All Good Things__ - Michael Jan Friedman [60]
“Oh, yes you are,” Q argued. “And the stakes on this table are pretty high. The highest, in fact.” With his stick, he indicated a small sign on the table. It read: TABLE MINIMUM—HUMANITY OR THE RACE OF YOUR CHOICE. The captain was not amused in the least.
“You sure you want Data to shut down that temporal anomaly?” Q pressed. He picked up the dice and rolled them around in his hand.
Picard looked at him. “Are you suggesting that by shutting the anomaly down, I will cause the destruction of mankind?”
Q shook his head. “I’m not suggesting anything, my friend. I just run the table.” Picking up some chips, he began to place a bet. “Let’s see… you’ve bet on the temporal anomaly at four to one. Shall we see what comes up?” As Q threw the dice… … the captain found himself on a craggy ledge. Looking down, he saw that he was perched high above a vast, chaotic soup—a miasma of steaming lava and bubbling gases. It was hot here, so oppressively hot that he already found himself perspiring, and the air was full of fine, black flecks.
“Welcome home,” said Q, who was standing beside him, still dressed in his croupier’s outfit.
“Home?” echoed Picard, wiping the sweat from his forehead. He honestly didn’t know what his companion was talking about.
“Don’t you recognize your old stomping grounds?” asked Q. “This is Earth—France, in fact. About… oh ú.. three and a half billion years ago, give or take an eon or so.” He wrinkled his nose. “Smells awful, doesn’t it… all that sulfur and volcanic ash… I really must speak to the maid.”
The captain turned to him, his eyes stinging from the debris in the atmosphere. “Is there a point to all this, or are we just on another of your merry traveloguesT’
The entity looked at him. “Travelogues? You wound me, Jean-Luc. All I’m doing is trying to further your miserable education.”
“Indeed,” Picard commented. “And exactly what am I to learn in this place? How to asphyxiate myself?”
Q smiled knowingly and pointed to the sky. “Look!” he exclaimed. “Pretty impressive, wouldn’t you say?”
As Picard followed the gesture, his mouth went even drier. All he could see, from horizon to horizon, filling the heavens with its ominous brilliance, was the spatial anomaly that they’d located in the Devron system.
But here, it was even bigger.
“The anomaly is here?” wondered the captain. “At Earth … ?”
“At this point in history,” Q explained, “the anomaly is everywhere. It has filled this entire quadrant of your galaxy.”
Picard’s eyes were watering from the ashes in the air. He dabbed at them, to no avail.
“The further back in time I go… the larger the anomaly.” He tried to make sense of that. “Butw”
Abruptly, Q took off along the length of the ledge, as if he’d caught a glimpse of something he couldn’t resist. “Jean-Luc, quickly—there’s something over here I want you to see!”
Beckoning enthusiastically, Q knelt by a small muddy pond at one end of their ledge. The captain went over to see what Q was looking at.
Together, they peered down into the waterú It was murky, almost impenetrable to the naked eye… but free of the algae one might normally see in such a place. “What am I looking at?” asked Picard finally.
“Looking at?” repeated Q. “Why, mon capitaine, this is you. And may I say you’ve never looked betterú”
The captain found himself becoming annoyedú Q was toying with him. He hated that, with a passionú “Me, Q?”
“I’m serious, Jean-Luc. Well, in a manner of speaking. You see,” he said, pointing, “right here, life is about to form on this planet for the very first time. Two proteins are about to combine and form the first amino acid— one of the building blocks of what you laughingly call life.” Despite himself Picard was intrigued. Impossible as it was to see anything, he couldn’t help but lean closer to the surface of the pond.
Q turned to him and spoke in his most mysterious, conspiratorial whisper. “Strange, isn’t it? Everything you know… your entire civilization… it all begins right here in this little pond of goo. Disgustingly appropriate somehow, isn’t it?” He grunted.