They hail form a kingdom with thousands of years of history and a long thread of tradition. A research into their lineage, taking ten or twenty generations into account, would indicate that none had ever mastered the courage question the authority of their family. The very sacred scripture of the land, also considered to be the Constitution of the vampires, declares the blood of the royal family to be the purest and the holiest. “If you spill a drop of the royal blood, you will definitely rot in another world – one with a burning star that blinds all, and transforms vampire skin into worthless ash.”
“Royalties don’t work,” proclaimed the scripture quite clearly. “They are assigned the sacred duty to act as symbols of unity. The most important task is to act as a role model to all; and none but a royal descendant has the divine charisma. Every one can do every thing; but no-one has the ability to hold the land together like the line of royal vampires. Once that line is disturbed, the social structure will fall apart, and every individual in the underworld will suffer and eventually perish.” No one thus has been able to challenge the rules upheld by many thousands of years!
The princesses would have had a fantastic life in the underworld. However, one sad morning their treasurer walked in with the solemn news that there wasn’t enough money in the treasury for their new castle. The sisters were unable to comprehend the chain of events that might have brought about this grave situation. There never had been a time when any money problem was raised. Cash flowed in easily as the vampire brothers and sisters worked to make the land thrive. Were the vampire commoners then questioning the royal authority and sabotaging the Empire? But no one seemed to have voiced any dissent. All the brothers and sisters were working in unison. They were also chanting the praise of the princesses routinely each day. There was no major disaster and the resources were not depleted. The sisters sat perplexed in the grand room for quite some time.
As the treasurer spent hours to go over the ledgers, it became quite evident that the vampires were indeed working, but the production had fallen to less than half of last year’s yields as more and more vampires were calling in sick and none seemed to be coming up with any extra-ordinary idea. All work showed signs of mistakes and lack of intelligence.
How could all vampires have suddenly become stupid! Or did they not fear the consequences of failing to offer the best of their talents for the survival of the land!
Jenna and Jamie decided to start a campaign to revitalize the workers. More songs were sung daily, eulogizing the great vampire nation and the Constitution, and the TV broadcasted all past maladies the vampire land had to endure against every sort of evil species in order to create the great country with the greatest constitution ever. The two sisters frequented the TV office in order to inspire the workers personally.
After a couple of years, the treasury still did not show any improvement. On the other hand, more and more money was being siphoned into the different campaigns. In the end, for the very first time in history, the Prime Minister announced the news that the institution was about to sink. The losses were just colossal and the entire system would collapse, leading to a mass famine.
The wise Prime Minister, who had been faithful to the royalty for many, many years wished the sisters the best and advised them to flee, packing the treasury in their bags before it all disappeared. The princesses bade adieu to the heartbroken ministers and decided to explore the world above as a possible alternate home to start a new life.
The year 2030
It was a foggy but cold evening on the surface of the planet earth. The year was about to end and people flocked to shop.
The Times Square crowd, boasting visitors from many corners of the planet walking about leisurely to enjoy their vacation or work visit, also prided in two new tourists who were slightly taller than the others, and had very dark sunglasses covering most of their faces even after dusk. They were walking a little bit funnily and sounded somewhat foreign. However, their oddity mattered little in this huge bustling city mainly filled with immigrants. The two new vampires in the midst of humans of all sorts could hardly be singled out.
A loyal vampire had already been living in the upper world for the last two decades in order to bring the sisters news from outside the kingdom, and also to provide whereabouts of lonely, undesirable humans. These creatures could be preyed upon on special occasions to substitute the staple meal of domesticated animal blood or blood from half-dead slaves that are bred only to provide their body fluids in the same manner poultry would produce eggs. Old faithful Bob had arranged for his princesses to have an apartment in the heart of the city and had also paid a visit to the expert document forger in order to create a respectable identity for Jenna and Jamie. When the princesses landed in New York, Bob was more than pleased with all the arrangements he had made.
