The Q-Equation 2 -------------------- The last dream Tom dreamt before he woke was about B'Elanna. He had done that a lot lately, dreaming about her. Not that that was bad, mind you. She was a better subject for his dreams than *some* things he could think of. Heck, she was a better subject than *anything* else. Still, it made waking up a decidedly lousy event. Especially on days like today, because Tom couldn't feel the B'Elanna of the waking world lying next to him. She must have gotten up early. Tom wanted to go back to sleep -- this was, after all his day off -- but suddenly the realisation dawned on him that he was the one who wasn't lying in bed, instead of B'Elanna. He was lying on a cold, hard floor. He opened his eyes and took a look around, wondering why falling out of the bed hadn't woken him up earlier. He was sure that that wasn't what had woken him now. But he didn't see the bed anywhere. Or even B'Elanna's quarters. He was lying on the floor of a large room, empty except for a row of chairs along one wall, and with a beautiful view on a sunny beach. A woman was sitting on one of the chairs, holding a small child. She looked familiar, but -- probably because he was still half-asleep -- Tom didn't recognize her immediately. "You took your sweet time waking up, Helmboy," Q said. And it wasn't just any Q. It was the female Q. =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= <<title sequence>> written by: Niels van Eekelen June - July 1998 owned by: Paramount/Viacom (Actually, they only think they own Voyager. In truth, the Q-continuum has complete control over them.) this story owned by: the writer, who does it all for fun, not profit (and, of course, to appease his countless fans.) Archiving and stuff is fine, just let the writer know. Comments and critics are more than welcome. And, please, don't blame any of this on that poor writer -- he's controlled by the Q as well. This is a companion story to the first Q-Equation. =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= The Q-Equation Q2 = P+T =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= "Could you... Could you possibly tell me how I got here? And by the way, where is `here'?" "It was an accident, really." "Yeah, I have those a lot, but what *kind* of accident? And where --" "You're in the Q-continuum. You got here by accident when I threw Q out." she stood up. "But since you're here anyway, you can babysit." In a flash, she had suddenly disappeared, and the child she had been holding -- it must have been Q Junior -- was lying in Tom's arms. Tom quickly considered his situation, or rather, his problems. (1) He was in the Q-continuum. (2) He *still* had no idea of how he'd gotten there, or (3) how he could get back to Voyager and B'Elanna. And last but not least, (4) the baby Q was asleep in his arms. Tom had a little experience with babysitting from Naomi Wildman, but *she* couldn't throw suns at her babysitters if she didn't happen to like them. And he did *not* want to know what happened if a non-corporeal entity needed a clean diaper. A shiver ran down Tom's back, and he wasn't sure whether it was because of his situation or because he was still only wearing his pyjamas. His best option, Tom decided, was to turn tail and run. He checked the room with his eyes, but didn't see any doors. Then he got up from the floor and gently laid Junior on one of the chairs. The pilot checked the walls and even the floor very thoroughly, but couldn't find an opening in any of them. The chairs had all been firmly attached to the floor, so there was nothing he could use to break the windows. He sat down with a sigh. Then Q Junior woke. It was several hours before Q -- the mother -- returned from elsewhere in the Continuum. She had been on Q-business. Q-business could do much to calm one down after some other Q had upset one. As soon as Q arrived back in the exit-less room, the calming down she had been doing turned out to have been quite futile. "*What* the *hell* has happened *here*!" she screamed. The room was hardly recognizable as the room she had left behind earlier. The chairs had all been torn from the floor, and the feathers from their cushions had all been gathered in one corner of the room. On top of them, a baby lay sleeping. The rest of the floor was covered with large splotches of what appeared to be... whipped cream? On the few empty spots on the floor, and on the walls, Q could see the distinctive claw marks of a Vytuiran razorclaw-lizard. The ceiling seemed to be relatively intact, only it had changed color from white to a bright pink. Outside the windows, a storm had broken loose. Q turned to the one who she would blame for this mess. Of course, she could clean everything with a single snap of her fingers, and it wasn't