Family
(For 
musing_way.)
"Do you have any family?" the child asked him.
Q is startled by the question. He's simply never considered it, one way or another.
What does "family" even mean, in this context? He examines the child's mind. To her, family means a unit of genetic continuity -- parents, siblings, grandparents. She's thinking of her own family, of a little brother and an older sister, of the parents of her parents, of the siblings of her parents and their children, her cousins. It's a small unit, isolated in her mind from the rest of her species, a special little group of "us" in a sea of "them."
Q does not have anything like that.
To her, family is about being a small child, protected by adults who have her best interests at heart. Q was never a child, and was created by the Continuum to serve its purposes, and has always known this. There has never been anyone looking out for him and his needs, but him. Oh, there are other Q who care about him, even other Q who have taken care of him, inasmuch as he needed it, but he was never the focus of a unit of entities organized around the concept of his well-being and care; he was created to serve his creators' needs, not the other way around. And, since he was created well, and since he was made to be part of the unit that created him, he has never rebelled against his purpose; it is his raison d'etre, it is what he is for. The fact that his creators are not quite so happy with the reason they made him for, now that he is fulfilling it, is not his problem.
The Continuum was created by a small number of entities who, upon becoming Q, became an even smaller number of entities. They created the Q, and the Continuum, billions of years before he came into existence. As they felt the need to add to their number, they, as the Continuum, brought new Q into existence through an act of will, and those new Q were fully realized entities -- not adults, perhaps, but not small children either. More akin to ten or twelve or fourteen year olds than to infants. And each new Q who was added to the Continuum contributed something to the whole, such that each new Q created after that one was influenced by all the ones who came before. Only twenty-two new Q were created by the Continuum after Q's creation; he was one of the last. Mortals have been invited to join, and some have accepted, but still, he is one of the youngest of the Q-born-Q, of the Continuum's acts of self-creation.
Are the eldest of the Continuum, those who designed his very species even as they became it, his parents? His grandparents? His ancestors? They're still alive; immortality has that effect. No generation of Q will ever grow up and supplant the prior generation; the past never dies in the Q Continuum.
Are the created-Q who came before him, those who were made by the will of the Continuum just as he was, his siblings? But all those who are older than him were part of the Continuum when it made him, so then wouldn't that make them his parents? And what of the few created-Q younger than he is? Are they his younger siblings, or his children? He was there when they were created, he was part of the overmind that designed and shaped them and brought them into being, he thinks of himself as a guardian and protector to those few who are younger than him, but being that they're as omnipotent as he is, they don't need much protecting, and anyway, he's more likely to lead them into trouble than away from it, at least from the Continuum's perspective.
Viewed one way, his entire species is his family. He knows all of them as intimately as the child knows her sister and brother, and they bicker with each other about as often. Viewed another way, he has no parents, therefore he has no fellow children of his parents, therefore he has no family. Viewed from still a different angle, he was never a child and therefore can never have had a family, not what she thinks of when she thinks of family, anyway.
He cannot explain any of this to the child. It's more information than she needs, more than he wants to reveal, and the comparison between the warm, protective unit that has surrounded her since her birth and his own situation is bothering him. Which is ludicrous, because he would never have wanted to be an infant -- the helplessness of sentient mortals' young, their weakness in comparison to their elders, is something he is entirely happy to have missed out on by being created a Q. And yet... there are people who she believes love her unconditionally, who she loves entirely in return. People she trusts completely, whether they deserve it or not. Q is almost entirely self-sufficient, but on the rare occasions when he's seen evidence that it would benefit him to have someone's help and comfort, he's never gotten any.
"No," he says, finally. "I don't have any family."
She puts her hand on his. "I'm sorry," she says sincerely. "You must be lonely."
It's ridiculous, of course. The child's misconception is laughable, assuming that because he doesn't have anything that translates to her concept of family, that he is alone. In fact he's never alone. Being part of an overmind, and a busybody one at that, he could seriously use some loneliness from time to time. He opens his mouth to make a sarcastic wisecrack... and then doesn't.
Because she loves her family, wholly and completely, and she believes they love her back.
And he loves the Continuum, as an abstract, but half the time he can't stand the actual people in it, and he strongly suspects that their opinion of him is even lower than his of them.
Because the only beings who *love* him are a desperately needy Q who wants more love and unity and togetherness than any Q could possibly survive, who he spends half his time trying to protect from herself and half the time resenting because she's omnipotent, dammit, she shouldn't *need* his protection... and a fierce, fiery, would-be warrior who's almost frightening in her intensity, who doesn't actually *need* anybody and in fact he's never been entirely convinced that she loves him at all, although her over-the-top displays of jealousy certainly imply that she thinks she owns him... and a Q who's older than him and elected herself caretaker of every Q who's younger than her... and another Q who used to be fun until he decided he was too grown-up to be entertaining anymore, and honestly, Q isn't quite sure that the older former trickster turned upstanding Continuum citizen cares about him anywhere near as much as he did. And none of those beings love him unconditionally.
And he realizes, to his shock, that he's actually *envious* of this child, of the fact that she has parents who specifically love and watch out for her and her siblings alone, that she doesn't share her creators with the rest of her entire species and that she knows for a fact that those who made her, love her.
So he changes the subject completely. "Why don't we play a different game?"
Mun's Note: This response was inspired by a conversation between Q and a child in LalSoong's fan novel Trip to Nowhere, chapter 5. However, as her take on the Continuum is very different than mine, and my version of Q has never granted the power of the Q to a small child, the context of this conversation is probably completely different in my universe than in hers. :-)
musing_way.)
