Inside the Box

(this was originally separated in 3 parts, I decided to mix them here since this is the preface to our setting Future chapters are likely to be less long than that one)

BEFORE THE COURTAINS OPEN

1

I understand your shock, more than you can imagine. Is impossible to conciliate some of the things you have experienced in the last couple of days with everything you though you new about reality. As if those 18 years you had lived inside some sort of video-game. Or urban-fantasy work of literature for “young adults”, what a despicable term by the way! Not the worse in that family of ideas, I suppose.

Well, almost 18 years. Your actual birthday is only tomorrow isn’t it? So, you have been my guest, and from that position you enjoyed the opportunity to watch a drop of our Society. From distance, as something unreal, like a play.

Few days from now, your position will change.

Our boys get that explanation in homeopathic doses, over years. Since you ended up lost, your parents gone, what remains of your family in chaos, this basic education was denied to you. It happens! My suggestion to you is this: do not worry about how true or false this is. You should find time to test the information I am about to give you, by yourself.

Pretend this is a movie, what I am telling you. Not your life, just something that happened with some fictional character. Makes things easy. I will not ask for your credit card number at the end, so, if this is a scam of any sort you can always walk away and tell the cops later.

Here it goes: the world you think you know. Is real.

There is no computer, no Evil Genius controlling everything. We art not brain matter floating in some pot of goo. Earth is a spheroid, like geography professors teach. The relative size of countries on the map you know is completely wrong, but any half decent geography professor you ever had tried to teach you that. Nothing secret about! There are electoral frauds, political coups, bribery in all level of politic, and in the three branches of every govern on Earth. On the same time, it’s not all corruption and theatre, many people believe what they are doing, take their jobs seriously, etc. Basically, the world a realistic and a bit cynical person takes as its working hypothesis by default.

That is real, is just not the entirety of what you must take on account as your reality. From now on.

Earth is a farm, or, ratter a “wild-life reservation” of sorts. Not exactly, but that’s the best image I have to give you for the moment. Life was, planted, here. Cultivated, and influenced.

This Universe is part of a closed “Pocket Reality System” of 7 universes. All identical in Astronomical scale. Each one has just a few dozen populated galaxies, not too many populated planets for galaxy, lots of “empty space” for comfort. What hast something to do with our minimalistic taste. Predominant in the community that I now consider as “real life”. Outside that Pocket of 7 universes.

Anyway, you cannot go there yet. You must learn a lot, mature considerably more, before earn that right. Places like Earth are cultivated primarily as “nurseries” of sort. People like your parents came here to raise their newborn children.

Our people, we do not age like the natives of places like Earth. We never decay, expend a few thousand years in places like this is not a problem for us.

We do not make those places safe, and we could. However, we don’t, because our people believe danger is necessary for grow, maturity cannot be achieved without it. Not every children survives long enough to reach the Initiation. And even adults like your parents are not entirely free from the risk of dying in places like that.

Is hard for the natives to kill one like me, but we can kill each other here. Our laws allow it, respected some limits.

There are 29 families, only. With access to those pocket dimensions. By accident, you would hardly ever met any other like you. Or me.

Unfortunately for you, there are ways to track us. Enemy families and rival branches inside the same family have the habit to hunt down and kill younglings and distracted adults in here. Since is practically impossible to do so outside Pocket Dimensions.

Outside the Pockets there is very strict rules and little tolerance for those who violate them. This is one reason why the young are kept in Pockets.

In here you can brake anything, kill anyone. The Society, our organization inside this Pocket, do not care about what you do with the natives. If you go too far, or disturb the parts of this world that are important to some other member of the Society, you may end up facing vengeance, or a duel to the ****. And, if you die, you die.

We, of course, have far superior resources and technology. Compared to the natives of any part of those limited universes we are deities. You will get access to that slowly and gradually. Starting after your Initiation, in a few days.

As I explained to you, I was your father’s friend. We met in this same Pocket, some time ago. Little more than two million years ago, actually. When we both still needed to conquer the right to leave the Pockets. He had been initiated couple of centuries before, I was still being prepared for my initiation. Good time! So, I intend to do my best to protect you here, and teach you the basic steps to unlock your natural powers.

