do you think I am, a fool? Of course I won't succumb to silly bribes."

Q pondered a moment. "Okay. How 'bout I help you download Shockwave onto your computer?"

That was far more tempting. Obi-Wan carefully weighed the pros and the cons. All those games that he could play on the INTERstellarNET after that... "Hmmm...." he said.

Tinky-Winky squeaked, "Don't give in to the dark side, Obi-Wan!"

Obi-Wan grimaced in revulsion. He shrugged. "Okay Q, you've got yourself a deal!"

Q grinned devilishly and they both disappeared in a poof of light, leaving the Jedi Council in enough chaos to satisfy even the most unreasonable Maths teacher finding out that her entire class had not only not done their homework, but had fed it to their dogs too.


[DISTANT PART OF THE UNIVERSE]

Obi-Wan blinked in sudden confusion. Where there was once a whole Jedi council making as much noise as distressed children in a supermarket, there was only the silence of deep space. He was now floating in a vacuum filled with wildly swirling gaseous matter.

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaugh!" he screamed.

"Oh, do shut up," grumbled Q. "Did you come to help me, or not?"

Obi-Wan stopped screaming and looked at Q. "Me help you? How? I thought you were the mourning and even star, the be giggling and the ant, the alfalfa and the Old Mega, the ingrate, the cowardful, and invisible Bill Gates?"

Q tweaked Obi-Wan's ears, hard. "How many times to I have to tell you, my name is *Q*, not Bill Gates? I don't know why I picked you to help me, your memory is so pathetic you can't even remember a single letter of the alphabet."

Suddenly, there was a bright flash of light, and a monstrous ship dove into view, obliterating everything else except for Obi-Wan and Q.

Obi-Wan's jaw was somewhere near his ankles as he stared at the Math teacher of a starship. It was nice and sleek, and it was *huge*. Somewhere near the size of two Star Destroyers put end to end, he estimated. He had a sudden vision of an evil Empire run by dark Jedi Knights building a vessel much larger than this and using it to wreck everything else, and shuddered. He promised himself not to take anymore Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters, lest they make him hallucinate again.

"Yes!" Q jumped up and made a sign of victory. "We got into the right spot." He turned to Obi-Wan. "Come on. This is the ship we were looking for, the one that's making all this chaos." And before a squeak of protest could come out of Obi-Wan, there was a flash of light and they were inside the starship.

[INSIDE THE STARSHIP]

Chaos greeted Obi-Wan and Q like a long-lost friend, although both had just escaped its grasp a mere two minutes ago.

The interior of the ship was very nicely furnished, noted Q, with pastel-coloured walls and plush upholstery, gleaming chrome staircases and even a plant or two. Unfortunately Obi-Wan had no time to appreciate all this, mostly thanks to the large frying pan that crashed smack into his head the moment he arrived on the ship.

"Owwwww!" howled Obi-Wan, rubbing his head in misery. He was just about to ignite his lightsaber to protect himself from any more such attacks when he was distracted by a very alarmed scream to his right.

"Arrrrrrgh!" screamed Zaphod Beeblebrox, realising that the stupid shipboard computer had erased all his important files (mostly relating to the study of the human body) *yet again*. He turned and saw Obi-Wan standing there with a confused look and a lightsaber. He didn't care so much about the confused look, but the lightsaber was just what he needed at the moment. He snatched it out of Obi-Wan's hands and raised it, preparing to cleave the computer in half.

Obi-Wan, assuming that the weird guy with three hands and two heads was hostile, immediately tried snatching it back.

This, unfortunately, did not work.

Zaphod clung on to the lightsaber like his life, screaming, "Mine! Mine!", while Obi-Wan, equally determined, tugged with all his might, screamed back, "No! Mine! Mine! Or I'll help you not!" (Note: The latter happens to be a famous Jedi saying.) What ensued was what one could call a game of tug-of-war.

Meanwhile, in a corner, Arthur Dent was having a really lousy day. He started out the morning just fine, trying to execute some of the usual functions on the computer, when it suddenly seized up and refused to talk to him.

