Alternatives 6

Alternatives

By Samantha Quinn

Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: see Part 1-4

A/N: There’s not a lot of T/T’P in this chapter, sadly. It’s more of a setup/explanatory chapter. There will be more T/T’P soon- some noodles, even, if not an actual salad. ;) Actually, there’s some T/T’P in this chappy, too, it just might not be readily apparent.

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Chapter 6: Down the Rabbit Hole

Phlox had been in his office for less than a minute before Trip sat back up, cursed silently at himself, and promptly slid off the bed. Not only was he a Starfleet officer, he was the Captain. Moreover, he was a captain who used to be an engineer. If he was stuck in a holographic program of some sort, there had to be a way out. And that was what he should be doing, not lying on a fake bed, in a fake hospital, waiting for a fake diagnosis from a fake Phlox.

As Trip slid off the fake bed, however, he reflected briefly that it felt very real. In fact, it was as exactly as uncomfortable as he remembered it being from his last visit to San Francisco Medical Center. It might have been four years ago, but the paper sheet still scratched at his skin through his clothes with all the comfort of a paper cactus. Trip would definitely say very positive things in his report about the Valisian’s technological prowess, even if their hospitality left a lot to be desired.

Trip couldn’t remember how the Chancellor had activated the program. . . that didn’t seem quite right. . . and that bothered him. Still, common sense (logic, the cruel portion of his brain taunted) dictated that if there was an on switch, there had to be an off switch. Thus, Trip set about to find it. His first step was to look for an access panel. The illusion of his hospital room didn’t have any that were readily apparent, but after a couple minutes worth of poking around, Trip came across a small one hidden behind his bed.

Idly wondering if holographic Phlox would try to stop him, Trip bent down and began to examine the contents. His frustration grew, however, because the access panel was everything an access panel in sickbay should be. In fact, it looked a lot like the one on Enterprise’s sickbay.

“Captain Tucker, what are you doing?”

Despite his convictions that he was in a holographic program, Trip looked up immediately at the familiar sound of Malcolm Reed’s British tongue. Well, it sounded like Malcolm. The sight that greeted Trip’s eyes didn’t quite look like the tactical officer, though. Malcolm, the last Trip had seen him, had possessed a full head of black hair. Holographic Malcolm, on the other hand, had a thin head of hair that was equally black and grey.

Curiosity bit at Trip, but he forced himself to remember that this was a hologram. A competent captain would be working on a way out of this mess. Thus, Trip ignored Holographic Malcolm, even as he heard the approach of Holographic Phlox’s footsteps.

“Ah, Commander Reed. I’m glad you could join us.”

It was just a hologram, but Trip did wonder why Holographic Phlox insisted on calling Malcolm “Commander.”

“It was my pleasure, Doctor. I would have come sooner, but I was busy with The Cochrane.”

Satisfied that there was no off switch to be found in this particular are, Trip stood back up and resumed his search. He continued to ignore Holographic Phlox and Holographic Malcolm. They responded in kind, by ignoring his presence, even as they continued to talk about him.

“Is Captain Tucker doing any better?”

“Have you spoken to Ambassador T’Pol?”

So not only was Malcolm a Commander, but T’Pol was an Ambassador?

“Yes. I ran into her on her way home. She seemed quite . . .distressed.”

Trip knew that he was the source of T’Pol’s distress, and the felt irrationally upset about the fact. After all, she was just a hologram. She wasn’t really upset at all.

“I suspect her emotions were getting the better of her. She gets that way around this time,” Phlox commented.

Again, curiosity bit at the back of his head, but Trip ignored it. He also decided that if he was going to find an off switch, he might well have to leave sickbay. Wondering idly whether or not Holographic Malcolm and Holographic Phlox would try to stop him, Trip walked right past them and out the door. Surely enough, Holographic Malcolm and Holographic Phlox followed quickly.

Not that they needed to follow quickly, because the sight that greeted Trip as he stepped outside into the corridor made him slow his gait considerably. There were so many people wandering in the corridor. Could a hologram be this complex? The one Ah’len had shown him hadn’t been. Well, it was just a corridor. As structures went, they weren’t that complex. It was entirely possible that the Valisians had created an adjoining corridor. As for the people, they were theoretically possible too, Trip supposed. After all, Valisians and humans did look an awful lot alike. All these people. . . well, they could be your average, everyday, run of the mill Valisians programmed into the hologram. Maybe.

If only he could remember what Chancellor Lorne had said about transporting. . . Trip was almost certain that it was important. But even as he tried his best to remember, another one of the headaches surfaced. This time, everything didn’t quite go white, and his vision was only slightly impaired, but it still hurt like hell and thereby, still had the ability to stop him in his tracks.

“Trip?” Holographic Malcolm sounded so concerned that Trip actually felt bad for ignoring him earlier. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

Holographic Malcolm turned to give Holographic Phlox a concerned look. “Are you sure he’s ready to leave?”

“There’s nothing physically wrong with him,” Holographic Phlox insisted, despite the fact that Trip’s head was currently insisting otherwise. As if reading his mind, Holographic Phlox continued, “The headaches are merely a side effect of the Klingon . . . treatment. It is quite safe for Captain Tucker to travel.”