Against other “aspirants” I cannot do much to protect you. As I mentioned, some limits must be respected. Even the parents of aspirants cannot shield them completely from the risk of being killed from their equals. Against adults like me, I am free to act. Still, there are certainly some men who are more dangerous than I am. We can only hope your father didn’t had too many enemies outside, among the 29 families.

Natives, as completely different situation. I will not always protect you against them, if you do something that puts you in risk, for stupidity.

However, aside that, you don’t need to worry about Earthling laws and authorities. We are above those things. Their means of enforce rules on each other are powerless against the most basic resources at my disposal. After initiation we usually start learning how to manipulate the natives, tame and educate them to please our whims. Without disturb too much their societies. There is no point in cause confusion.

This is not supposed to be a garden. The populated areas inside Pockets are ratter jungles. Cultivated on purpose, but left wild, because that way is the way that serves our purpose.

Attract fame, take control over nations and entire planets, is a recipe to attract attention. And conflicts that will lead to ****. Your ****, or the **** of those who accept the challenge. I recommend discretion.

Buy yourself time. The longer you can stay without cross the path of any other aspirant, better chance you have to be prepared for the possibility of fight, when the encounter happen.

What else I have to tell you?

The world outside, we are biologically like humans in origin. Our advantages, including the immortality, are product of technological improvement. That’s why you will find many humans in different parts here in the Pocket.

Society outside is heavily patriarchal, not gender egalitarian.

Here in the Pockets, there is less rigid hierarchy between aspirants. Like most things, that is by design. We wish to see our young develop cunning and personal valour without rigid limitations.

You aspirants can have children her, yes, sure. I advise you against it. Because you do not have the necessary strength and resources to protect a family here. Against other aspirants, or members of other families. And try to have children as an aspirant is one of those behaviours that attract attention, looks like a challenge to other families. Insult to other branches of your family, although, in your case that is less serious problem. There is little of your family still alive.

I believe that is wall, for the moment.

Take your time, no one expects you to digest all that information today.

Just have most of it shewed and swallowed before the day of your Initiation arrives. Because that is a Ritual of Passage, and as any good ritual of that sort it involves some chance of **** in the unhappy circumstance of failing. Otherwise, no pressure.

2

Alexander grew up in a small orphanage, one among 200 boys and girls kept fed, dressed, and educated thanks to the charity of some good Cristian souls. The administrators and the supervisors showed kindness and there was no shortage of love. Only when he was around 12 was that the boy started realizing his luck.

In a society where institutions kept by the govern are plagued by misery and corruption. In a economy where many families end up living in the streets, in complete misery. He had a comfortable bed, good food, friends to play with, and a education of such quality that few private schools in the city could match. Being an orphan, without family or chance of adoption, was certainly sad, and frustrating. Nevertheless, under this contingency, his life was much better than it could have been.

His future seemed limited, until he realize the benefactors who sustained this institution and others like that used those places to recruit loyal workers for their companies and houses.

It was not feudalism, he certainly could leave when he reached 18. Join the military, perhaps. No family, no references, no contacts of any kind outside those provided by the institution where he grew up. Start a live would not be easy, but was possible. However, why should he reject the path of less resistance in this case?

He when to work in a restaurant, when he made 14. As apprentice. Still living in the orphanage.

Was not hard to understand there was something unusual about the business. Some connection with organized crime, mafia, anything like that. Alexander knew older people from the house who had started their lives in the more secretive and risky side of the business. More money, more opportunity for fast growing. The **** and the adventure where implied. He opted for a more conventional path.

He met Marcy, a normal girl from that larger world, the “normal” world. She had a mother, two sisters, her father was a policeman who died six months after they met. That made Alexander even more sure that stay away from the shady side of business was the right choice.

They had plans to move together. She would go to college, he would keep working, they would build a family.

However, the day he made 16 she ended everything. She said she needed time to study, focus. Her sister told him different. She said Marcy had met someone else, in a group of rich people. A girls three years older than him, who grew up in the orphanage. Silvia, confirmed that she was seeing Marcy in places where those rich boys go. Silvia was a prostitute now, Marcy, was the ‘pet’ of someone.

