=/\=
Icheb looked for Q in the mess hall during dinner hour, but there was no sign of him.
During the meal, Tom and Harry invited Icheb to come to Sandrine's with them afterwards for an impromptu pool tournament. Since Sandrine considered Icheb a "boy" who was too young to enter her establishment without "adult supervision," he accepted without hesitation. "Do you think we should invite Q?" Icheb asked.
"You can invite him if you want to, as long as he hasn't had his Q powers restored. I'd like to see what he can do on with his own hand-eye coordination and muscle control," Tom commented.
When Icheb tried to contact him through the comm system, Q didn't respond. Icheb decided to go to Q's quarters to invite him in person. As he approached Q's door, he worried a bit about what type of Q attitude he might encounter. Was he still being cooperative and friendly? Or did the captain's summons signal that something had gone wrong after all?
When Icheb initially activated Q's chime, there was no response from the occupant. Icheb knew he was in his quarters, since he'd checked via the computer prior to walking there. When he activated the chime a second time, he called out, "Q, it's me - Icheb. Are you there?"
The door swished open. "Yeah, I'm here," Q answered.
Icheb walked in, disconcerted by the sad tone of Q's answer. "Are you all right?"
"As all right as a potential Oprelian amoeba can be," Q shot back.
"I don't understand. You're doing so well."
Q gestured for Icheb to take the seat near his desk. Q remained sitting on his bunk, elbows on his knees, rubbing his hands together lightly. "The captain agrees with you. My father, not so much."
Icheb sat down heavily on the chair. "Your father was with the captain?"
"Oh, yes, he was there. Checking up on me, apparently. The captain praised my 'attitude adjustment' and the progress I'd been making in my training. My father wasn't at all impressed. She told him she liked my essay and had me read it out loud to them. When I was finished, she asked my father what he thought. He said it was 'nice.' He liked the part about the Continuum."
"But the whole essay was about the Continuum."
"Exactly. He hated it."
Icheb didn't know what to say. Maybe Q's father hadn't paid attention to the reading, but that was an indictment in itself. If he was so concerned a parent, shouldn't he have been paying attention? As demanding as Seven could be, or Captain Janeway, they actually listened to him whenever he had an issue of some kind. "Well, uh . . ." he finally managed.
"It's all right. You don't have to say anything." Q stood up and walked around to the other side of his bed. "When I saw how unimpressed he was with what the captain was saying, I made my excuses. I said I was late for a temporal mechanics lesson."
"We aren't having that lesson until tomorrow morning."
"He doesn't know that. He could if he wanted to, but he won't bother to find out. I know how he is. He's impossible to please. I came back here to my quarters when I left the ready room. The captain came here to see me after my father left. SHE knew I wasn't in a temporal mechanics lesson. She tried to make me feel better, but what's the use? If my father doesn't think I'm up to being a Q, the rest of the Continuum is going to be just as unimpressed. My next essay - if I ever get a chance to write one - is going to be entitled, 'Life as an Amoeba,' by Q Junior."
"I'm sorry, Q." Icheb didn't know what else to say. "Maybe the Continuum will let you stay here as a human, if they won't take you back as a Q."
"The captain said she'd try to convince them to let me stay here as a human, but I really want to be a Q, like my father. Can you understand that?"
"I do understand. But living on Voyager as a human is better than swimming around in a petri dish. At least you can pilot the Delta Flyer every now and then. You can come to Sandrine's and play pool with us sometimes, too. That's what I came here for, by the way. You're invited to come to Sandrine's with Tom and Harry and me to play pool. Maybe hitting a cue ball around will help you forget your troubles."
"Thanks for the offer, Icheb, but . . . hey, why not? It's better than sitting in here moping about spending eternity in 'circular city.'"
=/\=
That night, Q did seem to ignore whatever fate the Continuum would decide for him. Tom and Harry won the pool tournament, to no one's surprise, but Q assured Icheb he'd had a very good time. They sat around after it was over, and Tom regaled them with stories about his "misspent youth" hot rodding in his family's old hovercraft with a few of his friends, until he splashed it into Lake Tahoe. "It's probably still down there," Tom laughed. "I had to do all sorts of odd jobs to pay my father back for losing it."
When Harry mentioned a pool player named "Minnesota Fats," Tom explained that guys hanging out in pool halls often had nicknames. The rest of the night, they came up with humorous or outrageous names for the four of them.
