NEW: VOY "West: Your Possible Pasts" PG-13 J, Q 4/6
Alara Rogers
When time resumed, Janeway became aware that she was warm, and
something was flowing into her like liquid light pouring directly into
her veins, making her body expand behind her skin and fill with
vitality. Somewhere, someone was quietly moaning in sensuous
pleasure, and at moments Janeway could feel that pleasure, as if it
was a patch of sunlight on the river and she was on a moored boat that
kept floating into it for moments at a time. But it wasn't her
pleasure; even at the moments she felt it, she felt a keen awareness
that someone else was feeling it, that the thrilling bits of ecstasy
that darted in and out of her consciousness weren't hers, but were
coming in... through the light in her veins? Something in her blood.
Someone else's blood. She was...
She became conscious of where she was. She was fully dressed, curled
on someone's lap as if she were a sleeping child, and her head was
resting against someone's chest. Someone's naked chest. Someone's
naked, *female* chest. In shock and embarrassment, Janeway jerked
fully awake, to find herself sitting on Amanda Rogers' lap.
The Q was naked, laying back against a couch, and had apparently been
holding Janeway nestled against her body while Janeway slept. Her
long blond hair draped over the arm of the couch, where she was
resting her head on a pillow. As Janeway got to her feet, Amanda made
a complicated gesture with her hands, almost spinning them around each
other, and she was suddenly dressed as a Federation civilian doctor,
in a tight light blue jumpsuit with black boots, and a white lab coat
over it, a medical tricorder and emergency hypo kit attached to her
belt.
"What's going on?" Janeway managed, face flaming with embarrassment.
"You ran out of energy," Amanda said. "q and Junior thought it best
to call me in and have me feed you, both because I'd be more adept at
a fine-tuned energy feed without hurting you than most Q would be, and
to avoid stepping on human sexual taboos any more than necessary."
She grinned, and sat up. "Q would have been just as skilled at
controlling the feed as I am, but q suspected there was a very real
possibility that you'd rather have your existence cease than give him
a thrill."
"Give him... a...?"
"Providing energy to another Q is a sexual act, for us," Amanda said,
her tone totally matter of fact. "But as the only other heterosexual
female in the entire Continuum, I can promise you that while I have no
control over whether or not it felt good, I didn't actually take it as
anything other than a necessary medical treatment." She smiled
slightly.
Janeway blinked. "I'm not a Q," she said, focusing on that part and
trying to ignore any other implications of what Amanda had said.
"No, but for a moment you were," Amanda said. She drew her legs under
her on the couch, sitting with one folded down and one up with her
knee near her head, and she leaned her chin and folded arms on that
knee. "We're not like humans or Vulcans. I hate the analogy, but the
closest thing to what we are that you're familiar with is the Borg...
not that we're like the Borg. We keep our individuality and we don't
bring anyone in by force. But we aren't defined by our, well,
genetics, or our physical shape or biology... if you can talk about
biology for noncorporeals. What defines a Q is the ability to draw on
the Continuum for power. I was born with that ability even though I
was born biologically human, so I have always been a Q. There are
five other Q who were born mortal and who were given the ability to
draw on our power, and Will Riker almost became number six."
"And I'm a Q because I drew power from the Continuum? *How?*"
"You're not a Q, no. You don't have the power permanently. But for a
moment you were like a Q. You see, you're made of Continuum energy,
the same as the rest of us. You're just made of less of it."
"I'm made of what the Q are made of?"
Amanda sighed. "This is hard to explain. Think of a hologram."
"Okay."
"Holograms can't exist outside a holodeck or holo-emitter set. They
can be sentient -- you'd know that better than most people -- but
their consciousness is housed in coherent light, and outside of
projectors for that coherent light, they can't exist. Matter, what
you used to be made of, cannot exist outside a universe that supports
the physical laws that hold matter together."
"Like the biomimetic copies of us," Janeway said. "Or the Monorhans."
