Waste, waste, waste. It was the single word on my mind the whole of our last little chat. How much time I had spent on him. How much effort and thought—me. Me. Whole planets beg for my attention, now and billions of years to come. Me, who breathes stars into existence. Me, who parts nebulae with a wave of my hand.

And he was saying no to me. He was speaking to me only for the betterment of his conscience, otherwise he did not care.

Me.

Well I would have no more of it. I would not play the stairs to his moral high ground. I didn't even tell him to what extent he'd offended me, merely gave him my adieus and left. The vale over my eyes, which I'd been pulling back so slowly, so cautiously for the last three months, was ripped off to the blinding shine of clarity.

And anger. And shame, for I could see exactly why the Q had been laughing at me for the last few years. And then anger again, hot and strong.

The first thing I did upon leaving him was look up some planet where they worshipped me and let them go about it. It was a planet his beloved Starfleet might refer to as Class Y. The occupants were made entirely of living rock. I appeared to them as a crystal and they oohed and ahhed over me, attending to my whims while I sat there for weeks and thought. Sometimes I tried not to think, and being worshipped was good for that. They told me how perfect I was. They reminded me I was not anyone to be denied. They erected a temple of themselves around me before I left. By then, I had come to accept my anger and contain it.

It's a crucial step for a Q. Otherwise I might annihilate something without ever realizing it. Especially if my anger was affixed on one person, one mortal, one nobody anybody would miss.

Jean-Luc Picard. I'd said I'd leave him alone and yet in the years that followed he never left me alone, frolicking around the universe in his speck of a starship, always only a thought away. He could forget me, cleanly. He did not have the burden of policing his mind.

Time passed. I distracted myself. I played in the far edges of the Gamma Quadrant mostly, some place where they've never heard of Starfleet. Eventually my anger faded, and then came the day I realized it was gone altogether. Whether eliminated or buried, I did not care.

Only when the need arose did I slip back into Federation space, knowing he was in the neighborhood and shrugging it off. Who was he to me? A past curiosity, that was all. In sixty years he would probably be dead.

Sixty years is nothing to me.

And so it was that I abandoned all my interest in humanity, flicked it to the ground like the poisonous cigarette it was.

A little story you might find interesting. The setting? The Alpha Quadrant. The characters? Me and the closest of my associates, Q.

It was his turn to pick a place and he chose Alpha III. I complained, but I didn't get very far with him since I couldn't verbalize exactly why I didn't want Alpha III, just that I didn't. He'd put up with my last choice, some underwater photonic spa on the other side of the galaxy—dull by all his standards—and so here we were. Alpha III.

The bar he chose was crowded and loud and colored lights roved everywhere. Blues and pinks and yellows flashed across our faces, an effect I supposed was meant to be stylish but was mostly just blinding. Worse, the bar was swarming with Starfleet cadets. I wished they weren't there. Not enough to unmake them, but enough to blacken my mood.

It's an unpleasant sensation, remembering humans exist. As I was scowling at them from across the bar, and thinking of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the worlds, Q handed me a drink and asked me whatever happened to that Starfleet officer I used to talk to. "The old one without any hair." The trouble with Q is I can never tell if he's staged all of this to elicit information from me or is just… serendipitously curious.

Either way, it was bound to come up eventually.

"Him?" I said over the music. "I haven't thought of him in fifteen years."

"No way! He was your favorite little toy!"

"Toys break, Q."

"Whoa. Now what I wouldn't give to hear more about that."

"Sorry. I've forgotten most of it."

"That's a shame. You know we were all so surprised you liked a human so much, and now you just don't even care. And you don't even know why!"

"I was bored."

"You're going to make me investigate, aren't you?"

There was a jolt of fear in my stomach when I realized he might summon Jean-Luc immediately to "investigate." After all, I had just declared I didn't care. As Q etiquette went, he was no longer my property. Up for grabs. And what would I do then, face to face with him so suddenly, so out of my control? Would he turn to accuse me? Surely he would. And what feeble defense pointing at Q would be then.

I swallowed, and forced myself to relax, and reminded myself that whatever Q did I would play it cool and uncaring as I was. If Picard accused me, I would simply refuse to answer.