The next morning, in their temporal mechanics class, Seven discussed Captain Braxton and the Federation Temporal Police. "Generally, when a time stream is changed, the old one disappears from memory. Before I came on board, Voyager was accidentally sent back to the twentieth century. Later, the ship was returned by Captain Braxton to the same place and time in the Delta Quadrant it had been when the incident began. However, the crew remembered what happened, and our EMH obtained his mobile emitter during the adventure. This technology was retrieved from a timeship that originated five centuries in the future. What reason could the Federation Temporal Police have had to allow all this to happen?"
The discussion was lively. Icheb remembered some facts about time travel from his Borg knowledge, and Q had some things to say about the subject from the Continuum's perspective. They finally decided that the mobile emitter had to be delivered to the 24th century from the 29th, but why was still a mystery. When the class was ending, Icheb remarked, "It will be best if we don't mention this to the Doctor, Seven. His ego is big enough as it is ."
Seven agreed.
=/\=
Icheb was checking relays in a Jeffries tube down in deck 14 the following morning when he heard a voice call out, "Itchy, are you in here? Itchy?"
"What can I do for you, Q-Ball?" Icheb answered, using another of the nicknames they'd come up with after the pool tournament in Sandrine's.
"I need your help." As Q descended the Jeffries tube ladder, Icheb folded up the tricorder he was using and stood up. "Remember that ion imbalance Lieutenant Paris mentioned during our lesson?" When Icheb nodded that he did, Q said, "We're going to repair it for him."
"Did you get permission?" Icheb asked.
"Well, that would ruin the surprise."
"The surprise?!"
"The captain's been encouraging me to take more initiative. I want to show her I can do things for others without being asked," Q explained.
Icheb considered the proposal for a moment before saying, "I'll help you on one condition."
"Name it."
"You won't refer to me as 'Itchy' in front of the senior officers."
With a smile, Q agreed. It was a good thing. Tom had told Icheb that he should call his friend Scratchy if Q kept calling him Itchy. Icheb thanked Tom politely, but decided he preferred the reference to a pool hall, instead of to an obscure, ancient cartoon.
=/\=
An hour later, the task was nearing completion. "I've realigned the last pair of power couplings. You can start the pre-ignition sequence," Icheb said from the rear of the Delta Flyer.
"Understood." Q flipped several switches to activate the sequence.
Icheb listened for a moment, checking the readouts on the panel and his tricorder. "I'm not detecting any ion fluctuations. We did it!" He glanced forward to Q, who was sitting in the pilot's seat, and smiled. "You can power down the engine now."
Q hit more of the controls, but instead of turning down the power, the engine revved up. Concerned, Icheb took to his feet and moved towards the front of the Flyer. "Q? What are you doing?"
Q enthusiastically responded, "You're going to love this. I once learned how to open a spatial flexure using nothing more than a deflector array."
"A 'flexure'?"
Confidently, Q told him, "It's like a tunnel through space. I'm going to open one to the Clevari system. Just wait until you see the females. They're spectacular!"
Soberly, Icheb reminded him, "We need the captain's permission to leave Voyager."
"Do you think she'd give it to us?"
"NO!"
"Then there's no point in asking," Q responded offhandedly.
"You've been doing so well," Icheb said. "Why break the rules now?"
"I'm bored."
Icheb had known Q for long enough to recognize something else was going on. He didn't want to become involved in an unauthorized joy ride in the Delta Flyer, though. "Icheb to Security."
"They can't hear you. I've dampened all outgoing communications."
Icheb started to move forward, but before he managed to reach the Flyer's Tactical station, he was stopped by a shield raised by Q.
"Just sit back, Itchy. Enjoy the ride." Q lifted the Delta Flyer from the shuttlebay floor, blasted through the doors, and flew the shuttle out of Voyager.
Although he already had a suspicion, Icheb asked, "What's the real reason you're doing this?"
"I'm getting out of here before my father can put me back in that petri dish."
"The Q are omniscient. They'll find you."
"I may not have my powers anymore, but I know lots of nooks and crannies we can hide in." Icheb suddenly stumbled when the Flyer was rocked by the application of Voyager's tractor beam. Chuckling softly, Q muttered, "They're so predictable," as he busily manipulated the shuttle's controls.
"Q, the captain isn't going to let us get away with this. Please, let's go back," Icheb implored.
"Don't worry, Itchy. I've got this." The Delta Flyer broke free of the tractor beam and sailed through the rift.
=/\=