Q-VERSE: GENESIS

Rated PG-13 for violence and language

by RJB

DISCLAIMER: Star Trek and all its various series are a copyright of Paramount Pictures. I don't own them, but this is only non-profit fan fiction. No money is involved and no infringement is intended.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is the first story in a series that's meant to encompass all five Star Trek series and just about everything from the Trek Universe but the kitchen sink. (If you see a replicator fly past, don't be surprised.) Like my "X-Men Eternity" stories, it deals with alternate realities and timeline-hopping, and also echoes the structure of the X-Men “Age of Apocalypse” event. Incidentally, if you're waiting for more “Ultimate X-Men,” it's coming soon. Sorry for the delay.

This story contains SPOILERS, especially for the last two movies, so if you hate that sort of thing, be wary.

1

"Remember the time I almost got Picard to destroy humanity?"

Q Continuum
Somewhen

The being who would have been recognized by Starfleet records as "Q" chuckled to himself as he recalled his more notorious antics. "Now that was a good day..."

The other being, who wouldn't have been known as Q although he'd held the name many eons longer than his colleague, managed to dredge up a smile for the thousandth retelling of this particular story. It was not an easy thing for him to do, and he'd once created a constellation with a stray thought.

"Yes, yes, it was. You've never lacked for imagination, Q."

A certain amount of literary license is required to convey their surroundings properly: Picture everything, all at once. Now forget most of it and concentrate on that tiny sliver of everything which the human brain is able to perceive, then superimpose that sliver on a place beyond time with no physical form or particular order to its composition. When you've achieved the perfect symmetry between everything and nothing, you'll understand the Q Continuum.

If all that sounds like a little too much in the way of stage-setting mental gymnastics, try it this way:

Two omnipotent beings walk into a bar, and the first one turns to the other and says...

"Imagination!" Q snorted. "Where am I to find any of that in this dismal place?"

"You could start another Civil War," the old Q suggested. If nothing else, the younger Q's efforts at period-appropriate costuming were usually worth a smile.

"Bah!" The first Q waved his hand. "I'm tired of reshaping the Continuum. It's loud, it's complicated... it gives me a headache! What I need is a little fun..."

Old Q groaned and sipped-- metaphorically-- at his drink. "Not this again. Youhave a seven-million track mind, Q! And I think six and a half million are consumed with that bald fellow and his minions..."

"As though you don't ramble on about the time your darling nephew cornered Kirk on his homemade planetoid."

"That story is a classic!" the old Q protested. "You begged me to tell it the first trillion times... it's not my fault you spend millennia in here, listening to me."

The younger Q shrugged. He glared at the jukebox in the corner, causing it to change its tune and possibly to spawn a new civilization somewhere in the Beta Quadrant.

"It's just so... limited. I don't care for limits."

"Who does?" Old Q grunted.

"Ever since Picard's crew went their separate ways after that sad mishap with the clone, it feels like all the fun has gone out of my life!"

"So go annoy Janeway," said Old Q. "That used to amuse you."

The younger Q snorted. Something-- either a fly or a hyper-advanced stellar explorer-- landed on the surface of the bar. He swatted it in irritation. When it screamed telepathically, pretty much eliminating the former possibility, he brought it back to life and shooed it on its way.

"She's an admiral now. Desk officers are terminally dull."

"Go back to when she was a captain!" The old Q sighed. "You're starting to sound as limited as them! You know you can be anywhen-- there must be some adventure of theirs you haven't mucked about in yet!"

Q stared at the wall. "It's not the same. Reliving past adventures for the tenth time isn't the same. Alternate versions aren't the same. Why do humans have to finish everything so fast? As though it would kill Picard to amuse me for another century or two." When the old Q frowned at him, he snorted. "Yes, I heard it, too, and it is absurd! I think I've earned to right to a little absurdity!"

Old Q goggled at him, burning a hole through space-time with his gaze. When he'd stitched it up, he said, "When have you ever earned anything, Q? You just strut around, acting as though you can do whatever you like just because you're omnipotent! Kids today..."

"I'm open to suggestions," Q said. "If you're so Q in your old age, tell me: What should I do?"