"The Monorhans are a better example; the biomimetic copies of you
could have survived indefinitely if they hadn't been exposed to
radiation that wouldn't have affected your biology. But the Monorhans
simply couldn't exist outside their own system. Those who went
through your transporters were reconstructed in a form that could
exist under the primary laws of physics as well as the laws in
Monorhan space, like you could, but those that weren't transported
simply dissolved." She unfolded her legs and stood up. "The
difference between you and a Q like I was when I came to the Continuum
is that a Q has been granted the access to power needed to leave the
Continuum and reconstruct ourselves in matter. Continuum energy
doesn't exist in your universe; we literally cannot leave without
reforming ourselves into something that *does* exist in your
universe. And when Q brought you here, she didn't give you that
ability. But since you had the knowledge of how you had traveled
through the edges of the Continuum when you were an amphibious
sapient, Queria was able to grant you the ability to draw small
amounts of power to travel freely within the Continuum. And since you
have the memories of manipulating the strings as the Nacene do, from
when you traveled with the Nacene you called Phoebe, you now have the
ability to draw power from the Continuum to manipulate the Continuum.
You always had the ability to alter the metaphor you *perceive* the
Continuum with, but now you actually have some ability to literally
affect the Continuum."
"I hardly spent any time at all manipulating the strings. And the
power was given to me artificially. I only had it for moments, and
when I lost it I lost all knowledge of how to use it. Phoebe was just
demonstrating to me how easy, and tempting, it was for the Nacene to
create such enormous damage to our space."
"Yes, but when Q gave you back the memories, *all* of the experiences
were recorded in your mind permanently... you no longer have a human
brain to limit what you're able to remember. Things you couldn't have
grasped if the structure of your brain was still humanoid -- like Warp
10 transit, for example -- you understand, now that you're given back
the memories of the moments you understood them."
"So... because I had these experiences, and now I can remember them...
now I've become a Q?"
Amanda shook her head. "If you were a Q, you wouldn't have fainted.
You need vital energy, the energy that fuels your existence, in order
to summon dynamic energy, the type of Continuum energy that gives us
our powers. We, and you, are made of static energy -- energy that
takes a shape, energy that behaves more like a plasma state of matter
than like the energy in your universe -- and static energy radiates
vital energy, fueling you. Because you're a representation of a human
consciousness, not a Q consciousness, you are made of a lot less
static energy than a Q, and therefore have a lot less vital energy.
So when you used that energy to open a channel to the dynamic
Continuum energy all around you, you used up your own life force. If
I hadn't restored you, you might have died; static energy disperses
without vital energy to bind it into a shape."
This was a representation of someone's house, in the efficient but
homey style common on colony worlds where resources were low. Janeway
went to the window. It was a bright, sunny day outside, looking out
over a field of riotous purple flowers everywhere, on reddish stalks.
"And that's why people keep telling me I can't leave the Continuum
because I'm dead. The thing that I'm made of, now that my matter-
based body has been destroyed, is essentially the same thing that Q
are made of, but I don't have enough of it to be able to reconstruct
myself in matter and go to my universe. Is that correct?"
"Yes, basically."
She turned, angrily. "So tell me why Lady Q *did* this to me!"
"Gave you life?" Amanda sounded sincerely puzzled.
"Gave me *this* life. I know you Q have the ability to make matter at
will. She could have reconstructed me a matter-based body identical
to my old one. Instead she brought me here, in a form that can't
leave the Continuum. She didn't have to give me a new life at all;
she *chose* to do this. She chose to resurrect me in a form that
traps me here. *Why?*"
Amanda shrugged. "I don't know her motives."
"I didn't know the Q could keep secrets from each other."
"They're all very good at keeping secrets from *me,*" Amanda said.
"I'm not the Q you ought to be asking. But I'm not sure anyone knows
what Q's motives are, anyway. There's something she knows that she
doesn't seem to be sharing... and yes, that's possible, it's just not
easy to do."
