"Oh Noy", Lo Zhan let herself drop in the nearest chair, "If that ancient Buddhistic belief of rebirth is true, the most vicious punishment must be being born a lab rat."
She did not waste time in offering Noy a toast, but half-emptied her glass in a single take.
"Perhaps you did not entirely mess up in your latter life, and this is the compromise", he nagged her, taking a sip of the deep-blue beverage in his hand.
"I hope you go slow on this stuff, that's not synthehol."
"Yeah, I noticed."
One could not drink Romulan Ale with speed, it forced you to stay at one table with the partner-in-crime you were drinking with. Probably a cultural contrivance, Noy mused, gazing into the uneven liquid. Keeps you from plotting behind each other's back, at least for a moment.
"So you're sure you want this?", Zhan pulled him out of his thoughts.
"Want what?"
"Stay."
"Oh." He wasn't sure about whether she wanted to fight once more. They had been over this, and nothing else, for weeks now, over and over again. Some nights he had gone to bed, with her voice ringing in his lofty, dangling ears, their appendix crawling from his raging stress. "Yes, I want to stay."
To his utmost relief, she let it rest. "You're much braver in this than me, Noy."
He decided to excuse himself from answering by taking a large sip of his Ale.
"I mean it", Zhan went on, making him wish she had taken a seat somewhere else, "We'll all face the end of our lives, somewhere in the future. So we take all possible measures to push it further, eating well, exercising, and trying not to worry too much. We go to check-ups, and do everything a doctor tells us, only not to face what's inevitable. We all strive desperately for a sense of control." She bent forward, as if examining his nasolobial sulci. "You don't."
"Well, I exercise occasionally", he committed dryly, "And I usually follow doctor's orders." The Ale must have done something to the nerves in his mouth, since the words wouldn't form as easily as before.
"That's not what I meant", Zhan evaded the provocation with unbearable patience. "Staying on board, in our condition, we're bound to drop dead at any given moment."
"We haven't changed", Noy answered. Short replies seemed a good course right now. "We just learned something about us, our race. Something we did not know before." He took another sip of the Ale, craving for an opportunity to leave the conversation.
"We're much more vulnerable than any other being on board."
"Always have been", he corrected.
"And facing the unknown, with a fracture in the time-space-continuum posing a lethal threat to you, is what I call bravery", Zhan laid out.
Maybe he should get up, bring her an Ale, too, so she could not lay siege to him like this. "Guess so." Words had become even heavier by now. "Or nothing's going to happen", he pulled himself together for a reply, "And you'll just grow old, and grey", he almost said, 'old and dry', but managed to resist. Perhaps some more of the Ale might help.
"But your time is so much shorter on the ship!", she finally lost the grip on herself, "Any variance in time resonates in your body! You must realize that the quantum signature in our cells -"
He gulped down the rest of his drink, claimed "I need another", sprang from his seat
- and everything went blank.