Lose the chance to be part of Marcy’s family, be in that home, was almost worse than lose the love of his life.

Alexander was devastated, but life goes on! Work, study, cry in your free time. “Depression is a luxury for those who can afford it”, he would tell himself those days.

Silvia asked if he wanted to lose his virginity with her. Since the plan he had waited for was Marcy, and that ship had sailed.

Funny, that was what precipitated everything.

He went to see Silvia after work, had to stay out all night because one cannot enter the orphanage after 18h. Rules of the house. Silvia said, “no problem” she was free that night, he could stay in her place. She didn’t promise to let him sleep, but he could sure stay.

Just Silva was not alone. Halime was there. He didn’t recognized the girl, never saw her before, but clearly was someone from high above. Silvia was playful, but there was fear in her deference towards the small Asiatic girl. Her, posture, was of owner, not friend. They walked in her limousine, the amazingly gorgeous girl giving commands that Alexander obeyed to be diplomatic, but Silvia seemed to obey by compulsion. As if she wasn’t in her right state of mind.

Alexander assumed ****, until he saw differently. That was the moment when he Alexander learned that vampires exist in real life.

Halime showed her fangs, and buried them in the breast of Silvia. When he tried to stop her, she jumped on him. And his resistance to her commands to stop struggling surprised the girl.

She was stronger than him, stronger than any human. His fight was useless.

His blood was taken, but it burned the vampire girl. She was in pain, fighting to breath, trying to speak. To ask, “what are you?”.

Somehow, Alexander escaped from that car.

To live in fear and paranoia from the week. Until that question was answered to him. “We call ourselves The Society” said the man, who had a face that suggested 20 years. With manners that somehow failed to match that suggestion.

This man said his name was Victor.

Victor’s ancestors had been humans, long time ago, in another Universe. The details would have to wait, but Alexander was not human. He was one of them.

His people would protect him from mobsters and from vampires, for the following months at least. Victor could not stay. He had business elsewhere. However, he would leave someone in charge of this situation. To give Alexander the necessary guidance, and protection, since this situation was urgent.

Dra Yolanda Lione, lawyer and psychiatrist, was the person assigned to be his “preceptor” and guide him in this process of preparation to join a society that was apparently more secret than the mafia. And capable to provide protection against vampires.

Yolanda opened the door to those mysteries as gradually and as gently as the **** line given to her allowed.

The people, Alexander’s parents, their ancestors evolved immortality, technology to travel between realities, mixed all into cyborg implants and genetic manipulation in such an **** fashion that now they are something else.

Now they join in groups of noble families like The Society. Create Universes closed only for the members of the group. With a few Universes inside each. And cultivate planets with life, in some galaxies of each universe. Just to evolve people, societies, and grow their children in those places.

Places, like Planet Earth.

This was strange, and hard to believe. After the Initiation, supposedly, Alexander would expend a long time without aging. To choose what age he wanted to look like, once he graduated in some future moment of his education.

About vampires, other beings of myths, spaceships and portals between Universes, most of those things Dra Yollanda would not clarify. Not until he had learned the basic.

He was not going back to the orphanage, and he could not leave the gated community to go back to the restaurant. She promised to send someone, to check if Silvia had survived that terrible night. And how she was, if she didn’t died. However, discretion was necessary. “No one wants to risk a war against vampires”, said the doctor.

Was a trick to keep his attention, and better administrate the situation.

In reality, she had already contacted the local vampires using the authority delegated by Victor.

Yolanda was only organizing the information in the less disturbing sequence possible.

The “elves”, Alexander kin. Their children are free to kill, should learn to dominate the natives, can fight and even kill each other inside those Pocket Universes. Can die, for good.

Because this people, those “space elves” or “Elder Gods”, believe maturity only develops from making irreversible decisions, and suffering the consequences. In their adult society there is too many laws, and no real risk of ****. No ground for **** between citizens of their astronomically large civilization.

The Pockets are those wilds, dangerous, places. Where children survive and grow, or die. And adults may use to settle their differences, even killing each other, if comes to that. They are allowed to do so in places like that.

