Kai Blanché
PrevNode LinkNext[ Cut to the room in the Q Headquarters. Kira is there looking bored. ]
[ The door opens. Kai Blanché - a Bajoran, looking in his 50s enters, wearing traditional Vedek clothes. ]
Kira: [Looking] Hello!
Kai Blanché: Hi! You must be Narris Kira. I am Alesodro Blanché. I’m a big fan of yours.
Kira: Alesodro Blanché? Kai Blanché? One of the first Kais? But you’ve been dead for…
Kai Blanché: Millenia, yes. Well, I didn’t actually die. In fact I’ve become a vampire.
Kira: A vampire? A Bajoran vampire?
Kai Blanché: Indeed.
Kira: And you’re a fan of me? How is it possible? You’re still considered one of our best Kais. And a genius. And…
Kai Blanché: Well, everyone gets to pick his heroes.
Quark: If I may interrupt this discussion, I’d like to film it. An old Bajoran Kai is always good for business.
Kira: Quark, but the Bajorans are poor!
Quark: True, but the industry around the Bajoran prophecies is making millions. People bet on it like crazy on Ferenginar and other planets.
Kira: And might I add that Bajor sees very little of all this money.
Quark: It’s not my fault that you don’t seem to care enough for making a profit out of this. In any case, let the camera roll.
Quark: Go on, don’t mind me.
Kai Blanché: Fine by me. I’m sick of being presumed dead and could use some publicity.
Bashir: [Joins] Sorry for being so ignorant, but what are you so famous for?
Kai Blanché: Well, following a few prophecies and some interpretations of them, I began to investigate games. My collaborators and I started to analyse them mathematically and create as many different variants of games, puzzles, riddles and other diversions as we could think of. I grew a substantial cult (well sort-of) collectively known as “Vedek Blanché” that worked on it, and we started developing what is now known as “Computer Science” - algorithms, proofs of correctness, Turing models, etc.
Bashir: Wow, did you have computers at the time?
Kai Blanché: We didn’t really as a matter of fact. Our enthusiasm actually prompted the Bajorans to investigate ways to realise these things. By the time my first cadence was terminated, we already had electronic computers.
Kai Blanché: I must say I was never very enthusiastic about the cult surrounding me and how I got most of the credit. After my ascension to a vampire, I got so tired of Maths and Computer Science that I spent my next life as a simple farmer. Nowadays, I mostly travel around our original Galaxy and other galaxies as I see fit as a Q.
Bashir: Interesting. By the way, isn’t Blanché a French name?
Kai Blanché: Indeed, I adopted this name after the name that the prophets told to be of one our gods, who turned out to be a Terran.
Bashir: [Amused] Gods!
Kira: Well, the Bajoran religion is unusual in that our supreme beings are the Prophets, who in turn assign “gods”, who are lesser and not omnipotent. As such Bajor has become known as “The Stock Exchange of the Gods”.
Kira: We sometimes prefer calling these entities “Profiles”.
Kai Blanché: Indeed. I should note that after communicating with the Prophets enough (we Qs don’t need the proximity to the wormhole, or the orbs) it’s become more of a hobby and an obsession than a faith to me. I kinda started to think of the prophets as my friends.
Bashir: What about The Emissary?
Kai Blanché: Oh he’s a god all-right, one of our most important ones, but by no means the only one. Our most famous profile was The Invisible. See, we believed we would never know who he was. But we did here.
Kira: Really, who?
Kai Blanché: [Laughs] I’ll give you one guess.
[ Kira, Bashir and Dax think for a while; meanwhile Q smiles a big, stupid, smile; then they look in Q’s direction. ]
Kira: is it Q?
Q: I’m indeed The Invisible and proud of it. It’s so flattering being the most famous Bajoran god. And I feel like I deserve it.
Kira: And I’m glad to see it didn’t go to your head.
Quark: This is great stuff.
Kai Blanché: Naturally there’s a huge problem unifying profiles as time progresses. At ancient times we had very pictorial names such as “The One who stands at the top of the Tower” or “The Wandering Son of the Lion”. As Bajoran mentality advanced, they became “The Front-End” and “The Wandering Jew”.
Bashir: Heh, cool. But really, what is the Invisible famous for?
Kai Blanché: For example, he is the one who suggested Artaxerxes to bring Vashti to the guests. [Reference].
Bashir: Seriously? How come he interfered so much with the Earth’s population? Doesn’t the Q continuum know better than that.
[ Q laughs. ]
Amanda: See Doctor, the Q Continuum doesn’t have the Federation’s constitutional disapproval of interfering with less advanced civilisations.
Bashir: Interesting. I suppose the Federation would appear primitive to the Q Continuum too.
Q: Quite so, Doctor.
Amanda: Yes, and well, Q is a force of nature. He tends to perform some very unorthodox actions that even most Qs tend not to do, and yet they seem to turn out for the best in the end. No one knows how it works, but it does.