"Vanishing Point" By Alelou Rating: PG Disclaimer: All things Star Trek belongs to CBS/Paramount. Genre: Adventure, Missing Scenes, Angst, Trip/T'Pol Description: Missing scenes from Season Two. Author's Note: It ain't easy to squeeze a missing scene into an episode that consists almost entirely of another character's transporter dream.  I just thank God Archer went to talk to Hoshi in sickbay.  Thanks as always to jT for beta and reviewers for the care and feeding. "You have the bridge," Captain Archer said, as he departed to check on Ensign Sato in sickbay.  She had spent 8.3 seconds in the pattern buffer of the transporter and apparently had experienced some psychological trauma due to her delayed rematerialization. The turbo-lift opened and Tucker and Reed entered in animated conversation.  Reed was saying, "She sure packed a lot into 8.3 seconds.  What was it, two whole days worth of things happening?  Meals, kidnappings, bomb-planting aliens, turning so invisible people could walk right through you - how could so much happen in so little time?" Tucker said, "It was like all your basic work-related nightmares rolled into one.  You can't do your job right, your boss relieves you of duty, nobody pays any attention to you and then to top it all off you literally disappear ..." Tucker shook his head.  "Hell, the only thing she left out was showing up to work and realizing you forgot to wear any pants." T'Pol lifted an eyebrow, but the two men were two engrossed in their discussion to notice.  "She must have a really vivid imagination," Reed said. "You ever read that story 'Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge'?  It's about a guy in the American Civil War who's being hanged - I can't remember why - and you get this whole adventure when the rope breaks and he falls into the river and swims away and I think he even makes it home and sees his wife.  But then you realize he's actually just dropped, you know, that the whole thing had taken place in the time it took for him to fall and break his neck.  It's pretty creepy." "Huh," Reed said.  "I'm shocked, Commander.  You have read more than comic books." Tucker scowled at him. "How is Ensign Sato?" T'Pol asked. "Oh, she's fine," Tucker said.  "Phlox is examining her now." Reed said, "I don't think we'll be getting her back on the transporter platform anytime soon." Tucker said, "She didn't want to do it in the first place.  But I can't blame her now.  That compressed beam idea of yours, Malcolm - that's real interesting." The men began to debate different methods and how to test them, including how best to present the idea to Starfleet. T'Pol listened to them while she attended to her other duties.  So Ensign Sato had apparently imagined that she had literally disappeared. Adult Vulcans didn't dream, of course, or at least they didn't remember their dreams - though there was some debate among Vulcan scientists about what happened during REM sleep cycles, and her one experiment with not meditating had indeed resulted in some vivid sleep imagery.  Certainly nothing about going to work without clothes on, however.  That was very hard to imagine. She could, however, imagine how it felt to be invisible. Next installment: Precious Cargo.

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