DS The Search for Carolyn

by Thor2000

In a sequel to “Star Shadows,” Carolyn Stoddard of the future Collins family has become omnipotent and has traveled back in time to 1972. Captain Roger Collins and the future Collins travel back in time to meet the people they once were.

Chakotay and Torres had been waiting for over an hour for Tom Paris to return. Since Voyager's return to Earth, the lieutenant seemed to be becoming lax in his duties. There was no longer any urgency as there was when they were fighting to return from the Delta Quadrant. They were supposed to scout the progress of the indigenous tribes here and depart, but if they didn't leave soon, the chance for them to be discovered was going to be noticed by the natives.

"Paris, come in…" Chakotay tapped his badge.

"I'm here, I'm here...." The errant lieutenant stumbled out of the brush covered in vines, leaves and dried branches. "But I really think you should see this...."

"What is it?" Torres asked.

"Follow me," he led the way back to a dry riverbed. Following it for thirty meters to a lake down below the rim of a cliff, they huddled in thick brush and noticed a village of blue-skinned natives fifty meters away down in the valley. They all had white hair except for a few women in ceremonial dresses with long blonde hair. For hundreds of years, none of them had had anything but white hair. Why did they worship a blonde deity?

"I don't understand." Torres whispered. "What's the big deal?"

"The statue!"

All the natives were chanting around a twelve-foot tall marble statue of a longhaired female Starfleet officer in the center of a sacrificial pond. They all mustered the name of their goddess as best as they could in the confines of their native language. "Kay-Ro-Lyn… Kay-Ro-Lyn… Kay-Ro-Lyn…"

"I thought Starfleet records say no Federation starship has ever visited the planet." Torres inquired.

"Never has been a ship in this sector." Chakotay revealed. "The Cassiopeians never allowed it."

"Prime directive aside," Paris spoke under his voice. "The inhabitants of this planet have been exposed to a Starfleet officer who wanted them to consider them a god. Someone named Kay-Ro-Lyn."

"Or Carolyn…" Torres answered.

PART TWO

"I ran the name Carolyn through Star Fleet records." Torres sat at the briefing room table with Voyager's Officers as they tried to find out of any unsanctioned Starfleet vessels had made contact with the natives on the planet. "It seems that on Star date 5894.1 a causality loop exchanged the histories of a family in Twentieth Century Earth with that of the history of USS Enterprise. Captain James T. Kirk and First Officer Spock were able to restore the damage to the time-stream but not before a Carolyn Stoddard was affected by the Galactic Barrier now erroneously called Parallel Time in this short-lived tangent."

"As we all know, these cosmic energies cause accelerated evolution and enormous cosmic power on the level of the Q." Chakotay pointed out.

"Okay, " Captain Janeway understood. "But if that timeline ceased to exist, how did this Stoddard manage to?"

"She shouldn't have." Torres remarked. "As both histories returned to their normal places in the time-stream, her incident at the barrier never happened."

"Somehow," Chakotay theorized. "She escaped to our quantum reality. With the power she attained, it would have been possible for her to escape the causality loop. My only question is, how in the world does an entire family exchange places with the crew of two Enterprises."

"I can answer that." Lieutenant Harry Kim stood. "A naturally occurring quantum singularity…" He pressed a button at his console. The image of a mansion appeared on a holo-screen as new ship's doctor, Dr. Johnathan Archibald Collins, recognized it. It hadn't changed much in the five hundred years since it was built.

"That's Collinwood!" He realized. "My ancestors traded places with the Enterprise Crew?"

"In the Twentieth Century," Kim continued. "A Professor Theodore Eliot Stokes discovered what he called a doorway to parallel timelines in a room at Collinwood. Fifty years later, Professor Samuel Beckett, the Father of Quantum Science, theorized what he had really discovered was a quantum singularity being confined and shaped by the architecture of the house." The computer simulation showed a three-dimensional schematic of the mansion with the superimposed singularity at the end of a west wing corridor.

"The causality itself was finally collapsed on Star date 5894, but upon being collapsed, " Kim's simulation revealed. "It exchanged and warped the timelines at both ends with the Enterprise Crew of two centuries and the Collins family of two centuries. Retaining their memories, Captain Kirk and Captain Picard forced it to collapse once again and restructure both ends before the first collapse." The ship's boatswain whistle sounded over them.

"Yes," Janeway responded.

"Captain," Paris sounded befuddled as he sat on the Bridge. " A strange ship just appeared out of no where on our sensors. It's...........the Collinwood????"

PART THREE

"Star date supplemental. Our computers are down; life support systems failing. Our warp engine cold and our dilithium chamber shattered. Carolyn's attack on my ship has left us highly vulnerable and unable to maneuver. Repairs may take a year! " Captain Roger Collins ached as he rose from the floor to his chair. The entire ship was engulfed in darkness while his First Officer Barnabas and his paramour Ambassador Angelique Bouchard lovingly held on to each other in the caved in remains of the transporter room nearly destroyed by the powers of a former crewmember. Flicking on his light saber for illumination, Lieutenant Commander Quentin Collins was still hovering over his beloved Victoria and checked her mother for injuries. Standing up in a hallway, Security Officer Maggie Winters forced her fingers into the doors of a turbo lift as she forced it open and freed David Collins. The ship was as close to a dead hulk as it could get.

"Loomis report!" Roger called for his Science Officer.

"All systems down," Willie coughed as he stood. "Almost every circuit fried. Engines off-line."

"Barnabas... Quentin..." Roger hit his com-badge repeatedly, but the frequency was jumping all over the channels.

"Captain!!" Ensign Amy Jennings held her shattered com-panel in her lap on the floor. "I've managed to re-direct power from the phasers into the sensors. I'm reading a ship called... Voyager?!"

"Never heard of it!" Roger declared as the air hummed nearby from a transporter link. He looked up to six Star fleet officers appearing to help him. He was never glad to see anyone, but he was still a bit wary. He had never heard of a Starship called Voyager.

"Captain," A female starship captain looked at him. "I'm Captain Kathryn Janeway of the Federation starship Voyager. I imagine you must have a lot of questions." She beamed non-threateningly.

CHAPTER FOUR

"Captain Janeway," Roger nursed a broken arm as his lovely hostess challenged his memories. "Your history of Earth is full of contradictions. There was no Khan, no Genocidal War, no Romulan or Borg conflicts..." He paused for a sip of her synthesized sherry. "And never a female Starship Captain."

"Maybe..." she stopped him. "Not in your timeline but there was in ours."

"Ah, yes..." Roger scoffed. "Your time-line theory, well, how do I know yours isn't the tangent?"

"Maybe…" Janeway poured more tea for the pompous hero as her crew from Voyager restored the Collinwood. "What are your last memories?"

"We've been caught in a time loop." Roger genuinely believed. "We've been forced to re-live the transformation of my niece into a being of immense cosmic power. Every time she destroyed the Collinwood, she inadvertently sent us back to before her transformation to live it again over and over and over verbatim."

Janeway's door opened and closed as her ship's doctor opened. Dr. Johnathan Collins paused before the figure of Captain Collins and forced back a smile. He looked at his computer pad and then revealed to Janeway.

"Fifty-three members of Collins' crew had severe burns, seventy-two had broken bones and less than twenty are critical." Dr. Collins informed her. Janeway looked to her doctor and then back to Captain Collins.

"Captain," She grinned. "Meet my ship's doctor. He is a direct descendant of the son of Barnabas and Angelique Collins."

"Captain Janeway." Roger remained as dubious as his Twentieth Century counterpart. "My Science Officer has never had a son."

"No disrespect, sir," Dr. Collins started. "But from what I understand of it, the singularity was very specific and never covered any of the years that my ancestor was alive."

"Captain," Janeway continued with decorum. "I am not here to dismiss your timeline, but the only reason you are still free to exist with your memories intact instead of returning to your place in time was the presence and power of your niece. Even you must know how dangerous she is. We all need to know where she is. Do you know is she now?"

"I have no idea."

In 1972, Collinwood was the home of the Collins family. A wealthy powerful family nearly if not as affluent as the Massachusetts Kennedys or the New York Rockefellers, they owned nearly everything in Collinsport, Maine. The family estate was three stories tall and both intimidating and influential as it sat atop Widow's Hill and looked down on the town. The massive grandiose house, locally reputed as one of the most haunted houses in New England, sometimes looked as if it were built to hold secrets. It was a job it did very well. Its front foyer was decorated with the portraits of Barnabas Collins, Isaac Collins, Joshua Collins and Jeremiah Collins. Their faces frozen in time stared down to a burst of light preceding Lt. Carolyn Collins Stoddard. Clad in a Starfleet uniform from the 24th Century, her eyes shone and she felt like a little girl in this large, dark, wonderful and moody old Gothic house. She felt like a child in its presence. She wanted to explore every part of it and know every inch of it. Hearing someone coming toward her, she transmuted her clothing into something 20th Century with a wave of her hand.

"Carolyn!" Liz Stoddard headed for the drawing room and stopped upon seeing her daughter's visage. " I thought you were out with Maggie!"

"I came back early." The playful little minx lied to this incarnation of her mother.