For the first few days, Jenna and Jamie were awed by the newness of the upper-world. However, they chose to schedule their exploration mainly after sunset since the supply of vampire-strength sun blocks to prevent any accidents including parts of their body evaporating into the sky was rather limited.
The new hometown of the sisters had unusually tall buildings and lights flashed all over the walls. Screams and shouts spread about the streets. Shops lined the wide and newly restored roads, and displayed fashionable clothes or electronics products. The earthlings must have a weakness for the vampire species – pondered the sisters when they saw the inanimate mannequins with vampire-pale skin through the large store windows.
The initial stage of euphoria and acclimation soon passed, and the Princesses were faced with a harsh reality. They had a bag full of money and jewels, but no loyal ministry. They could shop around and dine, but not a single soul except dear old Bob either respected or feared them. Having come from a line of pure-blooded royal vampires who never ever lived as no-bodies, this situation posed a serious problem to Jenna and Jamie, and was unacceptable by the Constitution of the vampire land. The sisters were hence burdened with the duty of establishing their own kingdom here on earth if they wished to value the ancestors whose blood had given them life.
As the threat of being cursed by all vampire royalty ancestors became imminent, the princesses grew more and more depressed every day. If the news of forsaking vampire land and leaving all the workers in chaos, and thus ruining the sanctity of the constitution reached the wise old vampires, they would hunt them down to earth to bestow upon the two the cruelest possible punishment. Jenna and Jamie were facing grave consequences unless they upheld their status in their new hometown.
Earth thus needed to be explored and conquered, and earthlings had to be tamed. Jenna and Jamie, however, could barely go out in the scorching rays of the sun, and thus had to retreat inside the apartment most of the day. This was a problem indeed! The mortals were working with a twelve-hour phase shift! In order to connect with the earthlings, the princesses needed to find a link that was in-between the two species -- one who could communicate with the humans in a trustworthy fashion while remaining loyal only to the vampire kingdom. They needed human decoys.
Later one night, the two girls went over the pages of the book of the Great Vampire Royals to study the behaviors of earthlings. Over the last thousands of years, once in a while, a vampire had risen to the upper-world and had written down the knowledge of all the human characteristics in the secret book of wisdom that was only available to the royals. Only the two princesses in Vampire Land had access to the knowledge collected over millennia in order to uphold their power over semi-educated vampire workers not of pure blood. The sisters, however, were never ever too keen about staying up all night and studying like decrepit, unhappy creatures tired of life, and would not have taken this recourse unless they feared the very worst if they failed to mend their status.
After scanning fifty pages in candlelight they discovered an amazing fact. If, under the full moon, a female vampire bit a female human who was deep asleep, then drank only half the blood from the victim’s body before adding two drops of the vampire’s own blood into the wound, the human would become a slave of the vampire kingdom. She would behave completely like an earthling in every other respect, but her soul would belong to the Princesses and she would join the sisterhood of half-blooded slaves.
The theoretical roadmap for recruiting a devoted army was found in the book. However, the most challenging question now was to decide how to create the image of the Princesses on this planet. They should have a position of respect and fear so that an average human in the city would not feel that there was a way to emulate the two. The Princesses should not be considered as an overt threat, but an indispensable necessity. The sacred scripture of vampire land automatically created the status, but the book was worthless to these unenlightened earthlings.
As the two brainstormed all day long and became more and more frustrated, they decided to turn on the TV and relax. On the screen of the small box, suddenly appeared a frail and unimpressive person who was being interviewed as something called a “genius.” He had apparently created a brilliant device to save the species of the planet. The person who was interviewing this short and stout man seemed to be quite enthralled by his aura.
The sisters were now convinced that they needed the reputation of a genius – who was smarter than the rest in some respect, and could offer the entire city a life they only could dream of. The duo started to think how they could achieve this goal fast. Bob was summoned the next night to call upon the document forger. They needed some modifications in their profile and wanted the word PhD appended next to their names. Bob was also asked to rent a large enough building and obtain a license to operate that building as an educational institute that would also perform research. The two princesses would reach the core of the city by recruiting devoted scholars and then by slowly and very systematically buying up all the minds.
