It was a week after the Enterprise left that it became clear something was wrong with the Companion.
"What's wrong?" Zefram asked her.
She sighed. "We made a mistake. Hedford's body cannot take my form after all. We are... incompatible."
"What's going to happen to you?"
"We will expire."
"How? I don't understand," Zefram said.
"It does not matter now." The Companion turned away from him. "What I am wondering is why you could not accept me for who I was, without who we are now. I understand now that the translator defined me as female because it was programmed to that binary. I was not female, I was not male, I was nothing but myself. We sacrificed everything to please you – it appears that this was not a sacrifice we should have made."
Zefram could only watch as she pushed away from him and walked away over the horizon.