There is a somewhat lowerclass suburb in the Nexus, anonymous in it's blandness. It is one of the more proletariat suburbs, providing living quarters for workers involved in factories in the industrial third of the 'burb. A small, but present number of them commute to jobs in a neighbouring trading center as clerks, labourers and receptionists. Construction is a mixture of styles, but none older than a hundred and fifty years. Bungalows and modest villas share space with Spanish Mission and modern weatherboard-clad buildings. Corrugated iron is the predominant roofing material, with tiles used on the more wellkept properties and ex-government houses. Most of the grounds are composed of comfortably long grass, and the odd patch of overgrown flowers. As one gets further away from the eastern side of the suburb, the property values decrease, tapering off to low class wooden buildings facing a sand dune swept beach. A couple of rusting car bodies can be seen, half submerged in the sand particles. In the middle of the suburb, there is a collection of shops and a petrol station. A dairy, several secondhand shops, the local public house and inn, and a closed up bakery. Three fish and chip shops look to be doing well, by the amount of people patronising them in the grey halftime between night and day. It is now winter; the night comes early and fast. A few groups of men pull up to the pub, some cycling, some carpooling, a couple on motorbikes. Four walk. There is a cheap jukebox in the corner of the pub, volume just over the comfortable level, yet not loud enough to coerce someone to alter it. The bar seals the northern wall with faded panelling, sparsely wallpapered with posters advertising Tui beer. Five small to medium round tables dot the room, cheap chairs surrounding them. Two pool tables hold court in the southern half of the room. Two lights in the main portion of the room illuminate it, with two larger lamps overhanging the pool tables. Three of the tables are scattered in the middle of the room, while two are in the outskirts, shadowed. Three or four groups are immediately obvious to the casual observer. The first is the tradesmen and meatworkers, playing pool and relaxing with a beer after a hard days yacker. The second is the unemployed, celebrating at the bar a the win over another small dimension of Nexus in the cricket. If their team had lost, they would be consoling themselves with alcoholic celldeath. The third group are a strange collection of men, varied in their backgrounds. Their demeanor is quiet, and draws in some from the other groups. They are talking over one of the larger tables. The fourth group is not so much a group, as a category. A nineteen year old, barely legal, is quietly writing an assignment. A twenty five year old is doing similar work, as is an old retired serviceman, studying a book while waiting for his old friends. The nineteen year old merits closer observation, due to his uniqueness in this group of people as a whole. Often, much can be learnt from exceptions to the rule rather than from the normal. He is obviously fairly pureblooded European stock, due to his most pale skin, and the textbooks he refers to in the dark corner of the room bear strange titles. Two of the seven are in english; the rest are in an unknown tongue. A wellthumbed copy of a King James Bible, and a book on ancient Arab linguistics. Three other of the tomes are in flowing Arabic, and the remaining two are in a sharp, runic script reminiscent of Nihongo and Tengwar. He looks up as a man enters the bar, then turns away once seeing it is not the man he is looking for. The youth gets up to buy two cans of beer, then sits back to his reading. He puts one can by his feet for later, and returns to his studies. Another man walks into the large room. Seeing that it is the man he is waiting for, the youth rises, waving at the man who hurries over. The young man carefully puts his papers away in a backpack. He looks at the newcomer calmly. The new man is tall, with a grey two piece suit and tie sharply accentuated by his tidy black hair. Unusually, it shows no use of gel or mousse to create the neat arrangement of hair. He carries a brown leather briefcase, and has a blue pen peeking out from his top left pocket in his jacket. "Tim 'Chaos Demon' Smith?", the older man asks with a wry grin. His eyes smile, unimpeded by glasses. Tim frowns. This is hidden by his fringe of hair somewhat, but is still evident. "Don't call me that in public. How did you find that?" The man sits down uninvited. "I'm Justin Walker. I'm a representative of Black Comet Incorporated. We want to hire you for your language and translational skills." The frown deepens into a scowl as Tim gives him the second can of Tui. "Why should I? I'm close to cracking the strange language in a couple of books I found in a moldering library somewhere. Once published, I could get a better job." Walker smiles again. This time, it is evident that the smile is trained, and he does not feel completely happy. "Trust us, what we have for you will blow your mind and set you up for life. It is one of the oldest artifacts known to us. It's age has been verified by five independant infor-- ag-- sources." Tim sighs, lightening his facial expression to a worried look, and hunching his shoulders. "There are lots of people more qualified. Why aren't you asking them?" Walker snorts cynically, appearing disdainful for a moment of the more famous translators. "They couldn't handle it's contents, or it's implications. We also have to retrieve it from it's current location, and we couldn't get them to do it." Tim Smith pounces on this. "Soooo.... I have you over a barrel. Where is it at the moment? Why am I mentally able to do it?" Walker's control is loosening. His smile loses it's intensity. "It's in a pocket dimension. The current custodian of it will only allow the person who takes it to read it. We'll pay you anything you like. Hazard pay for this type of mission is typically twenty million double dollars. "As for the contents... well, you're able to associate with the vampires sitting quietly over there, and the werewolf playing pool over there. The supernatural will play a part." Tim looks up at this. "I'll assume you know not to blab that information everywhere. What type of time does it have, relative to this one? I do know about these sorts of things." Walker frowns again, this time more deeply. "Time flows backwards in this pocket at an approximate rate of one to twenty." A deep sigh expands and collapses Tim's chest. "I'll do it for triple hazard and five million double dollars if the time required exceeds the estimate." Walker nods quickly, penning the details of the contract down on a prepared paper. He passes it to Tim, who scans it and signs. "Oh, and by the way?", he asks. "Yes?", Walker replies. "I'd advise you to forget the titles of my books. You're having enough trouble with finances at the moment." Walker looks up sharply. He had noticed the titles of two of the arabic books, due to the merits of travelling extensively for the Corporation. They were enough to render Tim Smith incommunicate in fifteen countries, if not more. But... he had a wife and three girls