This work of fan fiction is based upon characters created by Joss Whedon for his "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" movie and TV series. This story is written solely for the amusement of fans and is not for profit.
BUFFY 2029 A.D.
By
Miles N. Fowler
Two Prologues
Prologue I
Xander swivels in his chair to face the picture window of his twenty-fourth floor office. It grants him a panoramic view of San Diego Bay including most of the navy installations. (To see the navy’s medical facilities, though, he’d have to cross the hall to Dick Howell’s office, which has a different but equally stunning view of the city with Balboa Park in the foreground.)
Xander rests the back of his head against his intertwined fingers, his eyes drinking in the expanse of open ocean beyond the bay. He closes his normal right eye in order to use his bionic left, which zooms in on a speck on the horizon. He can identify it as a yacht called “The Madeleine.”
He’s had this Six-Million-Dollar-Man model for only a couple of years. Before that, he had an artificial eye that barely gave him normal vision, and before that he went a long time without any binocular vision at all. A real handicap in a business that pretty much requires depth perception for full-dress surveying or even “eyeballing” a construction project. Yet, twenty-five years ago, old man Cameron, still the Chairman and CEO of Reliable Erections International, Inc., took a chance and hired a project manager with one-eye--an under-achiever who barely earned a high school degree.
Alexander L. Harris has come a long way, and he knows it. He is proud of his big corner office not only because he worked so hard to earn it, to become president and chief operating officer of R. E. I., but also because he supervised the construction of this very building back in 2021 when his title was chief project manager.
Xander swings back around to face his desk. He puts on his reading glasses—3.25 diopters of magnification for the right eye but none for the left because it doesn’t need any—and reads the email on his desktop screen again.
Xander
Dawn is excited about seeing you in Geneva Saturday, and so am I. Cross your fingers re Buffy. Haven’t heard from her in a few days, but we expect her to arrive by train Friday afternoon.
Love,
Willow
Xander smiles.
Prologue II
Round and round, two figures stir a boiling iron pot. One is tall and one is short, but each is as thin as a stalk. As if the dungeon ceiling holds his sightless gaze, Tall and Old never faces wall or floor; meanwhile Short and Young looks furtively into the cauldron’s roiling core.
“A year today, I reckon,” observes the cunning youth.
“Have we labored so long?” the weary one sighs. Still his eyes are raised up.
“She came last week, but not since,” the youth observes. Slyly he pauses, then adds, “Why do we go on?”
“Oh, do not even think it!” cries the blind old man. “She can smell our thoughts even from another country!”
“If she is abroad,” says the youth thoughtfully, “then even she could not come home before we have a taste of her brew.”
“No! No! I beg you,” cries the old man. “Stop! Think of nothing but ceaselessly stirring the elixir. Or else she will send one of her demons to punish us!”
“What makes you so sure?” asks the boy.
The old man does not answer right away but sniffs the air, which is rank with rotting straw, but there is something else, too, a less customary but familiar sulfurous stench. The paddle with which he stirs becomes irregular in its course; his arms falter, giving way to inchoate fear and likewise to fatigue from ceaseless daily toil.
“Who is there?” the old one asks, his voice rising to a squeak.
“What are you going on about?” complains the youth, but his own voice cracks. “You’re giving me the creeping willies.”
The old man sniffs again, then slowly extends his gnarled finger in the youth’s general direction, and the young man watches as the untrimmed, yellow nail seems to screw the air in the direction of the void behind him; so the youth slowly turns his head to look behind his shoulder. There, only a foot behind him, a figure tall and wide and round as a boiler standing on its end; its hideous face resembling a jack-o-lantern only if one imagines a carved pumpkin discarded into a trash heap where it has grown green with mold and slime. Only if one imagines, too, that a jack-o-lantern’s jaws might lever open to reveal long fangs amid uneven, broken molars, black-patched and awash in a sea of clingy saliva.
The youth screams but the monster takes two steps--surprisingly nibble for his size--and is at the opposite side of the cauldron. The vampire seizes the old man's head between meaty paws and gives the neck a snap, which reverberates against the walls. The old man’s stifled scream comes out a shudder.
The boy fumbles his paddle. "B-but it was my fault, not his."
“Never you mind, boy," growls the vampire. "Don’t dare miss a beat! Not until he can be replaced.”
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