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It took something special to get the attention of an omnipotent entity like Q: after all, when you have the freedom of the cosmos and all possible realms of time and space, you’re not going to get distracted by every Tom, Dick or Multiverse that passes your way.
He was taking a moment to appreciate a particularly piquant little civil war on Tarsurus 12 - really it was delicious, the whole thing was based on a singular misunderstanding about the precise definition of liquid and gel states, and if the written language of the planet hadn’t been strictly government-controlled this never would have happened - when something twanged in the corner of his brain, and it made him look. Something that had that odd touch of age and the almost-taste of the Continuum. Oh, not in an identical way: rather in a pallid, poor-reflected way. If the Continuum tasted like finest chocolate (and really, how could it taste of anything less?) then this taste was like carob.
Still pretending that he was no more than mildly intrigued, he looked all the way over to a pocket dimension that he hadn’t really visited since his youth, searching for that something that had that edge of familiarity, and when he couldn’t find it with half his attention, he turned reluctantly away from Tarsurus 12 and threw himself fully into the little dimension.
It was raining. Of course it was. A class-M planet, an alternate terra, a place of humans. Q rolled his eyes, still pretending even to himself that he wasn’t enjoying this. Novelty was rare to the Q. One of the few drawbacks of being omniscient - so rarely does anything unexpected happen. He materialised an umbrella, settling into his preferred and familiar human form, and started to walk, following the pulse of awareness that felt like family.
This was woodland, not more than a hundred years old, and open: Q didn’t have to push through any vegetation as he moved. The rain battered on his umbrella, almost turning to sleet. He supposed it must be cold, but being as he didn’t feel anything physical unless he wanted to, it was scarcely relevant.
He found the creature face-down in a clearing, half-covered in fallen leaves and mud, soaked to the skin. This close, the almost-Q aura around it was stronger. But it was evidently dying. Mortal. How delightfully odd.
Q, now consumed with curiosity, turned it over. It flopped helplessly onto its back.
Oh, not human. Not at all. But it looked as human as he did in this shape. The hair was a bit of an unusual colour, but then humans were like birds, always showing off with their plumage. The single bright blue stripe would barely cause remark, even in the most tediously stolid of human societies - I‘m looking at you, Starfleet - and visible tattoos were positively status quo, it seemed. Q laid a hand on the thing’s forehead, sending a quick mental query:
/ ? /
He didn’t really expect a reply.
But the faint, almost lost response came back immediately: / ! /
Q withdrew his hand, almost surprised. Why, this was a child. Not literally of course - this thing was not of the Q - but it was old enough to class as a Q pre-teen. 65 million years, at a guess.
/help/
The creature was too weak to move. But it had felt him touch its mind, so it was reaching out in the only way it could. It wanted to live. It trusted that he would save, not destroy. How very pitiful. How very human of it.
/h-help me/
Q pushed a little further, and looked Inside the creature. There was something looking back at him.
And Q snapped his fingers with a grin. He knew just what to do.
It had been a long day on the Enterprise-D. First the tactical system overhaul had over-run: due in no small part to the fact the Mr Barclay had somehow managed to get himself wedged inside the tactical console. Then the distress call had hit unexpectedly, and they’d had to shoot off at warp 9 to help out a stranded Vulcan science ship who had managed to overload their own warp engines trying to escape an anomaly they’d been studying. The paperwork on that one was going to last forever, Picard thought, sitting the final hour of his watch on the bridge and finding himself looking forward to nothing more than an evening of music and solitude.
So he couldn’t help a twinge of dread when he saw Deanna Troi sit up a little straighter in her chair, and heard her lilting voice say “Captain -!” in that way that undoubtedly heralded some fresh hell about to unleash.
And then Q appeared on the bridge in his customary flare of brilliant light, and Picard’s heart sank into his boots. The day, it seemed, was very far from over.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that, Jean-Luc,” said Q, who was positively glowing with supercilious glee. “I’m on a humanitarian mission of mercy. I’m doing good deeds. I’m quite overwhelmed with goodwill.”
“A feeling I cannot bring myself to share -”
Picard cut himself off. In Q’s arms was the limp body of a man, filthy and so wet that his clothes were actually dripping onto the bridge floor. “Who is that?” he demanded.
“I’m afraid we haven’t been formally introduced,” Q said, archly. “He’s rather too practically dead to make small talk.”