It could be called a coincidence, but the Improbability Drive chose that precise moment to start malfunctioning. Just when he thought the ensuing chaos was receding, then there had been a bright flash of light, then these two people had to come onboard and start it all over again. From his vantage point, he could see one of the pair engaged in a vigorous struggle with Zaphod Beeblebrox, and was pulling desperately at a rod of metal with one hand, while repeatedly bashing one of Zaphod's heads with a large frying pan (which, Arthur recalled,
happened to be the one he hurled away in frustration) with the other, while screaming "Mine! Mine!" all the time. Meanwhile, Zaphod was holding on to the rod with equal zest with two of his hands, while the third one desperately tried fending off the frying pan.

Arthur let out a miserable groan.

In another part of the Heart of Gold, Trillian was trying to convince the computer to talk to her, to listen, to do *something* about the Improbability Drive, whose improbability ratios were skyrocketing beyond impossibly dangerous levels.

The computer refused to do anything.

"What *is* your problem, anyway?" shrieked Trillian in wild frustration. "Don't you have any *freaking* brains?!?!?"

"My, my," said Q, suddenly appearing out of nowhere and nearly giving Trillian a heart attack, "No need to scream so loudly, the place is noisy enough as it is...."

Trillian gave him a cold, hard stare. "Who are you to come barging in here and disturbing my peace? Can't you see that I'm trying to fix someth-"

"Oh, shut up", grumbled Q, for the umpteenth time in that day. He leaned over the computer console, and after a lot of gentle persuasion (read: bashing and throttling the console), he managed to obtain the information he wanted. His heart sank. This was what he had been fearing all along.... Q let out a particularly nasty expletive which shocked even Zaphod Beeblebrox, half a ship's length away, who promptly dropped the lightsaber he was holding on to, much to Obi-Wan's delight.

Q stormed out of the room, leaving Trillian a confused mess.

Back on the bridge, Arthur figured that things were finally beginning to slow down. Although weirder and weirder stuff continued to occur (a class of RGS girls in the middle of a Maths lesson abruptly appeared for half a second before disappearing, hair grew on Picard's head, C3P0 and Marvin fell silent for over three minutes), at least the lightsaber duel (the duel over the lightsaber, that is) had ended. Just as he was beginning to relax, Q stormed onto the bridge.

Arthur hit his head against the bulkhead in disappointment.

Q glanced around the bridge in bemusement. Obi-Wan was there, hugging his lightsaber tightly and giving occasional dirty glances to Zaphod, who was sitting glumly on a chair and nursing severe head injuries. Arthur was there too, hiding in a corner, dejectedly bashing his head against the wall and muttering, "Why me, why me....."

Q glared. "I need to talk to you guys. The situation has become far more complicated." When nobody paid particular attention to him, Q exploded and yelled, "Alright, out with it. Which nut here tried to get the computer to download Shockwave all by itself?"

Everyone in the room instinctively turned to look at Arthur.

"Wha... what? Why is everyone looking at me?" spluttered Arthur. "Not like it was me who tried..." Arthur looked around the room at the circle of angry faces, and sighed. "Okay, okay, fine, so it was me! So what's wrong with that?"

Q had a hard time restraining himself from going over to Arthur and wringing his neck like a wet cloth. "What's wrong with that?!? Did you know that there are precisely five hundred and seventy star systems which have a law prohibiting anyone from downloading Shockwave without a professional, qualified Shockwave expert to do it?"

"Oh." said Arthur. "And I suppose you're going to help me?"

Q gave him a withering look. "Of course not! Who do you think I am, Bill Gates?"

"You mean you're not?" asked Obi-Wan.

Q ignored him with a great deal of effort and continued. "It's far too late now, and there's only one person who can undo the damage you've done, and that person is my nemesis, Bill Gates, the renegade Q! Which means we have to go find him, before this computer destroys the universe as we know it."

"Go find who?" asked Obi-Wan, still fairly confused after the day's harrowing experiences.

"Bill Gates, who else?" snapped Zaphod, still rubbing the bruises on his head.

"Oh." He turned to Q. "So you're really not Bill Gates? I thought you were.... Oh no, why are you giving me that look? And why are you advancing towards me like that? What have I done?"

Q growled and attacked.

Obi-Wan's scream could be heard from the other extreme of the seven-mile long ship.

