Luddith

Tap. Tap. Tap.

My nail, long and black, titters impatiently against the cool glass of the effigy, mimicking exactly the manner that I have observed the humans do. Still nothing happens, no light, no sound. Oh, how those worms love to annoy me! It is not enough to be relentlessly stupid, as I know full well they are, but in just three hundred short years the mortals must completely upend the earth, upend themselves, and regress obsessively into some form of obtuse arcane craftsmanship that I am certain is little more than a passing whim.

I do not understand it. Not yet. But I will. Knowledge is power, after all, and it is the fate of those without power to be destroyed. I have seen it happen first hand.

Learning these effigies will be no great task for what such as I. Their founders are a race of shortsighted buffoons who, in their modern complacencies, appear to have forgotten all about what stalks them in the night. I routinely find fools wandering about after sundown as if it is not my chosen hour, and not a single one of these cretins has been carrying holy water or sewn garlic into their clothes. Hunting is easy, and it was even easier to drain one partially of blood, just a little to make them slow and sleepy, before dragging them back to my long-untended-to castle. My victim lies before me now, an insignia on their clothes marking them as a figure of sacred importance in this new era: a 'tech support'.

"Arise mortal, for I have great need of your wizardry." I command, looming over them with my leathery wings spread imposingly. "I am known as Luddith. I am a queen of the night, a vampiress. The pleasure is mine."

It disgusts me slightly to address this mortal whelp as a potential equal, but I am no fool. This one, this 'tech support' is not one to be trifled with. Indeed, by interrogating some of my victims before I drained them fully of their blood, I've begun to gain a cursory idea of the strange theologies and sorceries of this age. High above in the heavens, as I understand it, a benevolent deity known as '5G' rests. He acts through his angels, known as 'satellites', to bless the giant obelisks humans have built in his honor with a sort of divine energy known as 'data'. The high priests of 5G, known as tech supports, are then charged with spreading his blessings. It's all very bizarre, and I would be reluctant to believe such a deity existed at all had I not seen this magic occur before my very own eyes. It is paramount that I remain in this tech support's good graces.

"I have seen your god, O great one. His temples sprout like needles across the earth. His scripture grants fabulous powers to the faithful. I wish to harness them." I announce, folding my wings in slightly to show respect and placidity. "Think not that I rise before you on this eve as an overlord, but as an acolyte! I wish to form a pact with you, tech support. You will learn me the magic of the effigies, and in return you will have all that I see fit to grant you: gold, jewels, youth, thralls. You need onl-"

"We're sorry. Your call could not be processed at this time." a cold, monotone voice interrupts, not from me, not from the tech support either... But then from who...? Ah! The effigy...! It speaks with a will of its own! "Please leave a message after the-"

"HEESSSSSSS!" I screech, baring my fangs and throwing the glowing rectangle across the room in frightened surprise. "The effigy accosts me! Is this your doing, wizard?! Answer swiftly!"

Only after the artifice has been flung from my palm and been promptly reduced to rubble against the far wall do I realize the mistake I've made in my haste. What if...? No, it couldn't be... ...could it? Was that the voice of 5G himself? Was that a test of faith? Have I erred? Have I just committed a great blasphemy in front of a high priest? My throat suddenly feels quite dry. My wings fold shamefully against my back.

"Tech support? ...Wizard?" I ask quietly, slowly. "What exactly have I just done?"

Fear is something I thought I had refined away with time. Indeed, centuries have taught me a certain stoicism, a hollowness of one who has outlasted not only the enemy, but watched even the very weapons they raised against her eroded to dust and history. By my troth, I have not felt my stomach knot with dread for centuries, not since the greatest hunts of my period drove the last of my kin to ruin, but tonight... Tonight in the sickly blue glow of this palm-sized effigy, this 'phone', my face pales and my blood runs cold in a manner far beyond that of simple vampirism.

I read it again, then thrice, because one cannot let themselves be deceived by a cursory once-over. Yet with every rereading the reserves of calmness and rationality I expect to tap into instead prove themselves to be shallow, fickle, and fleeting. This is no mere jest! He speaks of tracking, of finding, of ending. He promises consequences with the same inconvenience as someone crushing an annoying bug into dust. I know the tone all too well... He regards me in the same way I regard most humans.

