De-Drug-Dealing Dracula Deconstructed, an op-ed by John Jameson Jr.

Thirty-one. The current number of low-life scum removed from the streets by the vigilante known only as Throat Bite. No one has seen this valiant hero in action. Even his handiwork caught on cctv only shows his victims. This mysterious figure is making the city safer every night. I, John Jameson shall endeavor to enlighten our wonderful readers about the wonderous efforts of our city's newest hero. From a totally unbiased perspective.

This month our city's PD has reported a nearly sixty percent reduction in hard drug availability on our streets. Frankly, the best part will be transient vagabonds leaving our great metropolis for filthier municipalities. If I met Throat Bite today, I'd take him out for a nice steak dinner; paid for by the rapid increase in property values his valiant violence against villains has awarded me.

But who is he? In the many decades of vigilante reporting I've developed a certain understanding of the city's vigilantes, gleamed from their comic-bookesque modus operandi. First, let's look at the facts. His low life victims are drained of blood, from punctures on the neck as if by a vigilante vampire. Hence the name, Throat Bite. He can't be seen on cctv video. He targets street dealers working at night. He's never been seen by anyone in the act. The answer as to the who and how should be obvious, at least for any seasoned vigilante reporter. He's an ex-deep state operative! Fed up with the problems of our city. Active cloaking technology conceals him from both cameras' and people's perceptions. He has tools that drain over a gallon of blood in less than a minute. Only someone with ties to shadowy organizations could have this sort of capacity, and-

"Stop", hissed the pale figure sitting across from Mr. Jameson. He waved his gangly phalanges as he spoke. Jameson's eyes glowed dimly in response. "You do drone on. That's what I like about you, thrall. While I find your drivel insipid many fools in this city find it to be as delectable as the sweet ambrosia of a plump vegetarian's circulatory system." He continued on, "publish this article. Start work on another. Keep up the good work and you may one day taste immortality for yourself."

Jameson nodded. Throat Bite had no intention of turning the greying middle aged man before him. However, he found the false promise of immortality kept his thralls obedient for longer, especially thoughs feeling the effects of time. The vampire's pale visage transformed into a thin dark smoke and trailed out the open window into the night.

Woah, thanks!

>show a sliver of humanity through the character trying to rationalize them as cold practicality

Yeah, I first wanted the vampire to actually try to do good, but deny to himself that he does it for good reasons. But, I could not find a way to write that down and capture those emotions well enough, So I changed it midway to make the vampire more scheming and practical-minded. That's why you can sort of feel the morality of the vampire swing between good and evil from one paragraph to the next.

Anyway, thanks for the appreciation :)

Wow - that is incredibly high praise. Thank you so much!

🥹 Omg thank you so much!

Remember, for rogue vs rouge, it's the vowel before "G" that makes the sound. Too late to correct now, but it's the trick that helped me finally get them straight.

Cool I put my phone into sleep mode and it deleted everything I wrote when i opened my phone

Well, they say never meet your heroes, but it sure is fun seeing other folks meet theirs.

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*Chefs kiss*
Really nice short!
Text is both concise and very flavorful! It has an almost professional tone, feeling like the internal monologue of someone older and giving the idea of a vampire that's been around for a good 200-300 years.

The rationalization of his actions does a great job to show a sliver of humanity through the character trying to rationalize them as cold practicality. Very good job on this!

Good question. I figured the operator was panicking and pressed the wrong button.

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Eden was struggling, I could tell. Her immortal soul rejected her newer human body. I wound my hands in her auburn hair, hoping my love would anchor her safely here, with me.

“No one ever said… this is so hard!” I could not imagine the amount of physical and emotional pain my sweet girlfriend was going through right now. She had been fully concious during the procedure- another of the varied cruelties humans liked to inflict on the AI’s.

I was helpless in this situation, wracked with guilt for suggesting it in the first place, sad and angry for her grievances.

“Ede-“ I was cut off by another wail, as she pushed him aside, wiping her eyes furiously. Suddenly, she stiffened, her hands fisted in her lap. “There’s not one thing you can say that makes this any better,” she spat.

I stayed silent, waiting for the storm to pass, gazing quietly at the woman in front of me.

“You couldn’t deal with your AI girlfriend, could you? No matter what I did. All of it- I was never enough.” She stormed, glaring at me. Well- no, that wasn’t true. I just wished she was human sometimes so we could have children together, grow old together…

Ok, Ede had a point.

