I Brought Her Over. I Had to do so. 20100314

We are very misunderstood.  We can not fly.  That would violate the principles of physics.  We can not vanish, for the same reasons, and our reflections actually do appear in mirrors.

We are quite a bit stronger than most humans, but it is with at a cost.  Oh, the stake in the heart is no more fatal to us than it is to humans, but that is pretty much uniformly fatal.  Our similarities are much greater than our differences, but there are a couple or three big differences.

The biggest difference is our lifespans.  Personally, I have only been around 11 centuries, but some of my comrades are much more ancient.  One of my good friends has existed for almost 18,000 years, and actually was acquainted with Neanderthal persons.  By the way, they were not brutes.  They had culture, language, music, advanced thoughts.  They died out because they were not as adaptable as sapiens is.  More than anything else, the warming weather did them in since they were so well adapted for the cold.

I guess that most vivid thing are the memories.  Folks see “Vampire Movies” all of the time, and the only thing that they get right is the relative immorality.  Otherwise, everything is wrong.  People think that a mere bite transforms a mortal into what you call a vampire.  Nothing could be more wrong.

You also think that we seek humans for food and kill them.  This is just wrong.  We ARE humans, just sort of augmented.  We are not killers without souls.  By the way, the nonsense about religious symbols and the holy water stuff is just, well, nonsense.  Some of us are very spiritual, and many have experienced religions that are extinct now.  I can hold a cross, or dip my finger in holy water with no ill effect.  The popular writers and the old folklore made those myths seem to be real.

As a scientist, I do know what has happened.  It turns out that there is a virus that alters human DNA in such a way that some special abilities are available.  This particular virus also encodes ribosomal RNA that preserves memories.  More on that later.

I had the unfortunate fate of being female.  Even in this “enlightened” age, females suffer discrimination, but it is much better now than it was even a few decades ago.  Fortunately, our kind are physically strong, so I was able to fend off the attacks of brutal males.

Actually, I like being a female, even though our kind can not reproduce.  Sadly, part of the “gift” is almost certain sterility, although a very few of us have had children.  The few that were borne were quite human, as the virus does not pass through the placenta.  I had three female friends over the past 1100 years who bore children.  It was bittersweet.

In the natural order of things, children should outlive parents.  My three friends chose not to bring them over, and after many decades, their children grew old and finally died, whilst their mothers aged only days.  This the extreme painful part of being as we are.  But it always happens that the people that one loves age and die, leaving us alone, except for each other.

The popular media, and the ancient legends, have us so, so wrong.  Dracula was horrible.  We are nothing like the Count.  Dark Shadows got a bit closer, but still had many false ideas.  Forever Knight was actually much closer to the reality, but still perpetrated the notion that we are killers with a lust for death of others.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

Most legends also perpetrate the notion that we have to drink human blood for sustenance.  Nonsense.  The virus does wreak havoc on our digestive system, but we can eat soft foods.  Soup, without any solids in it, is our normal food.  By the way, the blender was invented by one of our people, ostensibly to make frozen rum drinks, but actually to relieve us from hours of pulverizing food by hand.  The side effect is our gift to you.

We do have a ravenous hunger for iron, because the virus pretty much spills it from us rapidly, and also interferes with the mechanism to form hemoglobin.  Like all mammals, we need hemoglobin to transport oxygen to our cells, or we will die.  Before we learnt how to deal with that problem, we did indeed kill for blood and its hemoglobin.  But almost all of the time, we used animals, not people, for it.  With modern technology, simple adjuncts are sufficient.  I suppose that is not necessary to tell you that several of us work at some of the major pharmaceutical corporations.  Now you know why some of your drugs cost so much.

Anyway, I was going to tell you why I did what I did.  Bringing someone over is a heartrending decision.  You do not know how much.  By the way, getting vaporized by sunlight is nonsense, but the virus completely makes us devoid of melatonin, and the capacity to produce it, so the UV in sunlight injures us immediately.  Whilst we do not turn into a pile of dust, like the movies show, even a few seconds of exposure gives us very painful, and slow to heal, burns, and our eyes can be damaged in only a couple of seconds such that we become quite blind for weeks.

That is also sort of funny, and I mean it in a strange way.  Almost nothing injures us.  Our metabolism is such that any injury is repaired almost instantly.  For example, if you were to cut your finger slicing food, it would take several days for it to heal.  If I were to have the same injury, a cut to the bone would take only about 12 seconds to heal.

We are extremely sensitive to UV, but are NOT asleep during the day.  That is nonsense.  We just have to stay out of direct sunlight, that is all.  We can even walk in the light, if we take care to cover our bodies with thick clothes all over, and use what amounts to welder’s goggles for our eyes.  We are just sensitive, that is all.

I guess that I have been unfair, keeping you in the dark, so to speak, about bringing her across.  It has to do with politics.  I hesitate to write about politics here, but in this case I must.