“Your parents, they died in a ambush, motivated by conflict between families. Your family is almost completely extinct. What is left of it, is a mess. However, you need to grow and develop here before you can earn the right to leave the Pocket and join our actual society.” Said Victor, when he finally came back.

In the party before the Initiation, Alexander finally saw Silvia again. Alive and well. Not just her, but also Halime. Marcy was there too, along with 3 of her rich “girlfriends” and the vampire mistress who owned them. All those girls were naked, except for collars. Leather for the human girls, iron for the vampires.

Other naked girls in the party, wearing leather collars, served the guests. Those, waited in their knees, silently.

There was other women in this party, wearing beautiful night dresses. Almost all of then had collars around their necks.

By this point Alexander knew, those who had no collars where members of The Society. People, from his specie. Those wearing collars, were slaves.

Alexander came closer, moved by curiosity. And confirmed. All collars around the necks of those girls waiting for his inspection, had his name written on them.

_Old, self-evident, tradition. No reason to not use it here. Since that is a traditional ceremony, after all. Older than this Universe where we are, as a matter of fact. Say nothing about this planet.

Was not Victor who said that. Was Dra Yolanda.

The woman was wearing a silver collar. But the name on that collar was Victor, not Alexandre.

You cannot have all them! commented the space elf, playful.

But, next morning Yolanda was waiting for him on the armchair, in his living room. No collar around her neck.

Victor was gone, no longer on Planet Earth. He was alone.

As Yolanda explained, the girls given to him here his **** property by the laws of The Society, but they were not under his power. Right now, he had no effective power over anything, or anyone.

That’s how parents leave their children, after Initiation. Victor, had done the same to him, despite not being his blood relative.

Money was not a problem, for the moment. And she was here to share information with him, contacts, advice. She could keep administrating his affairs for now. Their relationship would not change.

Alexander asked for a moment of excuse, walked back to his room. In the vault, he found a silver collar, with the name “Alexander” on it. And a list of his ****-girls, including his preceptor, who was waiting for him in the living room.

“They are your ****-property by the laws of The Society, but they are not under your power right now. If you want them under your power, you must take them, impose your will and tame them. You have the power to do that, they have no chance to success if they try escape or fight you, and no one will help them. If you are determined, and if you use the tools at your disposal well enough.”

Or he could, of course forget all that. Reject her proposal, go back to the plan of build for himself a normal life. Just now, that would be an ageless one.

Still, on the other hand, he could accept her offer. And live in luxury, just ignoring the ominous alien aspect of this situation.

However, any solution that didn’t involved follow the instructions to learn how to develop his powers of domination, would probably end in his dead. When some other, better prepared, aspirant to full membership in The Society decided to pay him a visit.

3

When Alexander started considering things, after the night of his Initiation in The Society, he realized that being an aspirant fresh from the Initiation was a lot like being a newborn baby. This huge world around you don’t is confuse and makes no sense.

You have the potential to develop powers beyond your comprehension but any significant improvement will take so long that is impossible for you to imagine. There is one important difference, however. Human babies when they are newborns are supposed to be protected and surrounded by comfort and, if possible, love. All the time.

His environment since his preparation for Initiation stated had been more elegant and luxurious than anything he had ever hoped to have. Now that he was Initiated, The house given to him was even more luxurious. This was far more comfort than he ever dreamed..

Love, on the contrary, was our of the table now. For the foreseeable future. Possibly, forever.

First lesson he had to swallow, first bitter pill, was that. Love is for females, only. Exclusively.

Well, women and small children.

Men in his world can give it, when they feel like, but must know they will never have any reciprocity.

Not in this world, at least.

Maybe much latter, when they graduate beyond aspirants, form a connection outside, with a wife. Who knows? No one actually promised that possibility in so many words. That’s just something he though would be logical. His mother must have loved his father, right? That’s, too distant and unreal now. More than one thousand years distant in his possible future.

His feelings, whatever they are, cannot unbalance his actions.

His relation with people in this world from now own must be calculative, strategic. He shall take, control, make himself the owner of those he desire. That is the path to develop the powers inherited from his parents. Awakened by the Initiation. A path he must learn to survive. Difficult for men like him.

