Decon. Hoshi and Trip discuss how they are both jealous of the other's abilities. Hoshi wishes she could be MacGyver and Trip wishes he had Hoshi's many tongues. Hoshi asks if Trip has always been good with building things, and Trip tells a story about removing all the screws from their dining room table on Thanksgiving. "It was so old, the wood sort of stuck together so it stayed standing. Until m'dad put the turkey down," Trip finishes, and says he spent the next month in his room. Hoshi laughs and asks how old he was. "Oh, twenty-four, twenty-five," Trip grins. Wait. Wait. His parents grounded a twenty-five-year-old? That's even more embarrassing than the fact he was so stupid when he was old enough to rent a car! Hoshi looks up to see T'Pol and Phlox just standing outside the Decon window staring at them. It was a funny cut. They're just there. All interested. "How long have they been standing there?" Trip whispers. He's all worried that T'Pol heard what a freak he was just five years ago. Orga-T'Pol and Orga-Phlox ask the usual Organian questions: how are they feeling, what are they thinking, et cetera. Trip tells them they'd feel a lot better if they two of them were off whipping up a cure. Orga-T'Pol and Orga-Phlox leave. Trip thinks that both of them showing up means there's no hope for them. Poor Trip. Poor, stupid, screwy Trip.

Orga-Phlox thinks Hoshi and Trip are brave the way they're facing death. Orga-T'Pol says, "Their courage isn't at [sic] question -- their intelligence is." It turns out the Organians use this infected planet as a way to determine if a species is intelligent enough to handle first contact with them. Orga-Phlox thinks it's an unfair test, and that things other than intelligence should be considered. Orga-T'Pol says it's not up to them to change how things have been done for ten thousand years, which means, of course, that it is.