to support. "What books? Here are some more papers on where to report when for departure and final details. Here are more details." Walker got up as fast as he could, and not be rude. He rushed out of the bar, leaving his blue Bic pen behind in his haste. Tim sighed, putting away the sheaf of papers on the new job and contract carbon, and got out his notes. Smith idly notes one of the female vamps going into the female toilet with one of the pool players. Not the werewolf; they say that type tastes somewhat earthy. Not that Tim would know, him not being a vampire. He absently notes down the names of the two in a small notebook, trusting the female to not kill the man. Living in this suburb, the pool player most likely knows what he is getting into. A small group of people enjoy donating blood, enjoy the natural endorphins that the 'kiss' transfers. A small, but constant number of them accidentally become vampires through prolonged blood sucking. A tall man from the third group wanders over to Tim's table, politely standing until Tim invites him to sit down. He appears to be in his late twenties, but given his unusual paleness, he is almost certainly older than that. "May I sit with you? I could not help but hear some words from your conversation", the half-Maori vampire says. Tim gestures for him to sit. "This information is free, my friend, since you are a regular here at this public house. I believe I know of the text that Black Comet is after. It's custodian is an ancient scientist, and I know of at least one other corporation that is after it. The other company is known for taking what they want by force if necessary." Tim slowly nodded, absorbing the information. "Wish I'd known that. I could've bargained for more pay. Is it worth it?" The vampire nodded, grinning. It was most unusual for a vampire to grin, as it showed the vampires fangs most prominently as a giveaway. "Absolutely, friend. But take a interdimensional beacon with you, as you will most likely need it." Tim Smith nodded again, more thoughtfully this time. "What about scavs, slavers, pirates?" "They won't be a problem to you." ---------------- Two weeks later, Smith was in a car getting a ride to a train in a nearby reality. He was getting a lift off the werewolf from the pub, Dantoni. (It was moderately hard to get to know supernatural types, but once you knew one, they invariably introduced you to others, initiating you into an underground society that opened doors in the most unusual of places. Good people.) The car was a rattly-bang Ford Escort 1.6Litre Sport. Dantoni, a biker by nature, tended to ignore his car in favour of his Suzuki. Tim was thankful he didn't have a backpack to store his papers in, or he'd be hanging on by his fingernails for grim death on the back of the insanely overpowered Suzuki motorbike. "Now, Teach, once you're done and you want a lift back, just ring one of us", Dantoni instructed. The local supernatural group called Tim 'Teach' in reference to his intensive booklearning, not un-normal when one knew vampires but unusual in it's intensity. "The same goes if you strike any trouble from this other lot who're after the same thing as you." Smith nodded, trusting that Danny would notice. He coughed at the cigarette smoke. "Thanks for the ride and all, but you wanta open your window a fraction to let the smoke out?" Dantoni blinked. "Sorry, forgot you couldn't regenerate or ignore it." He wound his window down with a pair of adjustable pliers. "And here we are, man!" the werewolf cheerfully announced. He handbraked the Ford, spinning the car about the front so that he ended up facing the way he came. Tim got out, picking up his backpack of clothes and his satchel of papers and small text books. "Thanks for the ride, Dan." Dantoni shook his head. "Noooot a problem. Laters!" Tim waved as the 'wolf drove off... spiritedly, dodging a screaming eighty year old lady. He belted his black denim duster, looking around for Walker. The unnatural hair and grey suit stood out in the pocked and shattered carpark. Tim moved towards him, attracting the man's attention. "So, you're ready, my friend?" Tim shrugged. "As ready as I'll ever be." Walker nodded animatedly, smile fixed. "Let's be off, then." Walker moved to the train station, getting in the #2 after showing the conductor a double ticket for himself and Smith. Tim obediently followed, pausing to enjoy the lines of the steam locomotive. The station was in a Victorian reality, and was rather prestigious in it's community. Tim didn't know why they hadn't maintained the carpark to the same high standard. Once inside the train, Tim sat down, pulling his duster about himself and warming his fingerless-glove clad hands by chafing them together, then crossing his arms and pressing them against his sides. The blackhaired nineteen year old looked out blearily at the sunrise, appreciating the red and orange art in the skies. He yawned, pulling the curtains shut for the modestly sized cabin and nodding off to sleep. Walker, he noticed, had left for... he said... drinks... --------------- Dimensional travel has long been trivial -- one simply finds a nearby wormhole, or locates the edge of one's reality. This is often what people use in the majority of borders in the Nexus. Some realities cast constrictions on what the entrant may utilize, or appear to be, but nevertheless no special abilities or equipment is required. There are, however, those who like their privacy and solitude. They isolate themselves, maintaining small patches of separate realities for their own. Some experiment. Some hedonize shamelessly. Regardless, people may not enter these dimensions without the permission of the occupants, or the owner. It is possible to enter without this permission, but the would-be entrant must possess intricate magic, or powerful science to break down the walls imposed. This is therefore an alluring site for scientists. It is possible to create a dimension, given a sun to drain, and once created, the dimension is self sustaining. In the process of creating, it is possible to control the physical properties, relative timescale and the security of the pocket dimension /exactly/. The only obstacle to this is amassing the energy required, and equipment heavy duty enough to handle the immense power. Interdimensional corporations typically only have four or five pocket dimensions for research and development. Only six banks throughout the Nexus have pocket dimensional vaults, immeasurably secure from theft. Once one has a pocket dimension, one is typically 'made'. A typical dimensional safeguard cracking unit requires a formidable bank of nuclear fusion reactors, aligned particle accelerators, and precise positioning to the link to the pocket at the point of connection in the home dimension from where one is travelling. As the funds availible increase, the size of the equipment lessens. To crack a pocket dimension with tissue paper walls requires a formidable amount of money. As the security of the target increases, the money required increases in a roughly linear manner. Obviously, once one has broken into the said pocket, one has extremely hostile, extremely wealthy marks after one's life and new