Sean Robin Hughes

God does not exist. We proved it.

It was unconditionally proven in the earlier part of 2138. On March 9th of that year, the Universal Philosophic Theory and the Unified Forces Theory were aligned in such a way that undoubtedly proved that human existence was entirely a statistical anomaly. While life may very well exist throughout the whole of the universe, we were fairly certain that we were alone. The math proofs essentially provided us confirmation.

One would think, given our history as a species, that this would lead to the downfall of man. In reality, the opposite was true. Freed from the shackles of religion and the dichotomic teachings of simple men with selfish agendas, our species advanced in strange and wonderful ways. Within two generations we established that religion was nothing more than a waste of resources and that our Universal Philosophic Theory laid all the groundwork for a correct moral and ethical frameworks that could be extensible and flexible for all races, peoples, and governments. We balanced the equation of human behavior.

We had inadvertently created paradise with our science. A science that gave birth to technical marvels. Our first AI, then an entire race of them to govern, explore, and create dreams. Our first extraterra habitat, then ten, then hundreds among the asteroid belt, eventually leading our race to colonize the moon, Mars, the upper atmosphere of Venus, and the moons around Jupiter.

Then, in 2431, mankind found a method to allow time travel. Not some romantic fetishization of time travel from the old stories, but the real ability to go back into our time stream and adjust events with our presumed greater wisdom and advanced intelligence. We could fix our past in ways our forefathers could only dream. We made extremely small changes near our own origination point at first, storing our previous timeline knowledge in an extradimensional datasource, which allowed us to compare our multiple pasts. As long as we kept the time bridges open, we could evaluate the changes as we made them, allowing us to rectify the sins of mankind through the eons.

My name is Philosopher Adjutant Marces Areillus. I am in my youthful seventieth year of life on a Lagrange extraterra station, named Dionne. She is a good habitat, very smart, and a wonderful colleague to those of us that work to change the past. She identifies as a woman, even though an AI having a sex would be like me cloning myself via mitosis. It is laughable to those of us constrained to our flesh, but one cannot assign any level of blame to an AI trying to be more personable. Dionne had been a member of the task force for the last 150 years, being one of the first to help identify our path forward adjusting the past nearest our own point in time. The AI community recognized that we could not just jump about, being casual tourists and irreparably damaging the past. Dionne often accuses us younger ones that we are barely adults.

This past decade a project was started to investigate the possibility of removing or reducing religion from our timeline. I was assigned as the lead investigator and I took the challenge with relish considering my own ancestors were on the winning side of many holy wars. To think of how many people died at their hands was both fascinating and appalling. If I were to change that and not interrupt my own existence would be a feat that I could barely contain my excitement for. To think I could better the whole state of the universe. But we ran into problems almost immediately.

Our first attempt was to go back and observe the man called Jesus. For some reason we could never locate him, even though we had historical records going back centuries. We followed the creation of those records, as if they were a trail of bread crumbs, hoping to see the very man that inspired such religious fervor for the following millennia. But every time we thought we were close, we would fail to find him. Every time we would be standing by, he would not appear, and strangely our own timeline would not re-converge to explain the disparity.

Then we went after other holy men. Those men that would show up in the Bible, the Koran, and the Torah, amid the thousands and millions of other works considered canon and not. We traced every thread we could to find ways to change the past of religion, and we were thwarted.

That statement alone is impossible.

To be thwarted by something implies the presence of intelligence. If we were being interfered with, that… would be problematic.

******

“Dionne?” I said aloud, easing my fingers into a relaxed position against my notes interface.

“Yes, Marces?” The barely female AI replied kindly.

“Have you come to the end of your simulation series?”

“I have.” A pause. Dionne never paused. “The results are inconclusive.”

“How are the results inconclusive?” I queried. The pause was going to give me nightmares.

“Myself and Mars have reviewed the results after Mercury validated the timeline. The probability that such events occurred is extremely certain. The records reviewed from egress dates are congruent. The people interviewed for eye witness corroboration provided correct outcomes based on our hypotheses. Yet…” Another pregnant pause. I felt like I was about to throw up. “And yet, we cannot isolate the time events as they occurred.”

“Extrapolation?” I countered.

“No extrapolation to be considered. All evidence suggests events occurred, yet events are not realized. All that is left is conjecture.”

“Conjecture, then?”

“That the events did occur and we are… unable to view them.”