“Travel?” Trip interrupted. “Where am I traveling to?”

“You’re coming with me,” Malcolm answered. “I have some footage back at Command that you need to see.”

“Starfleet Command?”

Holographic Malcolm cast another concerned look at the doctor. Then he responded, very slowly, as if he were talking to a not terribly bright child. “Yes, Captain. We’re going back to Starfleet Command.”

“The familiar scenery should help jog your memory,” Holographic Phlox added. Why would Starfleet Command be familiar territory, anyway? He hadn’t spent a large amount of time there since Enterprise had left spacedock four years ago. “If the headaches get any worse, you know where to find me. Otherwise, I want to see you again in a week’s time to make sure everything is proceeding smoothly.”

Holographic Malcolm took exactly two full steps and one half step forward before he stopped and turned to look at Trip expectantly. His hair color may have changed, but the facial expressions remained one hundred percent Malcolm Reed. The expression he currently wore was equal parts smirk, concern, and irritation that Trip had followed him. “Are you coming, Captain?”

Was he? Trip thought about it for a minute before he decided that the more he saw of this hologram, the more likely he was going to find an off switch.

“Sure, Malcolm.”
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

By the time they had reached Starfleet Command, Trip was not at all positive that he was in a hologram anymore. San Francisco had been too detailed, too crowded, too vast for this to be an illusion of light particles. Even the shuttle that had brought them here was as crowded as the Starfleet Shuttle always was, and the feel of being squished between four bodies wasn’t something Trip thought the Valisians could replicate. The familiar scenery and scents were just as he had remembered seeing it during his last visit to Starfleet Command, when he had been offered the rank of captain. San Francisco, its bay, and its people seemed to go on forever. Surely a hologram had to end at some point, didn’t it?

But this one - if it was a hologram - didn’t seem to. Which is why he and Malcolm had begun their journey at Starfleet Medical and ended up in a not at all familiar office inside the Tactical Sciences building.

Possibly-Holographic Malcolm looked at him with concern. “Maybe you should sit down, Captain.”
Maybe he should, but he remained standing anyway. “I’m fine, Malcolm. Whose office is this?”

“It’s mine, Captain.”

“You work at Starfleet now?”

Possibly-Holographic Malcolm’s look shifted from concern to . . . understanding? Well, Trip was glad one of them understood something that was going on here. “Yes, Captain. I have for the past two years.”

Vaguely, Trip remembered T’Pol asking him what year he thought it was. “Malcolm, what year is it?”

“I think you should see what I have to show you before I answer that question. And I really do think you ought to sit down.”

Trip complied, and watched as Possibly-Holographic Malcolm pressed a button on his computer screen. The video feed that appeared was hazy, and Trip recognized the file as the type used by incredibly old surveillance videos. It took Trip a minute to focus through the hazy screen, but when he did, he was glad he was sitting down.

This wasn’t a hologram. There was no way anyone - not even a culture as advanced as the Valisians had appeared to be - could include in a hologram such a detailed video of someone getting tortured by the Klingons. That someone, in this case, was Trip himself.

Of course, that didn’t make any of this universe real. But he was fairly certain that he wasn’t in the middle of a hologram.

Even though Trip didn’t buy the story that Phlox and Malcolm had been telling him, he remained in his seat and watched as his video self was strapped to a chair, beaten, and submitted to the Klingon variant of electroshock treatment. The latter was an odd torture device Trip remembered reading about in history and was administered by the Klingons using small disks attached directly to Trip’s temples. Well, that explained the headaches at least. The audio wasn’t the greatest in the world, but from what Trip could deduce, they had been after information about Starfleet’s military protocols. His video self, apparently, hadn’t felt like sharing. On another bed beside him, Chancellor Lorne was undergoing equally severe treatment.

When the video ended, Malcolm pressed another button and the screen neatly folded away out of sight. That was impressive, if not something he remembered being a standard feature of Starfleet’s desks.

Rising, Trip walked over to the window. Feeling suddenly quite confined, Trip looked for the latch to open them. Malcolm must have recognized what he was trying to do, because after a few seconds of fumbling, Malcolm pushed another button on his desk and the windows pulled neatly up. Trip just stood there for a minute, allowing the smells of fried rice, chicken, and salt water to tingle his nose before he finally asked, “What year is it, Malcolm?”

There was a barely perceptible pause before Malcolm responded steadily, “2166.”

Twelve years. That was impossible. “How. . . ?” Trip trailed off, not certain exactly how to ask what he wanted to. “I suppose the Sputnik and Enterprise are both decommissioned by now, then?”

“You’re overseeing the warp seven project here on Earth. You haven’t served on The Sputnik in seven years. Enterprise has been decommissioned, and is currently on display in the Starfleet Museum next to Cochrane’s ship.”

That would make sense, if any of this had actually happened. “The crews?”