"Do you have any family?" the child asked him.
Q is startled by the question. He's simply never considered it, one way or another.
What does "family" even mean, in this context? He examines the child's mind. To her, family means a unit of genetic continuity -- parents, siblings, grandparents. She's thinking of her own family, of a little brother and an older sister, of the parents of her parents, of the siblings of her parents and their children, her cousins. It's a small unit, isolated in her mind from the rest of her species, a special little group of "us" in a sea of "them."
Q does not have anything like that.
To her, family is about being a small child, protected by adults who have her best interests at heart. Q was never a child, and was created by the Continuum to serve its purposes, and has always known this. There has never been anyone looking out for him and his needs, but him. Oh, there are other Q who care about him, even other Q who have taken care of him, inasmuch as he needed it, but he was never the focus of a unit of entities organized around the concept of his well-being and care; he was created to serve his creators' needs, not the other way around. And, since he was created well, and since he was made to be part of the unit that created him, he has never rebelled against his purpose; it is his raison d'etre, it is what he is for. The fact that his creators are not quite so happy with the reason they made him for, now that he is fulfilling it, is not his problem.
The Continuum was created by a small number of entities who, upon becoming Q, became an even smaller number of entities. They created the Q, and the Continuum, billions of years before he came into existence. As they felt the need to add to their number, they, as the Continuum, brought new Q into existence through an act of will, and those new Q were fully realized entities -- not adults, perhaps, but not small children either. More akin to ten or twelve or fourteen year olds than to infants. And each new Q who was added to the Continuum contributed something to the whole, such that each new Q created after that one was influenced by all the ones who came before. Only twenty-two new Q were created by the Continuum after Q's creation; he was one of the last. Mortals have been invited to join, and some have accepted, but still, he is one of the youngest of the Q-born-Q, of the Continuum's acts of self-creation.
Are the eldest of the Continuum, those who designed his very species even as they became it, his parents? His grandparents? His ancestors? They're still alive; immortality has that effect. No generation of Q will ever grow up and supplant the prior generation; the past never dies in the Q Continuum.
Are the created-Q who came before him, those who were made by the will of the Continuum just as he was, his siblings? But all those who are older than him were part of the Continuum when it made him, so then wouldn't that make them his parents? And what of the few created-Q younger than he is? Are they his younger siblings, or his children? He was there when they were created, he was part of the overmind that designed and shaped them and brought them into being, he thinks of himself as a guardian and protector to those few who are younger than him, but being that they're as omnipotent as he is, they don't need much protecting, and anyway, he's more likely to lead them into trouble than away from it, at least from the Continuum's perspective.
Viewed one way, his entire species is his family. He knows all of them as intimately as the child knows her sister and brother, and they bicker with each other about as often. Viewed another way, he has no parents, therefore he has no fellow children of his parents, therefore he has no family. Viewed from still a different angle, he was never a child and therefore can never have had a family, not what she thinks of when she thinks of family, anyway.
He cannot explain any of this to the child. It's more information than she needs, more than he wants to reveal, and the comparison between the warm, protective unit that has surrounded her since her birth and his own situation is bothering him. Which is ludicrous, because he would never have wanted to be an infant -- the helplessness of sentient mortals' young, their weakness in comparison to their elders, is something he is entirely happy to have missed out on by being created a Q. And yet... there are people who she believes love her unconditionally, who she loves entirely in return. People she trusts completely, whether they deserve it or not. Q is almost entirely self-sufficient, but on the rare occasions when he's seen evidence that it would benefit him to have someone's help and comfort, he's never gotten any.
"No," he says, finally. "I don't have any family."
She puts her hand on his. "I'm sorry," she says sincerely. "You must be lonely."
It's ridiculous, of course. The child's misconception is laughable, assuming that because he doesn't have anything that translates to her concept of family, that he is alone. In fact he's never alone. Being part of an overmind, and a busybody one at that, he could seriously use some loneliness from time to time. He opens his mouth to make a sarcastic wisecrack... and then doesn't.
Because she loves her family, wholly and completely, and she believes they love her back.
And he loves the Continuum, as an abstract, but half the time he can't stand the actual people in it, and he strongly suspects that their opinion of him is even lower than his of them.
Because the only beings who *love* him are a desperately needy Q who wants more love and unity and togetherness than any Q could possibly survive, who he spends half his time trying to protect from herself and half the time resenting because she's omnipotent, dammit, she shouldn't *need* his protection... and a fierce, fiery, would-be warrior who's almost frightening in her intensity, who doesn't actually *need* anybody and in fact he's never been entirely convinced that she loves him at all, although her over-the-top displays of jealousy certainly imply that she thinks she owns him... and a Q who's older than him and elected herself caretaker of every Q who's younger than her... and another Q who used to be fun until he decided he was too grown-up to be entertaining anymore, and honestly, Q isn't quite sure that the older former trickster turned upstanding Continuum citizen cares about him anywhere near as much as he did. And none of those beings love him unconditionally.
And he realizes, to his shock, that he's actually *envious* of this child, of the fact that she has parents who specifically love and watch out for her and her siblings alone, that she doesn't share her creators with the rest of her entire species and that she knows for a fact that those who made her, love her.
So he changes the subject completely. "Why don't we play a different game?"
Mun's Note: This response was inspired by a conversation between Q and a child in LalSoong's fan novel Trip to Nowhere, chapter 5. However, as her take on the Continuum is very different than mine, and my version of Q has never granted the power of the Q to a small child, the context of this conversation is probably completely different in my universe than in hers. :-)