A shiny new placard was seen erected in front of the sisters' newly owned building within a few days. The institution was endorsed by a top official of the city himself. He was devoted to dear Bob who had once saved him from near death. More reputed scholars followed to endorse the institute as a great endeavor promising to save humanity.
Within a month, the sisters sat in a huge office room as the Presidents of a new research company, surrounded by many well-wishers. This was indeed a fantastic plan! However, another problem however emerged. They did not quite have any new brilliant work to awe the human species permanently. The solution asked for a thorough search among the potential candidates in the city, who had a new formula, or a device to amaze the humans, but was a very lonesome soul, unknown and unwanted, and who also slept alone in the middle of the night.
The challenge seemed daunting until one day they received a mail from Mary.
Mary could be called a geek. She had always been an outcast in school because of her preoccupation with the bizarre books. The teachers in her provincial school cared little for these unnecessary books but were very, very focused on preparing the students for exams.
Mary never did well on the exams because of her reluctance to follow advice. When high school was over, she returned home with a transcript showing not the top position but merely one of the top five. Within a few months, not because of her great results, but by means of some extra-curricular activities she did, thanks to her obsessions with these books, Mary miraculously got an offer from an emerging institution in New York, which was making a name for itself by having been affiliated with many big names. She had given the institute her research proposal and heard back from them quickly. They were very impressed with her ideas and wished to give her a chance.
The small town girl was excited to find in her mailbox a letter stating lucidly that she could move over to the big apple, where opportunities were endless, and right about every outcast with talent and determination could somehow find their niche.
It was in a fall evening that Mary slowly unpacked her few pieces of garments in her room. She had specifically requested a single room to be in her own world with little disturbance, and was very surprised to see that the housing office was happy to give her not just a room, but an entire an apartment.
It was probably a little odd that the room was far away from the regular dormitory building where the other first year students were housed. She was given a home with older married students at the outskirts of the city, and although the situation did seem a little irregular, the overly excited frosh was quite happy to have a space of her own.
The match-box-like houses in the married students’ complex stood in the middle of a large yard and were isolated form one another to provide the occupants with privacy. All the other inhabitants looked at least four or five years older than Mary and many had children. They seemed to have their own clubs and societies based on their mutual experiences and needs as married students. It was not quite a problem, as the situation only gave Mary enough space to be on her own in an entire apartment, where no one would barge in to disturb her while she was working.
The nerdy girl with ambition worked all night long almost throughout her first year. She had started a new project in high school and was attentively making her device perfect. She would sit in the couch with a glass of coffee next to her, and would scribble all night long.
After orientation, a project was also assigned to her by an over-enthusiastic professor. Her research proposals must have gained some praise, she thought! However, disappointment took over soon. She was given a very mediocre project with very little correlation with her initial research ideas. But it provided her with funds, and she agreed to take it up.
Mary was confused about why the professor kept overloading her with one after another project that could each be described as slightly better than menial work. Prof Monroe's workload kept her busy all day long, and when the day was over, she took the train straight to home to work on her own challenge. She knew very few of her class mates and her entire world constituted of Prof Monroe and his two other students, who were somehow quite close to their mentor.
After a few months, Mary started to feel more perplexed and began to panic. The electricity in her apartment would often be out for hours, and the plumbing appeared faulty. From a distance, she would see that the other houses did not have such lighting problems. She had gone to the management more than once only to be told that the construction was old and that although they were trying hard, the problem could not be easily fixed.
After a few more days, she walked into the housing office again only to be approached by a rather pale woman with lips that were too red. She said that the rooms were already all taken and there really was nothing much they could do to transfer her elsewhere in the middle of the year. “I had not asked for a room with all these older people,” Mary had tried to argue, only to be told that good girls do not argue unnecessarily and should have more patience. “Compromise is needed throughout life,” the housing manager said calmly.