“What did you do to him?” Riker cut in.
“Always so suspicious, aren’t you? I - I did nothing. I’m saving him. That’s why I’m here.”
Picard was having none of this. Back on the defensive: if he’d been a dog, his hackles would have been raised, his fangs bared. Q beamed upon this vision of irate human protectiveness with benevolent paternal joy.
“Save him yourself, Q. You have the power.”
“That would hardly be the point,” Q sniffed. “I can’t be expected to nanny some barely grown adolescent around the cosmos with me. I’m too young and fancy-free to be some inferior mortal‘s wet-nurse. So I’ve brought him to you. I know how much you enjoy saving people.”
Riker was speaking quietly into his combadge: really, Q didn’t know why he bothered, a Q could hear a pin drop two galaxies away if he wanted. Calling for the doctor. They were falling in line, of course. Humans. So beautifully predictable. Always wanting to be the whole universe’s Good Samaritan. This is why they’d never amount to anything, of course. You spend all your time picking up other snot-nosed child-species and mending their boo-boos, and you’ve no time for your own evolution. They’d never learn.
“Adolescent?” Picard queried, his voice getting that delicious edge that Q adored: that little knowledge melded with a far greater suspicion. “Q. If he is a child to you…”
“He’s about seventy million years old, if you must be so tediously linear about it.”
The shockwave of that went around the bridge rapidly, and Picard’s face set in that hilariously grim look that Q just adored. “Seems a shame to let him die when he’s barely out of diapers,” Q pursued, beaming. “Don’t you think?”
And he tipped up his arms abruptly, letting the helpless body fall.
It was no surprise at all to him that Lieutenant Commander Data, lunging out of his chair at ops with all that charming inhuman speed, caught the man before he hit the floor. Ah, Data. He might not be human himself, but he’d certainly contracted a nasty case of their primary condition: namely the urge to protect the defenceless. A pity, really, because the android otherwise had so much potential.
“Nice save,” said Q, admiringly, and then hid himself from view with a chirpy little wave. He had no intention of going anywhere, because this was going to be beautiful to watch, but it was always more fun to eavesdrop on his humans when they had the illusion of privacy.
Doctor Crusher turned up moments later to find a huddle of the senior staff gathered around Data, who was carefully lowering someone’s body to the floor. She was relieved to see that it was a stranger, not any of her colleagues.
“Who is this?” she asked, dropping to her knees and starting to scan the fallen man. The tricorder immediately went wild. Whoever this was, he wasn’t human. Nor did he match any other known species in the medical database. What was clear, at least, was that his life signs were weakening as she watched.
“We don’t know. Q just dumped him on us and took off.” Will’s tone was deeply frustrated. That tended to go with the territory when Q was around.
“Status, Doctor,” Picard said, guardedly.
“I don’t know.” It was hard enough telling what readings were supposed to be normal for the man. They were all over the place, as if he was running on electricity rather than blood. “Didn‘t Q tell you anything? A clue, a silly riddle, anything? He’s not human. I don’t know what he is.” She consulted a particularly alarming readout. “But it looks like he’s getting weaker.”
“According to Q, he’s lived for millions of years,” Picard said. “And - much as I hate to agree with Q on anything - it would indeed be a shame if he ended such a long life here and now with no chance to explain himself. Do what you can for him, Beverley.”
The stranger stabilised after ten minutes of Beverley’s constant work. The tricorder stopped making those alarmed beeps: the display dipped slowly into green and yellow, rather than hanging around ominously in the red. The doctor sat back on her heels, feeling more exhausted than she’d ever done. She’d been forced to take so many risks with medications and treatments: relying on the tricorder to tell her what would actively poison the patient and what had a chance of helping him. She hated it. It was one of the reasons field medicine had such a high attrition rate of staff.
“We can move him,” was all she said. There were a couple of nasty orange blips left on the readouts that she suspected might turn out to be a burgeoning infection, but there was no point in leaving him on the floor now. She was relatively sure he wasn’t going to die in the next few minutes, at least.
“Mister Data, if you wouldn’t mind.” Picard had the look of a captain who had about reached his limit for crises for the day.
Data scooped the unconscious man up and headed for the turbo lift, leaving Beverley to trade a weary look with Picard and then trail in his wake.