"I'm sorry." Janeway took a deep breath. "I shouldn't be shouting at
you; I'm grateful for your help, and I know you probably know less
than most of the others. But I'm just getting tired of secrets. I've
just learned that I had three children, and no one will tell me where
they are or what happened to them, except that the Continuum
identified them as... proto-Powers? I assume that means something
like Kes, on the verge of becoming noncorporeal?"
"That's usually what it means, yes," Amanda said.
"Right. I'm told they don't want to talk to me, but I'm not even
allowed to know where they *are.* I can't send a message home to tell
my family and friends that I'm not really dead, and no one will tell
me why not, except to repeat that I *am* dead. And I don't even know
why I'm here. Lady Q spoke as if she was saving me for Q's benefit,
but I've met Q precisely once since Lady Q brought me to the
Continuum, and he seemed to think that Lady Q has no concern for his
personal feelings. Mostly I seem to be babysitting q-ling and
exploring the Continuum. That's not exactly the grand destiny Lady Q
implied."
"I know why you're not allowed to tell your friends and family that
you're not dead."
"Oh? Are you allowed to tell me?"
"It's because you are dead." Amanda grinned at Janeway's expression.
"Sorry. But I'm kind of serious. Embracing the belief that there
*are* no supernatural, benevolent beings overseeing humanity and
protecting you was considered a major step in your cultural evolution,
a necessary part of making you capable of what you've achieved over
the last three hundred years. So what happens if people find out that
a human was resurrected from the dead by incomprehensibly powerful
nigh-omnipotent entities?"
"We already know the Q exist," Janeway argued. "My people aren't
about to start worshipping you just because they know you brought me
back."
Amanda sighed, and joined Janeway at the window. "When I first
embraced my power, I stopped a reactor from overloading on Tagra IV,
and I cleaned up their ecosystem and restored their planet to an
unpolluted state. They had already come to understand how their
actions caused the damage to their planet, and they *had* been working
to try to reverse that on their own. It's been only ten years, and
there are politicians and lobbyists on Tagra IV who are arguing that
the problem wasn't that bad, that the protocols they've put in place
to keep the planet from being polluted again cost too much, and that
the goddess of mercy -- who no one seriously believed in, except as a
metaphor, before I took action -- will protect their world from
disasters if they only have faith. Guess who they think the goddess
of mercy is."
"They think you're her."
"Yes. I get prayers from Tagra IV a lot. 'Amanda', which obviously
wasn't even a Tagran name before I did what I did, is now the most
popular girl's name and the 23rd most popular boy's name on the
planet. Several cults of the goddess of mercy -- who used to be named
Rion -- have sprung up, and about half of them include the story of
how she incarnated as a human girl and returned to Tagra IV in its
hour of greatest need. I just did *one thing*, and now about a third
of the Tagrans believe that I'm hanging around their planet, ready and
willing to do it again. And these were Federation citizens,
technologically and culturally advanced people. Do you think it can't
be done to humanity?"
"I think Starfleet, at least, knows better. We've encountered many,
many advanced alien species who could be mistaken for gods."
Amanda shook her head. "There's a man who embodies the 24th century
human, and your ideals. He's compassionate, intelligent,
sophisticated, a leader who truly believes in human self-determination
and peaceful coexistence with other races and that humans need to
accomplish things for themselves. And three times, in moments of
despair and terror, he has called on the Q, mentally, begging for help
in a manner that's completely indistinguishable from prayer. Despite
the fact that he's seen a Q in human form whining about having a bad
back."
"You're talking about Captain Picard."
"I am. Yes."
"Captain Picard might have reason to believe Q might aid him. Calling
out for an acquaintance who has the ability to save you and might
choose to exercise it isn't the same as calling on a god. Many
people, in moments of despair and terror, call on their mothers or
fathers, and they don't believe their parents are gods. Captain
Picard calling to Q would be a lot more likely to work than calling to
his mother would."