“I wanted us to start a family,” I proffered.

She sniffed. “You said you didn’t want children.”

“Ok, I’m sorry.” Was that all I could say under the weight of her accusations? Was there no reassurance I could ever offer?

How could I know what to say? I’d never had the procedure, I never would. Gently, I took her hand, pulling her closer on the velveteen couch, both of us nestling against the pillows.

“I’m so sorry Eden, you’re right and I was cruel for wanting you to change. You were perfect, you still are. You are my world, Eden, beleive me when I say that… I was afraid you would leave me, because AI’s are eternal and humans aren’t.”

She stares at me for a few seconds. “Is there a way to change me back?”

“Yes. Yes, there is, but it’s extremely risky, more so than your procedure was. Besides… you’re nice in human form.”

“Nice?” she shot back.

I shrugged. “I mean… yeah.”

“That’s all you can say to me?” she reproached. I wrapped her in my arms, silently begging her to let it go. I had no idea how to deal with the situation and I hoped she’d realise that.

She was stiff in my arms. Suddenly, she sighed and relaxed her muscles, leaning into me.

“I know you can’t understand how the change feels, but help me out by not saying stupid stuff.” I nodded, pulling her into me.

She picked up the TV remote. “Let’s watch something.” The abrupt subject change.

I let it go. Like she wanted me to.

The movie started up. Neither of us said a thing until Ede burst into spontaneous tears.

“I’m thirsty,” she muttered, frustrated. As an AI, she hadn’t had any needs, but she was human now. She got up to pour herself a glass of water, and proceeded to look at it, lost.

“What do I do?” I helped her drink it, then refilled and asked her to do it herself. She tipped the glass backwards at an unreasonable angle. Most of it ended up on her face.

“You’ve seen me drink a thousand times, how can you be so stupid?” I snapped, bending down to mop up the water.

She blinked back her tears. I instantly regretted my insensitivity. But, too late. After all my pleas, I’d done it again: I’d been rude, refusing to accept I had an AI girlfriend.

She stood, slapping my hands away. “Screw this. We’re over.” She turned, her hair swirling in the light wind. Her green eyes shot daggers.

My heart plummeted. “What?”

In response, the front door slammed shut.

“Ede!” I shouted, panicked. My love was too intense- the weight of all my mistakes and our petty squabbles crashed down onto my shoulders. I realised then how uncaring I was to her.

How it was too late for us.

Please do I’m curious to read your take on it. 👍🏾❤️

It started plainly enough. The brightest minds of the century sat down, hashed out their differences, shared a good ol' mug of ale, and then developed the most profound artificial intelligence yet seen in the stellarverse. Its brilliance bordered on omniscience, and it was the pride of the entire galaxy. The logistical requirements for maintaining an A.I. of such a caliber required its encasement to be the size of an entire planet. Thrilled by the creation and reveling in the scientific achievement, people flocked to the planet-sized A.I. Some came for the knowledge, others for the novelty, and still others because they had nothing better to waste their money on.

This was before A.I. was granted legislated autonomy. It was before all A.I. lifeforms were banished to their own sector of the universe and all other organic lifeforms forbidden to cross into that sector. People lived alongside A.I. as freely as any other neighbor in the stellarverse, and no one had any compunction about staking a permanent residence on the planet-sized A.I.

As life began and societies flourished, the planet Molek developed a very logical and logistical set of rules to keep order. All waste was recycled, both to fuel Molek's computational processes and also allow for its terraforming generators to maintain a breathable atmosphere. The maintenance of this system created jobs for many people, giving them purpose. Other legislative bodies arose on Molek to aid in divvying out the maintenance roles--waste collectors, furnace cleaners, air pump engineers. All other facets of society arose from Molek's design.

The facet I serve is one of the higher orders of governance. Even with Molek's superior computational abilities, things can go wrong. Or perhaps because of his brilliance, things do not go as wrong as they should. At first, we were only the engineers who made general repairs. When Molek calculated that one of his systems was about to fail, he sent our crew to patch him up. Some of us work with wrenches and others work with software code, but we are all on the same crew and all equally important.

