A large bucket of fried questions. With *mustard.*
OOC: crossposted from theatrical_muse, today.
Haha! And you thought I was going to make another joke about catchup, didn't you?
344. Talk about something cheerful.
Sure! I'll talk about babies. Babies are cheerful, right? Everyone loves babies. Particularly, everyone loves for people who are not *them* to willingly saddle themselves with a baby, so they can be the fun uncle and not have to get up at 2 am for the nighttime feeding. (Okay, so the Q don't sleep and we don't eat and we don't count time by clocks, so that bit about the 2 am feeding is technically not accurate, but believe me, a Q child can be an even bigger pain in the ass than a mortal one.)
My ex is having a baby!
Believe it or not, I'm actually thrilled. Not least of all because I'm not involved with this at all. She's collaborating with Q on this one. (Specifically, the Q who I consider our "older sister", the one who's really big on kids and babies in general. Which, when you think about it, you gotta wonder why she hasn't jumped on the chance to have a kid earlier... why, in fact, the trickster god and the goddess of war had the first kid instead of the fertility goddess in the first place. Mythologically it makes no sense, which is why I am glad we are people, with complex personalities and lives of our own, not gods, who are archetypal representations made up by mortals. If I were addicted to worship I wouldn't be able to get away with doing things that break archetype, like, uh, overthrowing the government and ending up in charge of the place. Show me the last trickster god who got away with *that.* But I digress.)
From my perspective, there's very little downside to this. Q who aren't me having children -- an activity that the Q can engage in because *my* ideology won the war -- bolsters the degree to which my ideology is respected and followed within the Continuum. The Continuum is happy, because both of those Q are considered dangerous mavericks and binding them to another Q, and to each other, helps to contain them. (Q is infamous for taking mortal lovers -- a different one each century, approximately, and then they die on her and she mopes about it -- because, to borrow more mortal metaphors, she changed all our diapers, and feels entirely too sisterly to most of the Continuum to actually want to be romantically involved with any of us. And my ex invented the version of the weapons that *mortals* can use, and then promptly got mortals into the Continuum, while she herself had no powers... plus, she plays around without her powers for *fun*, gets her mortal body killed frequently, and seems to most of the Q to be afraid of nothing. I know better, but, well. Since fear has historically been the main way the Continuum keeps rogue omnipotent beings in line, they're *terrified* of Q, especially since it is now obvious that if she decided to arm several million mortals with Q-killing weapons and drag them all into the Continuum, she could wipe us all out. So the idea that instead she is going to be occupied raising another baby is very pleasing to most of my comrades, not all of which have quite as much faith as I do that Q *wouldn't* try to kill us all... most likely.) Q is happy because she finally gets a baby after only complaining about the fact that she has no more young ones to help raise for the past four billion years, and Q is... well, I don't know if she's happy, I'm not sure my ex is *capable* of being happy anymore, but she seems cheerful enough. I mean, it was her decision. The way I hear it, she was the one who approached Q about it, not the other way around.
Also, this takes a lot of the pressure off me and my son. If he's not The Only Q Child In Existence anymore, people are not going to put nearly as high expectations on him... or on me, as the guy raising him. Really, this is great all around.
About the only downside is that my son is miserable. He is convinced that his mother is having a new baby to replace him because she thinks he's a worthless screw-up. Unfortunately, I can't convince him that this is not true, because he's a Q, he knows everything, and in fact it *is* true. Q *does* think our son is a worthless screw-up and she *does* want to have another one for primarily that reason. I've tried to convince him that a new Q close in age to him will take the pressure off him and will be a worthy companion to him in another ten thousand years or so, but no go. He has no interest in his baby sister and in fact is actively pretending that she doesn't exist. (Which she doesn't, entirely, yet -- she's still in the planning and design stage, but it's pretty certain that Q and Q will finish up the project and produce a fully realized baby Q in a short while. I mean, we're omnipotent. It's not like we have birth defects or miscarriages.) I can't help it -- anything that makes my son unhappy is something I can't be completely cheerful about, even if I think his reasons for being unhappy are entirely stupid. (It's not that I disagree with him that his mother is making a new child because she thinks he's a failure; it's that I disagree with him that he should *care* what she thinks. *She* walked out on *him*; why should he care about her opinion of him any longer? But, y'know, she's Mom. I can't really relate to that, since I don't have a mother myself, but it's been pretty consistent -- if he hasn't gotten over her abandoning him in five thousand years, I don't think it's going to happen.)
Well, that got a lot less cheerful in a hurry. Let's move on, shall we?
