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rolling out, we can take that as a hint that this isn't the right
tent."
Picard sighed. He tended to do that a good deal when he was around me,
I'd noticed. Then without another word, he walked through the entrance
of the tent, followed by Data. I cheerily took up the rear.
It was extremely dark. God had obviously not paid his
electric bill. There was a faint glow, coming from a source that I
couldn't identify, giving us just enough light to see one another but
not much more. However, there was one thing I could see, or more
appropriately, sense. Power.
I couldn't tap into it, couldn't draw from it. But it was there, just
the same, and Picard noticed something as well. He looked at me.
"Power. All around," I said to him in a low voice. "Power?"
There was something in his tone. "Picard, let's not go through this
again. There was power in the stronghold of M
as well, and she was hardly divine."
"But you don't know, for sure."
"No, Picard, I don't," I said, becoming more and more exasperated by
the moment. "But unlike you, I don't fall back on fairy tales to deal
with what I don't know. I assure you of one thing. I have personal
knowledge of, and experience with, every being that exists on the sort
of power level we're discussing. In short, I know all of my peers and
all of my near-peers. So if any of them are here, we'll be able to
chat it up nicely and I'll be sure to introduce you."
"Why, though," Data piped up, "would others have power in this realm
and you do not?"
"Perhaps," I speculated, "the longer one remains down here, the more
power one acquires. In fact..."
"In fact what?" prompted Picard.
"Perhaps one acquires power by resigning oneself to remaining in one
area. We've moved from one place to the next so quickly, refusing to
stay put, that we haven't had an opportunity to find out. Because of
that, I may be 'deprived." "
"How long would we have to stay at one level, do you think?"
"I've no idea," I admitted. "Time in this place isn't measured in the
same way, and doesn't flow in the same manner, as in the outside world.
Besides, we're faced with a deadline. The universe is going down the
drain, and for all we know, we've only minutes or perhaps seconds left.
We can't afford delays?"
He nodded.
And at that moment, the lights suddenly came up. Picard and I
flinched, shielding our eyes against the brightness. Perhaps god's
electric company had a change of heart.
I turned and saw myself standing next to myself. An infinite number of
me's, a virtual army of Q. And they were all thinning in the hair
department.
But for an instant, I actually took heart. The notion of an army of
me's, rallying to the cause, was quite uplifting. But, alas, it was
only an instant, because that was how long it took me to realize that I
was simply looking at a mirror. But such a mistake was no reflection
on me (ba DUM bum).
I backed up and noticed that Picard was likewise captivated by an
endless array of himself. Data tilted his head slightly and I knew, I
just knew, that he was likely counting them.
I couldn't resist: "How many, Data?" I asked. "One billion, seven
hundred million..." "Thank you..." I said, shutting him up.
It was like being in a "fun house," except this wasn't fun. The
hallway twisted and turned ahead of us. The floor was solid black
beneath us, mirrors were all around us, and I still had no idea where
the light was coming from.
"The light.." is from me."
I looked around. None of us had spoken. And it was disturbing to have
a question answered when it hadn't been voiced.
"Come forward. I await you. You may enter my presence
Picard and Data looked at me. "Sound familiar?" asked Picard.
"Vaguely," I said, and it did sound vaguely familiar. I couldn't place
it, but I was reasonably sure I had heard it before. "There are
several possibilities as to who it might be. The only way we're going
to know for sure is to keep walking."
We made our way forward. I watched the mirrors carefully and noticed
the images shifting the further we went along. My "army" went from
vast to nonexistent, to fat, to thin, to grossly distorted. Each
distortion was more horrific than the one before. It wasn't the simple
stretching that one expects from fun house mirrors and such. These
mirrors twisted my features in such a way that they made me look
positively evil. I looked over to Picard and Data, and their
reflections were completely unchanged. Indeed, they were so
unremarkable that Data and Picard weren't even giving them any no rice
This was getting ominous.
The floor beneath our feet began to feel gravelly. We turned a corner,
and the mirrors disappeared... and so did the tent.
Before us lay a vast plain, craggy and windswept. There was not a hint
of vegetation anywhere. In the distance was a small hill, and on that
hill.." there sat someone. It was too far to make him out clearly,
but he was seated in a fairly relaxed fashion and appeared to be
looking in our direction.
"Data," Picard said softly, "are we in another level.." another
place?"
"If we are following the Kibler-Ross pattern, this would be the land of
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