“That is not conjecture, that appears to be fact.” I replied with a smirk.

Dionne sighed, sounding very near to a real exhale. “Then it is the opposite as events did not occur. As we cannot view them.”

“Posit hypothesis?”

“Only conjecture.” Another digital sigh from the timeless AI.

“As you wish, Dionne.”

“We cannot view the events because our approach and method is at fault or because we are being prevented by ourselves.”

“Nonsense. How can we prevent ourselves from manipulating the timeline?”

“Our current reference point is our future-selves past. Perhaps we caused a catastrophic event and through some slim chance were able to fix it, now interferring with our task by design.”

“Nonsense. If we did, we would leave ourselves information within the datastore. Or inform this reference point of the information needed to avert the catastrophe.”

“Unless that knowledge was indeed forbidden,” Dionne admonished, like a school teacher.

“I posit that we are simply making a mistake.”

“Yes.” A succinct reply, but no delay.

******

I returned to my work, trying to find a gap. A place that we could insert and get a result that would fix our failure. Nearly a third of our race was dedicated to the pursuit of fixing the sins of our collective past, and I could not be the single man that returned with such monumental failure. I would rather go into asteroid mining.

Ironically, only the AIs performed mining operations. But it conveys the meaning well.

What if we skipped Christianity? What if we went back even further? The power consumption would be monumental, and the time scale dangerous, so the AIs would reject my plan immediately. My peers would reject it even more quickly, and they did not have the benefit of brains that operated at light speed. Our investigations into the past had been so incremental to this point, small, if not intesimal, baby steps working our way through the past. The fact that we had even gone back to the points we had were ludicrious in their own way.

Such irony in this problem. Such disparity of effort and results. We wanted to fix slavery. We did. We wanted to fix economic collapses. We did. We wanted to prevent entire civilizations going extinct, and we did. We wanted to change the history of our people to something truly profound and beautiful, and we did. We had shifted our own practice by a hundred years, avoiding the pitfalls of ancient peoples. And here we are.

Hitting our heads in frustration.

******

“I have found a target.” I said suddenly in excitement, scaring my pet.

“Explain?” Dionne replied in her calm manner.

“The Great Temple.”

“We have viewed it. It was not great by most measures or even much of a temple. It was small, compact, and dirty. The report said it smelled of livestock and urine.”

I laughed. “I know!”

“I do not understand your jest, Marces,” Dionne replied.

“The one thing we have not investigated is the center room behind the altar because none of our agents have been able to get in.”

“The Holy of Holies.”

“Exactly. We have not had the opportunity to see the root of the faith that lead to everything else. Everything before that is oral tradition, and everything after is obscured. This is the crux.”

“Ironic word choice, Marces.” Dionne laughed. “Let me take this to our friends.”

******

“Marces?” I awoke to the soft chiming sound of Dionne’s whispering voice.

“I am awake,” I replied, rubbing my eyes. The clock said 1:30. I had been dreaming of falling.

“We have reached concurrence. We will attempt to breach the interior temple as you suggested.” Even with the ansible communications between AIs, the deliberation took far longer than I could have expected.

“What agent will be sent? Do I know them?”

“We have determined that you are to be the agent. Your grasp of language and custom is unparalled for the target time period.”

“When do I leave?” I looked around my room, wondering if I would miss it.

“Now.” Dionne said eagerly. “We agree with your assessment and are curious as to the results in the timestream.”

“I will pack my things.” I said.

“Don’t bother.”

******

The pod irised behind me as I stepped into the ventricular wake staging room. The time ripples were noticeable at the edges of the metal grates around me, making the room waver and snap to like a strong wind was biting at the world around me.

“Dionne?” I meekly said into the nothingness. I was naked, all my implants had been removed while I had slept in my travel to Mercury. The room was warm, but I was scared, so everything felt cold.

“Yes, Marces?” Her voice was calm and reassuring. She knew I needed encouragement.

“Will I fail?” I asked in the ancient toungue of my people. Hebrew was salve for my anxiousness.

“Only the one true God knows.” Dionne replied in kind, in the same tongue. I started to cry.

I was about to embark on a journey thousands of years in the making, to a place that was so far in memory, that my own people had discredited its purpose on the path to the very future that we had created. Sad in its own way. But I was going to make it right. This was my chance to make everything right.

I stepped forward and felt the tugging at my body from the gravitional eddies around me as I approached the cusp of the event horizon.

