On a diplomatic mission, Picard and the away team are attacked by a group of radicals. Picard is slightly injured, but the energy blast damages his artificial heart. Picard finds himself in the afterlife, but to his dismay it appears to be the domain of his nemesis Q, who bluntly says "Welcome to the afterlife, Jean-Luc. You're dead."
To prove that Picard is dead, Q introduces him to people that Picard is aware have died, including Picard's father, and the voices of people for whose deaths Picard is responsible. When Picard accuses Q of causing his death, Q reveals that Picard's artificial heart is the cause of his demise.
Picard lost his own heart in a bar brawl with Nausicaans - members of a quick-tempered, bullish race, which resulted in Picard being impaled from the back through his heart. Picard realizes his regret for his "wild youth" and that it has finally caught up with him. It is revealed that the basis of his current disciplined personality and need for privacy in his personal life is rooted in his regret over his earlier life and a wish to keep it secret.
Learning of Picard's regrets, Q offers to let him go back in time to prevent the injury that resulted in him obtaining an artificial heart. Picard is assured by Q that any changes he makes will not affect anyone other than himself. He is whisked back to two days before the injury, meeting with his friends and academy classmates Corey Zweller and Marta Batanides. To his friends and acquaintances, his "newly changed" personality comes as somewhat of an unpleasant surprise, and he alienates his friends - the person they knew as fun loving and quick to
anger is now staid, slow to anger, and often unintentionally insulting.
Events proceed as they did with Zweller becoming enraged with a group of Nausicaans who cheat him at dom-jot. Picard short-circuits Zweller's plan to rig the dom-jot table, enraging
his best friend in the process. After an intimate encounter with Batanides that was not part of the original timeline, the Nausicaans appear and insult Picard and his friends. Instead of taking on the Nausicaans, Picard throws Zweller out of the way of the fight. The Nausicaans call the ensigns cowards and leave - as do Zweller and Batanides. Picard has destroyed his friendship with them by refusing to stand up for Zweller. Q tells Picard that he has saved his heart, and returns him to the present.
Although Q's promise not to otherwise change the timeline has been kept, Picard finds himself on the Enterprise as a Lieutenant junior grade in the astrophysics department, with Worf as his immediate superior. After meeting with Riker and Troi, he discovers that his careeris a list of routine postings and that he has accomplished little of consequence. He is described as competent by his superiors, but he fails to show initiative and is not willing to take the necessary risks in order to have a successful, well-rounded career in Starfleet.
Unwilling or incapable of taking any risks. Mainly technocrats and bureaucrats and pragmatists. I do not see this changing any time soon. It seems to go with the background of those drawn into politics these days and supported primarily by Wall Street.
So I propose a possible solution for those of us who have neither the clout nor the finances to influence those inside the beltway.
To set up a cooperative or union of sorts to provide those services and goods that the clowns in DC refuse to provide. Maybe taking our spiritual direction from the 12 Traditions of AA or OA or some other 12 Step group. Something also like The Free Clinics around the country but also providing food, transportation, clothing, housing and other necessities at a more reasonable cost. Being funded by dues and/or donations.
Starting small at first. Most likely in the North East and building from there. I do think it can be done but will admit that it would take some work. But with the employment and economic situation being what it is, I am sure there are those with the time to put into it.
Just a thought.
Cross posted at Once Upon A TPM
2 comments:
Now this is an interesting metaphor.
From the ground up and outside the political process.
Better than wearing teabags on your hat and screaming obscenities to minorities with a holstered gun.
forgot to sign in again--dickk
Yes Dickk. A counter culture if you will. DC is far to enmeshed with the money and Wall Street to ever be responsive to the "little people". So we need to do it our selves.
And elections will not change that. The kind of change we need to fix this broken system would require the near total destruction of it. Washington will always try to keep the status quot from coming apart at the seems. That is why Obama kept TARP going when the banks clearly need to fail and be broken up.
And it is why he and congress kept the current health system intact when the only logical thing was to scrap it and got to national health.
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