345: Are you well organised?
If you were equipped to examine the structure of the pattern that forms my essential nature (which you're not, as the form of energy I am made of doesn't even exist in your universe and should I translate myself into the substance of your universe with as much precision as possible you'd still be incapable of comprehending me), you would see that at the level of elemental particles I'm *very* well organized.
At the level you're talking about, though... maybe not so much.
But then, I hardly need to be organized. I have a Continuum to do it for me. Every thought I've ever had, every memory, every piece of knowledge I've acquired, and every piece of knowledge every other Q has acquired, sits in... well, your closest analogue would be a database, except that my mind is directly connected to it. By your standards, I have high definition large-pipe bandwidth streaming-capable Internet connected to my brain, and the query server I'm attached to is enormously powerful. I merely have to think a question to know the answer. If I don't happen to know the answer already. Which, usually, I do.
I prefer to be spontaneous and creative rather than organized; I don't *need* to organize my thoughts or my plans or my stuff (I don't even have any stuff. When I want a physical object, I make it, and when I don't want it any more, I make it vanish. Beat that with your file folders and your storage units and document boxes. I dare you.)
346: What haven't you finished?
Living. Learning. Changing. Growing. Raising my son. Developing understanding and wisdom. Having fun. Annoying the living daylights out of everyone in the universe.
I realize that to your perceptions, one of these things is not like the other, but from my perspective it's all part of my life, and I won't be finished with it until I'm dead, and given that I'm immortal, I'm expecting the universe to end first.
347: Where are you going?
Anywhere I want to, but that's the wrong question. I'm not going to a "where", except in the trivial sense that I travel all over the universe, all the time. I'm going to a "what". I'm going toward all the things I haven't finished yet.
348: What phrase or saying do you find most irritating?
"What do you dream about?" "What happens when you go to sleep?" "What was your favorite day?" "What will be on your tombstone?" "What secrets would you like to know?" "Money." "Death." "Earth's solar calendar." "Physical objects." oh, and really, just about any other phrase or question that implies that the person you're talking to necessarily has human limitations. Like being doomed to die someday. Or having to go to sleep on a regular basis.
You know, just because I'm immensely superior to all of you, with vastly more intelligence and nigh-infinite resources to draw from, doesn't mean I'm not a person, folks. An entity could start to feel left out around here.
Haha! And you thought I was going to make another joke about catchup, didn't you?
344. Talk about something cheerful.
Sure! I'll talk about babies. Babies are cheerful, right? Everyone loves babies. Particularly, everyone loves for people who are not *them* to willingly saddle themselves with a baby, so they can be the fun uncle and not have to get up at 2 am for the nighttime feeding. (Okay, so the Q don't sleep and we don't eat and we don't count time by clocks, so that bit about the 2 am feeding is technically not accurate, but believe me, a Q child can be an even bigger pain in the ass than a mortal one.)
My ex is having a baby!
Believe it or not, I'm actually thrilled. Not least of all because I'm not involved with this at all. She's collaborating with Q on this one. (Specifically, the Q who I consider our "older sister", the one who's really big on kids and babies in general. Which, when you think about it, you gotta wonder why she hasn't jumped on the chance to have a kid earlier... why, in fact, the trickster god and the goddess of war had the first kid instead of the fertility goddess in the first place. Mythologically it makes no sense, which is why I am glad we are people, with complex personalities and lives of our own, not gods, who are archetypal representations made up by mortals. If I were addicted to worship I wouldn't be able to get away with doing things that break archetype, like, uh, overthrowing the government and ending up in charge of the place. Show me the last trickster god who got away with *that.* But I digress.)
From my perspective, there's very little downside to this. Q who aren't me having children -- an activity that the Q can engage in because *my* ideology won the war -- bolsters the degree to which my ideology is respected and followed within the Continuum. The Continuum is happy, because both of those Q are considered dangerous mavericks and binding them to another Q, and to each other, helps to contain them. (Q is infamous for taking mortal lovers -- a different one each century, approximately, and then they die on her and she mopes about it -- because, to borrow more mortal metaphors, she changed all our diapers, and feels entirely too sisterly to most of the Continuum to actually want to be romantically involved with any of us. And my ex invented the version of the weapons that *mortals* can use, and then promptly got mortals into the Continuum, while she herself had no powers... plus, she plays around without her powers for *fun*, gets her mortal body killed frequently, and seems to most of the Q to be afraid of nothing. I know better, but, well. Since fear has historically been the main way the Continuum keeps rogue omnipotent beings in line, they're *terrified* of Q, especially since it is now obvious that if she decided to arm several million mortals with Q-killing weapons and drag them all into the Continuum, she could wipe us all out. So the idea that instead she is going to be occupied raising another baby is very pleasing to most of my comrades, not all of which have quite as much faith as I do that Q *wouldn't* try to kill us all... most likely.) Q is happy because she finally gets a baby after only complaining about the fact that she has no more young ones to help raise for the past four billion years, and Q is... well, I don't know if she's happy, I'm not sure my ex is *capable* of being happy anymore, but she seems cheerful enough. I mean, it was her decision. The way I hear it, she was the one who approached Q about it, not the other way around.