As days went by, Mary’s lair of solitude and contemplation appeared more and more ghastly. She could swear that she had once seen a pair of glowing red eyes right outside the window. Often there was a very soft sound like taps on the glass panes. One night around 11 pm, she could almost feel a soft breath on her back. She panicked and closed the windows and stayed awake in bed all throughout the night.
It was an hour before midnight on a Sunday. Jenna had been waiting outside the window for a while. The power inside the house was out as she had instructed. The princess, floating in the air, with her hands crossed on her bosom, could see the short, thin girl with dishevel hair sitting on the couch and working with utmost concentration. There was a candle next to her and a huge pile of papers lay on the floor. Jenna had picked up a few of those papers the last time she was able to get in, and had handed those over to a very brilliant thinker who had now joined her group. The work was extraordinary – was the report and most certainly had the potential to transform the princesses’ image as two of the most brilliant and progressive persons in the field. There would be more work from this meek, lonely girl, and the princesses needed to have them all.
Jenna waited for a while to see that Mary was quite tired and put her pen down before heading towards the bedroom. Monroe had asked Mary to see him early on Monday. She needed to go to bed.
The Princess now floated from one window to another, to see if one was left open. After being unsuccessful in three or four cases, she discovered with delight that the kitchen window was indeed left open in carelessness. As a breeze blew and the leaves rustled with the full moon up, Jenna slowly slipped inside the house and floated to the bedroom. Mary was deep asleep, and the vampire spread her charming spell to leave the girl in that state while she performed her task. A bat with a pair of bloodshot eyes fluttered its wing outside the window.
As the clock proclaimed midnight, the tall, beautiful princess slowly inserted her long, sharp fangs inside the neck of the sleeping girl and drew out exactly half of her blood. She then waited for a second and made a small slit in her own finger to let exactly two drops of blood drip into the wound in the neck. As the hurt but unaware Mary still slept in her bed, the pale, tall figure silently left the house to disappear into the darkness not exposed by the moon.
The next morning when Mary got up and started for Monroe’s office, she was feeling rather weak. She grabbed some strong coffee and called a taxicab. When she walked into the office, she was indeed very surprised. The president of the institute, Jenna, was sitting there, sipping coffee from a cup. “How extraordinary,” she thought.
“Hello Mary,” Monroe said, “So how are we doing today?”
“Okay, thank you,” she said as she looked at Jenna sideways.
“This is Jenna, the President of the Institute, as you know,” Munroe continued, “She is a very good friend of mine. We were just having coffee. Why don’t you give me your papers?”
Mary took out her portfolio and handed them over to Monroe.
“What about the other papers, Mary? The ones with your own work and the three line long equation,” said Jenna is a commanding, low voice. “Can you bring them to my office tomorrow morning? I have called a press conference and will need to explain those to the invited reporters properly.
“You mean you would like ME to present the work?” Mary asked, confused. “I didn’t know you were aware of the work. I don’t really think I ever talked to you about the work. It is REALLY great though that you would like to give me the opportunity to present some quality work at last!”
“No, Mary,” Jenna said in her low, confident voice. “You will need to give all the papers and the explanations to me. I will present them. However, I am nice to people who work for me. I have found a job for you that will keep you happy and pay for your bread. You can become a member of my publicity group and help me become popular with the poor kids in the inner city. I have a friend working in that area and will have him contact you soon.”
“What!” Mary blurted, “You really have got to be joking. “You are not serious here, are you? I will start screaming out in public if you REALLY are asking me to do it. You are joking here, right?”
“Of course she is joking,” Monroe took over the room. “Thank you much Mary. I will finish my coffee with Jenna now. Why don’t you come see me again tomorrow?”
Mary left the room perplexed, and forgot to close the door behind her. She was still feeling very weak. Probably she just was working too hard and was not thinking very clearly.
Jenna and Monroe sat face to face in his office, both a little paler than they usually are, and quite confused.
“What went wrong, Bob?” Jenna murmured, “I had done this so many times before. What could have gone wrong?”
“This is crazy,” said Bob, who was now living a respectable life as Professor Robert Monroe.
“I read the book so thoroughly. I could not have done anything wrong!”