"Good," Liz sat at the desk and signed the monthly checks. "With Barnabas and Angelique on their honeymoon, I need someone to run down to Willie at the Old House for me and spare me a trip..." She signed another check. "As long as he is replacing the plumbing in the Old House, we might as well do the same for Collinwood."

Liz continued talking as Carolyn heard other voices in the foyer. Looking out, she saw her counterpart returning with Maggie Evans. They didn't see her yet. Entering with numerous store parcels, they paused and hung their jackets. Waiting for Liz to turn her back, the playful blonde time-traveler glanced at her counterpart, stepped out of sight and teleported herself out of the room.

"Mother, " The Carolyn Stoddard native to this time period smiled as she entered. "Whom are you talking to?"

"Well, you, of course," Liz noticed a difference in her daughter's attire. "How'd you change your clothes?!" Carolyn forced a grin as she and Maggie exchanged looks. Liz looked at the both of them as she insisted she wasn't losing it.

CHAPTER FIVE

"Roger, look at this..." Barnabus's console on the USS Collinwood was still flickering on and off. Pounding it with his fist, it finally started working. "Two parallel timelines: in ours, Isaac Collins founded Starfleet and the Collins Shipping Yards in 1995. In Janeway's, Isaac Collins founded the tiny settlement of Collinsport in 1695 and gave rise to a powerful New England Family. Now, if our Isaac Collins had been the victim of a causality in time and space from his native Seventeenth Century as per the tangent, it means ours is the quantum reality."

"Then I owe Janeway an apology." Roger and the crew hovered over the bridge workstation. "How do we get back to our own timeline?"

"We can't." Barnabas admitted.

"Unless we find Carolyn to help us." Quentin added.

"She was more than a little ticked off at all of us when she tried burying me alive." Angelique commented as she and Barnabas exchanged looks. He was such a romantic without the Leviathans in existence in this reality. Overhead, Willie finally got the overhead lights on as Voyager's engines and crew pushed the Collinwood past the 50 mark. Voyager crewmembers working alongside the Collinwood crew found numerous structural designs in their ships in common as they needed parts.

"Did someone get killed in the warp nacelle?" Seven of Nine was helped by ADAM, the Advanced Diagnostic Android Module which assisted Loomis. He had never met a Borg and she had never encountered another positronic android other than Lieutenant Data from the Enterprise. She wondered what sort of person Adam must have been to have his history rebuilt alongside that of Data's. "I'm picking up intermittent debris in the matter stream." She continued.

"Lieutenant Commander Quentin Collins killed dictator Andreas Petofi recently in our native timeline by letting him fall into the anti-matter." The huge hulking android reported. "He was no one we cared about."

Captain Roger Collins soon began to realize he preferred the Starfleet of his native reality than the one in this one. Voyager's Starfleet was controlled by something called the United Federation of Planets, a rather stoic and unimpressive republic of planets in a small portion of the galaxy. Through some miracle, the Federation decided to accept the registry of the USS Collinwood using as a basis the account of a duplicate man named William Thomas Riker. Sometime prior, it seemed that a transporter glitch had duplicated the man: one was stranded on a planet blocked to transporter signals while another version of the man graduated to First Officer. Several years later, both men were allowed and recognized as individuals. Influenced heavily by that case, the Federation decided to honor even it's quantum reality counterpart's starships. The main council went as far as to insist that the likelihood of an entire crew once dominated by nepotism was going to be a continuing influence.

"Nepotism?" Quentin and Roger headed back to the Collinwood. "They said that?"

"Can you believe it?" Roger discussed the situation as the Collinwood was in dry dock still receiving repairs. "I never thought
having relatives in Starfleet was considered nepotism."

"It isn't." Quentin added. "But gathering the whole family on one ship to be wiped out in one disaster is. We are lost in a strange
new timeline without Jedi Knights, Leviathans or half a million other races we once co-existed with… we are unfortunately alone. On the other hand, I'm sort of interested in serving on some of their ships."

"Sounds like a grand adventure!" Roger beamed smiling ear to ear.

CHAPTER SIX

"Angelique, that's wonderful..." Liz spoke over long distance to the newlyweds. "I'm glad you and Barnabas are extending your honeymoon. I guess we'll see you in another week. See you then."

Listening to the conversation, Maggie Evans smiled and then looked adoringly to Quentin as he read the newspaper on the sofa.

"Don't get any ideas." he told the lovely governess with a wry grin on his face.

Skipping into the drawing room like a little girl, Carolyn sidled up alongside her mother as she hung up the phone.

"How are our favorite lovebirds?" she enquired.

"She says they feel like kids again." Liz became lost in thought. "I bet Martinique is beautiful this time of year."

Carolyn smiled happily as she turned back on her way to the kitchen before David or Hallie got the last of the previous night's chicken. Passing by the door seemed to bring visitors even this late at night. Hearing the echo of the door, the little blonde heiress spun on her heel like a ballerina and opened the door to a little blonde shadow covered in darkness.

"Yes?"

"Is Elizabeth Collins-Stoddard at home?" the shadow responded.

"Yes," Carolyn was inexplicably becoming unnerved. "She's my mother."

"Allow me to introduce myself, I'm..." The female visitor seemed to look for the right response or name. "Nancy..........Nancy
Collins, a visitor from..........Canada!"

The young heiress stood aghast and nearly fainted at their resemblance!!! Liz even stood from the open drawers of the drawing room in shock. It had to be a trick, a reflection! It was another copy of her daughter. In fact, it almost looked as if she suddenly had twin daughters. After some initial shock, she welcomed Nancy Collins into the drawing room to meet her cousin Quentin, their governess Maggie Evans and eventually her brother, Roger. After the traditional greetings, the talk changed from welcomes to her past life as a single child supposedly growing up alone to her adulthood without any living relatives. By all accounts, she seemed just what she seemed to be: another very distant relative from a branch off the family that no one knew existed. Liz just looked upon her and accepted her without question. How could she not when Nancy looked just like her own daughter? Quentin, however, remained suspicious. He had been this route before. How many times were distant relatives going to pop out of the world before things actually turned for the worst?

"I just can't get over your resemblance to our Carolyn." Roger grinned amusingly.

"And I just can't get over your resemblance to my Uncle Ro...........bert. Robert." She seemed mischievously lively and perky
as Mrs. Stoddard shared some tea. "But then the Collins genes have always had a prominent strength." She beamed enigmatically and serenely toward them.

"Will they be joining you?" Maggie inquired.

"No," the blonde clone hid a wry grin behind her cup. "They're no longer with me."

"Who was your ancestor again?" Quentin asked.

"Desmond Collins." she sounded as convincing as possible. "He married a Leticia Faye and they had three sons. One stayed here, one went to England and another went to Canada."

Quentin glanced to Carolyn beaming ear to ear as the two petite blondes discovered how much they had in common. Turning to the liquor cabinet for some more brandy, his eyes met Dr. Julia Hoffman who took one look at the other Carolyn and seemed to also go into shock.

"Don't be surprised, she's real." He took a drink from the liquor cabinet. "Or seems to be."

CHAPTER SEVEN

Once she had permission to restore the Old McGruder House on the Collins Estate, Nancy Collins wasted no time in restoring it back into Rose Cottage. With music playing through the walls, she slid over the floors celebrating her newfound freedom by zapping repairs and conjuring 24th Century conveniences. Singing at the top of her lungs as she saw in an old style Earth movie, she chose her own music out of the Earth's vast future of music. A twist of her hand and the walls of the estate returned to their splendid restored past prominence. Old gas lights reshaped on the molecular level into electrical lights. Under her feet, the dirty weathered carpet and wood floors turned to brilliant wall-to-wall carpeting. Under her godlike power, she could mentally and unconsciously transform the structure into a red and green palatial estate fit for someone of her ego. Delighted with herself, she danced and flitted through the main hall and flew off the balcony and landed in the foyer under a dingy dirty chandelier coming to ambient sparkling life by her own will power.

"I made it through the wilderness," she slid down a hall in a huge dark green sweater, her underwear and thick black sunglasses. "Somehow I made it through.... Didn't know how lost I was until I found you..." Advancing on her dining room, it immediately restored itself to precede her presence. Blue walls began to shine again and old paintings of old pastures and colonial structures turned into paintings of starry skies and other planets. Under a crystal chandelier in the dining room, the diminutive blonde zapped up a small dinner for herself in her brand new dinner room, but then her ears heard her door being pounded on as she stopped the music playing in the house. Transmuting her clothing into a black sweater and green Capri pants, she opened the door as Willie Loomis carried in firewood.

"Wow, you really do look like Carolyn." He looked around in shock at the place. This place had been falling into disuse for over two hundred years and now it was almost a regal palace. "This is impossible."

"A little spit and polish..." Nancy loved befuddling mere mortals with her powers.

"I...uh.... I mean.... if you need anything..." Willie looked around nervously.

"Can you get a message to Roger Collins?" Nancy turned to her Peking duck dinner. "Tell him I have some inventions for him."

"Inventions?"

"Computers." Nancy poured a very rare wine for herself.

"Those huge things on the Twilight Zone?" Willie strided into the parlor and dropped his bundle of wood at the fireplace.

"No, Willie," she smiled mysteriously. "They can be made so much smaller, small enough to go in your truck. I have ideas for things that will blow your mind!"