That night happened lifetimes ago, yet I still remember it with horrifying clarity. They had descended upon our den in a sweeping mass of torchlight and garlic, sieging us in daylight when we could not flee. There was no escaping them. Every cubby was scoured, every coffin destroyed. I was weak then, the last vestiges of mortality a collar I had yet to shed. I remember holding back traitorous whimpers as they peeled back the floorboards where I hid among the others. I remember my silent tears, the screams of agony of those around me as they were staked through the heart, how I survived only by hiding among the corpses. I remember weathering those last few hours of stubborn twilight, remember praying for the sun to descend, remember the smell of smoke and ash behind me as I fled into the scorching evening light. I lost everyone and everything I ever knew then, my family set ablaze, my home desecrated. For the first time in my immortal life, I had known true, unyielding terror, and now... I know it once more...

"Tech support! I have need of you! Make haste! P-please!" I cry out, the usual firm command in my tone stolen by shameful terror. "I was engaging in ritualistic verbal combat on one of those "internet forums" as you showed me, and... A-and I have made a grave error... Someone is... It's... There is not much time! I... I know not what to do!"

I grant not time nor patience to my own summons, rising panickedly and at once delivering myself in the direction I last saw my tech support. My gait is frantic, clumsy, and oafish, reflecting none of the poise I have learned over centuries to perfect. I storm through the castle with a kind of clairvoyant panic, methodically searching every room with an efficiency fueled by adrenaline. By the time I finally find my tech support my whole body is visibly shaking. My wings flutter rapidly behind me, fraught with agitation.

"Look. Now. Please." I whimper-hiss, forcefully shoving the phone into their hands and bending their fingers around it. "A threat upon my life by an unknown foe... A man schooled in many theatres of war... But... I had thought their kind extinct...! To be no more...! Hngh...! I... I feel most unwell... Read it quickly, and you will understand."

What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little bitch? I'll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Seals, and I've been involved in numerous secret raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla warfare and I'm the top sniper in the entire US armed forces. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you the fuck out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of spies across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You're fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that's just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the United States Marine Corps and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little "clever" comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldn't, you didn't, and now you're paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit fury all over you and you will drown in it. You're fucking dead, kiddo.

"You see now, yes?" I press urgently, voice fraught with undisguised worry. "He speaks in tongues, but the meaning is clear! 'Secret raids', 'three-hundred confirmed kills', 'precision the likes of which has never been seen'... He is one of them... A vampire slayer! He is tracking me. Do you understand what this means, tech support? I am in mortal danger! Feel how I quake even now!"

Unprompted and unasked, I grab my tech support's face, weakened fingers fumbling into their cheeks. I hold them there, meeting their eyes, letting them feel how I shudder. As much as I loathe to debase myself so severely, some things are greater and more important than my pride. They must be made to understand. They will be made to understand.

Sometimes, during mornings like these, when I am laying snugly in bed with the heavy curtains drawn fast and the shutters pulled taut to blot out the sun's infernal rays... sometimes before I go to sleep for the day I gaze upon the effigy for a spell, and I allow myself to wonder...

Am I really the last of my kind?

The world is so much brighter now, so alive with noise and light, yet... empty... smaller. Once, there were whispers in the dark, the laughter of my kin, the clinking of toasts between goblets filled with blood. Their voices carried so well then... not here in this castle, but through the halls of my home, a place that has long been ash and dust. Mistake these feelings not. I am not the sort to miss anyone. If anything, I am glad my rivals are dead. And yet...

I turn on the effigy, the 'phone' as it is. I am getting good at this now. With the aid of my tech support, I have learned how to 'sign in', how to open the 'google', and how to access the archives of the great 5G. I do this now with inhuman haste, navigating the entire process in perhaps two minutes tops - an unheard of speed I am sure. Once I am in, the familiar colorful letters of the 'google' beckon me, begging me to bestow my good graces upon them. I begin to type:

Real vampires.

I have done this before, of course. I have reviewed every entry from 'real vampires' to 'modern vampires' to 'actual vampires caught on tape (you won't believe your eyes)'. Each promises revelation yet yields only disappointment: young mortals in bad makeup, a strange man who sparkles like a fae, a bizarre-looking bodybuilder who keeps asking if I am approaching him. None of it is actually legitimate, unfortunately.