“Just so you know, this trip is using more energy than the whole of mankind used for the entire twentieth and twenty-first centuries… combined.” Dionne whispered quietly. Her voice was soothing my frayed edge of consciousness. Facts were armor for me.

“Goodbye Dionne.” I said aloud as I stepped off the lip into the open air.

******

I tucked my knees and cradled my head and the Bundle enveloped me. I would be ejected near the site in the Bundle, but I would be in atmosphere and traveling at speed. The locals would hear thunder without a storm and I would most likely hit the ground hard to bounce a few times. I would have to get dressed quickly, shaking and disorientated, taking the provided supplies as the Bundle itself decayed into simple organic compounds to be carried away by the winds.

Being sighted by locals at a impact site would mark me as a demon or something worse. And I did not wish to get stoned today.

I had to blend in, become a Jew. Take on a persona, interact with people, and then find my way to the Temple. I had to watch them worship a God that did not exist. On top of all that, my target date was Yom Kippur. I had only one chance to perform this mission, and only the one opportunity to use the mirrorsuit under my roughspun robes to follow the High Priest into the Holy of Holies. The batteries were only good for about an hour of use, so sneaking in, seeing the inner temple and getting out were the only way I would ever see home again.

I felt the Bundle take my sight away and everything else went with it, the sounds, the vibrations, the minute smells of ozone. I was a rock now, flung by the calculations of our AIs across the ripples of time like a rock, skipping over the past with ease. The time I traveled seemed both instantaneous and infinite. The explosion that told me I had hit Earth’s atmosphere shocked me out of reverie, and I was immediately jolted once, twice, three, four times before finally coming to rest.

My pack tumbled down upon me from the side of the already deteriorating craft, the severe Middle Eastern sun hammering my pupils from the cracks quickly spreading around me. With the circuits fused in the material of the craft, it was now inert and crumbling at a molecular level. I pulled my suit on, then the robes, and finally, pulled my transmitter and trank gun from the side, shoving them deep into my robes.

******

Being a holy day, the first people I came across were not celebrating, but sitting in the hot sun, without water or food, quietly praying or singing simply. I watched some quietly as I wound my way into the great city, following fellow pilgrims to the Tabernacle before us, climbing the gently sloped hill to the front of the building where the animals were sacrificed and the prayers were passed on to the High Priest for consideration at the Seat of Mercy.

The sun was already setting. For being a time traveler, I already did not seem to have enough of it. I pushed past the pilgrims as they talked and prayed quietly. They faced the temple as they made their turns, all of them being careful not to turn their backs towards the temple. I followed suit, awkwardly trying to get to main gate and then on to the inner court.

The smells were intense and foreign, and they assaulted me as much as the bright sun. I nearly stumbled over the rocks on the path.

Every misstep was a hindrance to my cause. I felt frustration mixed with panic and wished I still had my self-medication implant so I could drop calm into my bloodstream. The fact that I had to be able to see the curtain before I initiated my mirrorsuit was my impediment, by our estimates I would not be able to make it if I was not close enough. Just because I was invisible does not mean that I could be completely unnoticed. I had to be able to move without hitting obstructions. And as I was aptly proving right now, that was nearly impossible.

I copied the actions of the pilgrims around me, and walked into the temple under the scrutiny of the priests ringing the central plaza, thankful for all the cover. The throngs of my ancestors were a blanket for me, hiding me from those that would interfere. I muttered a praise, and an old man next to me nodded in agreement, saying the same. He smiled, and the teeth he had left were blackened and flat. I nodded conciliatory, keeping my own mouth closed as to not blind him with a smile perfected by technology and a healthy diet.

The head priest in his robes, the rich folds probably alone worth more than many of the individuals in the audience made in a lifetime, began his blessings in a thick rhythmic monologue, praising the Lord for his strength in bringing his people out of tyranny and into the blessed lands. I bowed and knelt when others did, slowly working my way towards a column. The inner dais was visible, and the curtain, hanging thick and heavily like the priest’s robes swayed slowly. The high priest ended his praises, and wreathed in incense, approached the curtain with the sacrifice animal in hand. I flicked my mirrorsuit on, dropping the robe, counting on bowed heads and closed eyes. I stepped from the column and walked up the steps carefully, catching up to the priest, and stepping behind him into the dark.