Q was grinning at me. He beckoned with his index finger and one of the more sultry cadets strutted across the room and slipped into his arm. Whispering in her ear, he got everything out of her.

Such as: Captain Picard? No, Admiral Picard, and he was retiring next month. There were rumors of a forced resignation or some sort of fallout with the leadership, although they were having a big ceremony as a send-off. Also he was "so inspiring and I would give anything to shake his hand and have you met him? I would kill to meet him" and other such unhelpful nonsense that bubbles forth when you loosen up a human like that. I never did that, for the same reason I didn't make a habit of reading their minds. It was never interesting that way.

"Wow, look at that," Q said after he shooed her off. He turned his attentions on me. "You really had no idea about any of that."

"No," I said.

"You just… got bored?"

"Yes," I said, and said nothing else.

Fortunately for everyone involved, Q didn't press the issue further than that.

But as the night waned on and I drank more and more, far more than I usually did, retaining my humanoid form to feel all the stupor and calm of a compromised central nervous system, to the point of actually enjoying the flashing lights, I kept remembering something the cadet had said. That he was resigning.

Leaving Starfleet.

I wanted to throw a drink in Q's face for sticking that in my head, and for starting this whole charade in the first place by reminding me that Picard would die soon, way back when. One might almost say he was concerned for me, but probably he just wanted the laugh.

One thing I swore to myself, and I even drank to it to seal the deal: I wasn't going anywhere near that ceremony.

Which of course means I went.

In another life it was a day I had looked forward to, the casting off of Starfleet by the once-favored Picard, and so for nostalgia's sake it seemed imperative that I attend—even if just for the excuse to try out a human body again, and that old captain's uniform. Fifteen years had passed, plenty of time for indifference to have won out between us. That was what I told myself anyway. I would have a look around and I would leave. Who among the Continuum could fault me for that?

The ceremony had already begun when I appeared there, standing in the back of the room without fanfare or announcement. The building was an old Earth church, a place where humans like Picard used to worship beings like me. There were about four hundred persons of various species scattered around the pews, and yet the room wasn't half full. As music wafted from the orchestra pit, the lords of Starfleet paraded across the stage in all of their lackluster mediocrity. Grey heads, all of them.

And then Picard came out. Everyone stood and clapped, everyone but me. He moved slowly, carefully to his seat on the stage, which made me wonder if he'd had some sort of accident. He stooped more, had gone completely bald, all of those omens of impending death. At the age of eighty-something he had, what, thirty more years left? Maybe less considering his mechanical heart. And the stress of command, too, would have its cost.

It was strange seeing him again. I had expected to feel something, some shiver up my arms, a pang of sadness perhaps. But I felt nothing. No desire to speak to him. Not even to let him know I was here. I was considering leaving when some man on the stage got up and rattled off a list of Picard's accomplishments. The man finished the list and moved on with some general statement about how much Picard had meant to Starfleet, how much they would miss him as a leader, etcetera, etcetera, but I wasn't following. I was back with the list, replaying it in my mind, just to be sure. No. It was definitely, very wrong. And I wasn't just going to stand there and let them be wrong about something like that.

I strode up the aisle.

I heard a few gasps once they began to recognize me, probably from when I put the entire species on trial or something.

"Stop, stop, stop," I said, and at my bidding the man at the podium went mute. Picard was watching me. I could see him in my peripheral.

"That's wrong," I said. "That's all wrong. You can't just list the man's accomplishments and leave out the most important one. Now try it again. I'll help."

The man began speaking, alarmed to be doing so. It was all over his face, and yet his voice did not falter. "Of course I neglected to mention Admiral Picard's most significant accomplishment of all, that of emissary to the Q Continuum. When the Q Continuum decided to destroy humanity, Admiral Picard, then Captain Picard, singlehandedly changed their minds by impressing the great entity Q, who graciously went on to plead humanity's case. If it weren't for the Admiral, all of us, all we know here and all we have yet to know would be gone."

"Q, I think that's enough," said a voice behind me.