Until he is ready to start that path, he must get used with solitude.

Some things he can practice alone. Mental and physical exercises. Is not the best way to grow, but is better than nothing.

Alexander must learn to live without love, not hunger for it, not let himself forget any appearance of it directed towards him is an illusion, and a trap. Because another thing babies are supposed to have, and he cannot count with, is safety.

Not all aspirants will live until graduation.

They are not supposed to allow their equals to live, if they have a chance to kill the. Unless the other aspirant happens to be from their family, and not a rival too important inside the family.

What in his case, was specially unlikely. His family was almost all extinct.

Women can be loved, when they are owned, and collared in slavery. He can let other aspirants live, if they are women and he manages to defeat them. **** them. Even women who are free, can still be allowed to live, maybe. No one was as direct and clear about that as they were about the need to kill his male rivals.

He has no idea about how to do any of that, anyway. Kill or **** other aspirants. Unfortunately, the Initiation serves to make public the existence of a new aspirant to The Society on planet Earth. And other aspirants had the benefit of a lifetime being instructed by their parents.

Older aspirants, who know how the game is played, will be looking for him. He is not ready to fight for his life yet. His first fight would be the last if it happened now.

Time is a luxury he don’t have, despite being ageless. The irony is almost funny, since as a mere mortal human he had decades ahead, before realistically need to think about dying from old age. Avoiding the dangers of criminal life, not taking unnecessary risks, dying should be the last concern in his mind for a long time.

No one should be trying to kill him, specifically his person.

His people created the vampires and other mythic beings. As tools for practice, so their new generations can learn and sharp themselves without bring conflict and chaos in their society. Outside the nurseries, **** between people was unacceptable.

Here, vampires are expected to try destroy, ****, or kill aspirants.

His people left more than just the supernatural beings on planets like Earth. Life in this Universe was conjured and guided here. The contrast in power between an adult Altrian, who has been in their Universe, and anything else in the Pockets, is too **** to be mentioned.

Altrian aspirants, the children of their specie: different matter!

On purpose, they leave those relatively ignorant and relatively defenceless young alone. To figure out life by themselves. “That’s me” Alexander could not fail to notice.

Between the ages of 16 and 26, depending on the native society where they have educated the aspirant, the aspirants are abandoned. In a primitive local society. To live among ephemeral humans. And this fauna of things shaped to have chance to actually kill them.

The young Altrian must learn to expand their capacity and figure out their heritage by themselves. Survive the older aspirants. Learn to kill without hesitation and outgrow any remorse. For the exercise and experience. And additionally, they can take whatever gifts the parents of their defeated foes may have left for them.

The aspirant has a long way to go, over a thousand years of experience to accumulate, before the right time comes to open the door into his people’s adult civilization.

After that, one day they will likely leave the Pocket Dimension. So, they can build a life in civilization and give back to their families the amazing gifts they have received. Show their gratitude. Probably. And one day, come back.

To have their own children, raise them for a couple decades, and leave them behind.

Hopping those children will survive their development and contact them once they find their way out the Pocket Dimension. “Circle of Life” bullshit, except for the fact that Altrian adults are almost truly immortal. Save for suicide and ****. And murders practically never happen outside Pockets like this.

Intellectually, Alexander had to admit, the system didn’t sound absurd for him. He was unable to deny the elegant logic behind it.

From inside the system this same elegance was feeling like the most messed up catastrophe he had ever contemplated. He could die! All that potential, endless time ahead, would be gone for good, in the blink of the eye. The multiverse would go on without him.

Only person really committed with prevent his **** was he. Himself.

According to Victor’s letter, left with the documents in the vault, Alexander’s first challenge was Yolanda.

The woman who Alexander knew as Dra Yolanda. Person responsible to teach him most what he knew about The Society.

“The ****-collars we use are more than symbolic fashion elements. Symbolism has its importance, you should not underestimate it, but those collars are instruments of discipline and control. Made with technology beyond anything you will find on Earth, among humans or hidden subcultures. Locked in this collar the **** cannot lie or betray you.

