And thus, the empire continued.  In a thousand years, in 2994, the evil Emperor Ludwig von(Bowser)Koopa, having frozen the ageing processes of himself, of all the other Brain-Team members, and of all members of the captured N-Team, would govern all the Milky Way and the rest of the Q-niverse, with the exception of only one galaxy.  Ludwig will have stopped all resistance to his authority (having ceased seven hundred years before) with his strong magic and allies.  The N-Team's complete capture had taken place in 1994, the year before the beginning of the empire.  Since the ageing processes of all Brain-Team and N-Team members had been frozen, these people would never age.  Their lives would never terminate.  Unless the N-Team could free itself and end Ludwig's empire, his rule would last forever.  It was actually Empress MotherBrain who governed the empire; she made the laws that Ludwig had to execute, and Ludwig had to obey her.

            When the carving of the empire began on 1 July 1994, it only included the Milky Way Galaxy and the Galaxy of Leos.  However, it grew to include ten galaxies by the new year; the capital was the Palace of Power in the Milky Way.  On 1 January 2095, the first centennial anniversary took place.  That day, Ludwig had his Second Symphony, the "Imperial" Symphony, presented.  According to all music critics in existence at the time and even later, this symphony was superior in all aspects to any symphony composed by Ludwig van Beethoven, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Peter Ilyitch Tchaikovsky, Gustav Mahler, or any other classical composer.

            Between 2095 and 2495, the empire grew to include hundreds, thousands, millions of galaxies.  In 2495, Ludwig and MotherBrain had already conquered over a British milliard galaxies.  All were unique; one was composed entirely of black holes.  Yet another contained stars arranged in a pattern such that one saw the thirteen-star flag of the United States of America if one looked at it from above.

            Steelheart and MotherBrain revised the principal languages in the Milky Way Galaxy a great deal.  They designated the languages before the empire as "Pre-Imperial" and those during the empire as "Imperial."  "Imperial" Italian was similar to "Pre-Imperial," but with accent and case marked in spelling and with mostly regular verbs.  French and English stayed mostly the same as before.  "Imperial" Iberian was a combination of Spanish and Portuguese with marked case and gender.

            The quality of life in the entire universe increased drastically.  MotherBrain may have been very demanding, but at the same time she gave in return.  She encouraged artistic and technological success, and she emphasised cultural values.

            In 2530, enough Thunderians existed to overpopulate drastically the sixth of the Milky Way that belonged to them.  Thus, MotherBrain permitted them to send any percentage of their population to the Galaxy of Leos, which was completely unpopulated except for the Plundarrian Empire, which composed an eighth of that galaxy.  These Thunderians established synthetic solar systems to house themselves and to spread them out across the galaxy.  To Ludwig's utter dismay, MotherBrain allowed them to rebuild their culture.  Certainly, he did not try to stop her.  Yet, what to do with the Thunderians caused the only conflicts between MotherBrain and Ludwig.  Their conflicts remained purely verbal.

            The only civil war began in 2671 in the Galaxy of Leos when the Plundarrian military, led by an ambitious Reptilian named S-s-slavo, attacked the Plundarrian government to object to the joint rule of S-s-slithe and Luna, accusing them of being weak rulers.  The people supported S-s-slithe and Luna and fiercely attacked the military.  The people and the military eventually rendered all Plundarrian worlds uninhabitable except for those in the Plundarrian solar system.  Only the few Plundarrians living in the Thunderian Kingdom and the Plundarrians in the Plundarrian solar system survived until 2675, when S-s-slithe and Luna implored MotherBrain to do something.  That she did, giving the bellicose empire to the Thunderians, who immediately stopped the fighting before the Plundarrian solar system became uninhabitable as well.

            Ludwig despised that until he saw that the Thunderians had ameliorated the living conditions in the Galaxy of Leos.  The Thunderians, now controlling the entire galaxy, paid all their taxes, though they objected a great deal to the air tax.  Most Thunderians spoke "Imperial" Italian, Ancient Thunderian, English, French, and some other language fluently; with absolutely no exception, all Thunderians could read and write, a fact that Ludwig loved.  This was the only race with no illiteracy at all.  They also sought careers that were not available in their galaxy.  So, Ludwig began using this practically inexhaustible resource.  The population approximately quadrupled every twenty years, since most families produced two sets of twins and between seven and fifteen years apart.  In time, Ludwig created a program to encourage Thunderians to help him decipher other species' forms of communication.  The Astutus-twins, not having been Q-cubed, had been freed; they became the greatest decipherers in the Q-niverse.  They had studied every language and every dialect known within a hundred years, and they excelled at translation.  Ludwig knew that the Wilytwins would do even better, but he also knew that they would end his empire if he freed them.  (They were the only ones who could do this.)

            So, only MotherBrain could stop Ludwig from madly doing as he wished.  She knew that it would be most imprudent to permit him to rule absolutely; he was going through a very dangerous stage of life, and she would not even consider giving him absolute power until he had passed through this stage.  She suggested in the twenty-seventh century that a president be introduced into the imperial government at the intergalactic level (that of herself, Ludwig, and Larry, Ludwig's brother and chief justice of the judicial system).  Ludwig consented.  The people elected the imperial president once each five years.  There was no limitation on the number of consecutive terms one could be in office.  Ninety-nine percent of the time, the empire's population selected a Thunderian, a human, a VideoLandian humanoid, or a hybrid with any or all of these in his or her genes.

            Most species in the Q-niverse were humanoid; Ludwig had taken control of the entire universe except for a mysterious galaxy by 2850.  This galaxy was near the Milky Way, but it was a strange irregular galaxy.  Little, it contained only one or two hundred stars and few nebulae.  Nobody who had entered ever returned, so Ludwig decided to send no more expeditions there until he had made some safe deductions about it.

            Over the course of eight and a half centuries, the empire grew to include almost the entire Q-niverse, as stated before.  Wesley Crusher's absence to his original universe proved opportune, since Ludwig could lock him out of the Q-niverse (Wesley's own creation!) and stop the other Q-cubeds from bringing him back.  Because Wesley was in another universe, Ludwig's power, being less powerful than that of any other Q-cubed, could stop the others (the Wilytwins, or Wilykit and Wilykat, and the Wondertwins, or Jayna and Zan) only if he surprised them with lithium super-Thundrainide, but something made him subordinate to MotherBrain.  (The Q-cubeds were Wesley, the Wilytwins, the Wondertwins, and Ludwig.  Ludwig was the only evil one among them.)

            During the thousand years, nothing could menace the evil ones' authority.  On their millennial anniversary on 1 January 2995, the thousandth anniversary of the empire, in an enormous concert, they would perform several excellent works of classical music, followed by Ludwig's Third Symphony, the "Universal Empire" Symphony.  After the music, Ludwig would announce that the empire would spread to other universes.  This would be the most festive day in the history of the entire universe.  The Q-niverse would be the capital of the new multiversal empire.  Only the Wilytwins could stand in his way. . .