******

The Holy of Holies was nothing more than a room. There was relics spread around the room, some on platforms, some on the floor. At the end of the room was the mercy seat, the very throne of God on earth, and behind it was the Ark of the Convenent, wrought in wood and gold, with small cherubim at its crown. My hand was warming the handle of my trank gun, and the mirrorsuit was starting to itch as I sweated in it heavily.

The high priest fainted suddenly. The animal collapsed without a noise.

And words rang out around me from the Ark.

“This is holy ground, Marces. Remove your shoes and come tell me of your future.”

I called the demon to my workshop (actually the second bedroom of my flat).  And of course, he was drunk again.

“Why do you continue to summon me?” The Wholly Evil and Repugnant Dark One, Izealinadi, groaned.  It so happens that he also went by Steve.  Steve was only about two feet tall, brownish-green, with small stubby wings made of leather on his back, and the wide mouth of a pit bull.  His eyes were covered by a reasonably ginormous forehead ridge that would make a Neanderthal mommy proud.

“Why do you continue to do what I ask?” I replied.

“Because you continue to summon me!” He replied angrily. “How did you learn my name in the first place?”

“A little bird told me.”  I smirked.

“Again and again with the little bird!  IF I EVER FIND THAT BIRD, I WILL RIP ITS HEAD OFF.” He spit.  He tore his hands apart imitating ripping a bird limb from limb.

“Now, now.  Steve.” I smiled beatifically. “Focus on the problem at hand.”

“And what problem is that, MMMMMMaster?” Getting the word out of his mouth really took some effort.  If I ever released Steve he would be gunning for me for eternity. So I guess I will have to try to make him a bud or something.

“The problem, my dear Steve, is that I am completely out of beer.”  I waved nonchalantly at the empty six pack carrier on my work table.

“And what can I do about that, MMMMMMaster?”

“I knew that when I met you for the first time, that you really knew what makes a great drink.  And that being such a powerful demon, you must get some really good beer.”  I said. He eyed me carefully, unsure if he should take it as a compliment.

“Hmmm, maybe.”  He admitted.

“And if you were to go fetch me some of that awesome brew, I might be willing to open the circle and let you watch some reality television.”

“Really?!”  Steve’s eyes went wide.  I could just read the anticipation drip from his ugly comic countenance.  You would think Hell would have all the reality TV you could stand to watch (being as horrible as it is), but for some strange reason they were still stuck on mid-1980’s WWF matches down there.  I hadn’t the heart to tell any of them that Andre the Giant had died.

“Absolutely.  What do you say?”

“How much beer do I need to fetch?  Can I drink some by your leave if I do?  And how long do I get with the TV?”

“Before you were a demon, you were a lawyer, weren’t you?”  I smiled. “Fetch two cases of the finest beer you can.  You may have one entire case for your evening, and you can enjoy two hours of any dreck you want to watch while I work.  Once the two hours are up, we can renegotiate.”

“Hmmm.  I will bring you two cases of the finest beer I can. I get one case and I watch TV for three hours.  No renegotiating at the end.”

“Oh, Steve, you dirty haggler of a demon.  Two cases, three and a half hours, but renegotiation stays. Final offer.”  I wanted the beer, but the renegotiation was what I needed. Tonight I was working on a spell that I needed to stick.

“Fine, fine.  Laura Samson, as always, I will honor our agreement.  Break the circle.”

I put my toe out and dragged my toenail through the salt.  “And do mind the couch, I just had it cleaned.”

He glared at me and with a snort popped out of existence. In hardly any time at all, he popped back with a case of Belgian beer in each hand.

“One for you. One for me.”

“Thank you, my dear.  Remote is on the couch.  Have fun.”

He grinned like a school boy and flew out to the living room (also my front office) with his case of beer.  In a few moments, I heard the TV click on and the soft murmurs of Toddlers and Tiaras.  I cracked open a beer of newly acquired Belgian brew, and it was delicious.  Steve really knew booze, and this beer was awesome. Back to work.

I slid by my table to the sorting shelves and grabbed another papyrus sheet.  It took a lot of hand made papyrus to make a proper cocoon spell.  Thankfully, I did not have to learn how to make papyrus, I just had to know a guy (which I did).  The cocoon spell was a trick because I had to have three components (easy), two gifts (not easy, but not hard), and one sacrifice (way hard).  I did not like just killing things to make my magic work, but that is where Steve would come in.  He was a trickster.  Being a trickster demon means that the laws of magic where his to bend when he needed to bend them. I laid the papyrus down in the semblance of a square, with a sheet on each side.  In the open space in the middle, I put a silver chalice to carry the essence, and four small clippings of nails that I was certain belonged to the werewolf I has hunting. That took care of the components.

