Everything remained white.
If there had been a floor, walls, or a ceiling where I was (or was not), they would have all been white.
Even after I made this observation, everything continued to be white.
I would have stood, or at least sat, but I wasn't entirely sure I if I was laying down. I felt no tug of gravity in any particular direction, but I didn't seem to be floating either. I simply was, and everything was white.
A voice, its waves so strong against the white all around me that they were nearly a visible contrast to it, came from…somewhere in the white.
"Are you hurt, Mike?" the voice said, and I thought it was a pretty strange thing to say to a dead man (after all, I was fairly certain that I was dead). But it also occurred to me that I knew that voice, and that hearing a voice you're familiar with after you've just died is probably a good thing.
So I smiled a little, feeling the muscles of my face stretch out, pressing against the almost tangible white.
"Fine, I think," I said, mentally checking myself for pain. I found none, but then, that was to be expected, what with me being dead and all.
"Good. Keep talking; I'm going to try to follow your voice." It was Picard, I realized. How odd to find him here with me in the afterlife. Then I realized, he must have died too. That was rather sad, but at the same time it was a very nice thought. I could think of worse people to spend eternity around, I supposed.
"Sorry I got you killed," I said into the white. There was a second or two of silence.
"I don't think we're dead, Mike. At least, not yet."
That was a new thought. I remembered seeing the pillar of the superstructure explode before my eyes, remembered that the ship I was on was in the process of vaporizing itself and everything around it.
"Just how exactly are we not dead?" I asked. It seemed like a fair question.
"Well," came the reply, closer now, "for one thing, I'm here, and I seem to be the only other person in your otherwise secluded afterlife."
"Maybe I'm hallucinating you," I said, wondering if it were possible to hallucinate after one's death.
"Please," a new voice said, "enough with the mindless drivel."
Some of the white disappeared, and was replaced by the form of a throne.
And on that throne sat Q.
Seemingly from nowhere within the white, Picard suddenly came into view as well. We stood at the foot of Q's throne, looking askance at him for a few seconds. He seemed to be examining his fingernails, though he wore gloves. Finally he looked at us.
"You're not dead," he said. "Well, not exactly, anyway…"
"Then where are we?" Picard asked, looking around for something – anything – besides the white.
"Why, mon capitaine, you are where every drone seeks to be but can never get to. You are inside the mind of the Queen."
His words fell like lead on us, cryptic as they were. A flood of thoughts rushed into my head, clearing up the haze that I had been in. I was still alive – we were still alive. Somehow, we had been spared sudden death.
"What about Earth? Everyone else?" Picard asked.
"All gone now," he said simply. "Replaced with the Borg idea of perfection." Both Picard and I sank to our knees. The moment we had both feared had come, and while we had survived it, we had still lost the battle.
"Oh get up!" Q said, interrupting our sorrow. "Come on now, you've done the hardest part, which is getting here. Everything has gone exactly as planned."
"What?" Picard said. "What do you mean? Do you mean that you knew that Omega was going to be a success?" Q nodded. Picard cried out. "Then why, Q?! Why let all those people die?"
Q stood from his throne and began pacing between us.
"Think back, Jean-Luc. That temporal anomaly problem I gave you. What did you learn from it?" He stared at Picard, who fumbled for several seconds before answering.
"You…you taught us to think outside the normal parameters of time."
"Yes," Q said, prodding. "More specifically…" he said. I spoke up.
"You taught them that time can flow backwards as well as forwards."
"Precisely," Q said. "And now I'm telling you that it can flow in a circular pattern as well, or back and forth, or in pretty much any direction it wants. Cause and effect is merely a poor description for a completely misunderstood science, mon capitaine. Believe it or not, it's actually better to say that everything happens for a reason, because it's a more accurate way to look at it."
"I don't follow," Picard said.
"Nothing new there," Q replied. "Look, Picard, Omega had to succeed because you had to end up here so that it will never succeed. Does that make sense?"
Both of us shook our heads no. Q smiled.
"I thought not." He sighed. "I've waited a long time to have to say this, Jean-Luc. My powers are almost completely gone now. You've noticed it happening, and you saw it culminating with the struggle back on the cube. The Queen was draining the power of the Q Continuum, but the fact is that this is the moment in history when we're supposed to get weaker." He peered first at Picard, then at me, then back at Picard. Seeing our blank looks, he threw up his hands and gave an exasperated sigh.
"We're being born," he said.
"What?" I replied, as if I had not just heard the words come out of his mouth.
"This is our birth, the birth of the Q Continuum. From here, we will exist into the future and into the past. We will exist so far into the past, in fact, that in our final act in that temporal direction, we will some day cause the birth of the Borg by casting them off of their world and onto a random planet that we won't even have taken the time to investigate first.
"In the middle of the fight with the Queen, I used the very last of my strength to bring you here, Picard. As of this moment, I and the rest of the Q are completely powerless."