a real house anyway, but that wasn't the issue. Tom was sitting quietly on the floor, neck-deep in the cream. He was still trying to decide if he had just had some of the best fun he had had in ages, or if he was about to cry. "You," said Q, "have some explaining to do, I believe." "Explaining? Well, I, suppose I could do that." He stood up. Several litres of cream still hung on his pyjamas. "But, Q, could you do me a favor?" "What?" "Well, my pyjamas seem to have gotten a little dirty, and since you're almighty anyway..." He fell silent when he noticed Q's glare. "A clean uniform would be very nice," he finished. Q sighed in disgust, but she *did* snap her fingers, and suddenly Tom was wearing a Starfleet uniform. *Well how about that,* he thought, *a Q actually did as I asked for once.* The uniform even had the right number of pips on its collar. "Thank you," he said out loud. "Just start explaining," Q replied. Tom sat down on a relatively clean spot on the floor, and started counting on his fingers. "Well, when your son woke up, he was lying on one of those chairs, and he immediately jumped -- or teleported, or whatever -- back into my arms. It seemed like a good idea to stay on his good side, so I held him for a while before I laid him down on a chair again. I don't think he liked the chair, 'cause just when I thought I had put a safe distance between him and me, the cushions started to explode and all those feathers started flying around. There were so many I could hardly see a thing. I thought I'd better get back to Junior, and that's when the chairs started to fly around. After I had spent some time ducking and dodging, the air cleared again. When I looked at Q he mumbled something I couldn't quite make out, and then he clapped his hands and some kind of creature appeared in such a Q flash of light. I dunno what it was, but it looked really hungry, and it looked at me in a somewhat unpleasant way." "That was probably Woof," Q interrupted. "Woof?" "He's Junior's favorite pet." "If you say so. Well, he chased me around for a while. Did you know that creature can walk on the walls? I didn't really appreciate all that, but I think little Q enjoyed it. At least, he was giggling constantly. Fortunately, he tired of his little game before I tired too much, and that Woof of yours vanished again. That's when Q started playing with the ceiling. First it was red, then purple, then yellow -- or maybe it was blue before that. Anyway, as you can see, he finally settled on pink. Lacking any better ideas, I tried to get to Q again. I thought that maybe if I held him I could convince him to fall asleep. No such luck. Before I knew what was happening, this cream was flying all around me. Your son's got an awful aim, Q, but he must have thought that if he just kept throwing whipped cream, he'd hit me eventually." "It seems he was right about that." "Well, yes, I suppose. As you can see, Junior kept throwing for a very long time, and when he couldn't find me anymore beneath his ammunition, he gathered the feathers from those cushions and went to sleep in the corner." He looked out of the window. "I'm not sure when Q started that storm. I must have been to busy to notice at the time." He smiled and licked his lips. "It wasn't all bad, though, Q. Your son makes some of the best whipped cream I've ever tasted." Q cursed -- and despised -- silently, and wondered how she could ever have thought a *human* could watch her child. Then she suddenly heard something. It wasn't really a sound as such, but something only a Q could hear. "Huh? What was that?" "What?" "Is Q trying to force his way in now? No," Q said in some surprise, "he's asking to talk to me." Tom wondered if this was good or bad. If he had been brought to the Continuum when Q had been put out, perhaps he could finally get back home to B'Elanna if Q returned. Q -- the one that was already there -- pointed at Tom with an immortal finger. "You. Stay here," she said, and vanished. "Anything you wish, oh divine deity," Tom replied to the empty room with a gracious bow. He was getting tired of being left alone with the baby. The kid was very bad on his nerves. When Q returned a while later, Tom could see that all had not gone well. Fortunately, since he and B'Elanna had gotten together Tom had gained a lot of experience in dealing with bad tempers. "What did he do?" Tom asked. "Did he actually think that he could give me a few shiny petals and stems and everything would be all right again?" "Do I understand correctly that Q gave you flowers and asked you to forgive him?" "Yes! Ke'essarian crystal flowers! The imbecile!" Tom could have agreed with that last bit, but he saw that it was in his own best interest not to. "Well, isn't that awfully nice of him?" "Nice! I