A couple of years ago I became very involved with Tricia.  She is a beautiful woman, with dark hair, a wonderful body, and a personality that anyone would love.  My current identity, after over 200, is now Athene (what can I say, one of my dear friends wrote both the Iliad and the Odyssey, yes, Homer is one of us, and still exists, and he was and is not blind as legend has it) Clark.  I have a valid Social Security card and a driver’s license.  Well, not that valid, but legal.

Tricia works, or worked, for a company that could not provide health insurance.  Her former lover infected her with a strain of human papillomus virus that causes cervical cancer, and she was fatally infected.  It is difficult to describe how much I love her, but I do.

Damn this health care system!  She should have been able to get regular health checks, including Pap smears, to monitor her health.  But without insurance, she could not afford it.  So she became very ill.  We had become roommates about the time that she got sick (but did not know it at the time) and had only a platonic relationship.  But she and I grew closer even before that.

She loves to tan in the sun, and obviously I can not do that.  However, if I wear a big hat, slather on lots of sunscreen, and put on some light colored clothes, I can sit beside her at the pool.  By the way, in another identity I assisted in developing sun screen not only to help my people, but to help humanity as well.  Please use it, and please, please put it on your children.  Clothing is better, but the screen works well.

Anyway, she began to have pain in her abdomen one day, and I insisted that she go to the emergency department.  Sure enough, the biopsy came back with Stage 4 cervical cancer.  I was livid towards her former boyfriend, but even more towards the medical insurance system.  It matters not much for me, but for you mortals, it is ESSENTIAL that you fix this broken system.

We came home and cried.  Tricia was despondent, as the physician had told her that she would have to have a total hysterectomy for any hope of recovery, and that was not likely.  At 23 years, that was not appealing to her.  We cried and cried, and held each other.  Then she kissed me.  I understood immediately.  I was not just her friend, but her lover now.

“Athene, can I ask you something?”

“Sure, Tricia, anything.”

“Does it scare you for another girl to tell you that she loves you?”

“No, my darling girl.  I love you, too, more than you can know.”

“I am scared.  I don’t want to die, but I will, and soon.”

“No, you will not.”

I got up and took a large butcher knife from the cabinet.  I pulled down my dress (yes, I usually wear a dress) and my underwear.  Tricia’s eyes were as large as plates, but she was is so much pain that she did not move.

“Thank you, Athene, just to kill me and get it over with.  I hate the pain, but I also hate you going to prison for killing me.”

“Who said that I was going to kill you?”  Then I plunged the knife deep into my abdomen, severing arteries and veins.

“Athene!  Please, please do not kill yourself!  I am dying, and can not stand the idea that you will die too!  Stop, STOP, STOP!!”

I waited a minute or two, then took off all of my clothes.  Tricia was spellbound and confused, but she saw my tissues repair themselves from the deep knife wound almost as by magic.  Totally nude, I displayed my recuperative powers to her.

In less than two minutes, a fatal slice into my descending aorta repaired itself.  Tricia could not believe it.

“Sweetheart, there is something that I have not told you.  Well, several things.  First, I love you and want to spend the rest of our lives together.”

Tricia responded, “Athene, I love you too.  I never thought that I would love a woman, but I love you.  But I am going to die in a couple of months.”

“No, you will not.  If you can quit that darned tanning, I can cure you.”

“I am confused.  What do you mean?”

“Tricia, just rest your head on my shoulder.”

For the first time in over a century, my fangs were exposed.  I gently pressed Tricia’s neck towards them, then thrust them into her left jugular vein.  It took many minutes to extract all of her blood.

I was bloated with it, but the way that it works is that if one just takes all of the blood, the victim dies.  She had to have some of mine, to make sure that the virus got into her system.  She was still a bit lucid, and I took the blade that I always carry and slit my left wrist.

I slit it again to make sure that there was enough blood to infect her, to preserve her, to save her.  Instinctively, she sucked the hot, dark, salty, red, and virus infected blood from my wrist.  I felt my essence blend into her as she did.

Tricia had just about died when I drained her of her blood, but recovered slowly as she drank it back though my wrist.  Now I was becoming weak.  Her instinct took over, and she stopped stripping it from me.  She put her thumb on the wound and stopped the blood flow.

We awakened, entwined in each others arms, in a few hours.  I could sense her new powers.  I could also sense that she no longer had cancer.

“Tricia, are you OK?”

“Athene, I now know what you know.  I remember everything.  You really socked Aristotle in the jaw?”

I immediately fell more in love with Tricia.  She and I were not only soulmates, we were mind mates, and would live essentially forever with each other.

I told you about the memories.  Now Tricia and I share the memories of all that brought me over, and their antecedents, and ours as well.  Obviously she is free of cancer now, since she is essentially immortal, as I am, and we are completely devoted to each other.  Perhaps this nation will recognize gay marriage someday, and perhaps even give vampires full rights in future.

This is just fiction, but still,

Warmest regards,

Doc

I shall crosspost this at Kos Monday, but Pique the Geek has to publish later this evening, and only one per day there.

Copyright 2010 Dr. David W. Smith.  Contents are welcome to be used in the Fair Use sense by anyone if this post is used as a reference.