possessions. Which explains the heavy sigh of relief on 'Chaos Demon's part upon learning that he was /invited/, not part of an illegitemat dimension cracking team. Tim got up from his train seat bed, feeling his foot complain bitterly of being twisted to fit into the narrow makeshift bed. Walker looked up in relief as two men in black suits walked into the room. They were obviously armed with handguns in under the armpit holsters. A pair of sunshades covered their eyes, matching their slicked back hair. One had a shoulder blade length ponytail. Tim felt his anxiety rise again at the sight of the bodyguards. An old man walked into the train wagon. He was dressed in a rich red bathrobe, with blue and white striped pajamas underneath. A pair of dark plaid slippers protected his feet, while his bald head was left to the elements. A fringe of white-grey hair ringed his head, so he would appear a daisy of types from the air. There was a pair of bronze metal framed reading glasses pushed against his eyes. Tim guessed him to be shortsighted. The old man rushed up to Tim, taking his right hand with both of his and shaking it animatedly. "A pleasure to meet you, sir! A pleasure!" Walker bowed slightly from the waist. "Mister Tim Smith, sir, the linguist. Mister Smith, this is Jonathon Floyd, CEO of Black Comet Incorporated." Jonathon Floyd sat down on the velvet padded train seat. "Take a seat boy, take a seat! Mister Walker has told you of the job we would like you to carry out for us?" Tim nodded, overwhelmed. "Yeah, a translating job for an artifact in an unknown language, currently in the possession of a person living in a pocket dimension who won't let anyone besides the person who takes it to read it." Floyd nodded excitedly. "Yes, you have it! Jessica is a good friend of mine, and she will take good care of you while you are living there! The artifact is an old set of journals that a very old mutual friend had. Unfortunately, he died recently, leaving us nothing as to what language his diaries he left to us were written in. The most decent chap you would ever meet, but rather absent minded. Mister Walker has settled payment with you to your satisfaction?" Tim nodded slowly. Jonathon Floyd hit a person with the force of his personality like a tsunami. "Yeah, he's been more than generous." Floyd clasped Tim's hands again. "If you do a good job for us, we'll be willing to keep you on, to hire you in whatever department you would like! Now, in the building near the train station here, Jessica has set up a portal to her dimension for us, and she eagerly awaits you and your knowledge of languages ancient and modern!" Tim decided to ask more about the contents of these diaries, since the old man knew the man who wrote them. "What are in these diaries?" The old CEO sat back in the train seat, tired all of a sudden. Tim presumed that it was from the chilly temperature, or from the humidity. "My old friend was involved in... shall we say, an adventurous life. There are a great many people who would like to know of his death, and pay their respects, but we don't know who they are. I also would like to read of his life and death. Once you are old, boy, you hold friends dear." Tim Smith nodded again, fully understanding now. "I would be more than happy to translate these diaries for you, Mister Floyd." Walker politely interrupted. "Shall we be off then?" Floyd looked up, then agreed. "Capital idea. Taylor, Reynolds, help me up would you?" Tim watched as the old man was helped up from the comfortable seat, then left the train for his old car. He idly noticed it was an old Jaguar. Walker indicated to him, and they left the train. They walked to the building, which was a small apricot painted concrete office building. ---------------- Once inside, Tim had expected a large room full of physics professors running around, fiddling with complex machinery. At the least, some impressive, high voltage arcs jagging from impressive brass spheres. Instead, the portal was a door on the wall. It stood out from the other doors due to the frame, colour and size. In a nod to popular myth, it had eldritch writings inscribed on the frame. Tim noted a pair of power cables snaking out from the door, looping around to power two sides of the frame. A thick cable bundle lounged in a notch cut in the doorframe, spewing a multitude of datacabling that tidily directed what Tim assumed were technical thingies hidden inside the carvings. The apricot painted walls presented it, the complexity overwhelming the paint's simplicity. Walker knocked three times on the door. Rather than opening, a small part at head height changed opacity until it was transparent, revealing a rather nice looking blonde woman. She looked to be twenty one, and had slightly imperfect facial features. Her hair was loosely tied back in a ponytail, some of it covering her glasses. Given her profession, Tim guessed her too to be short sighted. Her glasses were simple round lenses, held by the temples and by the nose part by a few holes drilled through the glass. She was wearing a tan pair of corduroy pants, a light blue T-shirt and a knee length labcoat, which was hanging open. A pair of orange rubber gloves hung out of her right hip pocket. She opened the door. "Mister Walker, and Doctor Smith, is it?," she said, smiling. Tim shook his head. "Just Tim Smith, sorry. I haven't got a doctorate or anything, I've just studied hard." She nodded agreeingly. "Well, a recommendation from me holds more weight in some places. I'm Jessica Tannin, by the way. Do you want to get started right away?" Tim shrugged. It combined with his facial expression rather well to give an impression of 'Sure, I suppose so.' "I guess so." "Okay, Doctor Tannin." She shook her head, frowning slightly. "Call me Jessy, please. I feel like a receptionist when someone calls me Jessica." Tim smirked slightly, remembering the old man from the train. "Lead on, MacDuff." The blonde raised an eyebrow. "And damned be him who first cries 'Enough!'?" She grinned dryly at Tim. "I hope for a better conclusion than that!" Chaos Demon followed her as she led the way. The pocket dimension was warm, and slightly dry in condition. Tim could hear a small waterfall in the distance, coming from where a small garden appeared to be. The landscape was part regimented flowerbeds and buildings, and part rambling hedges containing them. Jessy walked down a corridor of box thorn hedge, towards what Tim could see was a large, Gothic style building, flying buttresses holding the sides. A blackbird flew into a round hole near the top of the construction. Tim guessed it to be five stories high. The door to it was unlocked, but once inside Tim saw that it had strong steel strapping on the other side, with hefty steel bars on hand to stop it shut. Sunlight flooded through the large windows, trapping the air inside in a bone dry, warm preserve. It was hard to breathe shallowly. The main area had many freestanding shelves, books piled on them in no order that Tim could discern. In a moment of shock, Tim noticed clay slates, scrolls and lengths of knotted ropes stored on the shelves as well. Jessica went without hesitation to the other end of the building, where