From - Mon Jan 21 16:22:13 2002 Message-ID: <3C4C647F.D335C238@earthops.net> Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2002 13:57:03 -0500 From: Tiny Human Ferret Organization: copyright 2001 all rights reserved -- non-UseNet transmission prohibited. X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.5 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.2.17 i586) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: alt.gothic,alt.vampyres Subject: Dining Out at McDracula's (was {bad segue, eh?} Re: Handicapped child at ballet References: <3C2C2849.3539E637@mnemonides.net> <20011228140752.09793.00000072@mb-mp.aol.com> <080120020226204750%radovic@spam.earthlink.net> <090120020226260424%radovic@spam.earthlink.net> <110120021532596019%radovic@spam.earthlink.net> <140120021448470620%radovic@spam.earthlink.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit NNTP-Posting-Host: 65.205.1.226 X-Trace: vienna7.his.com 1011639425 65.205.1.226 (21 Jan 2002 13:57:05 -0500) Lines: 179 X-Authenticated-User: tjh22isp Path: vienna7.his.com Xref: vienna7.his.com alt.gothic:837935 alt.vampyres:159716 --nightshade-- wrote in alt.gothic in message , in a thread about being "childfree" and related issues: > In article <140120021448470620%radovic@spam.earthlink.net>, > wrote: > umm, unless you have a local franchise of McDracula's, ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ g-d fscking DAMN are you a font of inspiration today. > or have the > fountain of youth flowing up through your ceptic tank, you can't opt out > of aging. > > > Strangely enough the law and the social construct reflect this reality. > > strangely enough, the law and social construct reflect a desire for us > to curb our instinct and natural tendencies to steal and kill. so > arguments of natural behaviour of the individual only compare so far. "Dining Out at McDracula's" (c) copyright 2002 all rights reserved by TJH Internet SP of Rockville MD -- UseNet propagation only! ------ So, one evening, I decided that I would go out and see how the other half lived. It had been awhile. McDracula's is always a strange place to visit. Most folks steer clear of the place, vampyr making them antsy for historically understandable reasons. However, McDracula's is exactly why people should try to not be so antsy about vampyr. Think about it, if you're walking into McDracula's, everyone walking out is walking out with a full belly, no worries mate. You might not want to wander into the bathroom, or so you'd think, but they're really picky about keeping their facilities clean and safe; they not only have a reputation to maintain, but a business license as well. Massive stem-cell culture revolutionized the whole fast food business, everyone knows this. All around the world are massive vats full of serum populated by finely-bred lines of animal stem-cells, cheerfully converting proteins from amino acids and other nutrients in the broth. The trade secrets are in the final processing, where the suspensions are concentrated and the cells precipitated through their final differentiation gradients and forced to clump into the final mass, giving a totally natural texture to an admittedly only semi-natural product. Extruded, sliced or ground, and packaged and shipped, the quality is higher than any meat grown on the hoof, and the artificial processes are considerably more efficient than doing it the old way, what with all of the lack of hooves, horns and hair, not to mention the offal and innards. And who was it who developed mass-culture of stem-cells in serum? The vampyr, of course. The combination of proliferating blood-borne diseases, emerging genomic technologies easily capable of speedily sorting man from vampyr, and the emergence of a burgeoning stem-cell and culture components industry led inevitably to Lace Harvester's timely invention of cHemetic Cultures Inc's hemoculture unit. She sold them to research facilities, and then later to hospitals and eventually they replaced human blood donation and she got even richer than she was. In the meantime, she was also selling scaled-down versions to any vampyr she could find and that didn't exactly hurt her bank account any. Aside from a few religious-freak traditionalists, there were very few holdouts. Aside from a few religious-freak holdouts on the other side, nobody got all that upset to find out that there were vampyr all over the place, sucking blood out culture vats rather than necks, especially since cHemetic Cultures was later able to sequence the genes that produced their anti-aging hormones, and they sold _that_ too. So it all worked out, more or less, and Dr Harvester got just rich as Croesus and as if that wasn't enough for her, opened up McDracula's, worldwide. There aren't all that many of them, obviously, but it's pretty hard to find a real city anywhere that doesn't have one. But all of this is ancient history, of course. I went up to the counter and ordered a burger and some fries. "Nothing to drink?" asked the gal behind the counter, with a sarcastic smirk. "No thanks," I said, with equal sarcasm, "I'm just slumming, not going native." She stuck out her tongue at me (sting retracted), which she's been doing since we were in elementary school. "Small fry, and a Big Meat," she sang out to the line crew. If