already?
he wondered.
It was barely ten o’clock. The question of what he was going to do for the next twenty-two hours was only just beginning to sink in. He lay on the bed fully clothed, and stared at the bone-white ceiling until dragons and Möbius gears began to uncoil in the corner of his vision.
If I’m not nuts already I’m going to
be
nuts by the time I . . .
He snatched up his phone. The face recognition unlock worked and he could see himself in the phone camera’s display: that ought to tell him something if he wasn’t so overwrought. He dialed a work contact. As he’d expected, it rang through to voice mail.
Good.
“Uh, Mhari? It’s Alex. Listen, I’m not well. Uh, actually, spouting at both ends. Really, it’s a rotavirus or something. I’ll try to make it in tomorrow morning, but if I don’t, it’s because I’m pebble-dashing the—uh oh!” He forced a nauseated gurgle (which came disturbingly easily) and killed the call.
Ass: covered.
Now to sleep, and see if he could see himself in the bathroom mirror in the morning or something.
Sleep, of course, didn’t come easy, but there were movies on demand.
Lots of movies.
Movies about Lesbian Vampire Hunters and Blood-Sucking Fiends.
Movies with lots of gore and blood. Blood which, on screen, didn’t make him feel faint and dizzy the way the sight of even a trivial graze did in real life.
Fascinating.
• • •
A SLEEPLESS BUT INTERESTING—NOT TO MENTION AMUSING AND educational—night later, Alex prepared to wait out the day in a state of numb boredom. Sleep hadn’t come, and time had not restored his ability to see his own reflection: shaving had been unexpectedly hazardous. In a spirit of masochism, he stuck a pinkie through a gap in the duct tape around lunchtime; the resulting blisters took half an hour to subside. By noon he was reconciled to the horrible truth.
Face it: I don’t need sleep. Daylight burns. I can’t see myself in the mirror, I yanked the lock right out of the basement door and I
distinctly
remember bending my bike frame when I grabbed it.
He raised a finger to his mouth, ran it around the front of his upper jaw.
Is that my imagination, or . . . ?
No, it was imagination, at least for now. No fangs, thank God.
Fangs for small mercies, ha ha.
There’s no such thing as vampires.
There’s no such thing as vampires.
There’s no such thing as—
Research.
Alex spent much of the day with his smartphone, doing what research he could: mainly reading the Wikipedia and TVTropes articles on vampires, but also verifying that the camera could see him, but a left-for-right mirror flip turned his image into a blind-spot distortion. And that he could pluck falling objects out of the air ridiculously fast, on video. Some calculations in Wolfram Alpha confirmed that his reflexes had sped up to such an extent that they were not merely fast but biomechanically implausible, and while he couldn’t see his own image, he could certainly see the hotel toiletries he was juggling. By the time his battery was down to 10 percent he knew even less than he had when he started: except that whatever had happened to him was real, or his pocket computer was in on the conspiracy to gaslight him. Also, despite eating all his munchies and drinking copiously from the bathroom sink, the enervating sensation of thirst wouldn’t go away.
“What was I doing?” Alex asked the tiles in the bathroom. Introspection revealed a frustrating shortage of black-gowned Elvira wannabes slurping on his carotid artery; obviously there was something missing from the common lore that it takes a vampire to make a vampire. “I was trying to visualize the phase transition in—” He stopped dead, Möbius gears turning in his mind’s eye. “Then I passed out and the weird visuals began. Hmm. I wonder if it’s just me?”
A minute later, phone in hand, he waited for the call to connect. “Hi. Evan? Yes, it’s me. Sorry I couldn’t come in. I was
he wondered.
It was barely ten o’clock. The question of what he was going to do for the next twenty-two hours was only just beginning to sink in. He lay on the bed fully clothed, and stared at the bone-white ceiling until dragons and Möbius gears began to uncoil in the corner of his vision.
If I’m not nuts already I’m going to
be
nuts by the time I . . .
He snatched up his phone. The face recognition unlock worked and he could see himself in the phone camera’s display: that ought to tell him something if he wasn’t so overwrought. He dialed a work contact. As he’d expected, it rang through to voice mail.
Good.
“Uh, Mhari? It’s Alex. Listen, I’m not well. Uh, actually, spouting at both ends. Really, it’s a rotavirus or something. I’ll try to make it in tomorrow morning, but if I don’t, it’s because I’m pebble-dashing the—uh oh!” He forced a nauseated gurgle (which came disturbingly easily) and killed the call.
Ass: covered.
Now to sleep, and see if he could see himself in the bathroom mirror in the morning or something.
Sleep, of course, didn’t come easy, but there were movies on demand.
Lots of movies.
Movies about Lesbian Vampire Hunters and Blood-Sucking Fiends.
Movies with lots of gore and blood. Blood which, on screen, didn’t make him feel faint and dizzy the way the sight of even a trivial graze did in real life.
Fascinating.
• • •
A SLEEPLESS BUT INTERESTING—NOT TO MENTION AMUSING AND educational—night later, Alex prepared to wait out the day in a state of numb boredom. Sleep hadn’t come, and time had not restored his ability to see his own reflection: shaving had been unexpectedly hazardous. In a spirit of masochism, he stuck a pinkie through a gap in the duct tape around lunchtime; the resulting blisters took half an hour to subside. By noon he was reconciled to the horrible truth.
Face it: I don’t need sleep. Daylight burns. I can’t see myself in the mirror, I yanked the lock right out of the basement door and I
distinctly
remember bending my bike frame when I grabbed it.
He raised a finger to his mouth, ran it around the front of his upper jaw.
Is that my imagination, or . . . ?
No, it was imagination, at least for now. No fangs, thank God.
Fangs for small mercies, ha ha.
There’s no such thing as vampires.
There’s no such thing as vampires.
There’s no such thing as—
Research.
Alex spent much of the day with his smartphone, doing what research he could: mainly reading the Wikipedia and TVTropes articles on vampires, but also verifying that the camera could see him, but a left-for-right mirror flip turned his image into a blind-spot distortion. And that he could pluck falling objects out of the air ridiculously fast, on video. Some calculations in Wolfram Alpha confirmed that his reflexes had sped up to such an extent that they were not merely fast but biomechanically implausible, and while he couldn’t see his own image, he could certainly see the hotel toiletries he was juggling. By the time his battery was down to 10 percent he knew even less than he had when he started: except that whatever had happened to him was real, or his pocket computer was in on the conspiracy to gaslight him. Also, despite eating all his munchies and drinking copiously from the bathroom sink, the enervating sensation of thirst wouldn’t go away.
“What was I doing?” Alex asked the tiles in the bathroom. Introspection revealed a frustrating shortage of black-gowned Elvira wannabes slurping on his carotid artery; obviously there was something missing from the common lore that it takes a vampire to make a vampire. “I was trying to visualize the phase transition in—” He stopped dead, Möbius gears turning in his mind’s eye. “Then I passed out and the weird visuals began. Hmm. I wonder if it’s just me?”
A minute later, phone in hand, he waited for the call to connect. “Hi. Evan? Yes, it’s me. Sorry I couldn’t come in. I was
Similar Books