the second to last shelf was only half full, and the last one was completely empty. She picked out a series of tomes from the recent additions. They were two inches thich per volume, and numbered fifteen. As he scanned the titles, he found that they were written in seven different languages, ranging from pictograms to dense phonographical languages. "I'm sorry about the range, but Weiss lived a long time in many cultures and thought in many different languages," Jessica explained. She picked up half of the pile, gesturing at Tim to pick up the remainder. He followed her to a side room, which had an angled workbench framing the room. It sloped down from the wall, ending in a molding that prevented things from falling on the floor. She put down her pile, telling him to do likewise, and arranged the books in an order along one side of the room. Crouching down, she pointed out boxes of blank paper for Tim to work on. "There are bottles of ink over there, and a box of refillable fountain pens by them. Some ballpoint pens are there, and pencils are here," she pointed out. She pulled a tall stool from the middle of the room, leaving it at a blank space along the bench on the single wall that had a flat workbench. "I'll leave you to it! If you want me for anything, just sing out. I'll be researching in the main part of the Library. Lunchtime will be in about two hours, so I'll come for you then." ------------ Tim quickly settled into a routine. The mammoth Library had some sleeping rooms upstairs, and adjacent outbuildings housed a kitchen and dining room. He saw Jessica on a regular basis, but didn't speak much to the passionless scientist, who was often working on a project in her Biolabs. He heard strange moanings from it at night sometimes, but decorously ignored them. The blonde kept strict isolation orders on her Labs, citing dangerous organisms. Given the architectural theme throughout the complex, the kitchen was surprisingly modern. A large industrial freezer rimmed one wall with frost on cold days, while a replicator supplied cooking materia or meals. A sturdy, old looking microwave squatted on top of a counter in the middle of the room, powercord dangling from the ceiling. The overall theme for the kitchen, Tim concluded, was stone and steel, much like the theme for the Library was stone and wood. He wouldn't been surprised to have been told that the Labs were in stone and glass. He had been in the pocket dimension a month now, which roughly translated a bit more than a year and a half flowing the other way in the predominant Nexus timescale. If he were to return to the Suburb now, he would able to give himself tips on the best way to adjust to life in the supernatural suburb. While the idea tickled his fancy, it annoyed him. After a month and a half, he had translated three of the Journals. The first, which was Volume Ten, he had done due to the fact that it was a variant of K'r'pulz, and relatively common. It had contained a large amount of fascinating historical data, a detailed glimpse into the Neo Victorian era. The second volume translated was Volume Eleven, which had been written in an encoded form of the original K'r'pulz dialect. It was heavier going, but more rewarding in terms of contents. Eleven contained an incisive discourse and observations on the Bizkian Revolution that had laid to rest the corpse of the Neo-Victorian Era, and had preceded the Fifth Industrial Era. After translating these two volumes, he had decided to find just how old the author of the Journals had been, and to translate Volume One. At first, it had appeared to be an old version of written Mandarin, and had taken him awhile to find that it was, rather, a primitive version of Nihongo. Tim had no idea why the author had started his Journals in ancient China, but was by now willing to bet that the author had not been fully human, or any of the other predominant short-lived sentient species known in the Nexus. The First Volume was far less polished a work than Eleven and Ten had been, which added to Tim's theory that the same author had penned the series. The penmanship gradually changed across the fifteen Journals, until settling on an angular, runic script that had controlled arcs rather than just vee shapes that would indicate painful hands, or writing appendages. Fascinating. One quirk of the Journals was that the author was most interested in the sciences. His favourite science, it seemed, was the Biological Sciences. Many alchemical, chemical, physical and astronomical theories and observations were contained in the Journals. Tim was willing to bet that a great many of them, while not new, were definitely valuable. The remaining fraction were worth the price of the Crystal Waterfalls of Vr'yoth. If they were worth any less, Tim would happily let the vampires back home suck him dry and leave him for dead as a mercy killing. ------------- Five months after his first entry into the pocket dimension (approximately eight years and four months backwards in Conventional Nexus Timescale), the door to his comfortably warm workroom burst open, revealing a dishevelled Jessica Tannin with a metal briefcase in hand, and a flat two feet square temportal, which were available to CEO's and others with money to burn for a six cubic feet dimensional storage space. "Tim, we have to leave, /NOW/!," she ordered. Tim was focussed on the runic script of Journal Fourteen, until Jessica grabbed it and put it inside the temportal along with the other Journals. "HEY! What gives?," Tim asked, highly annoyed at his toy being taken away. "No time to explain, we have to get to the basement before /they/ get here...," Jessica not-explained, pulling the nineteen year old after herself. She pulled him to the front of the Library, where she enlisted his help in barring the heavy doors shut with the steel bars he had noticed on his first entry into the dimension five months ago. After sweating at them for five minutes, she pulled him to the other end of the massive Library, to a small wood bound in steel door that she locked after them. It had been shadowed in an unusually dark corner of the Library, and led to a narrow spiral staircase that went downwards. At the end of the staircase, which the two of them nearly rolled down more than once, was another small steel and wood door. It would be nigh-impossible to ram this door open in the extremely confined space of the staircase, and explosives to open it would bring down the staircase upon the would-be entrants heads. During all this time, Tim had been asking questions that Jessica had been ignoring. Now that they had a spare moment, he asked again. "What on earth is the problem, Jessy?" "Invaders, Tim. Five damned interdimensional corporations I refused to work for are cracking my dimension, and plan on taking and torturing me," Jessica explained, suddenly looking older than her physical twenty one year old body. Tim sighed, sitting on a crate of soupcans. "Is there anything we can do?" "Well, I can go into a hibernation mode, but you'd die after awhile without fresh air. I built this bolthole too well, it seems," Jessica said, self-derogatory. "I could use my new serum on you, but there would be some major