Alternatives 7

Alternatives

By Samantha Quinn

Rating and Disclaimer: See chapter 1

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Chapter 7: All I Have to Do Is Dream

Whatever this place was, Trip decided Malcolm was a rotten liar in it. The “personnel files” weren’t personnel files at all – they completely lacked any personal information that would deem them as such. There were no birth dates, martial statuses, children, addresses, or contact information.

Trip scowled at T’Pol’s rather lengthy list of accomplishments for a couple of minutes before remembering that he was an engineer. What good were those skills if he couldn’t crack a locked database once in a while? He had to give Malcolm credit, though. It took him a while to actually crack the other man’s code. Trip did have the fleeting thought that if twelve years had really passed, that would explain the difficulty he had getting into the system. The technological improvements did seem just about right for a twelve year time span too.

The code cracked, Trip closed his eyes briefly and wondered why in the hell he was doing this to himself. It wasn’t like he didn’t know who else was included in T’Pol’s file.

But a good captain is a good explorer. With that in mind, Trip opened the file.

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-Enterprise-

T’Pol was very grateful when the experience with the augments had passed. The situation combined with . . . other external factors had been making mediation nearly impossible. With Soong back in prison, T’Pol was greatly anticipating her meditations to return back to normal. True, Soong’s imprisonment didn’t remove the other factor altering her state of calm. But T’Pol was reasonably certain that her Vulcan training would be strong enough to overcome the distraction caused by the grief of Trip’s absence.

T’Pol believed in this possibility up until the time she began her meditation. For as much as T’Pol might have liked to, there was no way to blame the augments for the vision of Trip that interrupted the blank white slate of her meditation.

Taking a calming breath, T’Pol repeated the first line of each chapter of The Teachings of Surak in both her native language and the fourteen Earth dialects she knew in an effort to clear her mind of the delusion. When the effort didn’t work, T’Pol spoke hesitantly to the hallucination. “Captain Tucker?”

The hallucination remained seated at his desk staring at the computer screen in front of him.

“Trip?”

Again the hallucination showed no sign of having heard her. He was, however, quite engrossed in the contents of the display in front of him.

“Trip?”

With her third attempt, the hallucination still did not notice her efforts, but T’Pol did become aware of an intense sensation of pain between her temples. The sensation rivaled the worst of the headaches caused by the Pa’nar Syndrome.

Reluctantly forcing herself out of meditation, T’Pol rose and began to make her way to sickbay.

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In this. . . place that Trip had been transported to, this version of Phlox and Malcolm had sworn that Trip was having some sort of memory problem. But Trip was currently having a flashback that was very, very clear.

He remembered standing in engineering talking with Lorian – the son Trip had been trying to forget that he was never going to have. Trip recalled fishing for details of Lorian’s childhood in a desperate attempt to foresee how the child had been conceived. Feeling a lot like a kid pestering his parents at Christmas time, trip had prodded and poked Lorian’s story in an attempt to learn as much as he could about a life so full of possibilities.

Eventually, Lorian had given in and revealed the details of the wedding in all of its’ traditional Vulcan ceremonial glory. Even if Trip could pretend that he had never thought of that moment again in the Expanse after Lorian’s departure, there was no denying that he remembered it in perfect detail. In particular he remembered exactly how he had felt the first time he’d tried to picture that ceremony.

He had felt the exact way he felt staring at the computer screen in front of him.

Charles Tucker III, husband.

There was additional information below that, of course, but it took a minute just to comprehend the magnitude of what that meant. There was a tiny protest in the back of his head whispering Koss, but Trip chose to ignore it.

There was another whispering annoyance in the back of his head – the one that whispered something about Chancellor Lorne. Trip did try to listen to that voice, but the agonizing throb in his head made him think of Klingons.

The line below his name on the screen was for dependents. . . children . . . and there were two listed: Lorian and Elizabeth.

Trip sat in his chair for a moment contemplating his options. He could sit here and do nothing, or he could get up and explore more of this. . . place. Trip still didn’t quite understand what was going on – beyond not buying the “The Klingons Did It” explanation.

A little exploration couldn’t hurt, and might in fact help him to figure out what exactly was going on. With that justification in place, Trip stood up, and began to make his way to the address T’Pol’s file had so helpfully provided.

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-Enterprise –

Vulcans, of course, don’t frown. Frowning would imply giving into an emotion. Thus, T’Pol wasn’t quite willing to admit that she was frowning following her visit to sickbay. Nor would she have admitted to being frustrated following her visit with Dr. Phlox . If pressed, however, she might have acknowledged a lack of being pleased.

Phlox had not been able to find any medical reasons for her hallucination. In fact, he had gone so far as to suggest that her symptoms might have been a physical manifestation of her grief over her separation from Trip. As there had been no medical reasons for her headache, Phlox had attributed that symptom to the same non-medical reasons. T’Pol had quickly reminded the doctor that Vulcans do not handle their grief by developing psychosomatic symptoms.

Since Phlox hadn’t been able to supply her with an answer, T’Pol began to work on a diagnosis of her own. She remembered snippets of conversation from her childhood on Vulcan about mates’ and “bonding.” Some of those conversations had come from her own parents.

There was no denying she and Trip were mates. Or rather, they had been before he’d left.

