Journal Entry of Ian Haynes
A Vampire currently assigned to CCC197
Head of the Blood Donor Out Reach Program
I wish everything I wrote was
more than just statistics.
But that’s what you become
really great at after you’ve been turned.
Statistics.
No notes. No calculators.
You have a perfect recall of
facts, figures, or events in a timeline.
In fact, a timeline is our
specialty.
When all you do is… exist.
Remembering the dates, names,
achievements, failures of the living is not a problem.
I’m like a computer that never
needs to be rebooted.
Perhaps the best way for you
to understand what I have become is to stay just with the stats.
There are over 221 “Blood”
camps in “North America.”
210 in “Europe.”
Those working in “Asia” have
got to be concerned. Only 43 camps so far.
The latest official line from
the committee is that at least seven of those camps aren’t even extracting
blood from donors because everyone they test flunks the most basic redlines.
And that’s the “Official
Line!”
Yeah, right now I’d be
thinking “eternity” is not so locked in if I was stationed in one of the blood
camps in Asia.
According to Winston the
“unofficial line” is everyone is scared shitless.
Of course no mea culpa, official or unofficial, from
anyone on the committee about how they obviously miscalculated about setting up
blood camps so close to where all the bombs went off.
We all saw the explosions:
some of us on TV, others firsthand. What was the VC thinking? That there would
still be people we could tap?
Here’s an idea; we should have
made everyone on the committee who wasted resources building those camps be the
first to get off on the radioactive juice.
I know Winston feels the same
way.
He often talks derisively
about the Second Seating. He refers to them as “VireArchII,” but to me, they’re
all just part of the same “Vampire committee.”
“Watch what happens,” Winston
said to me. It was just a couple weeks before we moved from the shadows to take
over control of the world. “Politicians of the living will say anything to save
their career; a vampire will promise anything to save his, and he has all of
eternity to make good on his promise.”
But even Winston was shocked
as we pored over the official worldwide estimates of the living. Clearly the VC
had drastically underestimated how many would be left standing after the
takeover, and I could detect a glint of paranoia in his eyes. This was a rare
sight. Over all the years I’ve known him, Winston seldom allows his existence
to be influenced by fear. His favorite quote from Laski Weldon – “The living
are consumed with the prospect of dying, and therefore fear informs their
existence. Our kind has no such concerns, and that is what we must dwell on so
we can always feel alive.”
I have had the benefit of his
wisdom for a relatively short period of time. And his depth of knowledge has
been vital to my new life. His words are often chosen from those of our kind
who he has shared the shadows with for nearly a thousand years. “Wise are the
ones who have seen what lies on the road ahead. But the wisest are those who
can also look into your eyes and understand where you’ve been.”
My master is one of the wisest
of our kind. What Winston has taught me continues to inform all my actions,
even if at times I don’t always understand what lies behind the long history
that underlines each of the words.
I was not surprised when the
committee requested that he serve as commander of the Coagulation Concentration
Camp. CCC for short. All the Blood Camps have some sort of reference to blood
in their official designation. It was probably meant to refute a myth about
vampires – that they have no sense of humor.
However, to draw a complete
picture of the situation, it should be mentioned that the official designation
of the camp in any of the VireArchII rankings of the Blood Camps would report
the camp as CCC197. The number attached to the camp letters was assigned based
on the original population of the living it had enrolled when the donation
center received its first prisoners.
Perhaps the myth of no humor
amongst our kind first took flight as the living noticed our preoccupation
with… details.
“Nothing is too small to
escape notice, as long as it is moving,” is a common phrase amongst our kind.
You are alive.
We exist.
But if it does not move, it
will escape our notice.
As it should.
My brethren speak of the
distinct sound of the breaking of the skin of the living.
Then they subdivide their
impressions depending on the age, race, and gender of those they feed on.
There are many subdivisions…
within divisions… within categories, within general subject matter.
Embracing what I have become
means discovering that the passage of time has changed.
After the discovery, the
process of learning to deal with how time has changed is what one must embrace
as well.
Winston recounted all the
significant efforts of our kind who had ambitiously attempted to make the most
of the one advantage that we have over the living. And though most of the
stories lacked… a conclusion, all have become beacons for me as I walk this
long path with the reassurance that others have gone before me.
I have found that my existence
is best spent observing the world around me and then logging my findings.
What I eventually will do with
these observations is not important.
Small observations. Statistics
of course. Small deductions, if possible.
What is essential is to record
them. Observe and record, and…
And that is all.
This existence mandate has
evolved over time. And it is not something I have ever shared with my brethren.
Some would be appalled to hear
of my efforts. What is the point? What is to be gained?
The answer to their veiled
questions would probably only succeed in condemning me further in their eyes…
“What
if I am indeed wasting my time on such pursuits? ‘Time’ is the only aspect of
our lives where the cup runneth over.”
