That's what jail is like
OOC: Crossposted from theatrical_muse today.
Prompt 287: Prison
It may shock you to know that a fine, upstanding citizen of the Q Continuum such as myself has any acquaintance with anything resembling a prison... okay, okay, I can't keep a straight face through that one either.
Actually, I've been in prison, or something like it, multiple times. The incident I've talked about most often would be the time I was human, and Picard threw me in the brig. I have to admit, that was deeply unpleasant. But the fact is, it's not the worst prison I've ever been in.
The worst prison I've been in -- well, that was intended to be a prison anyway -- was when I was confined to a comet for, I think probably about six linear years, about two thousand years ago. It started as a disagreement about the interpretation of certain rules, and it came to the point where the leadership of the Continuum said, basically, "You implement your flawed interpretation ONE MORE TIME and we'll throw you in jail," and I said, "Nobody died and made you the boss of me, other people agree with my interpretation, and you and your jail can go jump in a quantum singularity," and then I did the thing they told me not to do, quite deliberately. So... they threw me in jail. This isn't even metaphorical, the way I usually get when I talk about the Continuum; we have a technique for binding the essence of a Q to a solid object, and we usually pick comets because they're small and fizzy and if the Q in question manages to knock the thing out of its proper orbit trying to get free, nothing's going to get seriously hurt.
A human prison, like Picard's brig, is actually preferable to a Q prison. Imprisoned Q may hear the Continuum and draw down information from it, but you can't send anything back. You're blocked from using your powers outside your own essence as long as the binding is on you, so you can maybe do some damage to the solid body you're in but there's very little else you can *do*. It is mind-numbingly boring, and while human prisons have to provide some variety of experience in that humans need to eat and sleep and use the sanitary facilities, Q don't... which means there aren't even biological functions to break up the monotony. You just do nothing, effectively immobilized for however long the Continuum wants to keep you there.
We don't do it as a punishment per se -- it's more akin to a torture, really. The goal isn't to make you pay back some wrong you have done, but to make you agree to stop doing that wrong in the future, and ideally, make you rethink your position so you recognize that you *have* done wrong (or become brainwashed by the utter boredom into being willing to believe anything if it gets you out of there.) Since it can't kill us, we consider it less serious a punishment than being exiled to mortality, and in fact I have to say being mortal was a lot more unpleasant. I stayed in prison for exactly as long as it took me to decide that the principle I was standing up for was not actually as important as my freedom, and I could have decided that at any point but I tend to be a tad stubborn about standing up for whatever I believe today. The thing about being mortal was that saying "I'm sorry, I won't do it again" didn't have any effect on that punishment. In a sense, being in prison was under my control and it ended as soon as I couldn't take it anymore and gave in, whereas I couldn't take being mortal anymore after about half an hour of it and yet had to put up with it for an entire day.
Then there have been times I was under house arrest, not allowed to leave the Continuum. Those were almost fun times, since unlike being in a comet, I was able to interact with other Q. Since at the time I generally wanted to interact with mortals and was bored with Q, I didn't find it pleasant, but being able to interact with other Q meant I could take out my frustrations on them, which often led to them deciding that maybe the whole Continuum would be better off if I got let off house arrest early.
There was the time Guinan locked me out of the universe. That wasn't so much a prison exactly; I could have gone anywhere had there been anywhere to go, but the thing about nowhere, see, is that it hasn't got any where in it, so there is nowhere to go. That was... let's just say it was upsetting and leave it at that. I'd have given that one the "worst prison" award if it had lasted much longer (much longer from my temporal perceptions, anyway, since outside the universe there's no time, so if I hadn't been generating my own time my consciousness would have ceased and I wouldn't have even known I was trapped), but it wasn't actually all that long before the Continuum ransomed me back.
But to be honest, the absolute worst prison I've ever been in wasn't intended to be a prison at all. It was intended to be a safe place I could recuperate from damage my former best friend inflicted on me. It was supposed to be an act of mercy, to protect me from having my psyche rewritten by unscrupulous fellow Q during a period when I was too weak and injured to fight them off. They put me in a pocket dimension, by myself, with nothing else in it, and as soon as I was healed enough to leave, there would be nothing to prevent me from doing so. Which might have worked out just great, if not for the sensory deprivation and the loneliness and the fact that it took me forty years to heal... it took only six inside a comet for me to decide that standing up to the Continuum wasn't worth it. I can't actually endure boredom and sensory deprivation that long. Or loneliness, if I want to be honest about it.
Prompt 286: Under what circumstances, if any, is it acceptable to break the law?
I can't imagine why you might think that I would think it's ever acceptable to break the law. I'm shocked, shocked, I tell you!... Of course maybe it might have something to do with my having been in prison multiple times?...
It's acceptable to break the law when the law is stupid. It's important to know both the letter of the law, and exactly what it will let you get away with... and the spirit of the law, what it's intended to prevent. Sometimes I object to the spirit of a law, in its entirety, so I follow the letter of it but in ways that those who created the law clearly never intended. Other times, I break the letter of the law when it's necessary to obey the spirit of it.
I should add that the only law I consider myself bound by is the law of the Q Continuum. There are any number of alien races out there who believe that the tests I performed on them -- which were usually for their edification, but they were rarely grateful -- were unlawful, and they've actually put me on trial (generally, in absentia. Although I have shown up for some of those trials, because they're hilarious.) But I'm not a citizen of any of those races and I really don't care about their petty little laws. The only law I even pretend to obey is Continuum law.
