“It sounds fascinating,” young Q admitted. “I’ve always been intrigued by primitive life-forms, especially those with a crude approximation of sentience, but it never occurred to me to intervene in their humble existences. I’ve simply observed them in their natural environments.”
“That’s fine for a start,” 0 said, “but you can’t really understand a species unless you’ve seen how they respond to completely unexpected circumstances—of the sort that only we can provide. It’s an engrossing pastime for us, entertaining as well as educational, while providing a valuable service to the multiverse. Only by testing baser breeds can they be forced to transcend their wretched routines and advance to the next level of existence.” 0 lifted his gaze heavenward as he extolled this lofty agenda. “Or not,” he added with a shrug.
“But doesn’t meddling with their petty lives interfere with their natural evolution?” Q asked. Picard’s jaw nearly dropped at the sight of Q making the case for the Prime Directive. Now I’ve seen everything, he thought.
“Nature is overrated,” 0 insisted. “We can do better.” A gold-framed mirror appeared out of nowhere and 0 held it out in front of him so that it captured the reflection of both him and Q. “Take you and me, say. Do you think our far-seeing forebears would have ever evolved to this exalted state if they’d worried about what nature intended? Of course not! We’ve overcome our base, bestial origins, so it’s only fitting that we help other breeds do the same—if they’re able.”
“And if they’re not?” Q asked.
0 dispatched the mirror to oblivion, then shrugged. “Well, that’s regrettable when it happens, but you can’t groom a garden without doing a little pruning now and then. Extinction’s part of the evolutionary agenda, natural or not. Some portion of those beneath us are going to flunk the survival test whether we help them along or not. We’re just applying a little creativity to the process.”
Picard recalled the older Q’s periodic attempts to judge humanity and felt a chill run down his spine. Was this where Q acquired his fondness for draconian threats? If so, he thought, then 0 had a lot to answer for.
“That’s true enough, I suppose,” the young Q said, listening attentively and occasionally nodding in agreement. To Picard’s dismay, 0’s lessons appeared to be sinking in. “I take it you’ve done this before?”
“Here and there,” 0 admitted with what Picard regarded as characteristic vagueness. “But you don’t need to take my word for it, not when you can experience for yourself the rich and restorative rewards of such pursuits. And there’s no time like this moment to begin,” he enthused, giving Q a hearty slap on the back while simultaneously, Picard noted, changing the subject from his past to the present. “Now, where are these peculiar people you were telling me about?”
Young Q pointed at the colliding star clusters overhead. Lace cuffs protruded from the deep, turned-back sleeves of his velvet coat. “Look!” he urged 0, and Picard was surprised by the infectious good humor in the youth’s tone, so different from the sour sarcasm of his older self. “Here they come.”
Picard looked where indicated. At first he saw nothing but the same breathtaking panorama he had viewed before, the luminous swirls of stars and radiant gas coming together into one resplendent pageant of light and color, but as he gazed further a portion of the colossal spectacle seemed to detach itself from the whole, growing ever larger in comparison as it hurled across the void toward the assembled immortals, plus Picard. The strange phenomenon devoured the incalculable distance between them, coming closer and closer until he recognized the incandescent cloud of seething plasma.
“The Calamarain,” Picard breathed in astonishment, never mind the lack of any visible atmosphere. And one million years in the past, no less! He never would have imagined that the Calamarain were so old. Were these the very same entities who had been approaching the Enterprise before, at the very moment that Q had snatched him away, or were these merely their remote ancestors? Either way, who could have guessed that their kind dated back to so distant an era?
Then again, he reflected, the late Professor Galen’s archaeological studies had revealed, with a little help from the captain himself, that humanoid life existed in the Milky Way Galaxy as far back as four billion years ago, and Picard had recently seen with his own eyes humanoid beings on Tagus III two billion years before his own time, so why should he be surprised that gaseous life-forms were at least one million years old? Picard shook his head numbly; the tremendous spans of time encompassed by his journey were almost too huge to conceive of, let alone keep track of. It’s too much, he thought, trying to roll with the conceptual punches Q kept dishing out. How can one mortal mind cope with time on this scale?
