CHAPTER NINE"Our universe awaits, and to home we must go," mused Kirk after all the Shadan representatives had left Voyager.
"Too bad they didn't get to try Klingon food," joked Anja. "Too bad I didn't get to try Klingon food."
"Would you like to? I can arrange it," Janeway offered.
"Thanks, but no thanks," said Anja. Lizzie, Hannah and Frau nodded their agreement. "That's something I'm content to leave purely to my imagination."
As the vortex formed on the viewscreen, Hannah wondered, "Will Q really give us those 'Star Trek' T-shirts?"
"If he does," Data perked up, "I can use mine as a bed for Spot."
"I never understood why you named your cat Spot," Lizzie prodded. "He doesn't even have any spots."
"It is a common human pet name," Data explained.
"Part of his quest to become more human," commented Picard.
"Precisely," added Data.
"A cat named Spot," Frau repeated. "You should have named him Schnurrbart."
"Interesting," replied Data, "the German word for 'moustache.' Perhaps a canine would be more fitted to that name."
"And Spot's a . . . cat's name?" asked Lizzie slowly.
Data did not answer.
Time passed quickly on their return voyage, each quietly jubilant at the prospect given them that nothing was impossible, and that they would soon be home. Once Deep Space Nine came into view, everyone anxiously wondered when Q would appear and send them their separate ways. Captain Janeway, especially, felt nervous.
"It's too easy," she kept repeating to herself. "I anticipated a lifetime of traveling homeward. Would Q make it as simple as this?"
The answer to this Anja kept to herself, knowing all too well that soon the Captain would wake up, in the Delta Quadrant, everything having been a dream to her, and blurry enough so that she would not remember how to reproduce the technology that brought home within her grasp. It would be like this for every participant in their odyssey, and very soon they would forget about creating artificial wormholes, deeming the feat impossible for the human mind. The computers, of course, would show no record that the events of the past few days had, in fact, occurred, and the only people who would remember the reality of it would be those shortchanged by the experience, Yugin, Qor and Quark.
As the docking clamps sealed and the airlock hissed open, the company hurried to the Promenade, not having been told, but somehow knowing that this was where they were supposed to go. Quark, it seemed, had been busy, for all his counters were covered with every sort of pie, cake, fruit, pudding, and any other food that one could imagine. He conversed with a taller, brown-headed man that everyone, all at once, recognized as Q. In a second, they were upon him, demanding.
"Send us back to our time! We did what you wanted."
"Let Voyager remain in the Alpha Quadrant."
"Send these people home! It's about time."
Q sat through all of this, silent as one who is superior and knows it, letting their statements bounce off of him like Jell-O. "Be patient," he finally chided.
"Patient indeed!" shouted someone from Janeway's crew, sending a creme pie flying through the air at Q, who disappeared before impact, allowing it to continue on its trajectory right into Data's face. The android assessed the situation, wiping strawberry creme from his eyes, and decided that the most human thing to do would be to return fire.
Thus,
the great four-front, four-crew food fight began in Quark's bar, which
had been stocked just for the occasion. The four time travelers,
who had paused just long enough to give each of their favorite characters
a pie in the face, ducked and dodged their way towards a door of shining
orange light, which they understood was intended for their return trip.
They hated to wave good-by, but each realized that they could survive with
simply a TV episode of "Star Trek," while a mere television episode of
their homes would never do. With only slight hesitation, they stepped
through the portal, one at a time, Hannah first, then Frau, Lizzie and
finally Anja, who paused for a long time after Lizzie disappeared into
the orangeness to drink in as much of the dream come to life as possible
before finally taking the plunge.
Anja jerked awake to find herself in German class, listening to one of Frau's period-long tales of her life experience. However, she soon recognized the story as the one they had just been through, and she saw that Frau, as well as Hannah and even herself, when she paused to look down at what she wore, sported identical "Star Trek" T-shirts, bearing an uncanny resemblance to something from a dream.
It
had not been a dream, of this she felt certain, but henceforth she would
have to treat it as such, for no one would believe the truth. She
didn't mind, though, realizing that even dreams were reality, sometimes.
EPILOGUE
Q placed his deck of cards, slowly, facedown on the table. He sat
enthroned within the crescent of earth's moon, observing, yet again, the
many fascinating mortals that occupied the blue-green planet's surface.
Again, something caught his eye.
"I
suppose I mustn't let boredom get the better of me," he reasoned to himself,
forming a plan to create yet another diversion from the eternity of monotony
in which he lived. In a moment he was off to Hollywood, to inspire
another universe into existence.
THE END?