In the Twenty-Fourth Century, the USS Collinwood was still in dry dock for its much necessary repairs while it witnessed a brief rendezvous with the USS Enterprise, its once dimensional twin. It was an awkward meeting between Captain Jean-Luc Picard and Captain Roger Collins for the first time since the cross-time incident. It was also an opportunity for two science officers named Geordi LaForge and Willie Loomis to share ideas and push the Collinwood to 110.

"How do you like your tea?" Picard asked his former counterpart.

"Earl gray, hot." Roger answered while he felt unconsciously superior to this man.

"Same as me." Picard mused as the two captains placed old issues behind them. Picard's memories of the tangent were still a little sketchy, but in that other timeline he had become an artist of some sort living in a little cottage with Dr. Crusher as his wife. She herself had become a waitress in the local diner. In all, it was a brief little dream he wouldn't mind revisiting.

"How you adjusting to our reality?" Picard sipped his tea.

"It's.... strange, confusing, darker...." Roger chose his words slowly before he smiled ear to ear. "Exciting!"

"Any assignments yet?"

"Yes," Roger sipped some tea. "A hunt for an errant niece..."

CHAPTER EIGHT

A burst of light in the Collinwood foyer and Nancy Collins emerged in a long violet skirt and matching vest over a white French blouse. Smiling ear to ear as a goddess over these poor pathetic mortals, she opened the front exit and closed it for the sake of the sound.

"Hello!" she called out beaming ear to ear.

"Mrs. Collins," Dr. Hoffman emerged with Carolyn from the drawing room. "My goodness, you're always in a good mood and happy disposition."

"Well, life is an adventure," Nancy smiled. "And I love it!"

"If you like adventures," Carolyn started. "Why don't you come with me to the Blue Whale?"

"Blue Whale?" An evil glint came into Nancy's eyes as she saw the potential for mischief. "Sure, I'll drive!" She secretly zapped a Mercedes for herself near the garage. She couldn't wait till her counterpart saw the thing waiting for them. Reaching for her jacket, Carolyn looked back to Julia.

"Julia," Carolyn pulled her jacket on and pulled her long blonde tresses out from under it. "Could you tell my mother that I went to show Nancy the Blue Whale?"

"I can tell her." Julia replied with a bit of a smile. Watching the two hyper blondes head off together, she found herself grinning unconditionally. The two of them were such a sight, but yet, there was something odd about Nancy which she couldn't put her finger on it, but what was it? She just seemed to have things go right for her. She had lost one family and she had found another. She was always happy and winsome and always friendly. In fact, there was nothing wrong with her at all. She was practically perfect. What sort of person never had any problems? Julia turned to the drawing room and turned toward the phone on the center table to make a call.

"Operator," She picked up the receiver. "I want the number of a hotel in Martinique. I'm looking for a Barnabas Collins."

In the far future, the USS Collinwood was finally heading back into deep space with its captain in command. Captain Roger Collins acted anxiously as his ship returned to full duty. His starship was now in better shape than it had ever been. Glistening with modifications never before seen in its timeline, the USS Collinwood soared back into the space between the stars looking for an adventure.

"Where do we go from here?" Security Officer Maggie Winters asked Roger in his waiting room. He looked up at her long locks tied into long braids dangling off her shoulders over her lovely figure prominent in her red and black uniform and then turned to look out the window of his ready room deep in thought and with a cup of tea in his hand.

"Our original mission," he stared out the window. "Exploring strange new worlds, seeking out new life and new civilizations, boldly going where no one has ever gone before..."

"I meant Carolyn." She had to stop him from another of his long droning tirades. "How do we find someone with all of creation to hide in?"

"I already have," Barnabas entered with a computer board. "I found this laser print from a 1972 photograph downloaded from this reality's Starfleet." He turned it toward both Roger and Maggie. The print showed two identical women: one named Carolyn Stoddard, the other a Nancy Collins. It also told how Collins had made developments in artificial intelligence and computer engineering before vanishing for parts unknown.

"Look familiar?" Barnabas replied.

"Hiding amongst our Twentieth Century counterparts…" Roger smirked at the sheer chicanery and gall of his now omnipotent niece. "The girl has nerve."

"Back to the original Collinwood?" Maggie asked.

"Back to Collinwood!"

Already quite ensconced in the past, Nancy Collins realized what it was like to live without problems or relatives that could control her. She could control or destroy the whole estate with a wave of her arm and recreate it at will if she so desired. She looked at the Twentieth Century woman named Carolyn Stoddard she once was before a fold in time placed her against her mercy in a claustrophobic starship unable to be the woman she was meant to be. She now understood why. Her original self was a free spirit who left and departed the estate of Collinwood as she pleased. In the far future, her natural self was repressed and contained in futuristic trappings and false memories that might not have really existed to begin with. Covertly sharing her omnipotence with her previous self was obviously corrupting and opening the true Carolyn Stoddard to a life that she was wanting. Carolyn Stoddard of the Twentieth Century meanwhile found herself loving her new twin sister as much as a relative could love another relative. Nancy was so larger than life to her and could somehow make things happen. Free lobster dinners, free drinks, two incredible looking guys at the Blue Whale who folded to their whims, Carolyn finally had to just yell stop to the extravagance. Nancy was very nearly a god to her and herself a mere mortal, but as all mortals, she felt more secure back on earth. Returning home to the Collins Estate, the two were singing at the top of their lungs.

"We're cousins...identical cousins all our life..." The voices of the two singing females laughed and screamed up to the front entrance. Quentin Collins was still up watching TV in the drawing room as he looked out to the disturbance in the foyer. Carolyn staggered up to her room extremely inebriated and disoriented from the hard living. Nancy had to have drunk nearly as much but she was still lucid enough to hold and support her up the stairs. A few minutes later, Nancy came dancing ready to party some more down the stairs. Noticing Quentin sitting in the blue tinted light of the TV, she practically skipped up to him as if she was just a young girl in a schoolyard playground ready to square off with him.

"Look at you sitting down here all alone." She seemed to be studying over him like a cat eyeing a mouse. "What keeps you up so late?"

"I don't know." Quentin sipped his brandy. "Why don't you tell me?"

"You don't seem to trust me, Mr. Collins."

"Where'd you get an idea like that?" He drank some brandy again.

"You're a strange man." She telepathically and secretly immersed her mind in his. It took only a second to dip into who he was and what she found under the surface was fascinatingly disturbing. He had actually been born in 1875, cursed by something called the Hand of Petofi and was once living in fear of a mere portrait in the attic of the Old House. Someone named Angelique broke the link keeping him in fear of it and now he lived here at Collinwood wondering what he wanted now as a normal man once more. Her eyes rounded at this weird twisted version of her cousin Quentin: a man who had been blessed by the power of the Hand of Destiny and became a dashing hero and Jedi Knight. There were so many more dashing secrets here for her to discover.

"Am I?" Quentin reached into his pocket, pulled out a crucifix and flashed it into her face.

"What are you? A religious nut or something?" she barely flinched!

CHAPTER NINE

Martinique had changed much in the years since the scion of a wealthy American family and a beautiful blonde sorceress had last walked its beaches and whispered sweet nothings under tree limbs. The scenery was still wonderful even if their favorite spots were long gone after being razed by storms and hurricanes over several years. The old hotel since lost by a hurricane in the 1920s had been built up bigger, larger and more wonderful. Angelique however loved the in-door plumbing and modern conveniences of the time as she showered for dinner and planned the futures of her would-be children. His mind still trapped in the humble and simple times of the past, Barnabas was reading in the chair by the window as he read peacefully in the light of the daytime sun. His wife, he loved the sound of those magical words, carefully made herself beautiful for him as the message came up from the front desk. Putting aside his book, he turned for the phone and mildly accepted it as a convenience.

"Hello?" He replied. "Who? Julia..." the long distance wasn't very good. "Yes, I'm very well, so is Angelique, what? ..........A new Collins? But that's impossible............" Angelique came out of the bathroom in a towel, sat at the mirror and fretted with her hair as she listened to the one-sided conversation.

"Canada?" Barnabas remarked. " Just like Carolyn?????? Julia, please, calm down, we'll be home soon. Take care." He hung up the phone obviously perturbed. Brushing her hair back to its luxuriant length, his wife looked up to him quite mortal and human despite being a long-lived sorceress. Her brand new husband seemed perturbed as if something from their past had returned to possibly ruin the future they finally had.

"Barnabas?" Angelique looked up to him.

"There's a new Collins on the estate." He was incredulous about what he had been told. "Her name is Nancy Collins, she looks exactly like Carolyn and claims to be descended from Desmond Collins."

"Is that something to be worried about?"

"She claimed Desmond had four sons." Barnabas revealed the wrinkle in the imposter's story. "As you know he only really had one son and one daughter."

"Nancy Collins is going to be a very rich woman." Roger told his sister in the drawing room of Collinwood. "All three of the manufacturers I introduced her to were begging and bidding to get a contract for her computer plans and with Collins Enterprises behind her, we'll triple, no, quadruple our stocks!"

"She must be very excited." Liz smiled to indulge Roger. She might have been the ultimate owner of Collins Enterprises, but she didn't care much about it. The family already had as much money as it had and she was happily content and secure where her life was.