The massive cloud that was the Calamarain, larger and wider across than even a Sovereign-class starship, passed within several kilometers of Picard, 0, and the two Qs. Iridescent patterns dazzled along the length and breadth of the cloud, producing a kaleidoscopic array of surging hues and shades. “So these are them?” 0 said, the wrinkles around his eyes deepening as he peered at the huge accumulation of vapors. “Well, they’re sparkly enough, I’ll give them that.” His nostrils flared as he sniffed the vacuum. “They smell like a swamp, though.” He limped nearer to the border of the cloud. “What say we start the testing with them, see how adaptable they are?”
“Er, I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” young Q answered, lagging behind. One of his high stockings came loose and he tugged haplessly at its neck. Next to Picard, his older self sighed and shook his head sadly. “The Coulalakritous are fairly advanced in their own right, only a few levels below the Continuum, and they aren’t exactly the most sociable of creatures.”
“Coulalakritous?” Picard whispered to his own Q, lowering his voice out of habit even though neither 0 nor the young Q could hear him.
“The name changed later,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “Be reasonable, Jean-Luc. It’s been umpteen thousand years, after all. How often do you think of your precious France as Gaul?”
Picard decided not to argue the point, choosing instead to concentrate on the scenario unfolding before him. So this was indeed where Q first acquired his insidious inclination for “testing” humanity and other species. Many thanks, 0, he thought bitterly; if the mysterious entity did nothing else, this alone was enough to condemn him in Picard’s eyes.
“Wait,” young Q called out, hurrying to catch up with his companion as 0 continued to advance toward the sentient plasma cloud. “I told you, they don’t approve of visitors.”
“And you’re going to let that stop you?” 0 challenged. He chuckled and stirred the outside of the cloud with a meaty finger. Thin blue tracings of bioelectrical energy ran up his arm, but he only cackled louder. “All the more reason to shake up their insular existence and see how they react. You’ll never learn anything if you worry about what the subject of your experiment wants. Let the tested dictate the terms of the test and you defeat the whole point of the exercise.”
“I don’t know,” young Q said, hesitating. Picard thought he saw restraint and good sense warring with temptation and unchecked curiosity on the callow godling’s face. I know which side I’m betting on, he thought, calling upon over ten years of personal experience with the older Q.
“Come on, friend,” 0 egged him on. “Surely we didn’t come all this way just to gawk at these cumulus critters from out here. Where’s your sense of adventure, not to mention scientific inquiry?”
Restraint and good sense went down in flames as the young Q’s pride asserted itself. “Right here!” he crowed, thumbing his chest. “Who are these puffed-up piles of hot air to decide where a Q should come and go? To blazes with their privacy!”
“There’s the Q I know!” 0 said proudly, and Picard, looking on silently, had to agree. 0 jabbed his protégé in the ribs with his elbow. “For a second there I thought you might be one of those stuffed shirts from the Continuum.” His face assumed a mock-serious expression that endured for only a
n instant before collapsing into a mischievous grin. “Between you and me, friend, you’re the only one of your lot with any fire or fission at all, not to mention a sense of humor.”
“Don’t I know it!” young Q said indignantly. He backed up to take a running leap into the glowing cloudmass. “Last one into the Coulalakritous is a—”
0 grabbed Q’s collar as he ran by, only moments before the impetuous superbeing dived headlong into the sentient plasma. “Not so fast,” he counseled Q, confusing his duly appointed guardian. “No reason to go barging in there, especially if this phosphorescent fog is as inhospitable as you give me to believe.” A crafty smile creased his face. “I say we infiltrate them first. The testing is always more accurate if the tester’s hand remains concealed, especially at the beginning.”
Showing his true colors, Picard thought. Alas, the starstruck young Q failed to make the connection between 0’s plan to deceive the Coulalakritous and the way 0 had already inveigled his way into Q’s trust—and, through him, the Continuum.