side-effects and benefits." Tim looked up at this. "Where there is life, there is hope. What are these side-effects and benefits?" Jessica's pretty face smirked. "Funny you should say that old quote. I presume you've heard of the Undead? How vampires can live forever, if they're already old enough to regenerate enough? The corpse, how blood reanimates it?" Tim slowly nodded. "You know that I know that stuff, I used to live in a suburb that was full of Supernatural people. I even mowed lawns for a Banshee lady, who paid well too." "The serum that I've been working on for the last year or so? The noises you've heard from my Labs? I've been working on a retrovirus that will create a vampire, coauthoring it with a demon for supernatural abilities." Tim stared at her, dazed at her ambition. After awhile, he gathered together his wits. "Why? Why would you want to do that?" Jessica laughed a couple times, pushing her index fingers together and staring at them. "Well, I wanted to find a way to enhance people, make them physically and mentally better. I couldn't get enough power out of the human body, so I needed to find an external power source of some kind." "Well, tell me about the pros and cons, Doctor Tannin," Tim prompted. He didn't have anything against vampires, but he didn't like charging forwards blindly into the dark. "You could heal from any damage -- a lost limb would regrow, disease couldn't hurt you, fatal wounds would heal away to nothing. If you were dissolved in acid, for instance, you'd reform after awhile. Your average physical power would increase sharply. Mental faculties. Your memory would be vastly improved, you'd gain some extra sensory perception and power and your intellect would be raised a bit. That's the good part," Jessica explained, waiting for any questions. "Sounds good, Doctor. Immortality, effectively?," Tim asked, impressed. "I assume the healing is from the demon's contribution?" "Yes, the demon helped with the healing and some of the ESP. You'd be immortal, unless you could convince an angel to help you pass on." Tim was now impressed. "Sounds really good, now. What are the cons?" "You'd be dependant on blood drawn from an external source -- fresh blood, anything older than a month would be useless. If you didn't get any within a certain period, you'd go into hibernation mode, and your body would wither away similar to a very well preserved Egyptian mummy." Tim laughed. "You wouldn't be able to draw blood, if your body was like that." Jessica shook her head. "You wouldn't need to. The unusually dry skin pores would absorb any blood sprinkled on the body, needed a minimum of ten cubic centimeters to repair the body. You'd have a painful hunger for more blood upon regaining consciousness." Tim looked thoughtful, now. "I take it your body is different to normal humans?" Jessica paused, then laughed as she realised what he meant. "No, I'm not a vampire. My body can get by with very little blood, I'll just be very hungry. So, you going into hibernation would be okay, as long as intruders had the sense to stay back." Tim's mind conjured up scenarios where innocents got injured anyway, but didn't bring them up. "What other cons would there be?" Jessica looked thoughtful. "Well, the improvements mean that the chemical makeup of the vampire's body is somewhat fragile in some ways, although it is extremely durable in other respects. Depending on the generation of the vampire, ultraviolet light emitted from most suns will disbalance the chemistry, and cause the body to break down, eventually causing death. There are also the prominent fangs, but you'd know that." "You mentioned generation of the vampire? What does that mean?" Jessica, by now, was into full 'scientist' mode. "The first vampire created from my serum would have a complete, thorough dose and be one hundred percent vampire, where the normal human would be zero percent. If that vampire were to create another, through the new generational vampire ingesting the blood of the first vampire, it would have a lesser percentage depending on it's 'father's generation and the length of time since the father vampire had fed, due to the amount of unprocessed blood present in the original vampire." "I'm sorry I asked," Tim muttered. He made a decision. "Shoot me up." Jessica crouched, looking into Tim's eyes. "Are you sure, Tim 'Chaos Demon' Smith?" Tim nodded. "I'd choose vampirism over death any day. I can still kill myself if I want to die." Jessica opened her metal briefcase, exposing a syringe loaded with a yellow-red substance. The briefcase was lined in foam, and had nothing else in it. She held it up, pressing the plunger until a pearl of substance glimmered on the tip of the needle, careful not to touch it. The blonde doctor inserted the needle into one of the large blue arteries on Tim's leg that brought blood back to the heart. "Are you sure?," she asked. "Yes. Do it." Jessica Tannin slowly pressed the plunger into the syringe, letting the substance go into Tim's bloodstream as a series of doses, rather than a blob. She carefully, but quickly, removed it from his body once it was empty, and pulled back a meter. Tim felt an absolute agony burn through his veins, as the substance hit his heart and shot through his lungs and back out throughout his body as it settled into it, pinching it, /changing/ it. He blacked out as the substance soaked into his brain. ---------- Two days later, he regained consciousness. He opened his eyes and lifted his head muzzily, looking at the clearly defined ceiling. A sharp hunger filled him, and he did his best to stifle it as he looked around the clearly illuminated small room. He then realised that the light was turned off, and that Jessica was watching him and nibbling on a sandwich. "How... how long was I out?," he asked. His voice felt smooth, not a rasp like it would normally have been after he woke up. She got up, looking at him. "Two days. Feeling a hunger you never felt before?" Tim nodded, trying to ignore the gnawing in his stomach. Jessy pulled him to his feet, then angled her head to the side. "You should be able to see two arteries on this side, Tim. Feed from them." He clumsily bit her neck, causing two punctures in her arteries as well as some miscellaneous bite marks that worried him. He quickly ignored that, as he felt the--- Ah! It was like seeing the world in colour after a life of black and white, like a junkie after a week of being 'clean'. He sucked greedily, tasting the tang that he had never tasted before, stopping himself as soon as he felt well. Jessica looked a little pale, and her eyes were out of focus. She blinked a few times, then her eyes refocussed on Tim. "Wow... now I know why some people like playing bloodbank to vampires." Tim noticed the punctures seal themselves, and guessed it was from his saliva. "I'm sorry about the bite marks, Doctor." Jessy shook a finger at him. "Why? You had to feed, and I was your first." She smirked at Tim. "Nice feeling, to know that I'm your first." She looked at a dial on the wall, then frowned. "We have about five minutes left of air. I must've used more than I thought I would, gasping back there. I'm going to go into hibernation on a