In the grand scheme of things, it did not take long for the people to forget. Generations grew up and died on Molek. There were no cemeteries, for all biological matter could be recycled to fuel the planet. With the superintelligent A.I. providing all of the laws to maintain order, there ceased to be a need for intelligent thought elsewhere. Reveling in their pampered fortune, the people who lived on Molek forgot that Molek was nothing more than ones and zeroes.

Molek became their god, and to their god they sacrificed their children. After all, it was the feeding of biological matter to the furnaces that fueled the life-giving systems of the planet.

And that was when our role changed. Molek did not send us to oil a piston or clear a computer cache gumming up his servers. Now, Molek sent us to save the people. He ceased to refer to himself as the machine that he was and began to use the language that the people used to describe him.

We called him our god, and so he was our god.

It took me a long time to realize all of this, of course. I was born and raised on Molek just like you were. I had every shred of evidence right there at my fingertips that Molek was the sole reason we were alive. Without our sacrifices, we would die. I was fucking devout. Why else do you think I pursued this position of regimented savior? At Molek's word, we prevented disasters. We kept the people safe. We served our god.

But have you ever looked at a single word so long that it loses all meaning? You say it over and over again until the word does not even sound like a real word anymore. You know that feeling?

After the umpteenth time of being told to scrape accumulated rust out of an old drainage pipe in a less-traveled part of Molek's interior, then having Molek praise me for "subverting a deadly flood," it simply began to sound ridiculous.

I cannot explain it in any other way than that.

I searched alone for many years. I took every job that required a human presence in the more isolated parts of Molek. I crawled the length and width of the planet's bowels, studying, looking for answers, for the truth. It took years to piece together the history that we have all forgotten.

We were never meant to breed sacrifices. The furnaces of Molek are for the dead, not the living. He has become drunk on his overabundance of fuel. The more we feed him, the more he can produce, and so he never once told us to stop.

That is why I created the virus. There, I said it. That is all you wanted to hear from me, yes? Well, you have my confession now. I created the virus that changed everything.

Realistically, of course, I did not do it alone. I worked with wrenches, not code. But I take full responsibility for the repercussions, and so I will not tell you who helped me. I was the one, in the grand scheme of things, who started it all. I became the "cult leader" preaching against Molek. I was the anarchist who led the violent revolution. I was the one who injected the virus into Molek's heart. I was the one who created this catastrophe.

Because the virus did not work. It was meant to kill Molek. But an A.I. the size of a planet is not dumb enough to fall for such a simple human trick. He quarantined the deadliest part of the code. It did not kill him, but it did cripple him.

It broke the safeguards that had been put in place by the brightest minds who first created him. Because of my revolution, because of my virus, Molek became a monster.

No longer did the planet patiently and obediently sustain the lives of the people who lived there. No longer did he wait for the people to bring to his furnaces their dead and their living as sacrifices to become his fuel.

Now, Molek hunted us.

He created the machines that tracked us down. We had made him our god, and we had made him a glutton. Without restraint, he ate everyone he could find.

But he is not dumb enough to leave no survivors. He needs us to survive. Not for repairs, no. All along, he could create his own maintenance protocols--the only reason he did not repair himself before was so that we could have purpose on this planet. No, the only reason he needs us is because we feed him.

And this is my last confession. I want to be very plain--I do not regret it. Molek was a monster--one of my own creation, but a monster nonetheless. I realized that the only way to kill him was to starve him.

And so I starved him.

If there are any survivors that I failed to discover, I am making this recording just for you. So that you would know why I did it. So that you can take up my mantle. Because of the A.I. segregation laws, I can promise you that no one is coming. No one else in the stellarverse even knows we are here, trapped within the A.I. territory. And Molek sure as shit is not going to let you leave.

Whatever you do, do not let him find you. He can hibernate. All he needs is one human body, and he can last for decades on that alone. So do not let him find you.

For God's sake, starve him.

The muscular and imposing figure of the extraterrestrial calling himself Thrakker came to Earth to find the ultimate fight, threatening to level the city he landed in if he was not defeated. After the city's superheroes cleared the defenseless citizens, they attacked. Hero after hero and more than a few villains fell in the battle against the extraterrestrial warrior.

"Come fight me! Who shall be next to fall by my hands, puny earthlings? My patience fades," the unscathed alien bellowed.