Briefly, T’Pol considered the man she was legally obligated to call her husband. If she had “bonded” with Trip, it clearly meant that she would never experience such an event with Koss. T’Pol was a fraction more pleased with that possibility than was appropriate for her species.

Her pleasure dissipated, however, when she contemplated the very real possibility that Trip’s promotion meant that she would quite possibly never see her bond mate again in his lifetime.

T’Pol was still contemplating the possibility of a bond with Trip when the turbolift opened its’ doors. Commander Brody was waiting inside.

“Gong to the bridge, Commander?” he inquired.

“Yes.” They traveled for several minutes in an uncomfortable silence. T’Pol wasn’t sure why she found his silence so unbearable, but unlike his predecessor, Commander Brody didn’t seem very interested in interpersonal relationships with the crew, even on the most basic levels.

They hadn’t had a movie night since leaving space dock.

“I would have thought you would have joined the basketball game with the other senior officers.” He may not have been Commander Tucker, but he was the Chief Engineer.

Brody bristled. “I don’t believe such fraternizations are appropriate among the crew, Commander.”

He was entirely correct. Moreover, if he had been one of her Vulcan colleagues, T’Pol would have welcomed his attitude. But coming from a member of a species she had come to know so well, it merely added to Brody’s unlikablity factor.

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-Sputnik-

The engineers of The Sputnik had seen fit to include a conference room in the design of the ship. Unfortunately, they had either thought the room would see very little activity or had underestimated the number of people who needed to fit in the room. Because though there were currently on three occupants in the conference room, the tiny space still felt quite cramped to Commander Bryant, Doctor Rosenberg, and Lieutenant Ortiz.

Gilbert rubbed his temples in frustration. Raising his head, he scowled across the table at Lieutenant Ortiz. “I’m not an engineer, Lieutenant. But aren’t holograms essentially just a bunch of light particles?”

Ana smirked at him before answering. “It’s a bit more complicated than that, Commander. But in essence, yes.”

“What I’m trying to determine, Lieutenant, is how something as harmless as your definition of a hologram purports to be has managed to put our Captain in a coma.”

Dr. Rosenberg cleared his throat and Gilbert glanced in his direction. “Do you have something to add, Doctor?”

“Yes I do. It’s not exactly a coma. Captain Tucker is, for all intents and purposes, merely asleep and dreaming.”

“A sleep we can’t wake him from,” Gilbert emphasized.

“Correct. I can come up with no medical reason as to why that is.”

Gilbert pondered, briefly, the possibility that Captain Tucker simply didn’t want to deal with his seemingly incompetent crew. He was ready to concede the power of that theory until Ortiz laid a small rectangular object on the conference table. “What’s that?”

“This came from the Valisians. It’s apparently the main power source for their holographic programs. It might also explain why Captain Tucker won’t wake up.”

“How?”

“Well, as Chancellor Lorne explained to us, the Valisians are telepathic. A good portion of their technology relies on telepathy to work.”

“Everything from their schools to their public transportation,” Gilbert acknowledged.

“Well, it’s all powered with a chip like this one, and their holograms appear to run on the same telepathic principle. In theory, this chip should have read the Captain’s mind and translated his wishes to the empty room.”

“So why didn’t it?”

Dr. Rosenberg cleared his throat again, and Gilbert decided it was quite possibly one of the most annoying habits one could form.

“Go ahead, Doctor.”

“The Valisian neurochemistry is vastly different from our own. We should frankly be glad it didn’t kill the Captain. Instead, it seems to have placed him in a deep REM cycle that we can’t wake him from.”

“Okay. Lieutenant, I want you to continue to work with the Valisians to see if you can develop some sort of device to counteract this one. Doctor, continue researching medical efforts to wake him. Dismissed.”

Gilbert watched them leave, and wondered how he was ever going to explain to Starfleet that they simply couldn’t wake Captain Tucker because the man was having a very nice dream.

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Chapter 8

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Eight hardy souls have made comments

Oh, pooh! You mean the AU where they're married is just a dream? Oh well, at least the real T'Pol WANTS to see Trip again. Maybe when he wakes up HE'LL realize he wants to see her? I just can't help thinking about your previous warnings about not living in the noodleverse, though. I've got a bad feeling about this....

^^me too!...although at least I'm less confused...and I'll take whatever noodles you feel fit to throw at us :o)

Intriguing chapter. It's good that T'Pol does want to see him. But what exactly is going on with Trip? Why create such an elaborate hoax?

Can't wait for the explanation!

Um, it's not exactly a "hoax," just faulty technology, as is the standard with Star Trek first contacts.

And there will be more noodles, btw. Both of the real and dream variety.

Quite interesting, Samantha. I like the way you've interwoven what's actually happening and what is going on in the holo program. Given that you indicated this was angst (and from what I remember of your notes when you first wrote this), I'm not hopeful for a happy ending even though I'd like to see one.

Still, I LOVE your take on T'Pol here...

hmmmmm what a complex and very interesting and entertaining tale you've woven here.

Continue please and little quicker please... I have to keep my nagging title buffed up you know :-D

Very intriguing chapter! Poor stuck in a dream Trip, even if it's a good one. I also love your take on T'Pol. Looking forward to more. :)

Noodles are good. I like noodles. Awesome story, by the way, I can't wait to see how it all works out! :)