Muse: Q
Fandom: Star Trek TNG and VOY
Prompt 287: Prison
It may shock you to know that a fine, upstanding citizen of the Q Continuum such as myself has any acquaintance with anything resembling a prison... okay, okay, I can't keep a straight face through that one either.
Actually, I've been in prison, or something like it, multiple times. The incident I've talked about most often would be the time I was human, and Picard threw me in the brig. I have to admit, that was deeply unpleasant. But the fact is, it's not the worst prison I've ever been in.
The worst prison I've been in -- well, that was intended to be a prison anyway -- was when I was confined to a comet for, I think probably about six linear years, about two thousand years ago. It started as a disagreement about the interpretation of certain rules, and it came to the point where the leadership of the Continuum said, basically, "You implement your flawed interpretation ONE MORE TIME and we'll throw you in jail," and I said, "Nobody died and made you the boss of me, other people agree with my interpretation, and you and your jail can go jump in a quantum singularity," and then I did the thing they told me not to do, quite deliberately. So... they threw me in jail. This isn't even metaphorical, the way I usually get when I talk about the Continuum; we have a technique for binding the essence of a Q to a solid object, and we usually pick comets because they're small and fizzy and if the Q in question manages to knock the thing out of its proper orbit trying to get free, nothing's going to get seriously hurt.
A human prison, like Picard's brig, is actually preferable to a Q prison. Imprisoned Q may hear the Continuum and draw down information from it, but you can't send anything back. You're blocked from using your powers outside your own essence as long as the binding is on you, so you can maybe do some damage to the solid body you're in but there's very little else you can *do*. It is mind-numbingly boring, and while human prisons have to provide some variety of experience in that humans need to eat and sleep and use the sanitary facilities, Q don't... which means there aren't even biological functions to break up the monotony. You just do nothing, effectively immobilized for however long the Continuum wants to keep you there.
We don't do it as a punishment per se -- it's more akin to a torture, really. The goal isn't to make you pay back some wrong you have done, but to make you agree to stop doing that wrong in the future, and ideally, make you rethink your position so you recognize that you *have* done wrong (or become brainwashed by the utter boredom into being willing to believe anything if it gets you out of there.) Since it can't kill us, we consider it less serious a punishment than being exiled to mortality, and in fact I have to say being mortal was a lot more unpleasant. I stayed in prison for exactly as long as it took me to decide that the principle I was standing up for was not actually as important as my freedom, and I could have decided that at any point but I tend to be a tad stubborn about standing up for whatever I believe today. The thing about being mortal was that saying "I'm sorry, I won't do it again" didn't have any effect on that punishment. In a sense, being in prison was under my control and it ended as soon as I couldn't take it anymore and gave in, whereas I couldn't take being mortal anymore after about half an hour of it and yet had to put up with it for an entire day.
Then there have been times I was under house arrest, not allowed to leave the Continuum. Those were almost fun times, since unlike being in a comet, I was able to interact with other Q. Since at the time I generally wanted to interact with mortals and was bored with Q, I didn't find it pleasant, but being able to interact with other Q meant I could take out my frustrations on them, which often led to them deciding that maybe the whole Continuum would be better off if I got let off house arrest early.
There was the time Guinan locked me out of the universe. That wasn't so much a prison exactly; I could have gone anywhere had there been anywhere to go, but the thing about nowhere, see, is that it hasn't got any where in it, so there is nowhere to go. That was... let's just say it was upsetting and leave it at that. I'd have given that one the "worst prison" award if it had lasted much longer (much longer from my temporal perceptions, anyway, since outside the universe there's no time, so if I hadn't been generating my own time my consciousness would have ceased and I wouldn't have even known I was trapped), but it wasn't actually all that long before the Continuum ransomed me back.
But to be honest, the absolute worst prison I've ever been in wasn't intended to be a prison at all. It was intended to be a safe place I could recuperate from damage my former best friend inflicted on me. It was supposed to be an act of mercy, to protect me from having my psyche rewritten by unscrupulous fellow Q during a period when I was too weak and injured to fight them off. They put me in a pocket dimension, by myself, with nothing else in it, and as soon as I was healed enough to leave, there would be nothing to prevent me from doing so. Which might have worked out just great, if not for the sensory deprivation and the loneliness and the fact that it took me forty years to heal... it took only six inside a comet for me to decide that standing up to the Continuum wasn't worth it. I can't actually endure boredom and sensory deprivation that long. Or loneliness, if I want to be honest about it.
Prompt 286: Under what circumstances, if any, is it acceptable to break the law?
I can't imagine why you might think that I would think it's ever acceptable to break the law. I'm shocked, shocked, I tell you!... Of course maybe it might have something to do with my having been in prison multiple times?...
It's acceptable to break the law when the law is stupid. It's important to know both the letter of the law, and exactly what it will let you get away with... and the spirit of the law, what it's intended to prevent. Sometimes I object to the spirit of a law, in its entirety, so I follow the letter of it but in ways that those who created the law clearly never intended. Other times, I break the letter of the law when it's necessary to obey the spirit of it.
I should add that the only law I consider myself bound by is the law of the Q Continuum. There are any number of alien races out there who believe that the tests I performed on them -- which were usually for their edification, but they were rarely grateful -- were unlawful, and they've actually put me on trial (generally, in absentia. Although I have shown up for some of those trials, because they're hilarious.) But I'm not a citizen of any of those races and I really don't care about their petty little laws. The only law I even pretend to obey is Continuum law.
Muse: Q
Fandom: Star Trek TNG and VOY