A/N: Rabid plot bunny that would not let me stop writing, despite laundry and needing to read "Love Letters for All Occasions" (Hey, maybe that was the inspiration.) First two parts are what I wrote it for; the last part is for some closure. AU, as this is over a couple of weeks, and we can all guess that Trip will not be gone from Enterprise for more than like, two episodes and a total of like, four days.

Disclaimer: I do not own Enterprise; I am not making a profit. I did steal from Paramount, but they turned me in to the University, and so I steal no longer.

He looked down at her sitting form and wondered how exactly she was sitting. He looked around and wondered how exactly he was standing, for that matter. The endless white space had no light source, but was as bright as the noon in the south, and he cast no shadow. He looked at his feet and his mind thought he may be standing on nothing, though his body said he was on firm ground.

"Fancy seeing you here," he said. She opened her large brown eyes framed by long lashes and looked up at him.

"Trip," she said softly. The silence hung in the warm white room. She spoke again: "I am trying to meditate." Her head moved back and forth in her particular gesture of frustration as she spoke, a physical signifier of condensation. She had regained her hardened demeanor.

"Well, I'm trying to calm down myself," said Trip, in his own defense. "Long shift." He lifted his chin in the air and dared her to tell him to leave.

"This is not the first time you have intruded upon my meditations."

"Most times I'm quiet," he said. "Sometimes you don't know I'm here."

"I always know you're here," said T'Pol. Her eyebrow rose. He should have known that he could not pull one over on her. They fell back into silence.

"You know, that's one selection that I never managed to choose for Movie Night." Trip grasped at topics, trying to find something to keep her from stopping her meditation.

"What is that?" she said.

"Well, there was a whole genre of twentieth and early twenty-first century movies called science fiction…"

"I don't see how science could not be considered true," she said, her eyebrow raised and her disbelief being worn like a cloak.

"Hold on, T'Pol, let me explain." Trip put his hands on his hips to let her know he meant business. "There was one movie that was wildly popular, in which there was a war between humans and machines, and it got to the point where humans had been enslaved by machines and were being grown mechanically in fields."

"Is this part of the human pathos surrounding automation as well as genetic manipulation?" she asked. She was ever the scientists, even in her subconscious.

"Suppose so, must be deep rooted in our societies." He shrugged. "Well, the machines used a computer program of the late twentieth century to make humans believe that they weren't enslaved… and some escaped that program."

"It seems that humans fancy themselves always able to overcome impossible odds."

"Well, yeah, they were fighting back and losing," said Trip, frowning. "People have to have their fantasies, I suppose… and you can't tell me that on Enterprise we didn't beat incredible odds."

"You are no longer on Enterprise. You will have to beat the odds on Columbia."

Trip flinched, eyes closing and head turning away involuntarily. He recovered. "Guess I will." He paused. "To make a long story short the freedom fighters were able to reenter the machine's computer program, and before they did they always went into another program to gain items they would need in the program for freedom fighting… guns, and bombs and such." He paused, and she was listening intently, and did not even comment on the violence of humans. "Well, it was called 'The Construct' and it looked a lot like this." She didn't comment. Did he just tell a story to hear himself talk? He grasped at straws again, just happy to be in her presence, didn't want her to leave, didn't want to be called to duty… "Do you figure we could go anywhere we wanted; like they could get anything they wanted?"

"I have never tried," she acquiesced. "This was the form of meditation taught to me from childhood – the absence of everything but myself gave me great comfort and physical and mental stability."

"See, me, I would go to the beach or something. A little white noise, a little good sun, and I'd be all relaxed."

"I am not you, Commander Tucker."

"No. You're not, T'Pol."

"Commander T'Pol, we have a visitor off the port bow," said Jonathon's voice. T'Pol looked pointedly at Trip and vanished.

Trip let himself fall asleep.