"You should..." The Old Q frowned. Q was making him think again, and when your thoughts encompassed galaxies, that was one of the last things you ever wanted to do. At length, a stray memory clicked. "Oh! You could save the Multiverse!"

"You're confusing me with Picard. I don't actually do that. I just like to watch."

"No, no..." Old Q slapped his forehead, setting off several thermonuclear explosions. "Someone's got to do it! They're about to discover red matter! Damn temporal mechanics; I completely forgot!

"Erm, technically speaking, you can't forget--"

"I put out seven supernovas this morning!" Old Q snapped. "I was getting around to it!”

"Alright." Q sipped at his drink-- actually an ocean in the neighborhood of Alpha Centauri-- and sighed. "Why so testy? Red matter isn't very dangerous at their level of control. The worst that will happen is an alternate timeline."

Old Q groaned. He began to push himself off his stool with a sound like a devastating earthquake. "It's him who discovers it. The one with the ears."

"The Ferengi?" Q frowned. "I'd like to see that."

"The other kind of ears! He's ahead of his time-- ahead of his whole damn species! Yes, today he's only manipulating enough red matter to spawn a new timeline! But you know that stuff is like Silly Putty! It will snap back on itself, and when it does, all the Multiverse will feel the tremor-- a temporal event even we'd be hard-pressed to undo! I told Q I'd warn him, and instead I sat here on my aura with you!"

"Alright," said the younger Q, drinking up, "don't get your galaxies in a knot. I'll see to it. Q to the rescue once again... it seems to be my lot in lives..."

"This is serious, Q!" the old Q stressed. "I can trust you? You'll save them?"

Q laughed. "Don't be silly, mon frér. I'll supervise. There are people to do that sort of thing..."

He snapped his fingers, and-- FLASH!-- left the Continuum for the hurly-burly world of linear time. Old Q leaned back in his seat and sighed. Then, slowly, he laughed: the best laugh he'd had in eons.

I wonder how long it'll take Mr. Omniscient to realize I left this to him on purpose. I can't let my nephew have all the fun... besides, this little tangle ought to be adventure enough to keep Q out of my hair for a century!

"Think of the stories," he said, and toasting the room at large, drank deep enough to drain the energy from a newborn star.

U.S.S. Enterprise, NCC 1701-E
Stardate 56848.1 (Just after the battle with Shinzon at the Bassen Rift)

Jean-Luc Picard was having the strangest dream. He was back home, in France, tending his family vineyard alongside Robert and René. He was trying to clear a particularly rocky piece of ground, when his shovel struck something that simply would not move.

On hands and knees, Picard dug out the area around the thing-- it was no ordinary rock, in fact. It was too soft, and--

It seemed to have hair! Picard sat back on his haunches and groaned.

It's not Data's head again, is it? I've had just about enough of finding parts of Data...

The object of his concern turned 180 degrees in the ground, very like an owl's head, and winked at him.

"Bonjour, Mon Capitaine!"

"Damn it to--!"

Picard sat up in bed with a start, his breath coming in harsh gasps. His artificial heart didn't flutter like a genuine organ would have, but he felt he must be taxing it to its limits nonetheless. It took him several moments to remember he was in his quarters on the Enterprise, that he was alone, that he hadn't been visited by Q in some time.

He rolled over in bed, intending to get himself a cup of warm milk or perhaps a drink to settle his nerves, and rolled right into a someone else.

Q lay on his side in the bed, clad in silk pajamas with head propped up on his fist, and winked at Picard. "Don't tell me. You had the strangest dream. And I was there, and I was there, and I was--"

"--hell!" Picard snarled, finishing his thought. He vanished from the bed as quickly as if he'd been transported, not stopping until he reached the other side of the room.

"Don't make such a scene, Jean-Luc! I'll bet you wouldn't look so scandalized if I'd gone with my first plan and appeared to you as Crusher." Q offered his best grin. "Besides... this feigning surprise and indignation every time I drop in has gotten old. You know you missed me."