[BRIDGE OF STARSHIP ENTERPRISE]

Captain Jean-Luc Picard was having a bad day.

Firstly he had bashed his head rather badly on the bulkhead overhang when he woke up in the morning, then he misjudged the length of his bed by half a meter and had landed rather hard on his posterior when he got out of bed, then after that he got scalded not once, but twice by hot shower water, (only because he managed to upset his breakfast tray all over himself and his nice clean uniform and therefore had to shower again) and, even worse, he had gotten lost
on his way to the bridge, all this making him half an hour late for duty.

Now, to top it all off, there was this demanding Math teacher-like superbeing wrecking havoc on his bridge.

He sighed. The superbeing, who had identified himself as Bill Gates, the renegade Q, seemed intent on taking over the ship. Right now, he was standing in the middle of the bridge, threatening a lawsuit unless they brought him to some planet called Alderaan, which Picard had never heard of in his entire life. He sighed again.

"Prehaps he is referring to the planet Alderaan in the Star Wars trilogy," suggested Data from Ops.

"Star Wars trilogy? What's that?" asked Picard in confusion.

"It was an extremely popular movie series in the late Twentieth
Century," explained Data. 'Although, I do recall that the planet was destroyed in the fourth movie by the Imperial Death Star."

"Wait, wait," said Picard in exasperation. "If it's a trilogy, how can there be a fourth movie?"

"Does it matter?" snapped Bill Gates in irritation. "Just take me there, you *moron*!"

That was it for Picard. Disrupting the order on his starship wasn't enough for this superbeing, he had to insult the captain too. He stood up and glared ferociously at the being. "I don't care who you are, and I don't care about your lawsuit, but if you don't get off my bridge, right now, I swear I will personally throw you out of the nearest airlock!"

Bill Gates swiveled and looked at Picard. "Fine, since you won't help me, I will have to use force on you!" He snapped his fingers, and Data instanly disappeared in a poof of light.

"What have you done to him?" gasped Picard.

"Oh, nothing, just sent him on a little holiday to Alderaan..." replied Bill Gates with a devilish grin. "Oh, well, see you there. Unless you are going to abandon your second mate to my use...." The grin never left his face as he, too, disappeared.

Troi, sitting at the back of the bridge, looked slightly confused. "Where did he just disappear to?"

Picard shrugged. "Alderaan, I guess."

"What?" said Troi incredulously. "But then that means that he could have gotten there himself, and he didn't need us to help!"

It took a while for the implications of this revelation to sink in. Picard's anguished scream could be heard for miles and miles around.


[HEART OF GOLD]

Zaphod Beeblebrox and Obi-Wan soon realised that both of them had some personality clashes, and after several conflicts and many serious injuries, they learned to leave each other alone- somewhat. They were now sitting on opposite sides of the bridge, glaring at each other. Obi-Wan was rubbing his neck, still sore, long after Q's frenzied attack.

A huge fishtank appeared over Zaphod's head and emptied itself, water, fish and all, onto him.

Obi-Wan had a laughing fit.

Zaphod stalked over and stuffed a large, wet, flopping fish down Obi-Wan's back.

Obi-Wan yelped, picked up the fish and threw it at Zaphod's head.

Zaphod growled and attacked Obi-Wan.

Q sighed.

Marvin was sitting in a corner, complaining about the miserable quality of life as usual. He was suddenly silenced by the Imperial stormtrooper who appeared out of nowhere and sealed duct tape over all his external speakers. Trillian started hopping around like a little kid. Suddenly she stopped, gave Q an amorous look, ran over, hugged him and gave him a passionate kiss.

Q shuddered in revulsion and prayed to himself (god what) that the Improbablity drive would be fixed quickly, and the rift in the space-time continuum would be healed. The events which had been happening were far to bizarre to suit even his tastes.

Suddenly the console closest to him beeped. "Ah-ha!" he exclaimed. "The stupid lag is finally over!" He walked over to the console and peered down at it. "I have got his trail! And he's gone to the.... oh, no, tell me this isn't possible... he's on the *Enterprise*?!?!?" Q slapped his forehead.

"Enterprise?" asked Zaphod. "What enterprise?"

Q shook his head. "The starship Enterprise, of course."

