So, it's 6:21 am, and I have yet to fall asleep. It's in these early hours of the morning that I find I start to be my most creative. It's as though the censored part of me went to bed hours ago, and the creative side has woken up. Juxtaposing this idea comes a thought about a different kind of vampire story.
I recently watched "Let the right one in" and was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. The vampire narrative has been told so many times, it's easy to find a story that fits each individual's taste. Whether you're a fan of "Blade", or "Bram Stoker's Dracula", perhaps "Daybreakers" or even "30 Days of Night" they all use the infamous vampire as their villain.
What if we were presented with a scenario where humans and vampires lived in harmony with one another. I'm not quite talking "True Blood" here, but rather something a bit more binary. Humans would have the run of the Earth for 12 hours a day, and for the other 12 we hand it over to the vampires. In fact, each home would house two families, one of vampire and the other of human. It would be a somewhat uneasy pact, as many people would find it uncomfortable going to bed knowing there was something undead living in your basement. Business, schools, libraries, all would switch hands at that 12 hour mark. The basis for this union would be that officials on both sides came to the conclusion that if you had a society that effectively never slept you could make boundless advances in medicine, science and art. Cures for cancer, AIDS, and a plethora of other diseases would be discovered with a work force that had doubled it's efforts. In return, the vampire populace would be given equal rights as citizens, and would be able to live their lives without fear of being hunted.
I'd prefer to avoid tired story lines of a group of vampires and humans breaking the rules and engaging in an all out war. That's been done, and it's really lame at this point. Rather, I'd like the story to play out perhaps a bit more bleakly. With diseases being abolished, the human population begins to inflate, somewhat. In a desperate act to even out the population, government officials allow for human volunteers to enter the vampire populace. Many are willing to sign up, of course, however the catch is that neither the humans nor the vampires in charge have any intent to convert these humans. That wouldn't balance out the population, just shift the weight in a different direction. The humans are corralled up into farms where they are harvested for their blood, in order to keep the vampire populace fed.
There's no silver lining, no plucky young hero to figure out the scheme and save the day. Instead it's a narrative about the sacrifices the powers that be are willing to make in order to keep the status quo. Often we have seen and read stories of government officials getting caught up in bureaucracy instead of doing what they say they will. This would be a sort of scathing look at an extreme example of governments willing to pass the buck if it means the rest of humanity can prosper.
I dunno, it's six in the morning, and if I don't get to sleep soon I might as well sign up for my fangs and greasy hair.
Just wondering what the Vampires would gain in a medical union with humans--once all human disease is gone, there would just be a different kind of vampire--instead of the undead we would have the Everliving. And who would they feed on, or vice-versa. Arthur C. Clark, where are you?
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