blanket by the wall there. Remember what I told you about your hibernation mode?" Tim nodded hesitantly. The idea worried him, that he'd look like a corpse. But the Doctor knew what she was doing, and so he settled down against the floor and a wall. "Want me to send you into it prematurely?," Jessy asked. She held up the syringe. Tim nodded. "I don't want to wait for ages. Sure." She cut an incision in his artery in his thigh, which healed quickly but not before he lost a large amount of blood. It looked like oil was mixed in with it. He felt airheaded, and sleepy. "Wha... was oil in bloo..." he asked. "The oil was your blood now, my blood was the blood you saw mixed with it. It hadn't been processed yet. You should feel the hibernation kick in any time now..." And that was when Tim lost consciousness. Again. Jessy nodded, pleased, laid herself down on her blanket, and sent herself into her hibernation, which was of a different kind entirely than Tim's, and was under her conscious control. Black out. ----------------- Over time, without a person to monitor power levels, a pocket dimension's security will degrade. A computer is not used, as in certain circumstances one can induce overly paranoid walling that cuts off the connection to another dimension. In effect, the dimension Floats "free" of the rest of the Nexus, requiring significant time and energy to reattach it. The owners of pocket dimensions typically hire a specially trained person to monitor and maintain the power levels. Jessica Tannin did her own monitoring, and had set the security to disappear rather than possibly Float. If one were to consider a dimension with a time continuum reverse to the convention, one could think they could stay in the dimension, wait a certain time, then exit it in order to study an earlier society, or species. One or two companies in Nexus make a goodly amount of money selling devices that will track the multitude of disparate continuums availible. A small, but thriving criminal subculture lives on proceedings from exploiting time disparities. Typically, social ties prevent people from travelling through dimensions that flow differently from their home dimension. The idea of returning to find a lover a withered elderly person is repulsive, as is missing your child's life and grandchildren. If one were to take one's society with them, this problem of travel would be solved. Thus the unusual status of the Nexus nomadic tribes. They typically also act as traders of unusual goods, selling high technology to primitive cultures and primitive art to older civilizations. They tell jokes to each other of outsiders travelling through dimensions with them to other tribes like we would tell knock knock jokes. Relying on their own healers as they often have to while far from modern medicine, those with wisdom and knowledge are often highly respected. A small, but decent amount is regularly made by them from the mapping companies as freelance explorers. And so a tribe wandered into Jessica Tannin's dimension. The Labs' warning signs were respected for what they were, but the Library was fair game. The Tribe squatted in the dimension for a month before discovering the small, ironbound door in the rear of the Library. ------------------------------ The elders of the Tribe had some skill in magic. As a rule, Tribal elders knew something of a wide range of magic and specialized in none due to the vagaries of the energies of the differing dimensions. Some disciplines were concentrated on more than others, of course, but few Tribes boasted a Master of a particular branch. The shadows of the monastic, almost cathedral-like Library held a tinge of evil for one wizened woman, but the link back to the Netherworld was strangely attentuated, and raw. Almost like a new one. But there was little to no evidence of recent habitation. She investigated the back of the Library, to find if they should quarantine it, trusting in her Journeywoman status in the clerical arts. The stone blocks were graduated in miasma, from nothing she could find to the faint tint in the darkest shadows. A iron lantern revealed a small, ironbound door recessed into a corner, which easily opened to her gentle nudge. The lanternlight curved slightly around the narrow staircase the door showed as it opened. There were no marks on the walls, or the door. There were no ritual stains that would give away a Summoning. She made her way down the little staircase, pausing every two steps to catch her balance on the precariously tiny footspace. She stopped at the bottom of the steps to check the door shown there. It was approximately five feet high, and attackers would have found it very hard to invade the room behind it. She pushed it open, and made her way into the room. It, too, was constructed in stone. Thin lines of black mortar outlined the blocks. It crumbled slightly as she drew a wrinkled finger, falling onto a greasy floor. Two steel bars stood on end next to the inside of the door, ready to barricade it if need be. A pretty blonde woman lay on a thin blanket on the floor, appearing to be asleep. There was a dry corpse against the wall, appearing to be long dead. She crouched down, sitting on her heels. The Elder prodded at the woman using her clerical arts, finding her to be in a deep, meditative sleep. The probe disturbed the balance of life energy surrounding the blonde, waking her. ---------------- Jessica blinked, as she felt herself wake. This meant... what? She looked around, finding an old lady crouching next to her, looking at her quizzically. The elderly female was clothed in a simple purple dress, with a cardigan wrapped around her top half. Her hair was brown, heavily stringed with white hair, and done in a loose bun. Her skin complexion was tanned and leathery, betraying a life lived outdoors. "You're living under a most unique dimension, girl. Are you the owner?," the old woman asked her. Jessica frowned slightly at being called 'girl.' "Yes, why? How long have I been asleep?," Jessy asked. She had no idea how long. It could be a week, it could be a millenium. "I don't know, child. I think it's been roughly a hundred and fifty years in your time. I'm part of the Ter'Ek Clan, a nomadic tribe." Jessica clenched her teeth for a moment. "Please stop calling me girl, child or anything like that. I am thirty, and do not want to be called a child. So, four thousand years conventional..." She looked at the corpse. "I'm being rude. Please, step back to the door for a moment?," Jessy asked. The Elder moved back, picking her lantern as she did so. Jessy Tannin picked up the old syringe, then grimaced as she found that the tip was rusty rather than sharp now. She begged a knife off the other woman, then crouched over Tim's corpse. Making a small, precise cut, she bled from her fingertips onto the dessicated body until she deemed enough had been split. She bound up the tip of her finger in a handerchief. The body sucked the fluid into its pores, the dry skin gaining vitality as the two watched. --------------------- Tim woke. Unlike Jessy, his wakeup was far less serene and was frenzied, a deep hunger gnawing at his spine. The old woman drew back up the stairs with a gasp, then