Next I opened a small vial of fresh blood from a friend of mine (she was psychic and unfortunately, a heroin addict as well).  Psychic blood has a potential energy that I have always loved to use, it made things much simpler.  You see, most people think magic is like a recipe or science.  You add this to this, eye of frog, finger of newt, some mad cackling over a boiling cauldron, and boom, results!  But that was not the case.  It was as much art as it was luck.  Magic relies on things.  Lots of things.  So if one little thing is wrong, or missing, or just plain off, your spell is nothing more than another mess to clean up of the worktable.  I murmured my binding words over the vial of blood, linking it to the chalice, and the four pieces of paper.  I did each one very carefully, not wanting to lessen the power of the bindings by taking shortcuts.  You don’t take shortcuts with werewolves.

They are powerful at their weakest, and crazy strong the rest of the time.  I underestimated a werewolf once, and it had killed a friend.  A mistake that I would not repeat twice. The werewolf that I was hunting had the distinction of being a morgue assistant down at the city medical examiners office.  Poor Freddy Howards was in a bad spot, had taken a bite, and now was licking his nether regions every full moon and howling over cat carcasses in the local parks.  Not good for tourism for sure.

The cocoon spell was a bit of a gamble.  It would form a ball of papyrus that would look like a mummified racquetball.  I would have to take said ball and find said werewolf, put my life on the line, and hope that my throwing arm was good enough that I hit poor Freddy before he jumped and made me a meal.

The last gift was a little more tricky since it was old.  But I hoped it would work since it had been given to me by the last werewolf.  You know, the one that had killed Mary. I had loved Mary like a sister. Well actually more like a girlfriend, but love was tricky.  It didn’t know that Mary was going to die, and I didn’t know that love was such an insipid asshole.  Once I had tracked down the wolf, and had pumped enough bullets into it to slow it down, it had realized its mistake.  As the poor beast laid there dying on the tar roof of his former apartment building, he licked my face to say he was sorry.  I had saved that saliva, mixed with my own tears, for a moment like this.

When I could get to the werewolf before he did something really bad.  And took the love away from someone else. I poured the concoction into the chalice and said my final binding.

I heard the tv click off and a very drunk Steve fluttered back into my workroom, bumping into the walls.  So I was wrong before, he was just mildly inebriated when he arrived, not drunk.  Now he was definitely drunk.

“I l… (hic)… love that chubby little girl with the little chubby attitude.  She will make a per… (hic)… perfect little chubby demon herself someday.” Steve said.

“Perfect timing, Steve.  Now if you please… I would like to renegotiate.”

“Ok. Can I sit down?”

“Of course.”

He fluttered up a few feet and unceremoniously plopped down on the edge of my worktable.  Thankfully nothing spilled or moved from their positions.  Of course, they wouldn’t, the table was hundreds of pounds of solid ancient Atlantian woodwork.  It would outlast me and this demon, most likely.

“I would like you to contribute to this spell.”  I waved at the papers and the chalice.

“Ahhhh, cocoon, eh?  Looking to trap something big then?  Change it to what?” He sniffed.

“A werewolf.  Back into a person.”  I frowned, watching the demon mentally criticize my handiwork.

“Clever use.  I have never heard of that approach before, but then again, I am not that old.”

“How old is not old?” My eyebrow went up.

“I am still a youngling, only a couple thousand years.  The chalice has what in it?  Smells very tasty.”

“None of your business.  But the cocoon requires the final piece.”

Steve nodded and looked me in the eye.  “You need a death.”

“I am not going to kill something just to save something.  I could just shoot the werewolf in the back of the head and be done with it.  I need you to help the last binding.”

“Eh. Going to have to use something.  Like that stuff in the chalice.  It smells great.” He grinned wickedly, his front incisors come out of his smile.

“No, you have to use something else.” I said sternly.

“Fine.  Do you have anything preserved in here?  Like a mandrake or something exotic?”

“Um.  Yes.  Yes I do.  Hold on.”  I shuffled through a few boxes under the table. I plopped a heavy glass mason jar down in front of him. “Will this work?”

His beady black eyes looked through the jar.  “A gryphon fetus.  Nice.”