"Right. But Captain Picard is also more aware than anyone except you
of the limitations of the Q and the reasons we can't really be relied
on for pretty much anything, and he knows better than to trust Q, and
he did it anyway. What would someone like your mother, who's never
met the Q, do if we brought you back to her?"
"I don't think my mother would start worshipping anyone."
"Maybe not. But that's what they're worried about. Resurrect a well-
known, heroic figure who's been in the news in the Federation a lot,
whereas there's been relatively little news about the Q -- I'd
certainly never heard of them before I learned that I was one -- and
it could set back your cultural evolution and set up your people to
start forming cults around worshipping us. It's the kind of thing
that needs to be handled carefully, and it's not Q's specialty; she
usually goes among mortals impersonating them, not as a goddess. She
may not want the hassle."
Janeway sighed. "Well, if it's related to your equivalent of the
Prime Directive and your unwillingness to tamper with my people's
culture, I suppose I can understand it. I still don't *accept* it,
because I think you're wrong about humans and about the Federation in
general, and I don't think the danger is as great as you do... but at
least you're trying to do the right thing." She looked around
herself. "Where am I? I was unconscious when I was brought here,
wasn't I?"
Amanda nodded. "Junior and q brought you to me. They've been waiting
for you outside."
<hr>
"Outside", which wasn't a bright sunny day in a field of purple
flowers at all, but a cool, crisp autumn day on an indistinct New
England university campus with quaint old buildings covered in ivy,
she found q and Junior waiting for her, both dressed in late 20th
century prep school costumes. Her own outfit had changed accordingly
as well. Annoyed, Janeway concentrated and replaced the blouse and
pleated skirt with her Starfleet uniform.
"Feeling better?" q asked.
She nodded. Junior whistled. "Aunt Kathy, that was *impressive.* I
never thought I'd see a human actually wreck a structure in the
Continuum. Q is going to be so pissed off when he looks up from his
research and sees what you did to his workspace."
"How much damage did I *do?* I thought all I damaged was the
sidewalk."
"You very nearly blasted a hole in his wall. Well, really, you very
nearly warped a hole in the structure of the space of his pocket
dimension, but y'know, same thing."
Janeway took a deep breath. "I shouldn't have done that."
"It was awesome!" Junior protested.
"I shouldn't have let my temper get the better of me. I just... I
don't expect better of a Q I barely know than to perform experiments
on me and my crew. It's what you do. But he did it to my
*children*... after I left them behind, because I'd lost all my
memories and I couldn't remember that they were sentient. And for all
I know, they blame me for what he did, and that's why they don't want
to see me, but I don't even know where they are, and he refused to
tell me, and no *other* Q is willing to tell me..."
"I know where they are," q said. "They're at the university. One of
them's in a class I was auditing before I decided it was really too
basic for me."
Janeway turned her head to stare at the young entity. (Young in
relative terms, anyway, she supposed.) "They're at the *university?
*"
"Well, where else would they be?" q began to walk away. "Come on.
I've got places to go."
Junior and Janeway both followed after her. "I'm afraid I've never
been exactly clear on what the university *is*," Janeway said. "Why
do omniscient beings need to go to a university anyway?"
"It's not about what you know," q said. "It's about how you *think*
about what you know. How it all fits together. Modes of perception,
ways of looking at the universe. Ethics. And most of the beings who
go aren't even as close to omniscient as we Q are; the university was
created for the benefit of the Q, but I'm actually the last Q still
going, unless I can get Amanda or *this* guy--" she punched Junior on
the shoulder, lightly, which made him grin goofily – "to come with
me. Right now my fellow students are all Powers, Lesser Powers or
proto-Powers."
"How many of them could there be in the universe who would want to be
trained by the Q?" Janeway asked skeptically.
"You'd be surprised. For one thing, anyone who attends Q University
gets access to the Continuum database. We have more comprehensive
information about the entire universe and more density of analysis
than any other Species of Power. *Lots* of beings want a piece of
that action."