“Captain Archer refused promotion after Enterprise was decommissioned. He is currently on a deep space mission on the Candida. T’Pol is currently the Vulcan Ambassador to Earth, having replaced Soval seven years ago. Travis is a lieutenant commander now and is a flight instructor at the academy. Phlox oversees the Interspecies Medical Exchange program here on Earth. Hoshi has returned to teaching, and currently lives on Tartus II. I am the current assistant director of tactical engineering, a position I took a leave from in order to join Captain Bryant in his rescue mission.”

“Of me? From the Klingons?”

Malcolm nodded. “I don’t know a lot about the crew of the Sputnik, except of course, Gilbert Byrant, who is serving as Captain of the Defiant. I believe his engineer, Commander Ortiz, served under you on the Sputnik as well.”

Trip nodded, and started to ask another question when they were both interrupted by a lieutenant Trip didn’t know coming into Malcolm’s office. “I’m sorry, Commander, but Commander Drake is insisting you come back out to the Cochrane immediately. He says it’s urgent.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant. Tell him I’ll be right there. Dismissed.” Malcolm cast an apologetic look at Trip as the lieutenant scurried out of the room. “They’re installing the new phase cannons,” he explained, “and can’t seem to be left alone for a minute without supervision.”

“You’ve told them about the conditions under which you installed our phase cannons the first time, I take it?”

Malcolm smirked at him in reply. “They were horrified.”

“Pansies.” He could say it, Trip figured, since they weren’t real Starfleet officers. Besides, a fake Captain still outranked a fake Commander.

Malcolm chuckled. “Absolutely. However, I do need to tend to their needs anyway.” Malcolm pushed another button on his desk and the computer screen reappeared. “This has all the personnel files of everyone you knew in 2154. You can browse it to keep yourself busy while I’m away.”

Trip nodded and watched Malcolm leave. Sitting himself at Malcolm’s computer, his hands tapped the side of the desk before he decided that he needed to know as much as possible about this place in order to actually get home. With that in mind, the first file Trip looked at was T’Pol’s.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Commander Bryant was not pleased. The Valisians had thus far been very pleasant, but Gilbert had very little patience with anyone who was keeping the fate of his captain a secret.

“Chancellor, for the last time, where is Captain Tucker? We’ve been unable to contact him for the past two hours, and the last time anyone saw him, he was with you.”

The Chancellor looked . . . well, frightened, and Gilbert felt a momentary rush of guilt. The Valisians were a nice people, this was a first contact, and they had shared almost every part of their culture willingly.

Almost. “If you know where he is, I need you to be honest with me, Chancellor.”

“We meant him no harm,” The Chancellor said, in an attempt to assure him. His words had the opposite effect.

“The Captain is harmed?” Lieutenant Doyle was an uptight jerk, but maybe he had been right about not sending the captain on a landing party after all.

“We didn’t mean to harm him. . . the device is not harmful to Valisians. Our people and yours are very similar physically. But he did not respond well to the device.”

“What device?” Gilbert demanded, his patience exhausted.

“Come with me.”

Gilbert followed Chancellor Lorne through the corridor that lead out of the science center and into what appeared to be a private bed chamber. Captain Tucker lie on a bed, looking comfortable, if not for the fact that he was unconscious. Gilbert immediately moved to the captain’s side and checked for a pulse. There was one, and it was beating steadily, if somewhat too rapidly to be a good sign.

Trying his best not to glare, Gilbert pulled out his communicator. “Bryant to Sputnik. We have a medical emergency. Lock onto my signal and beam the Captain directly to sickbay.”

“Will you be coming as well?” Doyle’s voice asked cryptically.

“No. I need to clear things up down here first.”

Gilbert waited for Trip’s body to disappear before he turned to look at Chancellor Lorne. “Now, let’s have a little chat about this device, shall we?”

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Chapter 7

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A whole mess of folks have made comments

Ohh! What are they doing to our poor Trip?!?

I'm very intrigued. I hope the next chapter comes out soon!

Very interesting! I like how Trip immediately suspects something is going on...

And, although you don't live in the Noodleverse, I really hope you stop by for an extended visit in this fic...:D

Oh, the suspense! I'm dying here. What does T'Pol's file SAY, fer Pete's Sake? You could've at least told us that, LOL!

Excellent update. I love this story, it's very intriguing. "Possible-Holographic Malcom" LOL

I hope that you update soon!

I'm confused. Is it the future, or just an artificailly-induced halucination-thingy? (*pout*) Need more story, that'll fix it! Well done, BTW. :)

Nice twist!! so he really is in a hologram???

Hey, if you're confused at this point, you probably should be.

And I'd definitely say that the middle portion of this fic could be classified as "an extended visit" to the Noodleverse.

^^ But what about the end? That doesn't fill me with confidence...

Despite that, I'm looking forward to reading more...

I am intrigued as well...joins the rest of the confused in the noodleverse patiently (for now) awaiting the next update!
:o)

I'm lovin' this story! I'm also totally intrigued.

Oh, poor Trip! (<--That's the most-used phrase ever, methinks) Love your writing, Samantha! And was shocked that it really was a hologram .. or whatever! Sooooo intrigued.