prepared to unleash divine wrath if need be. Jessica offered her neck to the vampire, knowing that she could handle a draining far better than the old woman behind her. The reanimated corpse took hold of her in an iron grip that she knew she could not break. It broke her skin with no care, save to minimize lost blood. The survival instincts of the vampire kept it sucking after Tim had drawn enough to sustain him, but his grip was loose as his body started to assimilate the newly taken blood. He leant back slackly against the wall. He then noticed Jessica, who was pale white and shivering. She was gasping at the bliss, and the lightheadedness of lack of blood. He realised what he had done. "I'm sorry I'm so sorry Doctor I've got no excuse..." She shut him up with a wavering finger against his bloody lips. "I knew the price." Jessy handed him the knife she had used on her fingertips. "Slash your wrist." Tim did so, slowly. To him, three hours ago he had been studying his books and had had no idea of what would happen. Jessica latched onto the bleeding appendage, greedily taking Tim's viscous oil-blood, trying not to take her old watery blood. The Doctor of Biology and the Supernatural passed out after half a litre. "What... what are you?!," the old woman asked, eyes wide. Noises from the top of the stairwell could be heard, as the rest of her Tribe came to investigate. Tim looked up at her with sad eyes. "I'm the First." He pointed at Jessy. "And now, she's the Second." ------------------------------ It took an hour of talking, but eventually Tim managed to convince the nomadic Tribe that he had no intention of killing them, or disturbing them. He remained in the underground cell for the next two days. It had been the Elder who found them, oddly enough, that volunteered to be Jessica's first 'meal'. Tim and the Elder sat by Jessy's body as she reawakened on the third day since her bleeding her own creation. Tim recognised the Beast raging within her eyes as the one which had been all consuming when he had awoken, and gently pushed the old woman forwards. Little would be gained from Jessica trying to drain his blood. He let the pair stay in their communion until he judged that the Elder had been drained long enough. He recognised the look from the pub back home. The 'cattle', as the vampire there had joked, had a grey tinge to their skin. Tim pulled the pair apart, letting the Elder stumble back while he held Jessica tightly in a bearhug while she regained her mind. The circle of Elders tautened their muscles, ready to use their religious artifacts on the two young appearing vampires. Crosses were most predominant, with holy water and paper Shinto wards coming a close second and third. They had talked with the pale linguist over the last two nights, and Tim had consented to the barrier between them and the outside world. They would not stand down until the Elder in the purple dress told them to. Tim loosened his grip on Jessica as he saw her mind returning. She appeared lethargic, and certainly no risk to anyone, much like a lioness after a meal. He looked up at the Elder. "You know, I still don't know your name, sorry... ?," he asked. Tim scratched the top of his head for a moment in embarassment. "El... Ella," the old woman replied, taking deep breaths. "My name is Ella. Is your ladyfriend in control of her senses?" "As far as I know, yes," Tim replied. One of the Elders composing the barrier frowned, asking, "Are you sure? How do you know?" "Besides the fact I went through the same thing?," he asked, inflecting his words to indicate that that was obvious. "I know some vampires in the future." The old man nodded, happy to accept the strange answer. A vampire was a strong ally, if treated with respect as a person and provided judiciously with the blood they required. There was a tradition in their tribe of letting strangers travel with them. Some tribes did not, and were wary of outsiders. "You can stand down, now," Jennifer said, tidying her hair and dress which had been messed up slightly during Jessy's feeding. ** Upstairs, outside the Library, it was a bright sunny day. The children played in the sunshine, running in a game of hide and seek outside in the simplistically ornate stonework. All they knew was that the grown ups were taking care of the nice man and his girlfriend. The older male children and youths worked on various maintenance tasks under the supervision of the journeymen craftsmen who lacked the knowledge to help with spiritual barriers. Trestle tables had been set up on the common, and the young girls and ladies were done preparing the midday meal. It was larger than usual, to welcome the new Travellers and to thank the Lady for letting them stay there. The doors to the Library had been sealed all morning, but they were opening now. All gathered outside stopped what they were doing, and watched. The shadows from the Library were almost vertical now, and the blackness within was only slightly alleviated by the midday sun. One... no, two people were coming out with the grandfolk, but they stopped nervously at the threshold, where the shadow met the light. One little girl came up to the door, to see if her granny was alright. Granny had said she might be a little shaky coming out. "Ella... Jessy and I can't go out in the sunlight, remember?," the man asked. Gwen, the little girl, saw her granny and ran for her, hugging her legs. "Hi, Gwen!," the nice man said to her. Granny had introduced them last night, and she thought that he was nice. He didn't go out during the day like everyone she knew, but that was okay. Her granny couldn't walk very far like 'most everyone she knew. Not everyone was strong. "Hi, mister nice man! It's good to see you again! Why can't you come out into the sunlight?," she asked. Tim looked at his new friend. He didn't want to harm the girl's innocence, but he didn't want to brush her off either. Jessy helped him, replying, "I'm afraid we're aren't human anymore, sorry. I'm Jessy, what's your name?" The girl looked up at the new lady excitedly. A new friend! "I'm Gwen, do you know my Granny? I made a hat for you, Mister, but I don't have one for you sorry Jessy." Jen crouched down, hugging her granddaughter. "That's okay, sweetie. His name is Tim, remember? I'll loan my hat to Jessy, and then they should be able to get to the covered area. Jessy just woke up today from a long, long sleep." Jen handed Jessy her wide brimmed hat that the Tribe favoured, as Gwen gave Tim a straw version of the wide hat. The edges sagged slightly, so the hat appeared ever so slightly conical. Jen also handed the two a pair cheap sunglasses each. Tim was sure they looked like tourists, but refrained from saying so. Careful to stay perfectly upright, and not stray from the shade of the hats, Tim and Jessy made their way to the canvas dining fly. Jessy's left hand was burned once on the short walk, but healed rapidly. Once there, they collapsed onto a blanket and were promptly mobbed. Politely mobbed, but mobbed nonetheless. Tim couldn't help but think of a flock of chickens as Ella shoo'ed everyone off. "You can talk to them later! The poor woman just woke up! There'll be plenty of time later on in the