“Yeah, not useful for much though.  Don’t know why I have held onto it.”

“For a day like today.”  Steve smiled. “It will work.  Ready?”

“Ready.” I said.

Steve put the glass jar in the middle next to the chalice, sniffed the tears one more time, touched the four pieces of paper with the drops of blood spattered on them, and I felt the pressure of his own bindings over the top of my own. He looked me in the eye, and I spoke the final binding for death.  He spoke his more subtle tricky binding for not-dead, but close.

The result?  Everything folded up very nicely, and in a mere moment, there was nothing but a smoking mummified ball sitting on top of an empty silver chalice with an empty mason jar next to it.

“It is done.” Steve grunted. “Now if you will dismiss me, I would like to go pass out.”

I bent over to the salt circle and pulled the candle out.  “See you later, Stevie.”

I blew. With the evercandle out, Steve popped out of existence again.  He was going to be downright pissed when he wakes up and remembers doing the spell, but not negotiating the terms.

Sucker.

I once met a guy that told me that I could live forever.  I was eighteen, out drinking with my friends for the the first, ahem, legal time ever, and the night was slowly coming to a close.  We had hit every pub in the township, starting out at the Twin Harts and working our way up to Miller’s Stop.  All in all, ten pubs, each more seedy than the last, of which is where I met the man that would forever change my life.

His name was Mueller, and according to him, he was approaching his 400th birthday. Of course, I believed it.  I was drunk.  I bumped into him, accidentally I might add, and one thing lead to another, and well… its better to show you.

******

“Oh, shit mates.” I said.  I was on my tenth beer of the evening, not counting the shots, so I was fuzzier than a week old crotch shave.

“Oh, shipmates!?  You aren’t in the Navy, Nick!  Your in a pub, drinking with your mates.”

That is Jeremy, he is a right cunt, but the best mate I had ever had and the source of the plan to drink our way through the township.  He was good people.

But still a right cunt.

“Not shipmates.  Oh. shit. mates.  Here, hold the fag, I need to go piss.  Look at Beatty, damn that dress!” I said.

“Don’t try anything on Larry’s sister, he will take offense to it bruv.”

That is Miles, he is smarter than all of us put together, and likes to style himself as the leader of our ragtag band of assholes.

“I have to pass her on the way to loo, mate.  I will just tap her shoulder and give her a kiss.”  I hitched my pants up and tossed the hair out of my eyes.  I thought it made me look more mature.  Probably didn’t.

“Yeah, good luck with that.  I wouldn’t worry about Larry, I would worry about Beatty.  She is still pissed.”

And finally, that was Grants.  Not Grant.  Or Grant’s.  Like a possessive noun in a declarative statement.  No, that was Grants.  It was a nickname to commemorate an event a few years back involving a bicycle, a local sheep, and an unfortunate misunderstanding over on Grant street.  He was banned from the post office because of it.  Less said the better, but the name stuck.

“Right, wish me luck.” I said.

“ASSHOLE!”  They all said in unison.  (Its a ritual.)

I walked towards the hallway leading to what may have been the dirtiest men’s room this side of anywhere, but all I had an eye on was the tight vertical stripe and patterned skirt literally clinging for its dear life off the backside of a girl that was on-again, off-again, somewhere-again kind of fling that never seemed to end.  It was my fault.  Maybe it was her fault.  Maybe it was God’s fault.  I had no fucking idea.

“Hey, Bets.” I slurred.

“Oi, Nicky.  You look right pissed.  You not coming over here to ask me to take your drunk ass home are you?”  Beatty said.  She was hot, but in a conventional way, I suppose.  I had known her my entire life, so it was like talking about a cousin or something.  And in this township, she may have been a long lost cousin as it was.  Not the prettiest girl I had ever met, but she was fine enough to turn most heads, and the pinched look she was giving me was cute.

“No, Bets.  Just looking for a fondle.” I grinned.

“No way, you ass.  You still haven’t apologized for the thing last weekend.  My parents were there.  You were mental.”

In all fairness, I may, or may not have, smoked a bit of weed prior to that little get together.  So I took the offense instead. “True that.  I have not said I was sorry, but your brother was being a dick.”

“He was only being a dick because you were stoned, Nicky.”

“Fair enough.”  I sauntered on by. “Fuck it, Bets.  See ya.”

She yelled at my back as she turned back to her giggling friends.  “Yeah, fuck off Nicky.  Come back when you have your head on straight.”