"So why am I here?" I asked. Q looked at me, smirking.
"Well, if you believe in fate, then that's probably the best answer you'll find. After all, you triggered the device, so it only stands to reason that you would be the first to experience the effect of Omega, an effect so strong that it brought you here with us."
"Q," Picard said, "just exactly why did you bring me here?" Q stopped pacing, clasping his hands in front of him.
"Because," he said, "I need to you to finish what you started. You see, in the grand scheme of the universe, the Q are the opposing charge to the Borg. They represent a skewed kind of perfection, and we represent the harsh reality. We are a balance for them. Just as their birth will some day be the undoing of us, our birth must now be the undoing of them. Of course, the difference between us and them is that they only have the option of existing in one temporal direction. We will go on, both into the past and into the future, possibly without end. Who knows?"
"This is all extremely confusing," Picard said, "but that aside, what do I need to do?"
"It's simple," Q said in his usual condescending tone. "You're inside the mind of the Queen now, and you have unlimited power. Destroy that mind, and you destroy the Borg."
"But she'll just come back again," I said. "She always does."
"No," Q said. "Her body comes back. That is not the same thing. The mind that body carries has survived since the beginning of the Borg. Only by destroying it will you be able to finish this, and return your universe – to say nothing of all the other universes – to normal."
"How do I do it?" Picard asked. Q laughed. Not a mere chuckle, either. No, he laughed for at least a full minute, as if Picard had said something so funny that, every time he tried to straighten up, he would remember again and double back over. Finally, wiping tears from his eyes, he was able to calm himself.
"Mon capitaine," he said. "You are inside the mind of the Queen. You have the power of Omega at your fingertips. Just…do it," he said. Picard looked puzzled, but turned toward the whiteness. He raised his hands slightly, as if about to cast some sort of spell, but then dropped them again, looking like he felt foolish.
"Borg Queen," he said in an authoritative voice, "this is Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the Enterprise. Show yourself!"
The white peeled back again, this time to reveal a gigantic face. It was not the face of the Borg Queen as we had known her. No, this was a fixture of the grotesque and macabre, a rotting corpse of a face with things crawling through and around the spaces where skin should have been. This was how, deep down inside of herself where she thought no one could see, the Queen saw her ancient self.
The face radiated hatred at us, particularly at Picard, who by this time had shrunk back from the horrifying image a few paces. It opened its mouth, revealing two rows of jagged, broken yellow teeth. I realized that this was not merely a visual illusion; I could smell her breath. It smelled of thousands of years of rotting decay.
"You!" the ancient voice creaked out of her like a rusty hinge. "What are you doing here?!"
Picard held his ground now, and even stepped forward at the face.
"I am here to kill you!" he screamed at the face. It went pale, as if suddenly realizing that it had no possible chance of escaping what was about to happen.
"Go away!" it shrieked, the fear etching across its sickening face. Picard kept stepping forward at it, driving it back with every step. He shouted each word slowly now.
"I…am…Locutus…of…Borg…" the shrieking became louder now.
"No!"
she screamed. "Go away!"
"Resistance…is…not…futile!"
"Leave me alone!" Still the horrendous screaming.
"I…want…you…to…die!" he shouted, holding the final word out as a scream until all the air had left his lungs, and he collapsed to his knees.
The shrieking reached its peak, the sound so terrifyingly loud that it vibrated my entire body as I watched. Slowly, the face that represented the ancient mind of the Queen began to split itself into pieces. The pieces separated slowly at first, and then with her final scream they exploded into dust and disappeared.
Picard sat on his knees, struggling for air. I went to him, placing a hand on his shoulder. He waved me off, indicating that he would be fine. There was a sound behind us, and we both turned to see a bright light glowing on the throne. Finally, it disappeared, and all that was left was Q. He smiled wanly.
"See, that wasn't so hard, was it?" he said. Then he stretched his arms out as if he had just been awakened from a deep sleep. Energy crackled along his fingertips as he did.
"We…we did it?" I asked, looking at Picard. He was dazed, too.
"Yes, you took care of the pesky Borg problem, and in the process, you helped found the Q Continuum. That must make you awfully proud!" He stood up suddenly, walking over to Picard and placing a hand on his shoulder.
"I guess this means that in a way, you're now my dad, mon capitaine," he said with a completely serious face. I expected Picard to get annoyed, but he was still too shocked by what had just happened.
"So that's it?" he said. "No more Borg?"
"No more Borg," Q replied. "You've done your duty."
"Then where are we now?" I asked. Q looked at me, then looked around at the still-white nothingness.
"Oh, this?" he said. "It's nothing; just a place I like to come to and hide out from time to time."
"Then we can return to our ships?" Picard asked, hopeful. "Everything is back to normal?"
"As normal as your species is ever going to get, I'm afraid," Q said gleefully. He snapped his fingers, and we were gone from the horrible whiteness.