could have made them myself if I'd wanted to. He's simply trying to sweet-talk me!" "Q, is there anything Q could do that you couldn't?" "Well, uh..." Tom didn't give her the time to think of something. "Besides, it's the gesture that counts, not what he gives you." Well, it had worked with B'Elanna -- if only once -- so why wouldn't it work with Q? Q didn't even have Klingon blood. Unless they wanted, of course. "What are you talking about?" "Q, Q is only trying to convey his feelings for you. Give him a chance, will you?" "Well... Oh, all right." "You know, Q, for an omnipotent being, you know terribly little about this sort of thing." "We Q aren't omnipotent, Helmboy, we're almighty. That's not the same thing. Wait here." Q vanished. This was starting to get old. A minute later, she appeared again. "Now what?" she asked. "Now, we wait. He'll come back." Tom could only hope that he would. He did *not* want to be trapped here for the rest of his life. "Next time," he suggested, "why don't you let him back in? You wouldn't want him to start doubting *your* feelings for *him*, would you?" "I suppose not. Ah, he's back already." "Let me guess: `Wait here, puny human.'" "Very perceptive, for a mortal biped." This time, after Q left, it took very long before she returned. It must have taken at least three hours, and Tom was starting to get nervous, but then she came back. To Tom's relief, she was wearing a broad smile. "I take it everything went well?" "You might say that," said Q, who appeared beside Q, also smiling broadly. That was the male Q. Boy, this was getting confusing. "Wouldn't you say so, my dearest?" "Yes, I would, my darling." "I couldn't agree more, my precious." "Neither could I, my handsome boy." "I love you, my pretty." "Uh... I don't mean to interrupt, but would you mind terribly sending me home now?" "Oh, shoo," said both Q in unison. Without looking away from each other, they both waved a hand at Tom, and suddenly the room surrounding him was replaced by another. It was a bedroom. Tom wouldn't really have minded that, only it was neither his bedroom, nor B'Elanna's, from which he had been abducted. Now, Tom had seen a lot -- not just today, but during his entire life -- but even he was more than slightly embarrassed when he noticed the bed in this room was occupied. Sue Nicoletti and Michael Ayala? He hadn't even known that they had anything going. He also hadn't known Ayala was so proficient at swearing, which the man did when he noticed Tom. Sue stuck to turning very red. "Look," Tom tried to explain, "I'm only passing through. I'm here accidentally, actually. Don't pay any attention to me." Tom *had* known that Michael Ayala was very strong, but that didn't help him very much when Ayala picked him up and practically threw him out of the door. After he had picked himself of the deck, Tom took a look around. Yes, he'd been right: Sue Nicoletti's quarters were right next to B'Elanna's. Quickly, he went inside. "... the Continuum again," B'Elanna was saying to her commbadge, standing with her back to the door, "but it seems they have forgotten Paris altogether." Tom grinned. "Not necessarily." B'Elanna turned and smiled at Tom happily. "They may be omnipotent, but they did put me in the wrong quarters. Your Mr and Mrs Neighbour were *not* happy to be disturbed." He rubbed his neck. A sudden gleam appeared in his eyes. "Then again, perhaps it was a hint." The next thing he knew, he and B'Elanna were hugging and kissing each other somewhere between where they had been standing. "B'Ella, do you remember that holoprogram I wanted to show you today?" Tom said when their mouths finally parted. "Uh huh," B'Elanna confirmed. "And do you know what I want to do there with you?" He described it at some length. Then they went to the Holodeck and actually did all of it, too. =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= the End =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= <<end titles>> beta-read by: Maaike van Eekelen copyright 1998 e-mail adress: Maaikeve@Freemail.nl My sister's; she'll pass things on to me. =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= epilogue =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= =/\= Tom and B'Elanna were lying in each other's arms on the grass beneath a romantic night sky in a beautiful garden in Paris, Earth. They had mutually agreed that this was what mankind had been thinking about when the `happy ending' was invented. Some ways behind them, another couple was lying on the grass, hidden from view by a neat row of trees they had put there for that sole purpose. "Those humans may have lots of flaws, and believe me, they do," said Q, "but they do have a knack for romanticism, don't you think, dearest?" "Uh huh," Q agreed.   The End