"Excited?" Roger beamed. "She was ecstatic! She must be able to read minds; she had those men in the palm of her hands. She could buy Collinwood out from under us...Quentin!" He noticed as his cousin passed by the entrance to the drawing room.

"Yes. " he seemed distractedly preoccupied.

"Have you heard the news?" Roger continued.

"Sorry, I couldn't keep from eavesdropping." Quentin replied casually.

"Nancy's plans are incredible." Roger gazed over to his sister. "A few years ago I would have thought an internet was something our fisherman used to catch fish, but now…" His excitement was uncontrollable. Now he knew how his father felt when the cannery was opened. "We are going to be ten years ahead of those Microsoft characters who wanted our investment. This will be the birth of the Collins Enterprises Computer division."

"Roger," Liz looked up from her embroidery. "You sound as if you have a new toy. You haven't been this excited since father gave you your first car." Maggie came from the dining room. Remembering Quentin's promise to take her out for dinner tonight for a change, she smiled in his direction and pulled him from Roger.

"Just finished David and Hallie's lessons," she said. "Give me a minute to clean up."

"Right. " Quentin admired his doe-eyed governess as she pranced up the stairs, headed down the hall and entered her room. Right next to her, the door to the west wing opened.

"Ready for dinner?" Quentin beamed.

"Quentin?! I just left you downstairs!!!" She stepped back from him startled.

CHAPTER TEN

Entering the Old House, Barnabas and Angelique dropped their luggage in the front foyer where it landed. The sound of their arrival obviously surprised Quentin as it looked like he was waiting for them. Briefly looking up to Barnabas's portrait, he whirled around a bit surprised.

"Quentin," Barnabas started. "We came straight from the airport. What's this about another Carolyn?"

"Oh, well…" He stuttered a minute as Angelique heard someone else entering. It was also Quentin! Angelique's lower jaw lightly dropped to be seeing two of him.

"Barnabas, I saw your car pull in and...." Quentin paused a bit surprised as he met his clone for the first time. "Well… it looks like you already found our other problem."

Using the power of the Hand, Lt. Commander Quentin Collins created a distraction by causing a crash in the nearby dining room. As the heads of his confronters turned to expect another person, he made a dash for the back door of the Old House. Hearing the steps of his counterpart and this other Barnabas Collins, he reached to pull out his communicator for an immediate transport, but then someone must have grabbed him. Falling forward, he struck his head on a kitchen counter and went unconscious.

"My lord! Who is he?" Angelique stood confounded as Barnabas and Quentin searched the clone's empty pockets. Hearing noises, Angelique realized where they were coming from as she bent down to pick up a small gold combadge with voices coming out of it.

"Quentin...where are you? What the devil is happening?!" Captain Roger Collins called for his First Officer.

"Roger?!" Angelique spoke into the strange object she was holding. On the USS Collinwood high above in orbit, Captain Roger Collins froze in his seat realizing their presence in this century might have been revealed and gestured to Maggie silently to kill the signal. Next to her, Ambassador Angelique Bouchard looked like she was in shock after hearing her own voice coming from the planet!! They all had counterparts in this year! Maggie clicked off her console wondering where Quentin was. He was obviously discovered while checking out the estate and doing a recon of the situation. The fear was just how far this past Collins family now knew about them. Waking up in a room of the cellar, Lt. Commander Quentin Collins didn't even know where he was for a minute. Rubbing his head, he recognized his 20th century clothing and looked up to his captor standing before him in the doorway.

"Who are you?" his 20th Century counterpart asked. "Where'd you come from? Parallel time? The past? The future?" He continuing staring at his duplicate trying to figure out what was happening. First Carolyn had a clone ingratiating herself into the family, and now he had a clone sneaking around the estate. He looked upon the clone silently looking back at him. Realizing his duplicate wasn't going to be talking, Quentin just locked the cell and turned to Barnabas and Angelique in the outside hallway of the cell.

"Who do you think he is?" Angelique asked.

"Your great grand uncle from 1840, perhaps?" Barnabas guessed.

"I don't know." Quentin made a look of perplexed and confused worry, "Let's go see what Stokes makes of the device he had." Quentin almost took charge as he led the happily married couple down the hall and up the stairs to the main floor. Locked in the cell, Lt. Commander Quentin Collins listened as the voices and footsteps faded away and surmised that he had been left alone. Using the power of the Hand to reverse the lock and open the door, he drifted out silently and carefully without a noise. He needed his com-badge to get back to the ship!

Silently passing through the hall and up the cellar stairs, he paused and covertly watched from afar and waited for the one named Stokes to put it down. The professor greatly resembled the Dr. Stokes who served on The USS Blue Whale of his native reality. Secretly fascinated by their resemblances to his friends and family, he listened to them talking about him.

"Professor," Barnabas surmised a theory. "Could it be possible that both this Quentin and our copy of Carolyn calling herself Nancy Collins both come from parallel time?"

"Possible," Stokes set aside the gold combadge after scrutinizing it with a magnifying glance. "But the extent of this miniaturized technology also tends to suggest they could be from our far future. I'm not versed in these things, but I do know that this technology is far more advanced than anything I have seen."

"Nancy is very eager to sell her creations to make money." Angelique looked up to her new husband. "I'm sorry, but what we are suggesting here is more than I can take. It's overwhelming me."

"Okay," Quentin turned round from the Old House brandy. "Here's our theory, Carolyn's descendant comes to the present from the future to get rich. She knows she can make a lot of money selling inventions in our time and my descendant is here to likely stop her."

"Sounds feasible," Stokes thought it over. "But it would suggest the Collins family has no fortune in the future. Surely anyone who could travel through time wouldn't have to resort to such means to restore a family fortune. She could just stop whatever happens to the family. I believe we are overlooking something."

"My god, they almost have it figured out." Commander Quentin Collins whispered to himself behind the steel door to the cellar. With another light gesture, he once more used the abilities inherent within himself to cause another crash out of the room to distract them, but this one had to be outside the house. As they predictably rushed to investigate, he rushed forward and grabbed his lost combadge into his hand and passed unseen into the back kitchen. In the back of his mind, he had a plan working as he looked for the Twentieth century ingredients he needed. Dousing a cloth in bleach and ammonia, he checked to make sure he wasn't noticed and ducked out the back way as he planned. Securing his badge to his chest, he watched as his so-called ancestors returned back into the house. He was starting to like them, but he couldn't tell the truth and possibly create more resultant events from his presence. Starting to signal for a transport to his ship, he heard more movement and froze where he was. Coming toward him was the would-be minx herself. Blonde, self-assured and smiling, Carolyn tossed her hair as she came closer to his hidden location. As she came down the path from Rose Cottage, he grabbed her from behind and chloroformed her with the powerful gas combination in the rag. Reacting and struggling, the blonde tried to fight back at her unseen attacker and lightly started drifting off. Her eyelids drooped as she fell unconscious.

"Collinwood, two to beam up." Quentin tapped his badge as the two of them appeared in the transporter room. Security guards hurriedly placed restraints on the diminutive goddess and electronic psychic dampeners too keep her from using her powers. Captain Roger Collins arrived to get his report as his Science Officer Barnabas Collins scanned the sleeping princess before him.

"Good work, Quentin." Roger applauded

"No," Barnabas scanned Carolyn Stoddard down to her atomic structure and frequency. "Wrong one!!"

CHAPTER ELEVEN

"Oh yeah!!!" Nancy was getting massaged in her living by a big brawny muscle man of her creation. She loved the massage job she was getting, but irritatingly stopped it as someone knocked at her front door. She loved her freedom, but she had to excise control to keep from striking everyone into non-existence with lightning bolts. Willing the imaginary man back out of existence, she wrapped a towel around her nude body, transmuted it into a white t-shirt and jeans and answered her door.

"Nancy," Liz stood at the door. "Have you seen Carolyn? She's been missing for hours."

"Carolyn?" Nancy asked and then reached out to read what was going on around her. Even a bit annoyed, she was a bit concerned and protective of her mortal counterpart. In her mind's eye, her blue eyes widened a bit annoyed to see the USS Collinwood in this time looking for her, but she chuckled at the fact that they thought Carolyn was her. They were a bit embarrassed as well as her Uncle started scanning the estate for her. Seeing the image of Carolyn secretly beamed back into her bedroom in the estate, she turned back to Liz.

"Have you checked her room?" She asked Liz.

"Yes."

"I'd check it again." Nancy answered. "I don't want to be rude, Aunt Liz, but Carolyn hasn't been here today and you caught me at a bad time."

"I'm sorry, dear." Liz expressed a bit of concern and started to turn away. Nancy closed her door. Scowling, the blonde goddess backed to the door and stared up through her new home to the heavens above. "Can't you people leave me alone!! Don't you know I'm finally happy!!!" She snarled toward her relatives in orbit and burst into a flash of light. Teleporting herself into Engineering, she surprised her Willie Loomis fine-tuning the warp engines.

"Carolyn!!" He had once loved her, but he was petrified in the presence of her godhood. His eyes glanced to ADAM working on the core.

"Willie, you guys shouldn't have come looking for me." she vamped him. "I need you to beam everyone on board who should be on board and leave orbit." She kissed him. "And don't forget to sabotage the engines so you can't come back."