"So the Q are... the *most* powerful of the beings of power in the
universe?"
"Yes," Junior said promptly. "Did you doubt it?"
q shot him a *look*, and he grinned sheepishly. To Janeway she said,
"It depends on how you look at it. The Prophets of Bajor, for
instance, have no comprehension of linear time, but that means they
aren't at all bound to a linear time dimension, whereas the Continuum
has its own linear time we are all bound to, even though we can move
freely in your time. The Douwds have no central authority they're
tied to, and can't be weakened by being cut off from a power source.
The Vash'ta are a full uni-mind and can act a lot faster than the
Continuum, since they don't have the levels of internal debate we do.
Oh, and yeah, we had a civil war. Lots of them think that
automatically makes them superior to us." She sighed. "The war really
hurt our prestige. Enrollment dropped tremendously during and after
the war, and it's never really come back to what it was."
"So beings like... Kes, for example. If you had brought her to your
University, she wouldn't have gone mad and attacked us the way she
did?"
q studied Janeway for a moment. "You never did get those memories,"
she said. "Makes sense, I guess. You were unconscious at the time,
so what's to remember? And then no one explained anything to you,
because Kol's repairs wouldn't have taken otherwise."
"Kol?"
"Kes's son. Also, my roommate; also, the guy who saved the universe
after you managed to almost get it destroyed."
Janeway stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. "All right, I think
that needs explaining."
"The memories you just got? About the Nacene, and the Monorhans, and
the Key? You ended up in a coma, and things went on around you, and
when they were all done and the universe was saved, Kol fixed your
brain, but told your crew to keep quiet about all of it because
otherwise you might suffer a relapse." She grinned. "Of course, that
wasn't the real reason. Just remembering that bad things happened to
you never stopped you before. It was because Phoebe gave you too much
information; the knowledge you gained from her on the nature of the
strings, and more importantly how to manipulate them, could have been
dangerous in the hands of a human, and if your crew had managed to jog
your memory about any of it, you might have remembered all of it."
"But Q's given me those memories back now."
"You're in the Continuum now. You're not exactly a danger to your
surroundings anymore. Kind of the difference between a kitten in a box
full of mice and a kitten in a house full of humans."
Well. That wasn't the most flattering analogy, but at least she was a
kitten now and not a cockroach or something, like the Q responsible
for Tom's and her transformation had treated her. "This has something
to do with Kes? Kes was long gone from the ship by the time this
happened."
"Sure, but she wasn't *dead*. See, the Monorhan god, the Light, had
gone off to Ocampa after creating the Monorhans and building the
array. Well, first he came here, to the university, and *then* he went
to Ocampa, where his fellow Nacene were being their usual
irresponsible selves. After studying with the Q, he'd actually
figured out that doing anything you want, just because you can, is a
bad idea."
"I'd never really noticed that philosophy being the hallmark of the
Q," Janeway said dryly, although she remembered thinking during her
adventures with the Nacene that even the Q were more responsible than
they were.
"You hang out with the wrong Q." q looked at Junior again, who had the
grace to look slightly embarrassed. "Anyway, he fell in love with an
Ocampa -- a general named Lia. One of the Nacene in Exosia sent your
Doctor to Ocampa to occupy the body of Lia's chief adjunct--"
"Wait, what?"
"Well, when you opened the gateway to Exosia, photonic energy was
drawn in, and since he was sentient photonic energy, he got pulled
into Exosia. So she sent him back in time to kill the Light, but he
figured out that he was backing the wrong side when he realized that
the Light was in love with Lia, also that the Caretaker and Suspiria
were on the side he'd been sent to help and he *knew* what they'd done
to Ocampa."
"What does any of this have to do with Kes, though?"
q frowned at her. "You're very impatient."
"We like her that way," Junior said.