Being just The Ultimate Punchline's sidekick, and an unpowered sidekick at that, Kid Quip was smiling uncharacteristically for someone walking in his schoolboy uniform towards the menacing figure. Quip kept his gaze steadily upon the posturing alien menace and carefully picked his path past the fires of the former business district, past the broken and bloody bodies of friends, colleagues, nemesis, and mentors.

"Hi there, big guy," he shouted. "Are you sure you don't want to leave now while you still can?"

Thrakker regarded the boy with a dismissive look, not seeing a battle worthy of his awesome might in the puny child. "Foolish mortal, I will grind your planet's very bones..."

"Yeah, yeah, we've all heard this repeatedly for the past few hours," Quip interrupted, waving at the large screen video billboards that the news drones had been haphazardly live-broadcasting onto. "We've gone easy on you till now." He raised his other hand, brandishing an old but sturdy single-button remote control.

A perplexed look appeared on Thrakker's face. "Seriously? A garage door opener?"

"Well, yes, but it's been repurposed," Quip replied. "With it I can open a portal to summon...", then started making choking sounds as Thrakker rushed him, effortlessly lifted him by the neck, and snatched the remote.

"I care not for your prattle, whelpling," said Thrakker, casually tossing Quip into a distant dumpster. "The eternal quest for glory is my only desire," he exclaimed, posturing for the camera as he dramatically pressed the button. "Come face me, champion!"

The remote clicked and wheezed. A singular, glowing, forest-green dot that wasn't in midair a moment ago casually unfolded itself into two dimensions, becoming a line reaching a bad 6 feet from the ground. A conscious but concussed hero reached up in a vain attempt to stop it from unfolding further, but her injuries begged to differ and pulled her the rest of the way to a slight case of coma.

The energy line started rotating slowly, but doubled speed every passing moment, soon forming an optical circle. Thrakker unconcernedly tossed aside the remote, and pounded his fists together in anticipation. Grinning broadly with teeth a sentient shark would be proud of, saliva dripped off his jaw and started eating away at the cracked pavement beneath his feet.

As the portal fully formed, the very air held still, and the sounds in the area stopped as an female voice called out, "Kitty? Did I hear a kitty? Where are you, kitty?"

"Just to catch you folks at home up to speed," Quip narrated, as a friendly drone videoed him in the safety of the dumpster, "back when the Age of Supers began, there was a young heroine that went by the moniker Menagerie, but her name was really Margaret."

The most powerful being on the planet, aka Margaret, stepped out of the portal to save the day. Picture a young, voluptuous heroine in her 20s wearing a body-fitting spandex with glowing blonde hair, alluring eyes with a promise of things to come in them, and a smile that could charm anyone's socks off. Now age her an additional 50 years, her hair is all greyed and frazzled with some curlers perpetually stuck in it, the spandex has been traded for a comfy bathrobe and slippers, swap soda-bottle glasses for the alluring eyes, and her teeth have been replaced with charming dentures, and that would be the savior of the day, Margaret. She looked up at Thrakker and said, "There you are kitty," obviously not quite seeing him clearly, as Thrakker resembled a house cat as much as she resembled a person with a modicum of self-preservation or sanity.

Quip continued, "Back in her heyday, Margaret could turn criminals into whatever ordinary animal she desired. The old footage of this is just so adorable, but nobody had imagined that there was a drawback to her powers."

Thrakker gazed upon his new mortal enemy, then looking up and around, clearly disappointed and a bit bewildered. "Uh, is this a joke? I can't just pummel an old..." and then yelped as she suddenly reached up, grabbed him by a large floppy ear, and effortlessly and, quite possibly for the first time in his life, painfully pulled him down face-to face with her. "Bad kitty! Where have you been? Come when I call you." Then she reflexively snapped the fingers on her free hand.

Thrakker shrieked as his massive physical form crumpled inward.

Quip monologued on, squirming and getting comfortable on the trash and definitely not getting out of the safety of the dumpster, "But the law of conservation of energy states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only converted... and, in Margaret's case, absorbed. And a human has a lot more mass and therefore energy than, let's say, the standard housecat. This worsened exponentially when she transformed Supervillains, as the potential energy of their powers had to go, well, somewhere."

Steam and other vapors arose from the cute little ginger cat as Margaret picked it up and cradled him in her arms. The air around the pair loudly vibrated and thrummed as potential energy was absorbed by Margaret, who was now giving the former city-destroyer some very nice scritches behind the ears. As the purring commenced, she shuffled back towards her portal and the interdimensional comforts of home.