"Yes, Carolyn...." He fell under her control. Smiling ear to ear, Nancy turned around ready to depart as ADAM grabbed her. He was strong, but she was much stronger.

"Let me go of me, you stupid android!!!" Her voice screamed as her presence became noticed on board. On the bridge, Quentin and Angelique both felt her presence on board with their own psychic senses.

"Roger!" Angelique screamed first. "Carolyn's on board and she has Willie under her control!!"

"We're leaving orbit!" Barnabas confirmed.

"Return us to orbit!!" Roger gave a command. "Full override!!!" Roger ordered and then joined Angelique, Quentin and Maggie rushing for the turbo lift to Engineering. By time they arrived, Carolyn was already gone, ADAM was on the floor with his arms violently ripped out of their metallic sockets and Willie was standing spellbound before the vibrating engine core. As Maggie rushed to the engines, Angelique and Quentin tried to break Carolyn's control on Willie.

"I can't break Carolyn's control!!!" Quentin tried to use his telepathy to snap Willie out of his cosmic trance.

"The two of us together!" Angelique told Quentin as they both mentally entered Willie's mind and searched through errant
memories and shipboard specifications among other irreverent thoughts to bring Loomis's will control back. Like searching through a darkened closet, they both collapsed into each other's arms as Willie snapped out of the hypnotic spell. The USS Collinwood was building up speed out of the Earth's star system and it propelled forward into Cassiopeian space.

"Willie." Maggie tried to shut off the engines. "Why can't we come out of warp?!"

"She made me disconnect the flex capacitor!" He admitted. "I can't reconnect while there's anti-matter in the valves!!"

"Red Alert!!" Roger called out. "Loomis, can you get the ship back under control?!"

"I'll have to short circuit the engines and force the valves to close." Willie dashed to his boards as the mighty starship squealed from the accelerating speed. "But it could crack the core when the backlash." Willie dared to try a foolhardy stunt. With the engines overheating and anti-matter expanding to the limit of the EMR shields, he called his best personnel to the problem.

"Make it so!!" Roger gave the order as Willie maneuvered his staff. Entering a Jeffries tube on B Deck, Victoria Stoddard herself prepared to help jerry-rig a connection from Engineering to the warp engines.

"Vicki! You in there!" Willie called.

"Yes!"

"Route the dampeners through auxiliary." Loomis ordered. "Maggie, if you're ready, disconnect the phaser banks and connect them to the by-pass in-lays. I don't want the backlash through the system reaching them"

"Check!" Maggie confirmed.

"David, open the antimatter valves to 65 and don't electrocute yourself!" Willie gave another order.

"Check.... ouch!" His hand grazed an electrical conduit.

"Willie," Barnabas watched the progress from the bridge. "Short circuiting the engines like this could blow them up."

"It's going to hurt me more than them." Willie mumbled. "Roger, hit the back-up commands!"

Captain Roger Collins tensed up a bit as he pressed the security clearance to the systems. An explosion blew out the core as the ship trembled and drifted to a dead stop. The lights all over the ship flickered but stayed on as the crew held their breath. Feeling it was over Willie hugged his workstation.

"I'm sorry, baby." He told it.

"Told you he was sleeping with it." Quentin told Roger.

CHAPTER TWELVE

"Star date: supplemental." Captain Roger Collins recorded in his log. "In trying to retrieve Carolyn into custody, she has once more damaged the ship but indirectly. We are in orbit around Danu-Five overseeing repairs to return to earth, but as yet, we have no idea as to how we are going to take Carolyn into custody now that she has the power to preserve her privacy." The senior officers collected in the briefing room as they waited for Willie to arrive late as usual. Dr. Hoffman noticed him first as he finally appeared, tugged at the front of his uniform and sat down.

"The flex capacitor is back online, ADAM is restored and the ship is moving at sub-light," he reported. "But we lost the core. It may take a week to repair and replace the dilithium crystals. I did check the Enterprise records on this planet. They have research about a family named Robinson starting a colony here. Part of the colony mined dilithium so we can replace the core, but it will take a while."

"Julia," Barnabas turned to Doctor Hoffman. "Do you have any ideas on how we can incapacitate Carolyn?"

"Barnabas," Julia cringed in her uniform. "Her body is being powered by cosmic energy flowing through her. She's a living storehouse of energy with power on the level of the Q. We can't even get close to her. Her senses are resonating on an entirely different nearly omniscient level. I could retard her acceleration shortly after her exposure to the barrier, but now, it's too far gone. She's unstoppable." She turned to Roger. "We don't even have the element of surprise now she knows we are here in this century."

"Carolyn is my daughter." Ambassador Liz Stoddard sat next to her daughter Victoria and then up to Security Officer Maggie Winters, her other daughter. "Somehow I feel it is my fault she is like this."

"Mother," Victoria comforted her mother. "Uncle Roger, what if Maggie or I were sent to penetrate the barrier. One of us must have enough of the same DNA to extract the sort of result she gain to fight her on her level."

"It doesn't work like that." Angelique looked up with her royal blue eyes. "Carolyn must have had a significant psychic potential to gain the level of power she gained. It must have come from her father."

"Maybe…" Julia began scheming. "After all this time, we could still have a faint transporter residual of Carolyn's makeup on file in the transporter systems. I could encode those signals into Victoria. She would be her closest in genetic make-up."

"I won't endanger my daughter's life like that." Liz reacted.

"Mother," Victoria reacted. "I'm fully willing to go through with it."

"No." Liz gave her answer.

"I'm against it." Quentin spoke. "Carolyn was corrupted by the power. We can't be sure how Victoria would react."

"I'm with Quentin." Barnabas spoke. "It's too great a risk. We're talking about playing with energies that have never fully been understood in order to unleash another threat on the universe." He noticed a reaction from Angelique. "I apologize, Angelique."

"No, I understand." Angelique gasped. "I too was briefly corrupted by those energies. It's too far a temptation." She looked up to her beloved Barnabas. "I was fortunate enough that I wasn't corrupted that far. The barrier is too much a temptation."

Roger and Quentin sighed as Barnabas leaned back and brooded the incident. Maggie Winters folded her arms, undid part of her braided hair and leaned back in her seat.

"The way I see it." She started. " Getting the ship back to full power is our first priority. Containing Carolyn is an option we haven't figured out yet so we hold on it for now. I just want to know what sort of mischief Carolyn is getting into on Twentieth Century Earth." She asked out loud.

In the restored Rose Cottage back on the estate of Collinwood on Earth, Nancy Collins smiled as her muscle man returned and massaged her to the music of Barry White. Next to her, her counterpart Carolyn Stoddard native to this time also appreciated her own massage by her very own beefcake.

"Oh, where did you find masseurs who delivered?!" she grinned ear to ear as she sipped a marguerite.

"Freshen your marguerite?" Nancy stood up holding her towel to her body.

"Please…" Carolyn moaned in delight as her look-alike cousin drifted out to the foyer already tired of her excess pampering. Her counterpart was enjoying it too much to lose it. Through her walk, Nancy towel stretched and morphed by her whim into a short dress hugging her body just in time to greet more company. Hoping it was that Maggie Evans, she opened the door and recognized her Cousin Barnabas, but judging by his attire, cane and short hair, it wasn't her half-Leviathan, half-human cousin.

"You must be Nancy Collins." Barnabas replied. Momentarily struck by her resemblance to Carolyn, he was also intrigued by her exuberant, flippant and frivolous attitude. "My new cousin."

"Yes." She scanned his mind for ulterior motives and was struck stunned by the events of his life. Like Quentin, it was another confusing hodgepodge of supernatural events stretched over two hundred years of time-traveling, body swapping through time and sojourns in alternate quantum realities. Born in 1775, he had been a vampire for two centuries, shared his body with his time-traveling spirit on two to three occasions and was now married to the witch who had once cursed him after forgiving her. She was becoming very fascinated and morbidly curious by this elaborate supernatural life history bound by paranormal events. She wondered how she could use it to her advantage.

"I understand you are a descendant of Desmond Collins," Barnabas slowly entered as she silently reacted distracted. "Now, which son was it of the three?" Barnabas stopped. How did Rose Cottage get restored so fast! Chris Jennings had predicted a three month job restoring the place just a few weeks ago!

"Desmond only had one son and a daughter." Nancy read his mind. "And three grandsons. His grandson Desmond was my grandfather."

"I see." Barnabas turned to face her. "And where have you lived before now?" He looked above the fireplace in the parlor where Nancy had a very powerful looking portrait of herself in a black dress. The eyes in the painting seemed to be following him.

"Let me ask you a question, Mr. Collins." Nancy turned the tables as she came between him and her portrait. "How'd you like to be a vampire again?"

Barnabas's face turned white. How did she know that? If she could know it, could she really change him back? Trying to come up with an answer, he noticed Carolyn coming toward him as she pulled closed her long white robe. She lightly tossed her blonde hair back as she strided up to him.

"Barnabas," She kissed and hugged him. "I didn't know you and Angelique were back from your honeymoon. Did you have a nice time?" She stood near Nancy as they resembled twin sisters. "How do you like our new relative? She's all the way from Canada."