It was Riker. Pudgy and balding; time had treated him worse than Picard. He opened his mouth to say more, but never did, because I froze him in place. How many times I had wanted to do that…

"Go on," I said to the speaker.

"Q!" That was from Picard, who stood to his feet.

"I have no business with you," I replied without looking at him.

"Right, you don't. So be gone."

"Be gone? And let this travesty continue? No, someone should intervene. There aren't nearly enough guests here, for one." I snapped and the pews were packed with various cadets in uniform, snatched from a nearby library. "And is this a funeral or celebration?" With a flash, a thousand streamers hung from the chandeliers to the rafters to the windows. Confetti rained over the crowd. "And the speech. The speech is the thing. Once we get that right, I'll be on my way."

Picard didn't miss a beat. "Are we to believe you happened here on coincidence? That you roam the galaxy arbitrating quality?"

"Where I am concerned, yes."

Some in the audience had started to leave. Without turning, I slammed the back doors shut. The windows, too, one after the other. Pom, pom, pom. I think I made my point clear, for the shirkers shrunk back to their seats.

Picard stepped forward, spoke at lower volume. "You said this was done, Q. You said you no longer—"

"Oh I'm barely speaking to you." For I had still not even glanced at him. He had noticed.

"Look at me, Q," he growled from the stage.

It amused me how he always dared to order me. Well, Riker dared, but only after taking cues from Picard. It was even more amusing here, in this room, after what I had just done, with such a larger audience than he'd ever had on the Enterprise.

Jean-Luc Picard, still too brave for his own good.

My eyes shifted to his.

He was scowling. His age made his scowl that much more formidable; something about all the wrinkles. A single scrap of confetti had landed on his shoulder. "Please. Leave."

I folded my arms. Smiled. "No."

He seemed surprised by that answer, but like any good tactician nimbly came around. "If you wish to attend, you will attend as anyone else. You will sit, there. And let Riker go."

"And hear him wasp at me? I don't think so."

"I will wasp at you."

"And you do it so much better."

He inhaled shakily, angrily. "What do you want?"

I strolled to Riker, around him, relishing the tension and fear, all eyes on me. I tapped my finger up Riker's shoulder, his neck, through his hair then down to the other shoulder. I leaned against him and squinted at Picard.

"Isn't there a president of your little Federation? Seeing as you're the most important human in, oh, quite some time, I'm surprised he isn't here giving the speech instead of… this." I gestured to the man at the podium, who flinched away. In microseconds I located the President—on the other side of the planet, attending some soirée—and summoned him to the side of the stage. When he realized what had happened, he blanched.

"Oh you've all heard of me, have you?" I said with disappointment. More golden silence. I played with one of Riker's pips—four of them now—while Jean-Luc limped down the steps. The confetti flicked off his shoulder.

"Don't hurt yourself," I joked, but my smile fell the closer he got. He was entering my space now, and there was something about that I didn't like, something different than anyone else entering my space. I was leaning on Riker after all, and yet Picard, two feet away, felt the more palpable of a presence.

He spoke at a whisper. "I want you to leave."

I remembered what this was. What I was. I leaned even closer.

"You? You think you can ask me for anything?"

He nodded as if he had understood something I had not meant to imply. "If you wish to punish me, Q, punish me. Not these."

I raised my chin and pushed off of Riker. "Punish you?" I wanted to say, but glared instead like I was actually considering it.

Fifteen years. Fifteen years we had not spoken, had not even seen each other, and still we were stuck in the same old rut, repeating the same old game, over and over, nauseous, spent. I glanced at the streamers above, then at Riker, the President, the podium. I made a hard turn on my heels and left the room. The doors opened for me and shut behind.

He was right. Doing anything more would be punishing him, and I had not come here for him at all. He had distracted me.

There was a wet bar on the lawn outside. The bartender skittered away upon seeing me. Was I on a 'Wanted' poster somewhere? I was keenly aware that I should make my exit, that it would be the Q thing to do, but instead I poured a drink and downed it in one swallow.

The trouble was I was feeling something now, something much stronger and more permanent than a pang of sadness or a chill up the arms. And it irked me that I didn't know what it was.