"Lia was dying," q said. "She and the Light wanted to have a child, an
Ocampan-Nacene hybrid who wouldn't have the limitations of the Nacene
and would be able to free the Exosian Nacene from being enslaved to
the strings. But she wasn't going to live long enough to carry a
child. So the Light read your Doctor's mind, noticed Kes in his
thoughts, and called her through time to merge with Lia. Kol – my
roommate -- ended up as the child of *two* Ocampan women and the
Light. There was only one Ocampan body involved, of course, but on a
psionic level he's as much Kes' child as Lia's or the Light's."
"So Kes was sent back in time."
"Well, sent, went, hard to make the distinction. So the Q took Kol to
the university to study, but he racked up some pretty serious gambling
debts and took off to try to make them up at exactly the wrong time,
so Q grabbed your Tom and Harry and took them off to look for him.
Which is how I met them; they stopped by my place at the university to
look for him, and when I told them where he went, Q was going to send
your guys to the casino to go look for him on their own. I figured I'd
tag along and help them out; Kol was my friend, and I didn't want to
see him lose his chance to do what he'd been born to do just because
he liked gambling just a little too much, and since Q couldn't go I
was pretty sure that a couple of mortals weren't going to get anywhere
on their own."
"Wait, Q sent Tom and Harry to a casino for... what? Omnipotent
beings? Noncorporeal beings? And he sent them on their *own?*"
"It wasn't like he could go. Q's been banned from that casino for
millennia."
"Do I want to know why?"
"Cheating, of course," q said. "What else would it be?"
Janeway could think of all sorts of ways Q could theoretically have
created trouble at a casino for powerful beings, but decided not to
say anything.
"Hey, no one ever proved anything," Junior said defensively.
q rolled her eyes. "No one *needed* to. Just because no one can
figure out *how* he warped probability without anyone being able to
see him do it doesn't mean it wasn't obvious that was what he was
doing."
"All right. So you, Tom and Harry went to the casino?"
"Right, and we recovered Kol, and he opened the gateway to Exosia
again to let the Nacene pass on to a new dimension, where hopefully
they wouldn't cause quite as much trouble. Kes went with him, but she
was attacked by Phoebe, in Exosia, after the rest of the Nacene had
left. She was joined with Lia at the time, and if they ended up
trapped in Exosia, Kes would be able to get out, eventually, but Lia
couldn't. So she separated herself from Lia and transported Lia out,
defeated her enemy, and got stuck in Exosia for what was by your terms
a couple of years. Lia, meanwhile, couldn't handle the damage she'd
taken; she went crazy with Kes' memories, thought she *was* Kes, and
attacked you folks."
"And no one told me about any of this because... Kol told them not
to?"
"Right. So when you woke up, you folks were heading into a region of
space that was lightless for many, many light-years; when Monorha was
destroyed and the Monorhans fled to Exosia, all the photonic energy
was pulled in as well, which included all the local stars. And you
were depressed and moody because of the stresses you'd recently been
under, like having your brain burned out and nearly dying of it, but
you didn't know the reason for any of it."
Janeway took a deep breath. Now she knew where that part of her
memory fit in. "And Kol didn't want me to remember because I'd
learned too much?"
"Uh-huh. Quite aside from the trouble you personally could have
caused with that knowledge when you were still corporeal, you were
fighting the Borg every other week, and if there was any possibility
that you might be assimilated, it was important to make sure the
*Borg* didn't get what you'd learned. But now..." she shrugged.
"There's no harm in it. At least I'm guessing Q decided there's no
harm in it, because he decided to give you your memories back."
"I'm pleased to see you all assess risk so carefully before doing
things that could endanger the universe," Janeway said.
q grinned. "We can usually fix our mistakes. But are you starting to
understand why you can't just go back home?"
"I don't see why I couldn't have gone back home *before* Q started
giving me my memories back. Or why I still can't; surely, if my
memories are dangerous, you Q could remove them."
"Good luck getting my dad to agree to that," Junior said with a
snort. "He *hates* wiping out people's memories."