Picard took a deep breath, forced himself to think clearly, and sighed. "Q, it's very late. I'm not in a whimsical mood just now, and I don't appreciate your using my family to--"

"Really, Picard, dredging up dead relatives? Surely you know I can do better than that for entertainment. The dream was yours; I just changed the ending. Feeling a bit isolated, are we? Missing home and hearth? How very sad..."

"Go away," Picard snapped. Then, realizing that never did any damn good, he tried again. "Q, I'm... I don't see what more you can want from me. I've taught you everything I can about human nature."

"Really? This is all?" Q shook his head. "That's disappointing in itself. Be that as it may, I'm afraid this isn't a social call. I need a favor. Specifically, I need someone to save the Universe. I first thought of you; no need to thank me."

Picard decided he wouldn't be getting more sleep anytime soon. He crossed to the replicator, ordered a hot cup of Earl Grey, and sipped it. Thus refreshed, he turned back to Q.

"What can I do that you can't do for yourself?"

Q looked scandalized. "Why, nothing, naturally. I just thought it would be more fun this way. Think of it, Jean-Luc... you and me, together? Saving reality as you know it? It'll be just like old times!"

"My memory of old times seems to differ from yours." Picard sipped the tea again. "The one time we actually did that, I was saving humanity from a mess you created. So what have you done thistime, Q? Offended the Continuum? Blown up a star?"

"Actually, this is one of yours. That ambassador fellow-- the one with no sense of humor?"

"You just described every Federation ambassador," said Picard.

"It's Spock of Vulcan, and he's not far from making a discovery that will endanger space-time!" Q perched himself on the edge of Picard's dresser and tried to make the Vulcan salute. He failed, then peered at his fingers in irritation. "Anyway, someone's got to warn him."

Picard blinked. "That's all? You want me to... warn an eminent scientist that his research may be dangerous? Does that really sound like an adventure to you, Q?"

The alien shrugged. "I can always whip up a pack of Klingons to fight en route. I'll even throw in a labyrinth!"

They regarded each other. Picard put down his teacup, frowning.

"Are you bored, Q?"

"I'm..." Q caught himself, glowered, and said, "You know, for a creature with such a very small intellect, you're annoyingly perceptive."

"Thank you," Picard said, "I suppose. Q... I'm sure Ambassador Spock is taking all precautions, and if you are genuinely concerned, I will be happy to contact him. But human beings do not seek out dangerous situations merely to have something to do."

"Don't they?" Q snapped his fingers, and suddenly Picard's quarters were crowded with dozens of exotic aliens, all squawking in different languages at once: in intergalactic Tower of Babel.

"Q!" Picard bellowed over the din.

"Sorry, Jean-Luc. I simply thought these representatives of the 197 hostile races you've contacted might have something to say about that."

"Yes, yes, point made! Send them back!" Picard's eyes were drawn to the corner, where the Borg representative was preparing to assimilate those nearest him. "Hurry!"

Q snapped his fingers-- FLASH! The aliens disappeared. Picard drew his teacup to his lips with shuddering fingers.

"Thank you. How is it a supposedly omniscient race never developed the ability to discuss an abstract concept without resorting to overblown visual aids?"

The alien shrugged. "When everything is equally possible for you, you don't need the abstract. And you've hardly disputed my point. Aren't you always telling me how human beings love exploration for its own sake?"

"I may have overstated the case." Picard put his cup and saucer in the recycler and sighed, head spinning with the uncomfortable idea that Q might be right. "The sort of thing you specialize in, Q... it's not exploration, it is meddling. I'm afraid I have better things to do."

"Do you really, Jean-Luc?" Q's familiar smirk reappeared. "Such as?"

"I... have responsibilities here. My crew is..."

"Getting old," Q supplied, "and splitting up, and-- in certain computerized cases-- dying on you. Are you sure you're not turning me down because you're sulking?"

Picard considered that, sat down on the edge of his bed, and met Q's eyes. "Maybe. You may have a point, Q. Twenty years ago, I might have hopped across the Galaxy with you for the fun of it. But I am... older, now. I begin to see there's more to life than endlessly pressing on to the next horizon. I wonder if there will be a place for me in the Universe when I can no longer do this."

Q answered with a mischievous grin. "Say the word and I'll make you 25 again..."

