Better Undead Than Smeg -- 1
"Must you lean over my shoulder when I'm trying to work?"
"We *are* supposed to be working together, Barnabas!" Angelique exclaimed indignantly.
"Yes. You blackmailed me into marrying you again, but you just weren't satisfied with that. You had to blackmail Captain Trask into posting us to the same duty roster, too!"
"Well, once I've passed the engineering exam, you won't have to worry about it anymore!"
"Ah, just like the last 12 times you took the exam. What was it you covered the exam paper with the last time you took it?" he asked rhetorically, "Ah, I remember! Our initials in little hearts, wasn't it?"
"How did you find out about that?"
"Never mind how I found out about it," he snapped. "What's next?"
She glanced at the clipboard she carried with her. "There's a chicken soup machine with a clogged nozzle on Level 14."
Suddenly a voice blared over the public address system. "Will Barnabas Collins please report to Captain Trask's office!"
Sighing, Angelique said, "Go on, go see what that puss-head Trask wants." She couldn't help notice the spring that entered Barnabas' step as he walked down the corridor towards the captain's office.
"What are you doing here?" the beautiful brunette with the word 'DuPres' on the breast of her uniform asked as Barnabas reached the bridge of the ship.
He shrugged. "Captain Trask just called for me."
"Well, I'm sure it's good news. Maybe you've been promoted to Admiral."
"Admiral Collins. I like the sound of it," Barnabas said as he walked to the door of Trask's office.
He knocked.
"Enter!" Captain Trask shouted.
When Barnabas entered the room, he said, "Ah, Collins! Close the door and take a seat, won't you?"
Barnabas closed the door behind him and sat down.
"It has come to our attention," the captain began, reaching into his desk drawer, "that you're a *vampire*!" He pulled a cross out and held it in front of him.
Barnabas bounded across the room to the door. Too late, however. Pasted to the back of the door was an enormous cross.
As Barnabas shrank back from the cross, Trask walked up behind him and hit him at the base of the neck, knocking him cold.
"Eliot!" the captain shouted, "call security in here, so that we can take him down to the cargo bay!"
After they had tucked Barnabas safely into his coffin and chained it shut, Trask and Security Chief Patterson walked away.
"Why can't we destroy him here?" Patterson asked.
"A vampire can only be destroyed by sunlight, Patterson. He'll just have to stay in there for the six months until we can get back to Earth."
Barnabas squinted as light touched his retinas for the first time in a very, very long time. Unable to see what he was doing, he sprang forward, grasping his liberator by the shoulders.
But before he could sink his fangs into the neck of his would-be victim, Barnabas felt a pouch being impaled on his fangs, as warm, refreshing blood flowed down his throat.
His bloodthirst for the moment sated, he looked at his liberator. The face was furrier than he remembered it - quite a bit furrier, in fact, but there was no mistaking those blue eyes.
"Quentin?" he asked disbelievingly. "What are you doing here?"
"How did you know my name?" the lycanthrope asked.
"Why I remember you. I met you back in 1897. I'm Barnabas. Don't you remember?"
"1897? You mean that you're *the* Barnabas? The undying one? Do you know the location of the Creator and the Promised Land, just like it says in the Holy Books?"
"What are you talking about Quentin?"
"He's saying that he's a descendant of your friend Quentin, so many generations later that you've become subject of legend among his - err - people."
Barnabas recognized that voice. He looked around and finally saw the monitor. "Eliot!" He exclaimed. "What the smeg's going on here?"
"Well," the corpulent, disembodied head began, "after you'd been in that coffin for a while, I began to get a little lonely, and I couldn't open the coffin myself, so looked up your next of kin."
"Quentin," Barnabas supplied.
"Yes. Well, it turns out that Quentin disappeared generations ago, but that his descendants married into another line of lycanthropes, and so the wolf gene has become stronger and stronger, until we get what you see before you."
Barnabas looked over to Quentin who was contentedly scratching behind one ear. "And how did he come to be named Quentin, too?"
"It seems that every male pup that's born with that coloration is named Quentin. As you can imagine, there are quite a lot of Quentins around by now. Including three of his littermates."
"You said that you began to get lonely after I'd been in that coffin for a while," he noticed his new companion marking his territory, "Quentin! Stop that! How long was I in there?"
"Err, well," Eliot paused. "A while. Like two or three . . ."
"Years?!?"
"Million years," he finished.
"Two or three million years?"
"Closer to three."
"You're trying to say that I've been in that coffin for three million years."
"Yep."
By now, Barnabas had walked into a room that was set up for an exam. There were papers on all of the desks with technical and mathematical gibberish all over them. Except for one. On that one was written {AC+BC} in little hearts over and over again.
"So, what happened to everyone?"
"They died."
"Well, if it's been three million years, I'd expect so."
"No. You misunderstand me, Barnabas. They died about six months after they put you in the coffin."
"Barnabas Collins!" a feminine voice called out.
Barnabas didn't need to turn around to know who was speaking to him. "Angelique! I see that you survived the catastrophe."
She laughed deprecatingly as she walked around in front of him. "Hardly. I died just like the rest of them, and it's all your fault."
"My fault! How could it possibly have been my fault! I had been in my coffin for six months by then."
Barnabas noticed that Angelique glimmered slightly. He reached forward to touch her, and his hand passed right through her. Then he noticed the letter on her forehead. "A 'W'!" he cried out.
"Barnabas, you've been in that coffin for too long. It's an 'H' for 'Hologram.'"
"No it isn't."
Angelique crossed to the mirror and looked at her reflection. "Eliot!" she screeched. "Why do I have a 'W' on my forehead?!?"
"Why, because you're a witch, Mum," the ship's computer responded.
"It's bad enough I need to have *any* letter *at all* on my forehead. But to give me the wrong one! I demand that you change it!"
"Yes, Mum. Right away."
Angelique smirked. "Thank you, Eliot."
Barnabas and Quentin had a hard time keeping a straight face when the letter changed to an 'E.' Angelique flounced out of the room.
"I'm working my way across the QWERTY keyboard," Eliot smirked. "By the time I get around to 'H,' I'll bet she'll be happy to accept the 'W.'"