You will one day have natural powers of compulsion, far more effective than this. What ****-collars like that give you is an imitation of our developed nature.

However, the collars cause collateral effects. They make the mind of the **** weaker, if used for more than six hours in a day. Permanent use can cause irreversible damage, and in the case of Yolanda, her main utility for you is her knowledge and intelligence. If I was you, I would not want to overuse the collar on her.

Albeit, not to use it, or under use it, are also dangerous options.

Knowing the woman as I know, I can tell you without hesitation. She will not submit to you willingly, initially. Without braking her will, you will never have her loyalty.

She will offer it to you, of course, in ground of mutual respect and common interest. Adding a drop of insinuation of lewd seduction, if she feels the need to. If you fall, and trust that deal, she will only use you for her own interest. Worse part of it, is that eventually someone able to trap and **** her will do that, and since her mind will be hers, Yolanda will lose it to who does that. And the woman will become a knife close to your throat, in the hand of that enemy.

If you use the collar on her, but fail to use it properly, she will betray you even faster. For mere spite.

I have shaped the woman for centuries, on purpose, to be that puzzle. My intention was to give her to a different aspirant. Someone of my own blood. Plans need flexibility, and I am happy with the way things turned out in that regard.

Under risk of spoil your fun and make this too easy to you, I will tell you now what this is about. I fear you may not have time to figure out things by yourself, temperature is raising around you faster than I expected. Unfortunately. Once again, we must not insist in **** our plans to follow rigid structures when reality brings opportunities and risks different from those we hoped for.

By dealing with my former pet, Yolanda, you should learn that women and men are different. In mind, perhaps even more drastically than they are in body.

Love is a product exclusively generated by the minds of men.

We love nations, institutions, something larger than ourselves, preferably. But we can also love people.

We must administrate that potential carefully, in all cases, because love is a self-destructive mechanism and ultimately leads to starvation. Due to its contemplative bias. That is, by the way, what makes Love easy to distinguish from anything natural of female mind.

One manifestation that makes this peculiar difference between men and women evident is the fact that we by natural impulse do not care in the slightlest for how much social status a woman has, when we are in love. No man feels shamed for being seem with a waitress or a house-cleaner, or a prostitute, who is gorgeous. Or pride and satisfaction for being with a Chief of State or a genius scientist, who is ugly like a sketch of Hell’s map. We may pretend we care, and we learn to pretend we care convincingly if we must, nevertheless it is a language we always speak with accent.

The one thing we naturally value in a woman is beauty. And that is self-defeating. Because beauty is short-lived among ephemerals.

And also, beauty is useless.

Object of contemplation. Something we fight to protect and keep safe. Like we fight for our family, for our nation, for our deities. Just because they exit and are connected to us. Even when they do noting for us to reciprocate our love.

That is a flawed nature, and we must not be romantic about the meaning of “nature”, it hardly means anything good unless we learn how to capture and tame it. We need to learn to be calculative in your relations with people, and avoid treating them as object of devotion and contemplation.

The one thing we can do with nature that is worse than romanticize it, is pretend it does not influence us.

Women never love.

As proven for the fact that they naturally value status, power. Things that unlike beauty are not for contemplation. Are means to an end, external to them.

The most intelligent women learn how to hide the fact that they are impermeable to love so well that becomes impossible to notice it in mere conversation. They hide it from other people, mostly from men, not from themselves. They are fully aware of how they feel, Yolanda certainly is. Inferior, stupid and emotionally retarded women, are different. Those do hide the fact that they do not love anyone or anything, hide it even from themselves. Most women are between such extremes, and if you pay attention, you will notice this basic fact: all their relationships are calculative.

We need to learn, what is their primary instinct.

They test, tease, betray or stay loyal, in self-interest. For safety, for raise their position in life, always for something external to the object of their interest. Never for mere contemplative devotion. Not when they are free.

Even do things that in surface seem extremely self-destructive. Selfless and generous. If we open their minds and study what is inside, the mechanism has nothing of self-destructive contemplation.

Women are purely self-interested, calculative.

Oh, the mechanist is not that simple! For one reason.

