Here we are. Fast on the heels of the last one, since I'm visiting family and there isn't much to do here but write.
As always, what Voyager did with/to the Q is being conspicuously ignored here. Oh yes, and there's a little parody of... you'll see. Entirely meant in good fun, I assure you.
With that said, I hope this explanation suffices. : ) Comments are always welcome!
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Riker sat straight up, his interest piqued. Finally, he might be getting some answers to the questions he'd been wondering about. He refrained from saying anything that might give Q the opportunity to get sidetracked again.
"Now, I'm sure you all know what a continuum generally is," Q said, still pretending to be addressing an entire class. Riker quickly glanced around to make sure he was, in fact, still the only other person in the room. "A spectrum, a continuous series of points all connected to one another. The space/time of this universe would be one example, in its own small way." He snapped his fingers, and a four-dimensional diagram of space and time sprang into being, paradoxically floating in the three-dimensional room.
Riker nodded slowly, looking at the diagram. Human senses wouldn't be able to make heads or tails of it. As it was, though, he didn't find it that hard to percieve; it was certainly much more straightforward than subspace bubbles, or the Q Continuum itself.
"Now, our Continuum was once a bit like this universe," Q went on, "although I doubt it'd be very flattered by the comparison. It had a latent consciousness, of course, because existence and consciousness are really just two ways of looking at the same thing, but it didn't always have the level of awareness it's got now. But over, well, what could be compared to time, more and more of the conscious beings in it evolved to the point where they became unified with it, and so the consciousness of the universe itself also evolved--" He paused. "By the way, you might not want to go sharing this sort of information with your mortal friends. They can't understand it the way you and I can."
"I wouldn't be so sure about that," Riker said. "A number of mortal philosophers, human and Vulcan at least, have been talking about that same sort of thing for ages."
"Oh, they talk about it, or at least throw the words around," Q said. "They've got a basic inkling that it's got something to do with becoming one with the cosmos, but they don't have a clue about how, or what that really means. Like a child who's heard of warp drive, and knows that it works by warping space somehow, but couldn't actually build one and would be likely to blow something up if he tried."
An image of Wesley popped into Riker's mind. He tried not to be amused by the comparison.
"Let me give you an example," Q said. "In a galaxy a few megaclusters over, a while ago, we-- the Q in general, that is, it was before my time-- found two species that struck us as particularly promising. One was a spacefaring humanoid species, not too advanced in metaphysical matters, but with a good grasp of technology and an interstellar government a bit like your Federation. The other was a single-celled microbe species, amazingly simple and primitive for the most part, but they already had a stronger link to the cosmic Unity than most so-called 'higher' material beings ever come close to.
"Like I said, both promising species with remarkable achievements, but they both seemed rather stalled in terms of where to go next. At least, we couldn't see them making any more evolutionary leaps in the near future. So some smartypants got the brilliant idea to stick them into symbiosis-- integrating the microbes into the humanoids' cellular structures. Guess how that turned out?"
"The microbes took over their hosts?" Riker guessed.
"No, nothing as simple as that," Q said bitterly. "The symbiosis went beautifully. The newly 'gifted' humanoids discovered how to access the Unity, sense things through it, even use it to manipulate reality. That was the problem." He sighed. "They made a religion out of it." Q spat the word 'religion' with even more vitriol than usual.
"Ah," Riker said, beginning to see where this was going.
"The next thing they decided was that there were two sides to this whole Unity thing, and each of them believed he was on the right side, and everyone he didn't like was on the wrong side." Q rolled his eyes. "Of course, this whole two-sides nonsense goes against the basic idea of a cosmic Unity in the first place, but try telling them that. Microbes or no microbes, they had no idea what 'unity' meant. Or 'balance', for that matter.
"You can probably guess the rest. They had wars over it-- nasty ones, too. They had just enough technology to make an awful mess of things, remember, and now they had this cosmic power to play with too. Next thing you know, empires falling like dominoes, planets getting blasted to rubble, the whole bit." Q frowned sternly. "And that, Mr. Riker, is why we do not go around handing out enlightenment to the unenlightened."
"Like the Prime Directive," Riker said.
Q laughed, his former serious mood instantly broken. "Maybe a bit, but we're nowhere near that stuffy about it. The way Starfleet does it, you can't even blow your nose on a pre-warp planet without committing half a dozen infractions. If we took it that seriously, we'd never be allowed to leave the Continuum." He paused, suddenly catching himself. "Oh yes, the Continuum! I was just in the middle of explaining it to you, wasn't I?"
Riker gave him a pointed look. "Why do I get the feeling you're stalling?"
"Stalling? Certainly not," Q said defensively. "Just trying to ease you into the more difficult concepts. I know that humans tend to attach high value to things like individuality and self-identity, so it might disturb you if--"
Riker didn't like the direction this was going. "Tell me, Q. Now."
"All right," Q said, "you asked for it. The Continuum is the sum total of all that is Q. All the traits, possibilities, and so forth that our universe originally contained, plus what we've seen fit to pick up since then. 'Individual' Q are arbitrarily defined regions of that totality, with no fixed boundaries. Like me... and you."
"No fixed boundaries?" Riker said, not sure what all this meant, but fairly sure he wouldn't like it when he found out. "You mean I am you?"
"Yes and no," Q said. "I'm Q, you're Q. But we're different parts of Q. The Continuum is the pool we all draw from--" he produced a bowl of water on the desk in front of him-- "and you and I are like two drops of water from that pool." He dipped both hands into the bowl, then raised them, holding a bit of water in each. "And now you know why we wanted you to join us."
Riker nodded slowly. "So that my traits, what I am... would be added to that pool."
"Exactly," Q said. "You had something we were lacking. Now that something is among the options open to all of us. But, and here's the catch..." He lowered his hands over the bowl again, letting the water drip back in. "I told you the Continuum is constantly shifting. That includes us. No fixed boundaries, after all. We slowly change, pick up new traits, lose old ones. Eventually, we aren't the people we were." He pulled another handful of water out of the bowl.
"So you're saying I'm going to become someone else?" Riker said, a cold feeling gnawing at the inside of his stomach. Q was right, this did disturb him.
"That's right," Q said, not seeming terribly concerned. "Try not to let it get to you, though. It happens to all of us. Really, when you think about it, wouldn't it get dull staying the same person for one eternity after another?" He flashed a grin. "Besides, it's a better deal than mortals get."
Riker was somewhat inclined to agree, but he wasn't entirely sure. "How long does this take?"
"Always the questions about time," Q said tiredly. "When this, and how long that, as if the Continuum was like a train that runs every hour on the hour. It happens when it happens, and when you're ready for it to happen. If it comforts you to know, though, you seem confident enough in yourself that you'll still be more or less the same person for many times what your human lifespan would have been."
"Why didn't you tell me about this before I agreed to join you?" Riker demanded.
"Because then you wouldn't have agreed," Q said smoothly. "And you wouldn't have understood. I did tell you some of it-- that you would become part of the Q, to bring us your human traits. You seemed to have some idea of what that meant, at the time."
"I might have," Riker said. "And I know that you told me about we and me being the same thing. But to be honest, I didn't know what to make of it all. What you were telling me, and what you were showing me-- I couldn't put it together."
"Of course not," Q said kindly, with a trace of condescension. "You were mortal, after all."
"And now, I'm..." Riker searched for the words to sum up what he'd been told. "A semi-individual, omnipotent, temporarily defined piece of an evolved, ascended, conscious, meta-cosmic former universe."
Q smiled in confirmation. "Or to put it simply-- a Q."