"Starship enterprise?" Zaphod scratched his head, found a small fish there and flicked it out. "Oh, you mean they build starships. Or do they sell them?"

"Who's 'they'?" asked Obi-Wan.

Zaphod gave him an irritated glare. "Don't be dense, *moron*. Of course it's the enterprise that builds starships. Why else would it be called the Starship Enterprise?"

Obi-Wan returned the glare. "*You're* the one who's being dense, *numbskull*. I thought he meant a starship named Enterprise!"

"No, he means that whoever joined an enterprise that builds-"

"*NO*, it's you who's wrong, he just means that-"

"Cut it out, kids," grumbled Trillian. "Hey, Arthur, doesn't that sound like the Starship Enterprise in that series, oh.... what was it called? Star Wars?"

Arthur looked confused. "Huh? I thought Star Wars was the one with this guy called Spock whose father was Darth Vader."

"*Darth* Vader?" Obi-Wan whined. "A Sith lord!"

"Yeah, and as a matter of fact, I think he didn't know until the third movie.. or was it the second.. no it was the sixth.. yeah I think the sixth. And his mentor even told him that Darth Vader killed his father, Captain Kirk." mused Arthur.

"And?" asked Trillian.

Arthur shrugged. "Don't ask me, I watched those movies years ago! All I remember is that a planet got blown up all for nothing, just like Earth... Oh, I remember now! It turns out that years ago Captain Kirk turned into Darth Vader after falling into a Microsoft lawsuit while fighting with his teacher who was Spock's mentor, Obi-Wan Kenobi. Or something."

"Me?!?!" squeaked Obi-Wan. "I didn't do anything! I don't know anyone called Captain Kirk or Spock or Darth Vader!"

"Oh, shut up," yelled Q. "Arthur, shut up, you've got it all wrong! Their names are Luke and Anakin Skywalker, not Spock and Kirk! Spock and Kirk are from the Enterprise."

"So, we're going to see them now?" asked Trillian.

"Oh, no, does that mean that I'm going to turn them to the Dark side?" whined Obi-Wan.

"No, that's the wrong Enterprise, that's the original one! We're going to a different one," said Q.

'An alternate universe?" suggested Zaphod.

"That's the first time I've heard you make and intelligent suggestion in my life," said Arthur. 'The Improbablity drive is working better than I thought."

"No," said Q, "the Enterprise in in the next century. It's something to do with inheritance of names."

"Can we not go?" whined Obi-Wan. "I don't wanna go."

"We can't not go, I've already set the course. And stop whining. We're nearly there," said Q. Frustrated by all the noise, he turned to his console. "Wait a- oh, whoa! We *are* there! That's fast-"

The Heart of Gold leaped out of hyperspace and crashed smack into the Enterprise.

[BRIDGE OF THE ENTERPRISE]

Picard was desperately searching for all references to the planet Alderaan on the bridge when disaster struck.

The water sprinkler system activated itself and drenched the entire interior of the Enterprise. The lights flashed on and off. Gravity was disabled from decks 1 to 24 inclusive. Loud dramatic choral music sung in Sanskrit flooded the bridge. The replicators served only Klingon food and Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters. Stormtroopers bearing duct tape appeared and mummified every ensign on board. Picard's high school elementary Maths teacher appeared and started screaming at
him. Darth Vader terrorized everyone in Main Engineering.

"What the-" yelled Picard.

Suddenly the Enterprise lurched very violently. The force of it, combined with the lack of gravity, smashed everyone into the far wall.

"Damage?" asked Picard, floating around wildly and bumping repeately into sharp metal edges.

"Mmmn nff hmfff, hrff!" replied the mostly mummified ensign who was still wedged into the bulkhead.

"Can someone please take off all that duct tape?" asked Picard.

Troi floated over and told Worf (wait a minute! This is the
Enterprise-E, what's he doing there? Oh, lousy plot device generated by the Improbablity Drive.), "Restrain him. This is goning to hurt." Then she forcefully pulled off all the duct tape.

The ensign screamed in pain and agony.

"Okay. So, damage report?" said Picard, watching 'Toy Story' with great rapture.

"No damage, sir," gasped the ensign.

