hormonal imbalance

[warpfairy]

They study Klingon. They work out a sleep schedule. They approach Betazed.

They are two days away from the system when Isabella notices something - troubling.

She takes longer than usual to compose herself that morning, and emerges from the living quarters with carefully measured steps, and avoids eye contact.

"Do you," she asks Lalita quietly, "have the ability to fly this class of ship?"

Comments

[dream_me_up]

"Can't think of anything," he says.

[warpfairy]

"How do you manage finances when you have to be a different person every few decades?"

[dream_me_up]

"Cleverly," he says. "There's some stealing involved, but usually only from myself."

[warpfairy]

She laughs. "That sounds like at least one interesting story, and probably more!"

[dream_me_up]

"Oh - I have to resort to the kind of trickery usually associated with major financial fraud to switch over identities while keeping most of my money," he shrugs. "It's getting a little harder and a lot more pointless as I get older and more things become free."

[warpfairy]

"There are some reasons to have money, still. I wouldn't want to live indefinitely on postscarce food. I like saffron."

[dream_me_up]

"Well, yeah. But it's easier now to just take a few months as a gap and then get a job under the new name if I want to. It's not like I don't have skills."

[warpfairy]

"Fencing, dancing, cheffery," laughs Isabella.

[dream_me_up]

"And prostitution," he adds, cheerfully. "Oh, that reminds me - the cheffery, not the prostitution - I can think of a few things I'd want to cook if I had the chance, and you have that teeny little kitchen. Interested? I could write you a grocery list."

[warpfairy]

"Sure. If there's anything expensive you might need to chip in some of the results of your grand theft."

[dream_me_up]

He giggles.

"I could just give it all to you. That would be a new way to steal from myself."

[warpfairy]

"That would be a peculiar thing to do," Isabella points out. "On several levels."

[dream_me_up]

He shrugs. "Why?"

[warpfairy]

"Large transfers of wealth draw attention; we have known each other for less than two weeks; the fact that we're going to be traveling together doesn't diminish the fact that then you wouldn't have it anymore. I suppose I'm a slightly longer-term caretaker than any of your myriad identities, since I age as I am expected to, but it will still add an extra step if you want to buy anything."

[dream_me_up]

"Oh, I wouldn't give it to you on the books," he laughs. "I'd just take it all with us, and if I had you I wouldn't need a legal identity of my own, I could just let you buy all the groceries."

[warpfairy]

"Being without a legal identity could probably be inconvenient under some - admittedly unlikely - circumstances."

[dream_me_up]

"Oh, sure," he says, shrugging. "But I still wouldn't need one."

[warpfairy]

"I begin to suspect you have an unconventional definition of need."

[dream_me_up]

"Of course I do."

[warpfairy]

"What does it mean when you say it, then?"

[dream_me_up]

"Different things, depending. Right now it means that I wouldn't have to have one just to make my everyday life convenient. I could get most of the same things out of living with you, in mostly the same ways, whether I officially existed or not."

[warpfairy]

"That's true. If you give the Harlequin to a museum you won't need the identity to keep your ship registered either."

[dream_me_up]

"See? And if something else comes up, well, then it comes up. I can always start existing again."

[warpfairy]

"What's the procedure for that like?"

[dream_me_up]

"Mostly, I make the old name disappear as much as I can and start using the new one. Sometimes I invent records; sometimes I just let the new paper trail speak for itself. The methods tend to change over the years."