Star Trek Hunter
Episode 28: The Covenant
Scene 8:
Shall I Brush Your Teeth For You?
28.8
Shall I Brush Your Teeth For You?
Retirement was the best decision Jon-Luc Picard had ever made. He was now far too old to be called on by the borg to repair the hulk. Not that he would ever consider becoming borg again - not even for as noble a cause as preserving humanity.
Opening one of his vintage bottles of wine was enough of a challenge, and his old fingers were having trouble with the task this morning. There were machines that could do this, perfectly, every time. But Picard was stubborn about his human pleasures and if he couldn’t prevent every 5th child of humanity having to go through what he had gone through… Being Locutus…
Of course, with the captain’s fingers still a little fumbly and his mind distracted, the wine bottle took the first opportunity to slip from his grasp and head toward the baked clay tiles of his kitchen floor - where it stopped just seconds before shattering - frozen in mid-air.
“You have grown so clumsy in your dotage.”
It was the most annoying voice the aging retired captain had ever heard. Fingernails on a chalkboard could not even begin to compare. A voice he had not heard for decades. A voice he had less than no desire to ever hear again. Picard turned coldly - like a freezer door opening:
“Q!”
“Yes, Mon Capitan, it is Moi…”
“Was this travesty of your making, Q?” Picard asked. “You were the one who first introduced humanity to the borg. Did you also send this gamma radiation our way? Is this one of your horrible pranks?”
“Alas,” responded the apparently omnipotent prankster, “If only I were so creative. No, the onslaught of gamma radiation into your home that has been on its way for more than a billion years is not my brilliant plan. It is the product of mindless natural forces. Much the same way that you are. But it has been far more amusing than any of my pranks could ever have been.”
“Yes,” Picard responded. “I have no doubt you found all of this mayhem amazingly entertaining. Millions dead - and billions to be enslaved by the borg. Did it never cross your mind to help, Q?”
“Shall I brush your teeth for you every morning?” Q asked. “Would you have humanity bow and scrape before me as their god? And the romulans, the klingons and all the others? Could you even begin to imagine how to sufficiently express your gratitude? Would you trade the slender hope of eventual emancipation from the borg for eternal hopeless slavery to a god?”
Picard walked from the kitchen sink over to his dining room table, pulled out a chair and sat down wearily, put his head in his hands. Took a deep, shuddering breath. “No. No, Q,” he replied without looking up. “No, I would not want humanity enslaved to you.”
“There. You see?” Q walked around the table and pulled up a chair next to Picard. Sat down. Put his hand on the ancient captain’s shoulder. “To tell the truth, Jon-Luc, I did consider intervening. But I am a gracious and kind Q. A magnanimous Q. I chose to be merciful. Your destiny belongs not to the Q Continuum, but to yourselves. And to those mindless natural forces that will destroy you if you fail to adapt to them.”
“Why do I have such a hard time believing you, Q?” Picard asked. He turned to look into the eyes his long-time nemesis.
A sly, familiar smile slowly crept across Q’s face. He squeezed Picard’s shoulder, stood up and walked around the table, then turned back to look at the elderly human. “You always could tell when I was lying to you, Jon-Luc…”
A familiar feeling of horror crept up Picard’s spine. “What did you do, Q?”
“Well, you know the story of how all of this started with Admiral Scumuk learning about the Dead Zone, the Hulk and the ancient Library of the Progenitors?”
“I was briefed. Star Fleet Intelligence sought my advice,” Picard answered.
“Did it ever cross that puny, limited mind of yours to wonder how Admiral Scumuk ended up at that ancient library in the middle of the Dead Zone on the other side of the Romulan Star Empire?”
Picard’s eyes widened.
Q slowly and deliberately smiled, winked and vanished.
For a very long moment, Picard sat at his dining room table, pondering what he had just learned. Had Q actually helped to save humanity? Had Q even been in his kitchen this morning - or was a tired old man just imagining this encounter?
A sudden crashing noise from the kitchen behind him startled the elderly, retired captain from his reverie, causing him to nearly jump out of his skin.
It was the wine bottle shattering on his kitchen floor.