"Captain Picard never punched me! Here I was trying to be civil and you go and hit me like that. Most people would have liked hearing that they are destined for great things. Captain Sisko was a religious icon for an entire planet! But he never found the need to punch someone simply because they called him the Emissary."

"As I remember from the academy, Sisko did punch you."

"Well, yes, I guess he did, but he only did that once. I saw him plenty of other times in which he was quite civil."

"Either way, I am not Picard or Sisko. I am Captain Blakes, and I do not like surprises."

"Did you think punching me was a very pleasant surprise? I mean I coulda been a contenda! I was one fight away from making it big! But instead some palooka knocked me out in the third round and sent me down to some rat infested dump in the ghetto."

"What the hell are you talking about? You know what, I don't want to know. Just tell me how I can get rid of you."

"That is an easy answer. If you want to get rid of me, you will have to evolve into a vastly superior being than the Q and then will me away. Until you can do that, I think I will prefer to stay. I will, however, make myself extremely useful to you and your crew."

"Really now? How exactly are you going to be able to help me?"

"For starters I can get your chief medical officer, a Dr. Amy Martin I believe, on to your ship right now. No need for her to make the trip that will undoubtedly take days; she can be here right now."

"Don't you even think…"

"Umm, how did I get here so fast? I was just boarding the shuttle to take me here and now I am here?"

"about it."

"Oh, Captain Blakes, I'm sorry for being so rude. Hello, I am Dr. Martin your new chief medical officer."

"See, Blakey-Boy, I told you I could be of at least some use to your ship. Now please, let me stay?"

At this point I gave up. I told Q that he could join my ship on the condition that he give me at least an hour to prepare for his coming aboard. In the extravagant over the top style that I will come to hate with every part of my very being, he put an hour glass on the bridge that would count the last seconds of peace this ship would enjoy one by one. I ordered Dr. Martin to go down to sickbay and begin getting used to her new work area, and I checked on the progress of Telev's modifications to the shield emitters. I found that instead of Lt. Telev working on it, my chief engineer Lt. Cmd. Erika Durant had taken over the project.

"Sorry sir, but when I asked for her help, Erika took one look at what I was doing and told me to just stand here and hand her tools."

"It was either this or me having to instruct him step by step in how to alter power distribution and the basic mechanics of confinement waves. Besides, I had to write a paper describing how this process could be conceivably done to graduate from the academy. I couldn't resist the chance to put all my ideas into practice."

"Very well, what is your progress?"

"I have managed to narrow the beam created by the generators to one meter in diameter, but I will need to cut that in half if its going to be anywhere near as effective as a phaser."

"Good, when can you have it ready for testing?"

"Hmm, I should be able to give you a practical demonstration within the hour. However, even if I can get this to within normal operating parameters of a phaser array, I can't tell you how powerful it's going to be. A shield generator was never designed to have its beam confined so much. For all I know, it might explode on the spot without ever firing a shot."

"Sir, pardon my interruption, but if I may speak freely there is something that the Commander isn't mentioning.

"Permission granted, what is he hiding?"

"I'm not hiding anything sir, I just don't think its really all that important."

"Telev?"

"There is a slight chance that if the field harmonics produced by the shield generator aren't monitored and kept within a very small range the resulting explosion might trigger every shield generator on the ship to explode. At the very least this would make us unable to raise shields until we get each and every one replaced, if there was a ship left when it was all said and done."

"The chance is extremely minute, Captain. The cascade from the explosion would have to create an energy wave with an exact wavelength. Even assuming it did, a catastrophic failure of the force fields surrounding the device would have to occur before it could reach the shield grid."

"Hmm, I trust you will take all necessary precautions to prevent that from happening."

"Yes, sir. We will advise you when it is finished."

I then decided to pay a visit to the good doctor and see how she was enjoying her new sick bay. I regret making such a blatantly stupid move. This was my first command, so I suppose I didn't know any better. Chief medical officers throughout the ages have never liked their sick bay, and Dr. Martin was certainly no exception.

"How are you enjoying your accommodations?"

"What accommodations? This entire place seems like it was designed by a deaf Ferengi! The beds are tremendously uncomfortable. The supply cabinets cannot be accessed without a level three security clearance which means that my staff has to get my permission before they can give someone something for a headache, and do you know how many minor problems show up every day in a ship this size? All that could be dealt with, but I don't even have half the equipment I need to examine my patients. Do you know how many different chemicals are involved in Betazoid telepathy?"