“Just follow my lead, young Q, and keep your wits about you.” Like a genie returning to his bottle, 0 dissolved into a pocket of phosphorescent mist indistinguishable from that which composed the Coulalakritous. He/it hovered for a second outside the immense cloud, then flowed tailfirst into the billowing vapors as though sucked in by some powerful pumping mechanism. The young Q gulped nervously, looking back over his shoulder as if contemplating a hasty retreat, but soon underwent the same transformation and followed his would-be mentor into the mass of plasma. Picard made an attempt to keep track of the two new streams of gas, but it was like trying to discern an individual splash of liquid within a restless ocean. From where Picard was floating, 0 and young Q were completely lost within the Coulalakritous. Their metamorphosis surprised him at first, but the logic behind it was readily apparent. If Q assumes human form when he tests humanity, I suppose it only follows that he and 0 would disguise themselves as gases before testing the Coulalakritous.
“Hard to imagine I was ever so suggestible,” the older Q commented, but Picard felt more apprehensive than nostalgic. His heart sank as he guessed what was coming next.
“We’re going after them, aren’t we?” he asked, resigned to yet another bizarre and disorienting experience. At least I might learn something that could help the Enterprise in my own time, he consoled himself, assuming his ship had indeed encountered the Calamarain in his absence. It dawned on him that he had no idea how much time might have passed upon the Enterprise while he was away. Had the Calamarain threatened the ship once more? What was happening to Riker and the others?
“You know me so well, Jean-Luc,” Q said. He snapped his fingers and a sudden hot flush rushed over Picard as, before his eyes, the very atoms of his body sped up and drifted farther apart, their molecular bonds dissolving at Q’s direction. He held his hand up before his face just in time to see the hand become insubstantial and semitransparent, like a ghost in some holodeck fantasy. His fingers fluttered like smoke rising from a five-year-old’s birthday cake, merging and coalescing into a single continuous stream of radiant mist. His arm quickly went the way of his digits and, before he knew it, Picard saw within his field of vision only the outer limits of the man-sized accumulation of gas he had become.
How can I see without eyes? he marveled. How can I think without a brain? But the Calamarain, or the Coulalakritous, or whatever they were called at this place and time, proved that consciousness could exist in this form, so he could, too, it seemed. The galaxy looked the same as it had before, the overflowing cornucopia of stars around him shining just as brightly. He felt a strange energy suffusing his being, though, like the tingle of static electricity before it was discharged. Strange new senses, feeling like a cross between hearing and touch, detected waves of power radiating from the Coulalakritous. The charge of the larger cloud tugged on him like gravity, drawing him toward the seething sea of vapor. Picard surrendered to the pull, uncertain how he could have fled even if he had wanted to. Despite his resignation, a sudden sense of misgiving increased as the great cloud filled the horizon. He felt a surge of panic welling from somewhere deep inside him, and realized that it stemmed from his memories of being immersed in the group-mind of the Borg Collective. If he had still possessed a physical body, he would have trembled at the prospect of losing his individuality once again.
Another shimmering cloudlet drifted a few meters away, on a parallel course toward the Coulalakritous. Lacking a mouth or any other features, it nonetheless addressed him in Q’s voice. “Be of stout heart, Picard. You’re going where no vaporized human has ever gone before.”
Then the stars were gone and all Picard could see or hear or feel was the overwhelming presence of the cosmic cloud all around him. It was a maelstrom of surging currents and eddies, carrying him along in their wake. A million voices hummed around him, yet, to his vast relief, he discovered he could still isolate his own thoughts from the din. Snatches of conversation, too many to count, beat upon his new inhuman senses, almost deafening him:
…the Principal Intent of Gravitational Fixities are to perpetuate Substance along Graduated Hierarchies…until fuller Thou art, tarry and ask Myself again…to the Inverse, the Singular Attributes of Transuranic Essentials plainly denote…Solitary Pygmy Suns forever desired before Paired Twins…no, Thou mistakes My Supposition grossly…ever should the Whole of Thoughtful Souls arrive at Concord and Harmony…much does Myself long to behold Such…never in Tenfold Demi-Spans shall That come to pass…should Thou refuse to merge Thy Vitality with Thy Fellows, Thou cannot rightly anticipate that They shall merge Thine with Thou…Our Hours were Exemplary in the Time Before…was a Unique Instance, not a Tendency of Import or Duration…I dreamed I was a Fluid…wherefore do We journey?…entreat Succor for Myself, My Ions lose Their Galvanism…Thou ever avers Such!…the Pursuit of Grace takes precedence over Mere Beauty…do Thou fancy that Quasars have Spirits?…I dispute That resolutely…no, pray regard the Evidence….