afternoon," the old lady scolded. This apparently exhausted her, as she sank onto a cushion her granddaughter produced for her from a pile kept warm in the sun. "Tim? We can't digest much anything except for--," Jessy started to say, but was cut off. "I know," Tim grimaced. "You could have warned me. I made bit of a mess not an hour after I created your new life." The old woman laughed. "A bit of a mess, the man says! He made more than that, didn't he Gwen?" The little girl nodded animatedly. "You brought up your /whole/ meal, Mister Tim. Remember?" Tim blushed. "Well, I /was/ trying to forget that. And please just call me Tim, okay?" Gwen nodded importantly, as if she had been given a great gift. "Well, I just drank, so I should be alright for awhile," Jessy said. "And Tim last night. Well, on to more important matters. Gwen, do you want to play with the others now?" Pausing only for a brief "Thank you Granny", the little girl was off like a rocket. "You do realise, Tim, that you've somehow inherited demonhood?" ----------------------- In a not too distant dimension, a man with what looked like a really bad case of sunburn and an impressive physique was searching. He knew what he was looking for, but he didn't know how he was going to get it back. "Damn you, Jessica Tannin! Because of you I can never see Hell!" ---------------------- Tim turned around, giving Jessy an evil glare. "You didn't mention any demonhood, Doctor Tannin. What's up with that?" Jessy pushed the tips of her index fingers together nervously. "Well, I didn't think it was that important, and well, I needed the power, and..." "Can you lock it down, Ella? Or convert it somehow?," Tim asked the Elder, who he knew to be conversant with deities. Ella looked at him, aged forehead wrinkling in thought. She got up, and walked around him a few times, eyeing him. "That would mean some form of ward. We'd never be able to eradicate it -- combined with your healing, it's quite a hardy power source." Tim sighed. All this trouble from accepting a job to translate someone's Journals? "With you, however, Jessy, we'll need to link you to Tim. If we don't, the taint will overcome you. It must be something to do with him getting the original serum that you authored with the demon, from what he's told me," Ella said. "Most demonic beings incorporate anti-thief safeguards into items they make." "For what its worth, Mister Smith, I'm really, really sorry about this," Jessy apologised. "What's done is done," Tim said. "Ella, could you make up those wards for me?" The old woman nodded, then took off a pair of bracelets. They were made of polished steel, and were a half-centimeter wide. "I'll get our metalworker to engrave them. They should be done by tonight, deary." Tim yawned widely, surprising Jessy. "I... *yawn* I'm gonna get some sleep. I trust you to wake me when the sun comes close." The thin vampiric linguist promptly fell asleep on the grass. "Why is he asleep?," Jessy asked the older woman. "He's stayed up the last day and night waiting for you. He wasn't sure what time you'd wake up, you see, and wanted to restrain you when you did. I'll show you what we've added to your Library, shall I?" Jessy Tannin nodded shyly, overwhelmed with this influx of visitors. She joined the old woman walking across the grass, careful this time not to let her hands stray past the shade of the sombrero. * * * Jessy woke with a throbbing headache, feeling like her head was occupied by angels punishing her for her sins. Looking around, she saw that she was in the Foyer to the Library, and sleeping next to Tim. Jessy blushed as she saw what they had done together. She shook Tim awake. "Hey, wake up!" "Wha... whazzatime?" "Time to be up!" "toobad... 'm not w'king up a' day..." "Considering what we did early this morning, you owe me. So /wake up!/" This shocked Tim awake, as memory came flooding back. He looked surprised, and had red rings around his eyes that were fading already. "I didn't think that vampires could get drunk!," he exclaimed. Jessy forgave him, as he looked geniunely surprised. "What, we were feeding off drunken gypsies and you expected the blood to taste like chicken?," Jessy spat at him. "I'm more angry at forgetting something like that than angry at you." Tim, fully awake by now, got up. He was mostly dressed, and closed up his clothing. "I'm going to get those bracelet Wards from the metalsmith, come with?" Jessy grabbed the two wide brimmed hats in response. * * * "Weeell, I've done it. The engravings a mite deep, who cares. Don't ye go and wreck the things, now. Took a bit of work to do fine work like that, I'll tell you. Not many smiths could do it that fine." The metalsmith was a large man, heavily muscled. He was correct about the skill of smiths in general, as travelling through dimensions of varying technology encouraged a brute force approach to tools, tempered with clever design. "Yes, you did a very good job," Jessica thanked him, nudging Tim. "Yeah, /beautiful/. You're a real artist!," Tim wore a smile as he looked at the bracelets, now around his wrists. He could now feel the absence of... something. He would have to practise without them later. "Tim, Jessy, we're moving on soon," Ella announced. "We've spent a year here, and that's a lot longer than most places. Our feet are starting to itch." Jessy looked surprised at this, but Tim was not. A fair number of transients passed through the Suburb, often visiting friends at the Pub. Some stayed a night, others a week, but none stayed longer. It was not in their nature to settle down in a place they considered temporary. "Where are you going next?," Jess asked. Meeting these excitingly different people had touched off her wanderlust, and made her exceedingly aware that she knew little about the species she was once a member of. "I don't know, to tell the truth. We were talking of visiting an Earth parallel world, and having some fun with the inhabitants," Ella mused out loud. "Could we go with you? This place isn't safe for us anymore, and I'd like to finish my translating somewhere obscurely safe," Tim asked. After some negotiations, the two vampires and the Travellers arrived at a satisfactory trade, exchanging no rent for the last year, for free travel. Tim and Jessy wore their wide hats everywhere, preferring to stay in Ella's wagon. Jessy, having brought some books from her Library, studied on the magic Tim had been given. Demon magic was strange. at least to Tim's knowledge. The vampires back in his Suburb used a cross between necromantic energies and human magic, relying on their undead bodies to supply power. Tim's power, however, drew from the demonic essence that had bonded to him. Jessy drew that power from Tim, relying on his permission. Tim also felt power flowing into him from Jessy, as if he was acting like a store of energy for him and his "child". One month later, after much travelling, Tim arrived at the Suburb a week after he left, due to an insane dimension that rocketed through time. The informal slang amongst the Tribe for this type of dimension was "shooting star", as those types of dimension vanished quickly relative to Standard Timescale. ** END OF STORY ** There will be a sequel :)