Bishop — John

“I want what is inevitable: but to solve this problem in a way that does not destroy people’s lives”

“Which problem?”

“I want to house all the homeless in the Bay Area. And then the rest of the country. More specifically, I want 350 acres of land allocated to housing the homeless throughout the Bay Area, and for that land to be developed to the point of enabling housing and to be located in a way to provide support and community to those people. ”

“OK. That is a very specific demand. And in exchange you will ‘go back to work’?”

“Yes. We may always keep the ‘cave dialysis’ running, but we will make sure to do enough hours with the clinics to support the current dialysis-patient-per-vampire load”

“What do you think the cost of this 350 acres is?”

“About $10B. Maybe double that including the development and depending on the location. ”

“You are asking for a $1OB hiring bonus to go back to work? I believe people will consider that a bit too generous, even in Silicon Valley.”

“It depends on how many vampires that bonus is divided among, and how much each of us is worth.”

“Even if you are each worth $1M, that requires 10,000 vampires to be worth $10B. “

“Yes, or about 120,000 patients. How many dialysis patients are there in California?”

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“You are kidding right?”

“You know me pretty well, I think you know the answer to that. Talk to the pay grades above us, and let me know. I believe you have seven days, although it may be a bit less than that. The wheels of the bus go round-and-round.

It was great seeing you, as always doctor. Take care.”

I turn and the Freightliners start shuffling again. Dr. A is still standing there when the inner doors close.

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EXODUS

Dialysis for ten thousand vampires — or 120,000 patients requires about two thousand ‘caves’.

There is no way we could hide two thousand caves in California. So we didn’t. We hid about 80. The exact number, I don’t know. They were set up without me even knowing who created them, let alone where they were. Maybe 100 in Texas. 60 in Massachusetts. 40 in Pennsylvania. 80 in New York. In total we had something about two thousand caves throughout the contiguous 48 states. Alaska and Hawaii had caves also, but because they required air or international travel, we did not consider them. The primary goal of the two thousand caves was to support the exodus of ten thousand vampire slaves to a safe refuge. They also supported the local communities.

Detailed design plans and purchasing information was available on both our ‘dark’ and ‘plain sight’ web sites. Any vampire could easily acquire the equipment needed to support a multi-shift dialysis clinic. They just had to provide the safe and sterile facility. And figure out how to get a base-level of patients. Enough to support a few vampires visiting for a while.

With the safe-house caves in place, we simply had to communicate where they were. Simple, except the complication of preventing anyone else knowing the location. Turns out this was trivial as long as our resistance wasn’t significantly infiltrated.

Vampire powers varied per person — but one skill was available to all of us. We had heightened visual acuity towards blood. About 100-fold better than the average person. Blood diluted one part to a hundred parts of water looked the same to us as obsidian-

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