Mon Dieu, Picard thought, spellbound by the unending torrent of communication, which struck him as being somewhere halfway between a Vulcan mind-meld and late-night debates at Starfleet Academy. As far as he could tell, the Coulalakritous did not possess a single unified consciousness like the Borg, but rather were engaged in incessant dialogue with each other. Could it be, he speculated, that this sentient cloudmass represented some form of absolute democracy? Or perhaps they had a more academic orientation, like an incorporeal university or seminar. He wondered how this incredible forum compared with the Great Link of the Changelings, as described in Odo’s intelligence reports from Deep Space Nine. The so-called Founders were liquid while the Coulalakritous were gaseous, but how different did that make the two species? From the point of view of a former solid, he mused, both seem equally amorphous…and astounding. He could only hope that someday he would have the opportunity to compare the experiences with Odo himself. No doubt Worf or Miles O’Brien would be happy to introduce them.
“Annoying, aren’t they?” Q’s voice piped up from somewhere nearby. “They never shut up and they never tire of debating each other. Small wonder they don’t want to communicate with any other intelligences; they’re too busy arguing with themselves.”
Picard looked for Q, but all he saw was the ceaseless motion of the Coulalakritous. It seemed a minor miracle that he could hear Q at all over the cacophonous buzz of the cloud-creatures’ conversation. These aren’t really sound waves at all, he considered, recalling a Starfleet theory that the Calamarain communicated by means of tachyon emissions. Am I actually “hearing” tachyons now?
The ambient heat within the cloud was intense, but his new form did not find it uncomfortable. Of course, he realized. The Coulalakritous would have to generate their own internal heat, and in massive quantities, to avoid freezing solid in the cold of space. Some sort of metabolic chemical reaction, he wondered, or controlled nuclear fusion? Either way, he suspected that his ordinary human body would be incinera
ted instantly by the volcanic temperature within the cloud. Instead, the ionized gases merely felt like a sauna or hot spring. Remarkable, Picard thought, savoring the experience despite other, more pressing concerns. The more he listened, the more he thought he could isolate individual voices by their tone or timbre. There were diverse personalities alive within the collective boundaries of the plasma cloud: long-winded bores, excited explorers, passionate visionaries, skeptics, cranks, poets, philosophers, fussbudgets, free thinkers, reactionaries, radicals, and scientists. He could hear them all, and the only thing they all seemed to have in common was that they savored debate and discussion. There’s so much we could learn from these beings, Picard thought.
Q sounded substantially less awestruck. “If I live to be another eternity, I’ll never understand why I found this nattering miasma so interesting in the first place.” Picard could hear the impatience in his tone. “If you’re quite through with your adolescent sense of wonder, perhaps you’d care to pay attention to the carefree antics of my younger self and his dubious acquaintance. That is why we’re here, you know.”
“Where are they?” Picard asked, genuinely at a loss.
“Can’t you hear them?” Q responded. “Why, they’re right over there.”
Not only could Picard not distinguish 0 and the other Q from the rest of the maelstrom, he couldn’t even see Q. No doubt the Coulalakritous could tell each other apart visually, he thought, but he could barely make sense of what he was hearing, let alone seeing. Even though he was beginning to distinguish one voice from another, he could hardly pinpoint two specific individuals in this gaseous Tower of Babel. The sights and sensations remained far too alien. “Over there? Pay attention?” he said, incredulous. “I don’t even know what I am anymore.”