"She's…" Barnabas could barely respond. "Excuse me, Carolyn, but I must get back to Angelique." He turned and departed at a brisk pace. Nancy looked to Carolyn.

"He just got married." Carolyn revealed.

"I didn't get to wish him well." Nancy sensed the former vampire returning to the path to the Old House and just willing in managed to tap into his fears of what he once was. During his brisk walk through the wooded estate, Barnabas thought he heard the baying of the dogs again. Above him, clouds rushed to cover the sun. Barnabas quickened his pace in fear uncertain of what was happening. His timepiece said it was just a bit past noon, but it practically turning night before him. A cry of a wolf frightened him and began walking even more faster than he already was. He actually noticed the moon coming out as time raced over him. The voices of several women came to his ears as the Old House appeared as a white dot in the distance. In the darkened path, he noticed a figure in the grass at his feet. It was Maggie. Her neck had been ripped out.

"No!!" Barnabas cried out. "Not again! Not again!!!" Near Maggie, Quentin shirtless and sprawled against a tree also rested with his neck ripped out. Barnabas whirled round and saw Hallie Stokes lying dead by his feet. David lied by her as well dead along with Roger and Liz. Barnabas cried out from these horrible images and felt the blood on his face. No, it wasn't true! It wasn't him! He wasn't this way again. Hurrying his pace, he nearly tripped over Carolyn's dead body and over that of Stokes. Once more a fleeing creature of the night, Barnabas franticly tried to escape these horrible images by pulling open the front doors of the Old House. Behind the doors, Nancy stood there. Her skin white and blood dripping down her throat.

"Was it good for you?" She chuckled.

Barnabas cried out in terror as Angelique appeared to console him. It was daylight again and he was on the front veranda of the Old House under the front pillars. Rattled, he somehow realized that someone was trying to put him in his place.

"Barnabas!" Angelique escorted him in and hung his wrap and cane. "Darling, you're trembling. What happened, did you meet Nancy?"

"There's something very weird, no, dare I say it, strange about her." Barnabus's trembling voice told Angelique and Eliot sitting at the desk. "She had answers to ever question I asked ahead of time; I couldn't trip her testimony. And her manner, it's so casual, as if...........we're playthings to her. She…" Barnabas looked to Stokes. "Knew what I once was." Eliot looked to Angelique.

"Do you think she knows of the other Quentin?" Eliot asked.

"I don't know." Barnabas looked up shaking as if he was a boy once more. "But then she acts as if there's very little she doesn't know."

"It's not just her manner, it's her presence." Angelique added from her own Wiccan senses. "She exudes this field about her as if she were...a god or something."

"That device I analyzed," Stokes continued. "I made diagrams from memory and showed them to a computer friend of mine. He said they showed similarities with the computers that she is producing."

"That's too big a coincidence." Angelique crossed her arms before her.

In Rose Cottage, Nancy Collins sat in a huge leather chair in the parlor of her new home. Carolyn was upstairs showering and dressing into new clothes and Nancy was enjoying the effects of her malicious mischief from afar. Swirling a brandy in one hand, she watched the conversation in the Old House through her television. Smiling ear-to-ear, her lips cracked into a tiny grin that erupted into laughter.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

In orbit around Sirius X, Quentin and Willie were able to locate viable replacement dilithium crystals in the Twentieth Century. Instead of immediately returning to Earth, they proceeded to the future location of Star Base 12 where in their reality was where they first encountered the trickster of the galaxy.

"I can't believe I'm doing this." Roger stood at the helm of the bridge as he sent a message out on all frequencies. "Q, where are
you?!!"

"Right behind you, mon capitaine." Q sat in his chair with a rascally and playful look to him. "So you've lost the confines of your
timeline and you've traveled here into the past, bravo!"

"Q, spare me the useless commentary." Roger stood his ground and Maggie Evans tilted her head annoyingly at Q. "Will you help us to contain Carolyn?"

"A Q against another Q?" the miscreant seemed to consider the situation. "Not interested. I thought you liked challenges."

"There is no way we can stop her ourselves." Quentin spoke for the rest of the crew.

"I am not your answer." the trickster vanished! Roger dropped his jaw a bit annoyed and frustrated with Q. He should have expected that, but then, it was worth the chance just to ask. Roger glanced from Maggie to ADAM at duty on the helm wondering what was happening on this version of their home world. It was night upon the estate of Collinwood as their Twentieth Century counterparts rested in the throes of sleep or conversed on the antics of their strange new relative.

"Barnabas," Angelique laid in bed with her head on the shoulder of her beloved. It was late at night and the moon was out for them. It was a very romantic moment but for the little minx across the estate "What do you think she is? How do you suppose she knows all about us?"

"I don't know." Barnabas stared up to the ceiling of their bedroom. "She doesn't seem evil or dangerous as much as she is intimidatingly irritating. I wonder if she's a version of Carolyn from another time like that clone of Quentin who vanished. I wonder if they're both from a parallel time. It's the only likely explanation."

"I don't think so." Angelique disagreed.

"Maybe they're some type of doppelgangers?" Barnabas recalled his stories of ancient creatures." Evil spirits which replace the people whose identities they steal." Angelique mulled over the thought as she rolled over.

"But Nancy isn't trying to replace Carolyn. She's seemingly trying to create her own life despite how vehemently she protects it." She listened to the grandfather clock in the room chime as she counted each ring.

"I still think they must be from through the parallel time room." Barnabas replied.

"Barnabas," she continued. "Did that clock just strike thirteen?"

Out in far space, the USS Collinwood was back up to power and in orbit around Mars. Hoping Carolyn wouldn't be able to sense their presence from this distance, Roger tried to make assumptions on the perimeters of her powers and made an effort to escape the anxieties overcoming him. He wandered in to Ten Forward lost in thought and took a seat at the bar. Bob Rooney, the crewman who managed the gathering hall, turned to Roger.

"Captain?"

"Tea, earl gray, hot…" Roger still had that drink ensconced in his mind. The realization that his life and memories were false was starting to prey on his insecurity. He wasn't sure how much of himself was real and how much was just the merging of the original Roger Collins and Captain Jean-Luc Picard. For the first time, his life and existence was left upon a whim of a false reality that possibly never existed if but for the power of his niece and the power of the universe.

"Penny for your thoughts." Dr. Hoffman sidled up.

"I keep asking myself, how do I imprison a Q?" Roger reflected. "I'd probably have better luck lassoing the moon."

"I've been reading the archive records of the Enterprise." Julia admitted. "They've encountered many of the same omnipotent races we did. Talosians, Melkots, Metrons, Organians, even Trelane... They really are quite interesting, and our counterparts down on the planet are even quite more fascinating. Prime directive aside, I wish we could introduce ourselves to them."

"I have the same desire." Roger confessed as he wanted to explore his past relationship with the lovely doctor. "Have you developed any recourse on how to handle my niece, the goddess?"

"I realized something." Julia looked up cunningly. "All these races developed their power from birth, but Carolyn gained hers without any sort of practice, discipline or training. Her mind is human. She's technically a child with a very powerful toy and she knows how to get what she wants by just desiring it. She still has the mind of the girl she once was."

"Including all the insecurities and desires she ever had." Roger seemed to find a thought in the bottom of his empty teacup. "Maybe, I've just been going about this the wrong way."

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

"Barnabas," Willie entered the Old House bewildered, bothered and bewitched. "What's going on here? Clocks striking thirteen, rain in the cellar, chickens in the secret room... It's like one elaborate practical joke after another."

"It must be Nancy." Barnabas looked up to his portrait and noticed it replaced by a picture of his so-called new blonde cousin. It was as if she had stuck her flag in the Old house and proclaimed it for herself. "Ever since I confronted her, I've been beset by illusions both real and imaginary. She's trying to rattle me, probably discredit or even..." Angelique screamed from the kitchen. As Barnabas and Willie came running, they found her standing before the sink where the water coming out of the tap was coming out a foamy brown liquid. Barnabas took her into his arms and Willie confronted the phenomenon to see what was happening.

"That's beer." Willie tasted it on his fingers and reached for a cup. Behind him, Barnabas tried to console his wife, but then without any control over his actions, he suddenly grabbed Angelique and dipped her into a kiss.

In Rose Cottage, Nancy Collins played with her Barnabas and Angelique marionettes before Carolyn Stoddard and Maggie Evans. Showing off her new toys for them, she made the Barnabas doll dip the Angelique doll and made the voices for them.

"Oh, I love you." she talked like Barnabas and then like Angelique. "And I love you too." Carolyn and Maggie laughed at the performance.

"Where did you get dolls that look exactly like them?" Maggie inquired as she marveled on the wooden caricatures of the couple.

"With enough money, you can get anything." Nancy claimed as she let Carolyn examine the dolls. Carolyn held up the Barnabas figure trying to perfect her marionette skills, but without intending it, the head on the Barnabas doll popped off and rolled across the floor. Nancy's eyes widened in shock! Across the estate, Angelique was screaming from the Old House at the top of her lungs. Nancy hurriedly grabbed the wooden head and replaced it.

Julia found herself to the Old House within minutes to handle the medical emergency, but everyone was quite tight-lipped as to what had exactly happened. Willie fled scared to death and it was just Julia to discern just what had happened.

"How'd this happen?" She bandaged Barnabus's head.

