Cousin Shark

_So, ugly guy! Hey. Sorry, nah, not really sorry, I had to take that out of my chest. However, welcome. You’re Fredric, right? I’m Ernan Deepwell , this is Cintia Deepweel my wife and cousin. We’re kind of a cliché, I suppose.

_Nice to meet you, Fred. Do you mind we call you Fred, by the way?

_Eh, I don’t suppose. Cintia.

_First days after transition are aways a bit hard. Takes some time for mind to focus, the senses do not feel quite right, memory usually runs out of control. It will pass.

_Look, what I wife is trying to say is that we are not here to make things worse. Enough people will do that job, in this family. Specially, young people like us. Under different circumstances we would not be above to playing that role too. However, someone we respect asked us to do our best to easy your way into the family. You know, this ugliness factor, the rare deformation you suffered when turned into vampire, it will serve as easy card to play against you. However, if wasn’t that they would find something else.

_We don’t have the personal experience. Besides, we used to be the youngest Deepwell vamps until you showed up, but we know the dynamic. Because, as dear husband likes to say. It is cliché. Adopted vampires are treated in a somewhat less friendly way than the human family members promoted to vampirism. We have not seem it first hand yet, in this family, but is a common thing in society.

_According to MDS…

_...Magica De Spell, that’s how some of us call the First Sommelier. The duck laide from Disney. Because of the hair, mostly. Crazy personality too, some say. Advisable refrain to use the term in her presence, though.

_Dear wife has a point! So, I was saying. According to De Spell you could probably play Friday the 13 with us with minimal effort. Your ugliness came with some sweet perks. Close combat advantages, serious stuff. Fortunately for me we don’t have any reason to play that game. Wave we?

_Not that I can see, Ernan.

_Good! I suppose some of the old fellows gave you the tour through the property, already?

_Something like that, I think. The 3 villages, beach, that other place with the boats. Some forest too, the property ends after the first line of mountain to the East, right? Some fields, farms. Powerplant. Small airport. Practically everything! I knew vampire families are filthy rich, but I had never realized how self-sufficient some of you can be.

_Some of us, Mr Shark! You are our adopted cousin, remember?

_Don’t push the man, dear husband! He’s still dizzy from the change.

_Right!

_We entered the immortal side of the family almost at the same time, husband and I. Seven years ago. He was 33, I was 25, but we both grew up here. Since we are born Deepwell. All vampire families have human relatives, you certainly know that now, even if you didn’t before arrive here.

_How is it? To grow, in a place like that.

_I don’t know, Mr Fredric. How is it to grow anywhere else? Problem with this question is that no one really has a base for comparison, since each one of us only got one childhood to go trough, and that has always to happen in one place at the time. We travel through the human civilization, my husband an I, he works with interests of our family in the human world sometimes. Still, I have a hard time imagining how a childhood in human society can work.

_Statistically speaking, in significant portion of Earth, it don’t work at all. For the most part.

_Evidently, darling, but still. Statistic only matters for panoramic views. In individual, case-by-case, perspective. People get born and move from that to adult age, still, like they have been doing since the talking animal emerged on our planet.

“Old debate, let’s avoid exclude our adopted cousin, dear wife. So, Fredy, you asked how it is to be raised in a place like that. It depends a lot, really. People in the villages, some in the house too, they are what we call “human cattle”. Vampire families practice selective breeding in farms. Have being doing so for, well, since little after the first Earthling vampires really. About 7 million years. Long before homo sapiens.

There is some similarities between our lives, as human children in a vampire domain.

Children here do not have access to cell phones, telephones, TV or computers. Not even radio. That’s all only for adults. In their case, depends a lot of what tasks they are being prepared to perform. Beyond being our source of human blood. However, you can be sure that they will not touch a cell phone before they reach 20 years. In our case, we get access to internet by 15. However, that is always our internal system, controlled connection with the global system of Nocturnal Courts. Access to normal, wild human, internet is controlled. One need special permission.

Education is usually very good, generally speaking. Hard Core Sciences, particularly. Mathematics, Music, Geography. Our History is significantly different to what you have know by that word. We have a civilization of over 7 million years behind us, with some individuals still alive who say personally it start. And are very lucid, with better memory that any of us.

Not just that, but we know for a fact that there is life in other galaxies. Human life too! Humanity evolves independently in each stellar system, usually, but it is much older than this planet. We have limited but effective means of communicate and even travel between galaxies. Is not our technology, is not under our control, but is something granted to us under some conditions by very ancient and powerful entities from beyond this Universe.