"Q!" Picard said automatically, but he chuckled. "Q, we must all take responsibility for the paths we have chosen. Everything ends, in time. It is nothing to fear."

"It is when you're outside of time," Q replied. "When you don'tend, and everything else does. That's nothing less than terrifying."

"I imagine it is." Picard frowned for a long moment. Then, making a decision, he stood from the bed. The sound of his joints creaking somewhat undermined his sense of youthful vigor, but he said, "A labyrinth, you say? I suppose there's no harm in one more adventure, if..."

"No," said Q. His whole manner had changed since that rare moment of sincerity. He sounded bitter, even... disillusioned. "I don't need your pity, Jean-Luc. You're right, I suppose I'm... grasping at straws. I'll deal with this myself."

"Are you certain?"

Q nodded. "The funny thing is, I knew how this conversation would play out before I came, but I still feel better having heard it. How human is that?"

"Very. We are good for one or two things, I suppose."

"If you say so." Q looked down at his pajamas. "Once more, for old time's sake."

FLASH and his clothing changed to an updated Starfleet admiral's uniform. Picard felt the strangest urge to salute him.

"Q," he said instead, "looking back, you were... well, you were an overbearing, selfish irritant."

"Stop, mon capitaine! I'm getting misty!"

"I was about to say, though..." Picard smiled. "It was, in a perverse sort of way, fun."

Q nodded. They nodded to each other, one more time. Then he snapped his fingers and--

BOOM!

Jean-Luc Picard probably would have noticed that wasn't Q's usual sound effect, if his physical form hadn't been collapsed in that instant to something smaller than a pinprick. If that sounds like an ignominious fate for a starship captain, the reader may rest assured that it didn't happen to Picard alone: In fact, the Enterprise, the Alpha Quadrant, and the Universe itself snapped back at that moment, a sort of reverse Big Bang, sparing no one and nothing save a lone member of the Q Continuum who'd chosen that precise moment to remove himself from the Universe. Reality's sole hope for the restoration of order.

If Picard had been capable of thought at that moment, he probably would have conceded that reality was doomed...

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

"Damn humans," Q said to himself in the white space that wasn't space at all. "Will I never rid myself of their influence? First Picard and then Janeway and now the Universe is gone and all I've got left is a quote from Arthur C. Clarke. It's maddening enough they're stuck-up and self-righteous-- do they have to be right all the time?"

Unfortunately, the long-past human science fiction writer had summed up in a sentence the nature of Q's dilemma. If he'd really been omnipotent, Q could have simply brought the Universe back. If he'd been truly omniscient, he could have easily planned his next move.

Unfortunately, for all their bluster, Q were omnipotent and omniscient only by the standards of linear, physical beings. Illimitable, but only within limits-- and the sudden removal of all that was brushed up against even Q's.

Furthermore, Q's abilities depended to some degree on the presence of the Continuum, of matter and energy and all manner of things to manipulate. Caught outside of everything, proverbially flat-footed and utterly lost, Q felt doubly helpless.

But wait. Q scanned the nothingness all around him. Almost... almost...

There. A tiny fragment. Less than an atom. Less than a quark. But it contained within it the pattern for Quark... and, well, everyone else who'd suddenly gone missing. Q's often-neglected but still formidable intellect-- he'd once described himself as having "an IQ of two thousand" even without his powers-- quickly formulated a working hypothesis.

Spock wouldn't actually deploy the red matter for several years, so the Unbang hadn't been caused by him directly. But he must have been thinking of the red matter for some time before he actually invented it, and he'd just crossed a temporal threshold, bringing the whole Universe along for the ride.

Once the basic concept for red matter took shape in Spock's mind, it became inevitable that he'd someday use it-- or, if not him, some equally brilliant mind working along similar lines. Knowledge, like a genie, could only remain bottled for so long. Inevitability produced entropy, and entropy resulted in Armageddon. That was what the old Q had been trying to prevent.

And now I've got to prevent it, Q thought, but how?