"Well..." Barnabas and Angelique exchanged nervous glances. "I was holding Angelique in an embrace when I............ hit my head."

Angelique's hands shook badly as she took the tranquilizers that Julia had given her. She thought of the beer in the tap, the chickens, the clock and the train locomotive noises from the attic. Was Nicholas back? No, it wasn't his style. Josette's ghost? These were not normal hauntings. It had to be Nancy, but how? Was she another witch, or something else?

"Barnabas," Quentin had come running from the Old House after hearing there was an accident. "I heard you had an accident."

"Nothing I can't handle." Barnabas and Angelique shared another secret glance. Quentin wringed his hands several times over and over and hoped for strength. Out the corner of his eyes, he realized someone had popped up behind him. Carolyn and Nancy entered behind him looking like bookends. Carolyn was wearing her usual overcoat as Nancy wore a leather jacket and engineer's cap.

"And what are you two made up for?" Julia asked them.

"I heard there's a train going through your attic." Nancy cracked Carolyn up.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

It had been a long time since Angelique had tried using any of her witchcraft. She had promised Barnabas that she'd never practice it again, but a little white magic couldn't hurt. Locating her old crystal ball in the attic, she sat with it in front of her before a blazing fire in the Old House fireplace. Looking to make sure Barnabas hadn't returned yet, she clutched the ball in her hands.

"I call upon the spirits of time and space," she chanted. "Allow me to open my mind to secrets I do not possess. Show me visions I do no see. Spirits and ghosts that haunt this land, allow me to see what you can see. Open your minds that I might possess your knowledge. Give me the face of our tormentor!!" Her mind's eye was now leaving her body and charging from the house over the rolling estate of Collinwood, through the woods and past trees populating the land. The dizzying effect took her to the front veranda of Rose Cottage, through the front entrance and into the upstairs hallway where Nancy Collins turned around and looked at her!!! She looked at her!! How did she know she was being watched?!!!!

A burst of light and Angelique felt herself mind, body and soul tied to a stake in a massive courtyard in Sixteenth Century France. Hundreds of townspeople in old European dress were lighting the bonfire under her and screaming, "Brulure sorcereiss." It was the French words for burn the witch. Screaming and writhing from the pain, she realized it was no illusion. She was being burned alive. Looking down upon the crowd cursing her, she noticed among them a hidden figure concealed under a hood and robe. Throwing her hood back, Nancy Collins smiled sadistically and mischievously out from under a dark hood and tossed the final torch!

Another burst of light and Angelique was back in the present. Dropping the crystal ball, she franticly jumped to her feet frightened to death and ecstatic to be alive. Hyperventilating, she realized that she could still feel the flames and smelled the smoke as she patted out her burning clothes and pulled off her burnt sweater. Collapsing into a heap on the floor, she couldn't calm herself down! She wasn't sure how it happened, but whatever Nancy was, she was way too powerful for even her!

"She's not human!" Angelique mumbled. "Not human!" Trembling and hysterical, she cowered in the corner of the room behind the chair and was still their when her husband returned with Quentin and Doctor Hoffman. A few seconds again to earn her trust, they carried her upstairs to calm her down and restore her will power. They had no idea what had happened, but it was quite obvious that Angelique had been scared by something beyond even she could handle.

"Julia, what's wrong with her." Barnabas asked standing outside the master bedroom.

"She's hysterical." Julia had given Angelique a sedative to calm her down. "She kept saying 'She's not human.' over and over." They treaded lightly down to the parlor. On the bottom step, Barnabas and Quentin shared a silent glance as they pondered over the shattered crystal ball in the middle of the room.

"Barnabas, it has to be Nancy Collins." Quentin spoke. "Things haven't been normal since she came here."

"Did someone say my name?" Nancy strolled through the open door in the foyer grinning ear to ear and carrying a huge pot of soup. Letting herself in, she walked into Angelique's kitchen and heated the soup at the stove. "I heard your lovely wife wasn't feeling well. I just thought I'd bring something… homemade... to lift her spirits."

"I don't know who or what you are, but somehow I'm going to rid myself of you." Barnabas daringly confronted her.

"I have no idea what you mean." Nancy grinned toward him.

"Let's lay our cards on the table, Mrs. Collins, if that is your real name…" Barnabas led Nancy into the parlor. "How much will it take to get you to leave Collinwood and not come back?"

"And what he doesn't have..." Quentin added. "I'll cover."

"So will I." Julia added.

"Your souls..." Nancy grinned as she leaned her weight to one leg. Julia and Quentin shared a glance.

On the edge of the estate, David returned from the movies. Hollywood-manufactured flying saucers were on his mind as he returned home and found them in his way! Parked in the shortcut through the woods from the main street in town was a large alien-looking creation that could only have come from outer space. It looked like a huge van with a darkened windshield, short wings with indefinable engines and no obvious wheels or landing gear. Barely touching it, David watched amazed, confused and quite excited while the back opened to reveal weird controls, planetary maps and an array of silver exotic weaponry. He barely hit another switch as a video came on and a picture of Carolyn came on in a screen of his cousin wearing a strange alien flight suit. It looked like a video recording because he saw an image of Rose Cottage behind her.

"Captain," the image of his female cousin spoke in the recording. "Have you prepared the Earth for invasion?"

"Father!!!!!" David ran to the main house at top speed. Leaving the strange craft behind, he didn't dare look back. He had to get someone to come see it. In his absence, Ambassador Angelique Bouchard came out of hiding from behind a tree and hit her combadge pinned to her chest.

"Roger, someone has taken the bait." She announced.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

"David," Roger begrudgingly followed his son into the woods beyond the Old House with the boy's Uncle Quentin following. "There are no such things as flying saucers." There was nothing in the path after all nor any signs that anything as big as David had described was even here, but then in several retellings, the landed spaceship had swollen five sizes and changed from white to silver in color.

"But it was here." he insisted. "She must have moved it!"

"Your Cousin Nancy is not from another planet!" Roger insisted. "She's a very sweet and lovely young lady."

"But she's planning to take over!" David shrieked scared out of his wits. He knew he had seen it!

Amused, Quentin looked around for a sign of something or anything that David had spoken of in his vision. Glancing the area over, he was about to give up when he saw something shine in the sunlight. Reaching through the weeds, he found an identical gold device as his clone had possessed! They were connected after all. He had to tell Barnabas and Stokes, but neither of them was on the estate. To calm Angelique, Barnabas had taken her to Bangor for a night of dining and relaxation. He couldn't tell Roger; he likely wouldn't believe anything he had to say.

"Quentin," Roger looked back upon the trail to him. "Did you find anything?"

"Yep," The Collins Playboy grinned. "Fifty cent piece." Quentin didn't know what to do next. He held on to the device during dinner and made an excuse to Maggie that he couldn't take her out that night. He just returned to his room in the West Wing and fondled the thing in his fingers as he lay in his bed in his clothes and stared to the ceiling. He rose for one last brandy to fuel him for ideas.

"That stuff's going to kill you."

Quentin whirled around into the direction of the voice. His duplicate was back and was now clothed in a red and black uniform with a bladeless handle hanging off his belt. With an emotionless expression, the clone made a gesture with his fist to his heart as some sort of odd salute to his presence.

"Greetings," Lt. Commander Quentin Collins spoke in a monotone before his counterpart. "I am your descendant from the 24th century and I am here to warn you of the alien presence which calls herself Nancy Collins."

"Really," Quentin smiled disbelievingly and looked into his glass. "I think this stuff has turned on me." He knew Barnabas and Angelique would never believe his counterpart had returned, and after a long late night discussion, he definitely knew they would have a hard time accepting the facts from his counterpart, but they had to accept the facts because they came from the source of the problem. He could practically predict their reaction.

"An alien from the future!!!" Barnabas and Julia exclaimed together as they listened to Quentin. Angelique dropped into the chair at the news. She had read Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, but the mere prospect of other life in this universe just never seemed to fit into her beliefs.

"Did he saw what we should do?" Barnabas asked.

"He said we should distance ourselves from her as best as we could." Quentin poured himself a drink. "And try not to tell them at the main house, we don't want to cause a panic. Apparently, they've already got plans in affect to handle her and they don't want us involved. He was a nice guy to tell the truth, but he couldn't hold his liquor." He downed his drink.

"That's easy for him to say." The continuing anomalies had forced Angelique to start taking tranquilizers on a regular basis. Just
this morning, the food in the icebox was talking to her!!!!

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Returning to the caretaker's cottage, Willie longed for the days when it was just he and Barnabas. He liked the prestige that being the Collinwood caretaker entailed, and he was allowed to hire as much additional help as he needed, but sometimes the job just wore him out. However, it was decent honest work and he had a lot of benefits such as occasionally joining the family for dinner and seeing Carolyn on a few dates from time to time. As she put off notions of a commitment with him, Willie found himself having interests in Nancy. Maybe she was another witch or not. Barnabas had married Angelique and she was proving to a very loving wife.

Taking a beer from his fridge, he sat down in his easy chair and clicked on his TV looking for something to watch. On the local late night ABC channel, he recognized a Marilyn Monroe movie he had always liked. He lightly smiled as the camera panned in on the back of the lost sex goddess, but as she whirled around, it turned out to be Carolyn in a Marilyn hairdo!!!! He sprayed his beer from his lips to the lap of his trousers.