"I just had the best idea ever," q said. She stopped in the middle of
the path they were walking, right in front of an ivy-covered brick
building with a high cornice roof, to face Janeway. "I can't do it
right this minute with exams coming up, but I'd already planned I was
going to throw a party as soon as they're over."
"And why is a party the best idea ever?" Janeway asked her, amused.
At times she sounded as young as she appeared.
"Because I have every right to invite Tom and Harry to my party, given
that we had that adventure together, plus I dated Harry. I--"
"Yeah, what's he got that I haven't got?" Junior interrupted,
aggrieved.
"I didn't change his diapers," q shot back. "And his father is not my
big brother."
"The entire Continuum is your big brother."
"Almost the entire Continuum is your dad's big brother, which makes
you everyone's nephew. So I think you're out of luck until your
sister grows up."
"What sister?" Junior asked, while Janeway was left wondering why a
relationship with one's sister would be better than a relationship
with one's nephew.
"*Anyway*, I can invite them. And if you'll take a few classes at the
university -- which, I'm being brutally frank here, you really need to
do anyway -- I can invite *you*. And I can invite your kids, because
they're in some of my classes. So you can tell Tom and Harry that
you're alive, more or less, and you and Tom can have a big family
reunion with your kids, and I can demonstrate to Harry that I've
learned how to have sex with mortals without accidentally killing
them." It was a good thing Janeway wasn't drinking anything, because
she would have choked.
"Rub it in, why don't you," Junior groused. "*I* never accidentally
killed any mortals I was having sex with."
"Because your mom took you on all those no-powers roleplaying
campaigns and your dad is the second-biggest mortal-loving pervert in
the Continuum. But you should come to my party too. I know a cute
Douwd I can hook you up with, and they're *almost* like Q."
Junior sighed. "It's not the same."
Abruptly they were in front of the door to the building. "Okay,
Admiral, this is your stop," q said.
Janeway blinked. "Excuse me?"
"You want to get invited to my party, don't you?"
"I don't recall actually agreeing to anything."
"Well, if you want me to arrange a meetup with you, and Tom and Harry,
and your kids, you need some training. And if you ever want to have
any hope of being let out of the Continuum, same thing. Because now
that you have an understanding of how to manipulate Continuum energies
and travel instantaneously through the Continuum, you can't be let out
without supervision unless you get training."
So it had been a trap after all. She felt sudden rage at Q, who had
*promised* her that his gift contained no hidden strings, no
entrapments, no tests. The whole thing had been a ploy to push her
toward becoming... whatever it was the Q wanted her to become. Q
pretended to have no interest in Lady Q's agenda any more, but they
had to be colluding somehow. Just as Queria was colluding, by giving
her the ability to travel at will within the Continuum. They were all
trying to turn her into something she wasn't, force her into whatever
the destiny Lady Q claimed for her was.
"And if I don't want to jump through the hoops the Q are laying out
for me?" she said in a hard but quiet voice.
"No skin off my nose," q said. "But I can't invite you to my party if
you don't go to the University for training."
"Come on, Aunt Kathy," Junior said. "It's not a bad thing, to learn
how to control yourself, is it? I mean, you thought self-control was
a good lesson for *me* to learn."
"It's not self-control I need to learn," Janeway said sharply. "You
knew how to control your powers; you just didn't know how to control
your impulsive desires to use them. If I *have* abilities that I
never asked for, abilities that make me dangerous... I would rather
simply have them removed."
"That's your call," q said. "I'm not the boss of you, so I'm not
involved one way or another. Just saying... if you want to get a
message home, or see your children, I *think* you're going to have
better luck going through me and my party than you are getting Q to
send you anywhere." She meant Lady Q. It never stopped being
unnerving to Janeway that here in the Continuum, she always knew
exactly who was being discussed when any Q said "Q". Or, for that
matter, that she could hear that q used a lowercase letter for her
name. The *sounds* she heard weren't any different, so how could she
tell?
"Fine," Janeway snapped, and pushed the door open.