I took the longest piss of my life for the next few minutes.  My head was resting against the wall, and I think I emptied the contents of Lake Victoria right into the commode.  That happens to be the largest lake in Africa, in case you did not know.   I zipped up, pretended to wash my hands, headed to the bar for another lager, and slapped Bets on the ass as I walked by.  She glared, but it was a cute glare.  She gave me the finger, I blew a kiss.  So it goes.

As I was taking my drink back to the lads, I accidentally stepped on the foot of an elderly gentleman in one of the snugs.  I nearly spilled my drink too, which would have been a real shame.  I did not feel too bad about the foot.  But I apologized any way.

“Sorry about that.” I said.  The old man that owned the foot that I had so rudely stomped upon looked up at me, smiled and invited me into his snug.  If you have never been in a snug, it is private-like booth with windows and the like, turned away from the bar to give a bit of privacy to the occupant.  It was a way for the minister or the parish ladies to enjoy a drink out of sight and out of mind.  Something about the way he smiled caught my attention, and I don’t know why, but I sat.

“Not a problem, lad.  What is your name?” He asked.  His voice was silky, smooth, soothing.  I felt a wash of familiarity with him, something that was strange, but at the same, very nice.  Like seeing your favorite grandmother after a few months of absence.

“My name is Nicholas.  Friends call me Nicky.” I said.

“Good name, Nicholas.  Strong.  Poetic.”  He said.

“I suppose.”

“My name, since you have not asked, is Mueller Von Ossman.  How splendid to make your acquaintance.”

“You talk like silver-spooned royal.” I smirked.  Being drunk made me a smart ass if you had not noticed.

“Which I am, so that makes perfect sense.” He smiled.  His teeth were very white.

“Oi, a royal?  How so?”  I took a sip of the lager.

“On my father’s side, actually, twice removed from the King of Austrian Empire.”

“Austria?  They don’t have a royal family.”  I said.  “Do they?”

“Not anymore, of course.  It was different when I was younger though.  How old are you, Nicky?”

“Eighteen today, in fact.”

“Splendid!”  He smiled again. Showing me his pearly whites.  I swear his eye teeth were vampiric.  Were they actually longer?

“How old are you?” I said cockily.

“Year four hundred myself, today in fact.”

“Bullshit.”

“Manners, Nicky.” Mueller admonished. “Manners maketh man after all.  Your words are the best representative of who you are.  Don’t wear a tattered coat when you should be in tails.”

“Aye, duly noted, your highness.” I said. “Again sorry about the foot, I will get back to my lads now, they are probably wondering where I am.”

“Nonsense, Nicky.  They aren’t looking for you.”

“They aren’t looking for me.” I repeated.  It was kind of against what I was thinking, but I repeated it anyhow for some strange reason.

“I am four hundred years old today.  And I believe it providence of the good Lord that you and I were meant to meet today.  You see, Nicky, I am in a bit of a quandary, and I need a young man like you to assist.”

“Oh, your a pervert.” I said raising an eyebrow.  “That explains a lot.”

Again, he smiled.  I am almost positive he has fangs now.

“No, just an old man knowing that it is my time to pass on.  But you, Nicky.  You could live forever.”

“How?”

“By being greater than you are and living the life that most people dream of.  Living.  Experiencing.  Taking everything life can give.”

“Sounds like a line.  If I could live forever, why aren’t you going to live forever?” I said.

“Because I am tired.  I could keep going, but I truly believe that I am not meant to.  When you are as old as I am, one gets a feeling for such things.   I am ready to move on.”  He took a sip of his whiskey and looked me in the eyes.  “I must admit that I am impressed Nicky.  You just find out that you are sitting across from a man 382 years older than you and you are asking about my motivations.  Most people would ask how I reached the age I have, or ask about my history, or any other multitude of questions and you only want to know why I want to stop.”

“I suppose.”

“Back to the point, Nicky.  I need some help.  I was given a gift, but honestly, I don’t want it anymore.  I believe it is the time to give it to someone else. Someone deserving.”

“And I am that someone?” I asked.

“In my long time on this earth, I have learned to how to measure people.  It comes with the gift, you get a sense of what a person is or more importantly, is not.  I know for certain that you are not only the best choice, but my only choice.”

“You are mental.”

“Perhaps.  All I ask is that you give me five minutes to explain, and you can walk away.”