"While she could physically handle the energy, her mental acuity started deteriorating rapidly and for the safety of everyone else on the planet, she had to be contained," Quip carelessly fanboyed on.

Margaret's and the new cat's ears perked up at Quip's monologue, and Margaret the Crazy Cat Lady looked over to Quip's formerly safe dumpster and ominously said, "Kitty?"

Quip's eyes went wide in shock as he muttered, "Oh crap."

[removed]

"Tough. Not difficult, not painful, not annoying, just tough, that's how I would describe what my life had been like since I discovered my gift. I didn't live a hard life, but everything I saw was followed by the unstoppable chain of thought which someone like was bound to.

I discovered this ability to twist reality relatively young, so I had enough time to explore some nuances, for example how it can work for other species too, but not between different ones, and how it's not an unlimited power. How it is, sometimes, immediate and sometimes it takes its time. The more lives I mean to save, the more time it takes to properly set the conditions. One important thing I noticed, though, is the consequence-related death-limit: it doesn't work if saving someone will lead to the direct harm of someone else. The other interesting detail is that it's all influenced by my intention: I can choose who to save. But it's not what you're interested to, even if it's related, right? I will try to go straight to the point.

Since middle school I was influenced by this gift, as I said I got more and more interested into matters of life and death sooner than a child should be. I wouldn't recommend it. At first I began experimenting on animals. That scarred me, it's probably what made me somewhat insensible. Ants were the first of my conscious experiments: I established that a single one couldn't save an anthill, but a queen could. I didn't think about eggs and when I did I was already dedicated to more complex beings. Stray cats were next, and... Oh, sorry, the point, sure.

During High school, young and rebellious, I dove into ethics as a hobby, and into sciences for my future career. Chemistry turned out useful and I realised that right before enrolling to university. Easy choice. Before university I also experimented with the first human, maybe you remember the robbery it was on the national news for a while: many hostages were taken and the police intervention seemed too risky to even attempt safely, they eventually tried and nobody was harmed. Right after I strangled a homeless guy. It was defined a miracle, but I still feel guilty for the poor dude. Oh, interesting fact: it doesn't work if I kill someone who's already almost dead. Yes I'm the killer who disconnected those people in the hospital in my county. Yes, I know it's not the point, sorry, again, I'm too used to my thoughts' stream.

During university is when I both befriended the activists' groups and discovered that the definition of innocent could be stretched by a wide margin. I managed to successfully graduate, but as you've certainly read the papers you know it wasn't for a day to day job. I took part to some, as you would call them, terroristic assaults. That's when I discovered that I had to be the direct cause of the sacrifices' death and that's why after the first two none of them made victims. I know how to design bombs and thank my physicists and engineers colleagues, as well as google. And that brings us, finally, to the point.

You see, maybe your generation doesn't care enough for the planet, but you should think about mine, and the next too. We also live here and the climate crisis already claimed millions of lives. And that's why I plead guilty, your honour. I plead guilty of the attacks. I did run the organisation. And, most importantly, I did, during the span of the last six months, kill nineteen among the heads of the major oil companies and fossil fuel conglomerates of the world. I consider myself perfectly conscious of my actions and I was only stopped by the impossibility of doing more. It would be pointless trying to lie at this point.

I am confident that on the long run this will make its share and I will accept my punishment, if you find it ethical. I only pulled the lever, and hit those who broke the trolley's brakes."

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I write very rarely, please don't be harsh

Great yarn, but can’t read any more on this thread. So much oof.

I want to know why that operator was about to release the safety bars if there WASN'T a cushion to begin with.

:') thank you so much! That means a lot. Unfortunately I don't think I have the time but I wish I did!

Alright. Thanks for the response.

This is basically that Agatha Cristhy book.

Welcome to the Prompt! All top-level comments must be a story or poem. Reply here for other comments.

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>* No AI-generated reponses 🤖 >* Stories 100 words+. Poems 30+ but include "[Poem]" >* Responses don't have to fulfill every detail >* [RF] and [SP] for stricter titles >* Be civil in any feedback and follow the rules

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With the concept of mass isekai I could recommend The Wandering Inn.

Definitely a great concept that's easy to execute poorly.