you got the joke, this was mildly insulting. The burger was not bad, and of course it was as standardized as you'd expect from something yanked out of a vat that yearly produced several tons of the exact same thing. The fries were golden brown, of course. At the table next to me, a family was munching on some McNecks, specialty of the house, which were essentially burger buns wrapped around a vat-grown giant aortal infarction filled with nice warm O Negative. The buns would soak up any spillage, as a rule, though of course one learned to avert one's eyes from the inevitable kids who were just learning to eat in public and were doing so a bit sloppily. The conversations were -- of course -- a bit bizarre. But I happen to like surrealism as an art and there's not a whole lot more surreal than hanging out in McDracula's, watching a family slurp their McNecks, listening to the occasional admonition to the kids about not playing with their food. Some bonehead teen sitting on the other side of me had clearly been waiting to hear someone say this, as when he heard it he immediately whipped out a beltcom with a game of chess punched up on it and started to hand it to me. His father snatched it out of his hand with a barely visible blur of speed and said "sorry" to me and I nodded aimably back, this was probably the oldest stupidest joke in the book long before the teen had been born, possibly antedating western civilization. Once it had been a very serious joke, nowadays it was beneath even being tasteless. A bum wandered in, and went to the counter and, as was traditional these days, promptly got his free McNeck. Everyone else paid for theirs, of course, not that food cost much anywhere these days. McDracula's had some sort of obscure internal economy; nobody on the outside was entirely sure if the paying customers were buying dinner or tithing to the church. In any case, for those who needed it, it was charity, for those who didn't need charity, it was a nice dimly lit non-alcoholic place to bring the kids. What with the dim lighting, it was pretty easy to ignore the fact that the vampyr were of course playing their Game. Occasionally something would swoosh past the back of your head, generally about the only way that a single Mainstream individual was likely to know that the Game was ongoing. I'd just about finished my fries and was about to head out when the gal from behind the counter approached in street clothes, and gestured at the seat opposite me. I nodded assent to her being seated, and she sat, but not before snagging my wallet out of the air as it flew by behind my head. She made some complex sign and most of the people whose mouths weren't full of McNeck made a clicking sound back at her. That was actually exceptionally polite; most of us had long since gotten used to the fact that there's not a whole lot you can do to make them stop Playing. She handed me my wallet. If I'd had shoelaces, she'd probably have told me to tie them. "Walk ya home?" she asked. "Wanna race?" I asked back. She grinned a little and said "I've always been fond of sucker bets. Got any money?" She knew I did, she'd seen the balance-remaining flag on my OneCard when I'd paid. "Cash, I mean." "Yeah," I said, "though I don't feel like losing it on sucker bets." "Well, we could go wander around the sucky part of town." "Ew." "Whaddaya mean, 'ew'? It's right around the corner from us!" We lived in a mixed neighborhood. A few blocks over from her folks' place was, well, her folks' place, but writ large. Most Mainstream people didn't like to go there much. During the daytime, it wasn't exactly abandoned, but they did tend to sort of roll up the sidewalks around daybreak. At night, it was much like any gritty city neighborhood, people coming and going to and from work and shopping, but with a bit more than one might expect of the usual seamy underside in evidence. "I know, it's just that I don't want anyone to see me, they'll all think I'm a spit-head or something." She made a little moue of distaste. Vampyr-spit addicts were more than a little annoying, to all concerned. "I can see your point, I don't like getting accosted any more than you'd want to get a reputation." "Well, whaddaya wanna do?" "I dunno, let's get out of here, though. I don't really feel like hanging around, they'll draft me to shine the vats or something." ------ Outside, it wasn't much darker than inside, but of course without the specific minimum of illumination, she practically vanished, her skin becoming exactly the shades of moonlight and shadow dappling through the trees. Her clothes were more visible than she was. Outside of conversations, walking with a vampyr was like walking with yourself, you heard only your own footfalls, or the occasional quiet rustle of fabric... but I could sort of feel her. I figured I had better try to make some conversation or I'd get spooked. "So," I asked her, "how do you like working for McDrac's?" "Heh, it's a job, but as for the money, I'm not exactly making a killing. But you get all of the take-home you can carry in one bag." And of course, she had that bag, full of McNecks for the folks at home. -- Be kind to your neighbors, even though they be transgenic chimerae. Whom thou'st vex'd waxeth wroth: Meow. <-----> http://earthops.net/klaatu/