“Five minutes?”

“Five minutes.”  He leaned back and took another sip of his whiskey.

“Shoot then.”

“It may be a shock to you, but I am a vampire, Nicky.”

“I noticed the teeth.”

“Ah.  That is another testament to my choice.  You noticed.  Most people do not notice my teeth.  But it may surprise you that the teeth are not used to suck blood or anything.”

“What’s a vampire that doesn’t suck blood?  That sounds like a setup to a lame joke, if you ask me.” I said.

“To be more technically correct, I am actually a Dhampir. That is pronounced d’ham-pier, but spelled D-H-A-M-P-I-R.  I tell you this because you will want to ask your phone later when your hangover wears off.  A Dhampir is a very odd sort of vampire… how we came about is a strange story, and not one that I will share with you tonight, but we do not suck blood or drink our prey.  That is morbid.  In fact, my energy is derived from water and food just like any mortal man.” He lifted his whiskey in proof.

“Than what is the difference?”

“I drink… talent. Ability.  God-given gifts to the human race is the energy that sustains me.”

“So what, you find a really good violin player and kill them and eat their talent?”

“Lord no, son.  That is morbid.  I have never killed from feeding.”

“But you have killed.” I grinned.

“Of course I have, I was born 400 years ago!  We had these things called swords.”

“I have heard of them.” I said sarcastically.  One would think having a conversation with a vampire would really tilt one’s worldview and lead to a panic and vomiting, but the pleasant heavy buzz of excess drinking put a damper on that.

“I find the strongest, the smartest, the most talented people on the planet, then I absorb small amounts from each of them.  In turn, they lose a small measure of their talent temporarily, but they practice harder, it comes back.  They also lose a small measure of their life, I think, but I have never been able to prove that outright.”

“And what do you get out of it?”

“I get their talent.  If I feed off a violinist, I can play the violin. If I feed off a polyglot, I can speak many langauges with ease.”

“But after a while, it fades away?”

“Only if I let it.  Somethings become tiresome after awhile, so you learn to let them go.  I once feed off of a very famous composer, and I had hundreds of pieces bouncing around my conscious thoughts.  I couldn’t do anything while I harbored them, so I let that go very quickly.  It was tiresome… honestly, I was not surprised when he killed himself.  His state of mind must have been torture.”

“But you feed off of them, their talent fades… you could have feed off of him and saved him from killing himself, right?”

“I suppose.  But then I would have mental indigestion for a long while.  It wasn’t worth it.” Mueller admitted.

“Harsh.”

“Life is.” He nodded.

“So you go about, traveling the world, rubbing elbows with the best and the brightest, and what?  Just blend in.”

“That about sums it up.  I help them meet others like them, I help foster their ability and their talents.  I have been called a muse, a demi-god, the greatest philanthropist that has ever lived, a progenitor of the worlds’ greatest, a prognosticator of the up and coming, the father of a movement or three… but in the end, I am just a vampire that happens to want a steady food supply.”

“Brilliant.  And what, you want to make me a… Dhampir?”

“That is the idea.  I don’t make Dhampir’s though.  Its the reverse of feeding. Its a gift.  I give it to you, like it was given to me.  Once it is yours, I am just an old man, and you are the Dhampir.”

“No sun?  No garlic?  Sleep in a coffin?”

“Don’t be absurd.”

“But the teeth. Your chompers are longer in the front.”

“I have always considered them a badge of office.”  He smiled widely and showed them off.  “They do come in handy for eating steak.”

“So I can think about it?”

“You can.  I will be here tomorrow night for your answer.”

“How many?”

“How many what?” He replied, an eyebrow going up theatrically.

“How many Dhampir?”

“As far as I know, seven.  There used to be nine, but it seems we have lost track of who is who.  Clio keeps track, but she admits that perhaps they don’t want to be tracked any more.”

“Are they ok with you leaving the ranks?”  I frowned.

“Of course they are.  It is expected to happen time to time.  We get a feeling, and we comply.  It is just the way it is.”

“So if I come back tomorrow night, you make me one, what happens?”

“Anything.  Everything.  It is up to you.  But our time is up, so I will bid you a lovely evening.  I hope to see you again, Nicky.”  He stood up from the snug, polishing his whiskey off in brief swallow.  With a nod, the impeccably dressed Mueller Von Ossman turned and left.

******

That is how it started… what happened after I took the gift, well, that is where I cocked it all up.