Thanks to that, vampires have had technology far more advanced than what wild humanity on Earth has. We do not mass produce advanced items, usually, because do that would be a violation of rules given to us by those same inter-dimensional beings.

So, our farms and strongholds have electricity, computers and internet since before the last Ice Age. By the time when that Ice Age started there was already a Space Elevator connecting our people to space-stations and farms in Orbit. It still exist, hidden from human perception by some means of mental manipulation that prevent accidents like airplanes hitting the stuff.

Our use of that high technology is limited, but we know many things about the universe that wild humans don’t. We have a data-bank with all scientific knowledge that can be developed, ever, in this Universe. We do not have free access to all that is there, but we know that is a limited volume of information. Possible science and technology in this Universe are limited. Natural laws, in the limit, do not change indefinitely.

Same family of vampires control the Space Elevator since it was build. And there is not much for us to do with it. Astronomic distances are, well, you know. No other planet with intelligent life for a very long distance. And, without inter-dimensional technology there is no way to travel or communicate faster than light in this Universe.

Out vampiric powers, and some things about our condition. All that is inter-dimensional technology. It is gifted to us, but no race generated from this Universe has permission to learn the principles of that science.

That’s a hard limit, to all intelligent races in this Universe.

Before a civilization approach the level of intelligence and knowledge needed to understand inter-dimensional tech those who dominate that technology erase this civilization from existence. Completely.

What is one reason why vampires are in no hurry to speed up the scientific advancement on Earth.

Human members of vampire families get the chance to study all that. Even visit some farms and touristic stations in orbit. There are universities up there, with teachers that came from other galaxies, and are not vampires but ephemeral people like you and me. Some humans, some not human at all.

All that will remain hidden from the wild humans until their civilizations develop the technology to mass produce inter-planetary vessels and space-stations similar to those places.

For the human cattle, the horizon is far more restrict. They are born and educated, to age and die for our family, in the same region. Often, in the same village.

Very rarely one of them gets the promotion to vampirism and became part of our family. Like you did, but with the advantage that they at least have some understanding about what our society is. Even if they know that for a different point of view.

We, the people my wife and I used to be, the humans in the family, we compare ourselves with the immortal core of our family, and with the vampires from other families. We have every reason to envy them. Of course. We also compare ourselves with human members of other families, some more other less important than ours.

However, we grow up playing with the cattle. Human children like us, but also not like us. Because we are “of the family” and they are not.

By the age of 15 about every noble boy in a vampire family has at least half a dozen bastards with cattle girls.

The young lassies who played with us since we can remember are all itching to have our dick inside them. Their aunts and mothers are all very accessible to us as well. Women seek power in men, their sexual desire is strongly connected to their fear and sense of vulnerability. We are terrible like gods to them, they know they must worship us, their husbands , fathers and brothers wound never dare to stare at us with rage when we anyone can see them. Say nothing about protest when they see one of us manhandling their women.

You don’t find much reluctancy from those women, really. As a noble boy looking for distractions in the human farms.

Must be somewhat frustrating for at least some among those men, who are our human cattle.

There is, of course, prosperity, security, stability. A level of medicine that wild humanity is far from achieve still. There is also the hope, small but real, to get promoted into vampirism.

Besides, unlike the wild human men under Feminist degenerated dogmatism, those men are the masters of their homes. Vampire families want their human cattle to procreate, and we have learned the best way to achieve that is to keep the world a dangerous place for human females. Give them no chance to live without constantly reaffirm their submission to their husbands.

When you don’t do that, married women stop having sex with their husbands, by default. Because that is how human biological program works. Females have sex because they feel they must appease a man and earn his favour. To survive and avoid his violent manifestations of disfavour.

Then, of course, we don’t allow our cattle any anti-conceptional.

As long as that system remains in place, birth rates stay as high as we can handle.

So, it is not a perfect life for anyone. Nevertheless, it has some good moments, for all people.

Grow in one of the wild human cities cannot be different from that, at this level, I presume. A collection of limitations, frustrations, bad and good moments.

Wouldn’t you agree, cousin Shark ?”

_Can’t you see, dear husband? You broke our adoptive cousin! He is a much lighter tone of grey, now.

_I saw that! I assume he is hungry.

_He became “hungry” like that in one second! The instant you entered the subject of “gender relations”, lover. That’s not how thirsty for blood usually works. We usually find it a lot more gradual, mind you. Mr Ernan, my lord husband.

_You do have a point, dear. I got distracted in the middle of the explanation. Thank you for notice. Our cousin need more time to digest all that.