He couldn't just reestablish the Multiverse all at once. Inside that tiny pseudo-particle were multiple timelines, some of them incompatible, some containing divergent versions of the same person, even some with different laws of physics! As the older Q might have said in his irascible way: The Multiverse is ninety percent crap. Rip it open and it will all blow up in your face...

Despite being worshiped as a god in a few cultures (and reviled as a devil in many others), Q wasn't actually one or the other; stitching all that together would have been beyond his capability.

He briefly considered leaving things the way they were: Q wasn't a philanthropist, either, and barely cared whether the Little People of the Multiverse got their realities reassembled. But then he thought of all the eons stretching before him... endless, faceless, monotonous... and shuddered. Clearly, something had to be done, and quickly.

Perhaps... a limited trial. If he could stitch together just one reality, one coherent timeline from the madness, then he could rally its people and, just perhaps, show them how to heal space-time, restoring all the others. He'd have to delegate a great many critical tasks to inferior minds-- resisting the urge to micro-manage eternity was no easy task-- but at least it would trim his own burden down to something bearable.

He hoped. Q steeled himself and dove down into the pseudo-particle, allowing its jumbled-together mishmash of thousands of possible realities to wash over him.

A human couldn't have comprehended it all. A Vulcan, an Organian, a Medusan... even a Bajoran Prophet would have gone immediately insane. Q just barely held onto a thread of his mind... and his hold on sanity had been sort of borderline to begin with.

With a supreme effort, Q rode it out until he could almost make sense of it all. That was the easy part. The hard part would be choosing which threads to stitch together, which lines of fate to follow, which lives to snuff from existence to make room for the ones he needed.

He felt each one as he cleared them away-- screaming in his mind, demanding to know why they were less worthy than billions of equally-flawed others, pleading as they were kicked into the refuse pile by Q's mental sorting algorithm. He didn't have an answer for any of them. After experiencing all this, Q didn't even want to be a god, whether he was one or not....

PICARD. Q held onto that thread, the last person he'd spoken to, his pet mortal, the best hope by his reckoning of making the denizens of the new timeline understand what was required of them. He gave special priority to stitching together the parts of the reality that concerned Picard, making a Universe the human would have recognized, constructed it along the basic rules he played by...

Then Q journeyed outward from Picard, selecting others out of his experience who might have had it in them to save the day. Janeway, a flawed but occasionally brilliant individual with a reckless streak. That Sisko fellow on the space station, an iron will who'd stood toe-to-toe with a Q and punched him in the nose. Spock himself, and his "blood brother" Kirk, who'd bested the old Q's nephew on Gothos. Another ship, the first of its kind, with a crew that had all but created Picard's precious Federation out of whole cloth...

It might have taken billions of years. It might have taken an instant. When it was done, Q had done the nearly impossible: He'd shaped a single, workable timeline from the chaos, a playing field upon which he could position his champions for the ultimate contest.

The actual positioning... that was where Q's efforts slightly fell apart. He was still too weak, too confused by innumerable scrambled timelines, to put the Universe he'd shaped into any sort of proper order. Ultimately, he just grabbed the life-forms he needed and shoved them all into the timeline without much heed for rhyme or reason. He managed to get them all onto a few ships; he thought that was quite an accomplishment in itself. Reconstituting James T. Kirk as a frustrated janitor or, for that matter, a boxer turtle wouldn't have done much good.

Rogue elements, too, slipped through the cracks: beings and situations Q would have preferred to keep out. But even a custom-made timeline couldn't be perfect-- almost by definition, fixing one thing broke another-- and he simply didn't have the fine control to block all the imperfections. Hopefully it would be enough.

On the nth day, Q slept. Literally taxed to the ends of infinity by his patchwork repair job, he finally lost that crucial thread and scattered himself to infinity, the better to regenerate until he could summon the cohesion to explain the rules.

His last thought before entering hibernation-- not counting the bitterly-accurate Clarke quote-- was something he'd heard from Picard: We must all take responsibility for the paths we have chosen.

Poor Jean-Luc, Q thought with the last of his energy, this time it's not I who'll have to take responsibility for the path I've chosen. It's you, old friend...

No more. His task complete, Q dissipated, and the new timeline he'd hammered into place lurched to life with a blinding...

FLASH!

Continued...