That “self” orbits in large portion around the need of reproduction. Leave children from their womb who will survive and thrive. It is essential to all women. Regardless of the individual, and personal, decision to never have children. Accidental circumstances and biography do not change the structure of the mind. The structure never realized the exception.

No woman is a patriot or a true believer, many act that role better than any man. Or almost any man. But when they do that, what is moving them is still a calculated bond.

I had sons and daughters, have a daughter growing up in the Pocket right now, and that conversation was amazingly easy with the girls. Compared to what it is with the boys. Even considering my sons received proper education while growing up.

Still, women’s nature is as flawed as ours is, the weak spots are just in different parts of the mental structure.

What is important to you, in the present, is this: you need Yolanda.

She is for the moment your only access to the resources and contacts you need to develop what has to be developed. If you will have chance to survive your first decade after Initiation.

If she remains free she will remain a weapon against you, waiting to be found and used.

Not just by other aspirants. Any low vampire with ambition, even a human criminal with luck and a little of privileged information, may end up capturing her obedience. Trapping her calculative mind with some carrots, and/or whip slashes. To be safe now what you need to do is destroy her freedom.

Any plans she has, must be erased. Any vulnerabilities she has being cultivating for her own interest under my intentional lenience, you must map and control. All her freedom, self-interest, and escape route, you must crush without mercy.

Be the only one planning her life. She will know what waits for her only when you decide its time to tell her. She must learn you are absolute in her life. Your whim ends all calculations, and her cunning only serves to please you. In short, you must be to her what I was until days ago.

Only then you will be able to safely depend on her. Because betray you will be impossible.

What she wants, irrelevant.

So, I just gave you the right answer for this exercise. Here you have it. All you have to do is deduce the steps needed to reach that answer. Then, write the equation, one step at the time. Calmly, in your own time. As long as you finish before anyone seriously dangerous find you.

I wish you well, aspirant Alexander !”

Was not the most optimistic prospect, as far as Alexander could understand it.

A clear manual, with schematics, would be preferable to all that psychologistic nonsense. Philosophy is good distraction when you have time and beers to kill, less welcome when your survival is literally under risk. “**** looks prettier as a metaphor”, as far as Alexander was concerned.

Therefore, he decided to keep his options open. Left the silver collar inside the vault, and walked out the room to look for common ground with Dra Yolanda.

What do you think should be my next step, now? he asked. Starting conversation.

_Halime, the vampire who tried to drink your blood believing you where just human. She is your most immediate problem. Vampires can be dangerous, she was humiliated, and furious. She cannot take vengeance against Victor, of course, so she will settle for you. There was other 22 vamp girls in the harem given to you by Victor. They know little to nothing about The Society but they understand now their fate is to end up reduced to slavery at your feet unless they destroy you first. Unfortunately, you are not ready to deal with any vampire. So, first thing to keep in mind is this: we cannot leave this house during the night. Here, we are safe. During the day, we don’t know how long will take for her to find you,

_Vampires cannot walk around during the day, that is part of how my people designed them, to keep them ****, I suppose. What else can you tell me?

_They are usually above human mobsters, both shady and completely organized-crime kinds of mafia. Who are by their turn above human governs in actual decision power, generally speaking. Vampires can potentially live for dozens of thousands of years, and instead of die from old age they turn into mummified stone statuesque things. The Society has means to revive them, and keep them “young”, of course, like they can do to any animal, humans included. To any living thing, really.

_Is that what they did to you? Are you, human. In origin.

_Let’s not talk about me. If you don’t mind, I would ratter keep my privacy. Since Master Victor didn’t shared this information with you.

_Alright, fair enough.

_Before you can think about plotting against vampires, and hunting your 3 vamp lassies down. To tame them. You need to start by some less challenging target. Marcy and Silvia are the most obvious choices, of course. However, I imagine Halime will have her human soldiers watching them to ambush you. So, instead of walk in that trap you should start with something safer. Learn how to fight, maybe. How to use your mind to manipulate the perception of others. If you agree, we can start after lunch. I make the necessary contacts, and organize the text you will need to read to speed up the practice as much as possible. Without hurt yourself, more than necessary.

_Yes, let’s do that. No one wants to be hurt more than necessary.