Also, this takes a lot of the pressure off me and my son. If he's not The Only Q Child In Existence anymore, people are not going to put nearly as high expectations on him... or on me, as the guy raising him. Really, this is great all around.
About the only downside is that my son is miserable. He is convinced that his mother is having a new baby to replace him because she thinks he's a worthless screw-up. Unfortunately, I can't convince him that this is not true, because he's a Q, he knows everything, and in fact it *is* true. Q *does* think our son is a worthless screw-up and she *does* want to have another one for primarily that reason. I've tried to convince him that a new Q close in age to him will take the pressure off him and will be a worthy companion to him in another ten thousand years or so, but no go. He has no interest in his baby sister and in fact is actively pretending that she doesn't exist. (Which she doesn't, entirely, yet -- she's still in the planning and design stage, but it's pretty certain that Q and Q will finish up the project and produce a fully realized baby Q in a short while. I mean, we're omnipotent. It's not like we have birth defects or miscarriages.) I can't help it -- anything that makes my son unhappy is something I can't be completely cheerful about, even if I think his reasons for being unhappy are entirely stupid. (It's not that I disagree with him that his mother is making a new child because she thinks he's a failure; it's that I disagree with him that he should *care* what she thinks. *She* walked out on *him*; why should he care about her opinion of him any longer? But, y'know, she's Mom. I can't really relate to that, since I don't have a mother myself, but it's been pretty consistent -- if he hasn't gotten over her abandoning him in five thousand years, I don't think it's going to happen.)
Well, that got a lot less cheerful in a hurry. Let's move on, shall we?
345: Are you well organised?
If you were equipped to examine the structure of the pattern that forms my essential nature (which you're not, as the form of energy I am made of doesn't even exist in your universe and should I translate myself into the substance of your universe with as much precision as possible you'd still be incapable of comprehending me), you would see that at the level of elemental particles I'm *very* well organized.
At the level you're talking about, though... maybe not so much.
But then, I hardly need to be organized. I have a Continuum to do it for me. Every thought I've ever had, every memory, every piece of knowledge I've acquired, and every piece of knowledge every other Q has acquired, sits in... well, your closest analogue would be a database, except that my mind is directly connected to it. By your standards, I have high definition large-pipe bandwidth streaming-capable Internet connected to my brain, and the query server I'm attached to is enormously powerful. I merely have to think a question to know the answer. If I don't happen to know the answer already. Which, usually, I do.
I prefer to be spontaneous and creative rather than organized; I don't *need* to organize my thoughts or my plans or my stuff (I don't even have any stuff. When I want a physical object, I make it, and when I don't want it any more, I make it vanish. Beat that with your file folders and your storage units and document boxes. I dare you.)
346: What haven't you finished?
Living. Learning. Changing. Growing. Raising my son. Developing understanding and wisdom. Having fun. Annoying the living daylights out of everyone in the universe.
I realize that to your perceptions, one of these things is not like the other, but from my perspective it's all part of my life, and I won't be finished with it until I'm dead, and given that I'm immortal, I'm expecting the universe to end first.
347: Where are you going?
Anywhere I want to, but that's the wrong question. I'm not going to a "where", except in the trivial sense that I travel all over the universe, all the time. I'm going to a "what". I'm going toward all the things I haven't finished yet.
348: What phrase or saying do you find most irritating?
"What do you dream about?" "What happens when you go to sleep?" "What was your favorite day?" "What will be on your tombstone?" "What secrets would you like to know?" "Money." "Death." "Earth's solar calendar." "Physical objects." oh, and really, just about any other phrase or question that implies that the person you're talking to necessarily has human limitations. Like being doomed to die someday. Or having to go to sleep on a regular basis.
You know, just because I'm immensely superior to all of you, with vastly more intelligence and nigh-infinite resources to draw from, doesn't mean I'm not a person, folks. An entity could start to feel left out around here.