"No damage?!?" Picard was so shocked he smashed painfully into the far wall (again). Recovering himself, he yelled, "That's not true! That's impossible! After a collision like that......"

"Anything's possible with the Improbability Drive, mon capitane, " said Q from beside Picard.

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaugh!" shrieked Picard. "Don't do that, will you!"

Q looked around the bridge. "What a mess. I'll try to fix it. " He snapped his fingers, and things improved somewhat. The lights stopped flashing and gravity was restored.

Picard shook his head. "I don't understand. Why is it *always* me?"

Q shrugged. "It's your destiny." He gave Picard a dirty glare. "So where are you keeping him?"

"Who?" aked Picard.

"Who else? That scheming monster called Bill Gates, the renegade Q."

"Renegade Q?" asked Picard. "And all the while I thought he was a Maths teacher."

"So, where is he?"

"That's what I've been trying to figure out!" yelled Picard, extra exasperated. "Look around the bridge. Doesn't something look like it's missing to you?"

Q looked around. "Data's not here.... oh, CENSORED! Don't tell me he...."

Picard nodded. "Yes he did."

"So, then where is he now?"

"I don't know! Look, if I knew where in the world Alderaan was, I would be there by now! According to Data it's something out of a set of movies called Star Wars! So where am I supposed to go find him, on the holovid channel?" yelled Picard.

"Alderaan?" Q heaved a sigh of relief. 'I can get you there. Or at least, someone can." He looked at the viewscreen, and suddenly realised it was playing Oscar speeches over and over again for no apparent reason. He snapped his fingers, and the viewscreen changed to the view of the Heart of Gold, dwarfing the Enterprise, outside. 'Only problem is, the ship out here is big but all its drives are malfunctioning. Can you tractor it with the Enterprise?"

Picard nearly fainted at the size of the ship. "Look at the size of that thing! Well, I suppose I could..."

"Good!" he snapped his fingers.

The Enterprise shook and light eneveloped the bridge as they leapt into another universe.

When Picard could see again, Obi-Wan was on the bridge, cringing and crying for his mommy.

"Oh, shut up," said Q, kicking Obi-Wan.

Obi-Wan stopped crying and looked at Q. "How wude!"he exclaimed.

"Yeah, yeah," groaned Q. "Now will you kindly take us to Alderaan?"

"Alderaan?" asked Obi-Wan, "Why? Isn't that the place where the Shockwave program files are manufactured? What would this chaotic chain of events have to do with that?"

Q slapped his forehead. "Everything! Fear is the path to the dark side- oh, what am I talking about? Just shut up and get us to Alderaan!" And he gave Obi-Wan a second kick for good measure.

"Oww! Okay! Okay! I get the point!" Obi-Wan picked himself up, went to the Ops console and keyed in the coordinates. "There! happy?"

Q heaved a sigh of relief. At least, something was going right today.

Another bright flash of light turned Obi-Wan and Troi into five year-old kids.

On second thoughts, I could be sadly mistaken, thought Q.

"I have a baaaad feeling about this," commented Picard.

"Tell me about it, " agreed Q. Obi-Wan stopped screaming for a moment, looked down at himself, and started screaming again. Troi looked at him, kicked him hard and said, "Shut up, pipsqueak!"

Picard looked surprised.

Troi shrugged. "I was a very mean kid."

"So was I," said Obi-Wan, and he immediately jumped at Troi and started to wring her neck. Q sighed, rolled his eyes and snapped his fingers. The pair of kids disappeared in a flash of light.

"And, uhm, where did you just send them to?" asked Picard.

Q grinned devilishly. "Well, since they are so mean, I decided to send them on a little holoday to torment my nemesis on Alderaan...."

"But he's a Math teacher!" said Picard. "Those two kids will never survive him!" He groaned. "And to think that I'll never see Counselor Troi again... I was hoping to marry her just in case Beverly rejects me...."

"Oops," said Q, "I forgot to tell you that the channel to her quarters was open and she can hear everything we say on the bridge...."

At that moment, Beverly Crusher stormed onto the bridge, grabbed Picard by his neck and started pounding on his head with a rolling pin.

Q chuckled. The ride to Alderaaan was going to be more fun than he thought.

To Be Continued.......