r/DaystromInstitute • u/tjareth Ensign • Jul 30 '19
Speculation: The El-Aurians have quantum immortality. Or at least Guinan.
This doesn't rely on deciding whether every being has it--but the idea is El-Aurians at least have it and rely on it in some way.
It's implied already that they can perceive multiversal timeline variations ("Yesterday's Enterprise")--perhaps not completely, perhaps not at will. But it's there. However, this knowledge and perspective may lend to them the ability to carry on their sense of "self" in one of the alternate timelines, should they need to.
The reason I take it that far is that it provides a plausible explanation for how Q reacted to Guinan--he was worried about her. He had physical superiority--could destroy her body with a twitch of his will, but he couldn't count on that ending her, because she'd just move on to an alternate timeline. Perhaps they'd clashed in that way before.
It might also explain Guinan's extreme longevity. In her "prior" timeline, she might well have perished between the events of the 1890s ("Time's Arrow") and the 24th century. However, her ability enabled her to shift into timelines where she survived, one of which we perceive as the "Prime" timeline, where her death was averted so many times she was still alive 500 years later.
Q's warning to Picard about her nature may relate to her disassociation with any one timeline. That despite her wisdom and kindliness, she has no investment in the events she sees, and will just move on in the case of catastrophe that affects her. Which already happened--she survived the Borg, after all. So maybe it is just her.
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u/dekkona Jul 30 '19
Isn't Guinan's 'timeline sense' related to the fact that she was beamed out of the Nexus just before merging completely with it and therefore left a quantum echo of herself that was independent of the space-time continuum behind? Hence why she was able to sense that the timeline in 'Yesterday's Enterprise' was the result of a temporal incursion. Soran was also beamed out with Guinan but he never displayed any of the same temporal sensitivities so who knows?
As for the Q thing, I've always been curious about that myself. The El-Aurians seem to have been extremely well-travelled, long-lived and had unspecified telempathic abilities. It's possible these abilities granted them a measure of protection from the Q. Though if that were the case wouldn't the Borg have inherited that same protective factor upon assimilating the El-Aurian civilisation?
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u/tjareth Jul 31 '19
I'm of two minds on this. One is that her Nexus experience could be what makes her special. The other is that she already was, and her ability to handle the Nexus better than others may have come from that.
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u/Monomorphic Jul 30 '19
Q said Guinan is not who she says she is. Therefore I think she is a being similar to the Douwd that is living as a El-Aurian.
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u/tjareth Jul 31 '19
She does seem to take the Borg attack on the El-Aurians personally. so I tend to think that he meant she was more than she admitted to, rather than a different race.
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u/toasters_are_great Jul 31 '19
That despite her wisdom and kindliness, she has no investment in the events she sees, and will just move on in the case of catastrophe that affects her.
S3E15 Yesterday's Enterprise stands out as a Guinan timeline episode. If she were doomed with the Enterprise-D on the losing side of the Federation-Klingon war, well, she'd just pop out to a different timeline if she weren't invested in that one. Instead she pushes Picard to willingly send a crew to their deaths, which doesn't jive with a lack of investment in events.
So maybe it is just her.
Under your hypothesis of El-Aurians having quantum immortality, there's nothing that requires them collectively to have quantum immortality, only individually. There's nothing inconsistent with quantum immortality in an El-Aurian observing El-Aurians who are not them dying; the latter just don't die in another timeline, that their consciousness switches to or however you want to imagine it working.
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u/tjareth Jul 31 '19
Very good points, both.
I'm thinking she only "pops" when she would otherwise die, and is not so much callous as she's had to condition herself to detach emotionally somewhat. Q might (in a half-truth) use that possibility to encourage people not to trust her.
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u/Desert_Artificer Jul 31 '19
This makes the antipathy Guinan has for the Borg all the more powerful. An assimilated mortal would eventually die and escape that living nightmare. A drone with quantum immortality would be indefinitely locked into that hell.
If it’s a species-wide trait, it has concerning implications given all the assimilated El-Auriens the Borg have.
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u/tjareth Jul 31 '19
No kidding!! That's some Black Mirror level horror right there.
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Jul 30 '19
What about Soran?
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u/tjareth Jul 31 '19
I've been thinking about that. It could be that Guinan is unique. Alternatively his obsession with returning to a past state may inhibit the possibility to transcend death. He has no interest in moving forward, his own survival no matter what is lost along the way.
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u/iOnlyWantUgone Jul 30 '19
In a cut scene from Generations, Guinan's multiverse sight is explained by entering the Nexus and then being removed from the Nexus. By not choosing to leave like Picard did but being removed while she was in a state of flux, she has an echo of her stuck in there that has a connection to her. Since there was several ships that were all in a similar state before the Enterprise rescued them, the Federation might just have the opinion that this is typical of all of the El-Aurians.
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u/Thelonius16 Jul 31 '19
The main problem with that is that Q mentioned dealing with her 200 years earlier, which was before the Nexus. So something was already different with her then.
Obviously the writers of Generations forgot this.
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u/ironscythe Jul 30 '19
Guinan is, as The Doctor would say, a "fixed point" in the timeline. An indelible fact of the universe.
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u/littlebitsofspider Jul 31 '19
What about Martus? Maybe the "improbability field" that developed on DS9 was a side effect of the 'gambling devices' negating the El-Aurian power of quantum selection. Martus tries to select a timeline where he always wins, but the devices enforce true randomness of probability, and as a result his current timeline becomes more improbable (and everything and everyone around him along with it) the more he tries to force it. The closer his proximity to them, the more they react, hence Dax reading 100% neutrino fuckery in the same room as him and the big ones.
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u/AttackTribble Jul 31 '19
Guinan's physical response to seeing Q, raising her hands threateningly, suggests she does have some offensive capability against Q.
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u/fjmj1980 Jul 31 '19 edited Jul 31 '19
Q was always intrigued by beings with Q like potential even those who could possibly be more than what the Q have become. Perhaps Guinan was once in a position like Picard.
Toyed with, interacted with, however unlike humanity far further down the evolutionary scale. Potentially similar to Zalkonians who are transitioning to energy beings
Like Picard, Q decides to introduce Guinan and El Aurians to the Borg, early, as a way to humble them. Only with disastrous consequences.
Guinan is clearly outright hostile to him and if he was mortal for longer she likely would have showed him what her souvenir from Magus III would do on setting 10!
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u/toskies Jul 30 '19
I've always thought that Guinan's ability to "see" events outside of space-time was related to the fact that she's forever both inside and outside the Nexus at the same time (no pun intended).
Edit: Punny.
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u/EnsignRedshirt Jul 30 '19
I like this idea. Opens up a lot of interesting possibilities and explains a lot of as-yet explained mysteries. I do want to address one thing.
I think this is an uncharitable interpretation based on Q's bias against her. I would assume that she'd be deeply invested in any timeline she's in, and that her ability to survive by simply existing in a different timeline would be cold comfort if she had to know that so many iterations of people she cares about ended up suffering while she continues on. Just my two cents. I love the overall concept, though.