"A kiss on the hand maybe quite continental, but diamonds are a girl's best friend..."

"CAROLYN????" A drop of beer fell from Willie's lip as he doubted the reality of what he was seeing. "NANCY???"

Reaching for the phone, Willie began to hope Quentin was up watching TV in the waiting room. He also began to hope he was already asleep and dreaming all of this in bed!!!! He continued to watch surprised, shocked and a little fascinated as Nancy copied Monroe's famous movie scene. Just like the lost goddess, Nancy proved to be kittenish, vivacious and very sexual slinking around in that pink dress in the movie.

".... But it won't pay the rental on your little flat..." The TV gave a good close-up to prove to Willie at whom he was looking. Nancy then pressed her hands to the inside of the screen and looked out to him. "Hang on Willie!!! It's going to be a bumpy ride!!!!!" She twitched her shoulders and flaunted her cleavage to captivate him.

On the starship known as the USS Collinwood, Security officer Maggie Winters pulled on some Twentieth Century clothing and headed to the Holodeck where a simulation of Collinwood was waiting for her. In order to disenchant this Carolyn of their Carolyn was going to involve some role-playing and a rather ridiculous concept. Beamed up from the planet beyond her knowledge, the Carolyn Stoddard of this century slept in a holographic mock-up of her bedroom unaware of where she was.

"Carolyn!" Maggie woke the young heiress. "Wake up!"

"What? What is it?" Carolyn was lead to the window. Outside were hundreds of spaceships in the air and thousands of clones of herself firing lasers. It looked like.... an army of Nancy Collinses taking over the planet and burning down the woods. The Old House blew up in a huge ball of flame under the night sky before her.

"This can't be happening!" Carolyn stood aghast refusing to believe what she was seeing. Behind her, her bedroom door burst open and five more clones of her either herself or her look-alike cousin burst in brandishing laser guns. Each of them had different styled hair and different costumes, but they all shared a same warlike mentality. Maggie tried to keep from laughing as Carolyn turned to her looking for answers, rolled her eyes back from the intensity of what was happening and then passed out on to the floor.

"Cease program." Maggie replied as the clones vanished before the furniture and then the entire simulation. In a few more minutes, the heiress would be waking up in her real bedroom and disturbed just a little bit by what she would think was a dream.

"I wish it hadn't come to this." Maggie comforted the unconscious blonde at her feet by stroking the hair from her face. In her mind, she recalled when her Carolyn Stoddard was her best friend.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Something weird was going on. Barnabas and Angelique were no longer dismayed by her pranks to turn their attention away from her. In fact, they hadn't even talked so much about her. As far as the odd events, they were nothing to worry about. Young David, Roger and even Quentin and Maggie were ignoring her. Carolyn had stopped coming to Rose Cottage to visit and started carrying on with her own life. Appearing in Collinwood, Nancy sidled up near Carolyn and realized that she had completely frightened her! Carolyn screamed at the top of her lungs at her.

"Sorry," she apologized. "Where you going?"

"To the Blue Whale to meet some old friends from high school." Carolyn admitted seriously.

"Sounds like fun!"

"No, uh, you wouldn't have much fun." Carolyn turned away from her. "I'll see you… later." She collected her long coat from the nook by the front door and departed through the entrance. Nancy watched stunned as Carolyn left her. In the drawing room, Liz was at the desk.

"Mrs. Stoddard, how are you?" Nancy hovered over her.

"Just fine, dear." Liz signed checks for the household bills.

"I though I'd come up and spend some time with you." Nancy presented herself.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Liz excused herself. "But I have a meeting of the board at Collins Enterprises. I'm afraid you'll have the house to yourself." Rising from her seat, Liz collected the household accounts and departed through the back way for the dining room. Watching Liz head out, Nancy scanned her mind. Like most of everyone, she was suffering from bad dreams, which influenced what she thought of her. Was it a conspiracy? Was someone gas lighting her? Looking around the empty foyer, she thought about talking to one of the ghosts.

"Hello?" Nancy looked around the empty estate.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

On the USS Collinwood, Ambassador Liz Stoddard sat quietly reading the Twenty-Fourth Century Edition of the Collins Family Yearbook from the files downloaded from the Enterprise. Impressed by the family members that might have been and the numerous descendants, she halfway considered sneaking down to the planet and meeting her counterpart, but then she was surprised by the arrival of her omnipotent daughter teleporting in to see her. On sight, the young goddess beamed and hugged her mother.

"Carolyn," Liz looked upon her. "You've been a bad girl. I want you to come back to us and…" She stopped herself from driving her away. "No, I won't do that. I've done that for too long. I want to know if you're happy with yourself?"

"Not especially…"

"What's the matter, sweetheart?"

"No one likes me all of a sudden." Carolyn was still partially human enough to cry. She embraced her mother and hugged her. Her mother consoled her a moment and the young woman kissed her mother once more. Unconsciously scanning her true mother's mind, Carolyn sensed numerous plans that Roger had planned and discarded to capture her. There was something about scattering her atoms in a wide transporter beam, and then another about using the ship's phasers to lobotomize her, and then there was the one to trap her in a transport cycle, but Roger or Liz had turned down each one for one reason or another. Somehow, Carolyn feared they might still try to get her if she came close enough to visit her mother.

"She's here!" On the bridge, Angelique and Quentin felt her on board!

With that note, ADAM locked the starship transporters on Carolyn and trapped her in it. It was just a split second for Carolyn to realize her molecules were turning to energy before she could think. Within seconds, she became beamed to a transport module hidden under Collinwood, which then sent her to a Celtic castle in Britain, to a buried crypt in the Carpathians, a chapel in Tibet, a lost city in the Philippines, an Incan temple in Peru, a Spanish fortress in Florida and then back to Collinwood to start anew. Quentin had personally given Adam the instructions to trap Carolyn in the constant transport beam and then planted a self-induced suggestion to mask the realization from Carolyn. With ADAM the only one whose mind she could not read, the fantastic android carried out the last hope scheme to capture the mischievous goddess.

"It worked." Barnabas confirmed. "She's trapped in cycle and Liz is safe!"

"YES!!!" Angelique still remembered nearly being buried alive by her.

"We got her!" Roger grinned. "WE GOT HER!!!!!" It was a major victory for them. Trapping his niece in a constant transporter signal beamed across the planet on the surface seemed cruel, but it was flawlessly harmless. Having Carolyn's molecules trapped in energy form would keep her detained as long as the modules sending her pattern remained undiscovered. It was time to resume their mission, Captain Roger Collins filed the account for his log.

"Star Date 5.196772." He recorded. "It is with heavy heart that I report that our plan to detain Carolyn has worked. Liz is heartbroken, but underneath it all, I believe she understands. The nuclear cells in the concealed transport modules will keep Carolyn detained until we can return to our century, but unfortunately, not to our timeline. Hopefully, Star Fleet will have plans with what we can do with her pattern in our time."

A few decks below, Angelique curled up next to Barnabas in bed in his stateroom on the USS Collinwood. In the window over the bed, the surface of Mars remained as the ship prepared another slingshot trip around the sun to return to their present but unfortunately, not their reality.

"It's a shame we had to sacrifice a chance to return home to capture Carolyn." She replied.

"There was no other way." Barnabas stared into her blue azure eyes. "Our 'ancestors' will just have to believe she vanished as she stays trapped in a continuing transport beam until we return to the present. It'll be like a constant dream state to her. She's okay."

"Thank goodness for ADAM." Angelique laid her head on his shoulder as the ship returned to the 24th Century. She kissed Barnabas as outside the window the starship left Mars for a trip to their new home in a different present than their reality.

In the sub-basement of Collinwood, the spirits of Sara Collins and Josette DuPres passed close to each other. A brief twinge of memory linked them a minute as they looked upon each other for a scant second and then depart. Sara moved through the wall to venture through the path for the Old House. Josette passed down a long corridor, deeper into the foundation and through a sealed doorway. Ahead of her, she noticed the large dustless metallic object with blinking lights and flickering buttons keeping a blonde goddess trapped in a state of energy circulating the globe. She marveled at the things the 20th Century had brought and walked closer to investigate it. Carelessly continuing to walk through it, she felt an unusual jolt to immaterial existence unlike any other object she had seen in the decade.

Possessed by the new field of energy, the transport module started shaking and reacting to her presence as its memory bank searched for a way to hold the extra pattern passing through it. A few new lights started flashing and its preprogrammed routines tried searching for means to protect itself. It had been programmed to receive and send one signal, but now something else was passing through it. Stumbling through computer files, the systems in it rediscovered the program for converting energy back to mass and used those routines to remove the pattern entering it.

Deep in a Celtic castle in Britain, another transport module waited for the energy signal to return to it. When the pattern did not return, it instead stood mute witness to the shape of a woman beginning to appear next to it. Energy turned into matter before it as the Collinwood module did not resend the pattern in it and proceeded to combine the patterns in it with the energy attacking it. The woman who appeared was short on breath and looked around with excited apprehension. Extremely agitated, she ran her hands over her face and body.

"I'm alive!" she laughed out loud. "I'm alive again!!!"

END