"I get the point doctor. What can I do to help make your sick bay run more smoothly?"

"You can start by having an engineering team add wheels or something to these scanners so that I don't have to move a badly injured patient from bed to bed just to do a thorough examination."

"Yes, doctor, I will have one sent down as soon as possible."

"Before you go, I also need a few more things."

"Yes, yes. Write all your requests down and put it on my desk. I will do all that I can to get all of your modifications completed."

I returned to the bridge expecting to be able to sit in my chair and get a chance to relax and think about the troubling times that lay ahead of me. Unfortunately, with Q there is never a dull moment. When I arrived I found him sitting in my chair wearing a uniform from the ancient Earth sport of hockey.

"Hello Blakey-Boy, I got my skates on and I'm here to play."

"What do you think you are doing? Get out of my chair and off my ship, you still owe me half an hour."

"I have been sitting here in this penalty box for so long. I can feel the ice calling me. I need to be out there with my team. I know we can beat them; you just gotta let me play. You just gotta!"

"You gave me your word that you would leave my ship alone for one hour, and I expect you to give it to me."

"Oh you humans and your reliance on such a primitive time scale. You use numbers based on such an arbitrary base of ten, and for some inane reason you use a base of sixty for your time." Now he donned the apparel of a twentieth century hippie. "You need to free yourself from the constraints of time, man. Man is like so the only species on Earth that even knows what like time is man. You need to reconnect with the Earth. Love the Earth the way it loves you. Free love!"

"Go hug a tree, Q. You told me one hour."

"Why can't they ever assign a fun captain to one of these flying death traps you call a starship?"

"One hour."

"Now, if you really would have listened carefully to me, you would have noticed that I never said a human hour. I choose to use the Naussican hour. Much shorter, but oh so much sexier."

"A Naussican hour is actually twenty-three minutes. You came seven minutes too late, so you broke your word. Now, do you really want to let me win this? You owe me another twenty-six minutes of peace."

"I don't want to wait. Here, I will take us both ahead that much time. I really want to see this shield phaser thing explode. It will be so much fun."

"Telev to Captain Blakes, we have finished the reconfigurations on the shield generator and erected the proper force fields to safeguard the ship. It is ready for the demonstration you wanted."

"I am on my way. I assume there is no way I could make you not come with me?"

"And miss this Blakey-Boy? Not for all the latinum on Ferenginar."

The journey to engineering was an extremely aggravating one. Every time someone passed us in the corridor, Q changed my outfit. I was a giant furry creature, a spider with six plush arms, a surfer, and lastly something called a Jedi Master from some truly revolting Earth science fiction called Star Wars.

"Okay Durant, have you made all the final adjustments to the device?"

"Yes sir, it is ready to go on your signal."

"Very well, proceed with the utmost caution. I do want my ship in one piece after you are done."

Q chose this time to whisper something in my ear, "You know, it isn't going to work Blakey-Boy. The device will malfunction and the chain reaction will destroy every one of your shield generators as well as critically wound half of your crew. As it will turn out, the alterations requested by your doctor could have saved many of them, but the way your sick bay is right now will cause each and every person to die. Do you know what plasma does to the body? I assure you it is not pretty. Tell them to stop."

"It will work."

"Did you just hear something, Captain? It sounded like a human male voice, but it was as if he wasn't really there."

"Telev, investigate that voice when this is done."

"What voice Captain?"

"You didn't hear that?"

"I didn't hear that Blakey-Boy. I think you are hallucinating. It happens to the best of humans from time to time. All the stress of working can take its toll."

"Computer, was there a voice in this room just now?"

"There were no auditory signals matching the description given in your area."

"It will work. Trust in yourself, Captain."

"There it was again."

"We can investigate this later, proceed with the test."

"I wouldn't do that if I was you, there is still time to back out. I really don't want to see your ship explode on you this early."

"Shut up, Q. Go ahead."

"I hope you don't say I didn't warn you."

The test commenced, and it went perfectly. If there was any problem, it was that it would too well. It would have pierced the force field if we didn't turn it off in time. Evidently the voice was correct, whoever it was.