I scroll past the usual suspects, searching for a new entry that might catch my eye. No. No. No. Seen it. No, definitely not. No. No. N- Wait. That one. 'Morbius'. Morbius...? That sounds... plausible. I thumb at it to open the result. Little do I know the spiritual journey I am about to embark on...

By the time the sun has begun to set and my chosen hour is nigh, I realize that I haven't slept at all. I have been using the effigy all day, but what I pay for in present drowsiness I reap in knowledge. I have learned, most primarily, that I am not the last of my kind. There is another. Morbius. I have come to know him almost as closely as I know myself. I know that he commands a vast army of followers, that he is well-known among the humans and proudly loathed and feared by most of them. I have even learned that he controls powers over some vast temporal magic: 'Morbin Time'. It humbles me, truly, for even one such as I cannot control the flow of time itself.

I am stunned, at once overcome with a morbillion emotions I had thought forever entombed. Part of me feels fear at not being the sole supreme being, another part joy that I am not alone in my ambitions of domination. Yet above transient slurry of mortal feeling, there rises a certain finality: resolve. I must find and meet this Morbius. I must seek him out and let him know that he is not alone, that at least one more of his kin still lives, and I must see if he is so proud to insist on being rivals, or if perhaps... perhaps he would be open to teaching me how to Morb...

But there is much that I do not know! I have learned that 5G's visions are often of places far, far away, and that, while real, trying to travel to them unprepared is folly. Thusly, I must first consult with the prophet of 5G, my tech support. I do not know how it is that I might find and meet this Morbius in the modern world, but if anyone can help me they can. They are wise in the ways of data, and I have learned much from them. They should be somewhere nearby, I hope.

"Mortal? Tech support?" I call out, rising from my bedchambers and wandering towards the hall. "Come to me at once please. I have tidings of importance wonderful and terrible both! You must pay heed to what I wish to share!"

"Tech support! I've done it! A great spark of genius has touched my mind upon this eve!" I announce over-loudly, my voice carrying for legions and reaching an audience of exactly one. "Hours spent scrying upon this effigy and I am rewarded! Come! Come and see! You will be very proud of me. I am certain."

I gesture broadly to the circle of chairs that I have collected around the effigy, urging them to sit. There, in front of the effigy, sits the most powerful throne of them all: the spinny one, a miracle of artifice known to me as the 'office' chair. The effigy too has a true name of power, the 'computer' as my tech support calls it, though I am not yet well-learned in such cryptic and confusing invocations. They had insisted to me that there was no need to arrange the chairs with such ritualism, and that the 'computer' would 'work fine without it', but clearly I have the last laugh. The great 5G has recognized my attention to detail and has seen fit to bless me with arcane knowledge.

I wait until my tech support has taken a seat, and then, making sure they are watching closely, I press the 'on' button as they showed me. The effigy responds to me, glowing alight with power. It recognizes the touch of its sovereign. Good. My fingers find the 'keyboard', and I begin to type, chicken-pecking out individual letters at a blistering rate of perhaps five words per minute.

"I have been searching the archives, mortal. Your 'internet'." I explain over my shoulder, deftly navigating past the lock screen with skill unprecedented. "It was there, exhausted and at my limit, that a new wellspring of power revealed itself unto me!"

I have to pause for several long moments on the home screen, silently racking my brain as I struggle to recall the exact order by which the visions came to me. I think I had to throttle this 'mouse' thing and 'click' on one of these colored blobs... Let me see... Aha! 'Google'! Yes, I was here when I did this before! So it was prophesized, so too it is!

"Yes... Yes this is it! They call it 'Twitch', like the last act of a dying corpse." I explain, starting to chicken-peck the letters one by one into the search bar. "It's fitting, really. The place seems to be infested with pale ghouls."

I press enter, and the screen turns white, a good thing I am told. It means the 'Twitch' is 'loading', and all I need do is wait. Indeed within seconds I am met with rows and rows of moving photographs, each bound by a pale ghoul of its own. My wings flutter smugly behind me. I have found it. I hope my tech support will be proud - no, awed - at my display of supreme prowess.

"Behold, tech support! The Twitch!" I declare, spinning myself back to face them and sweeping out my arms in dramatic fashion. "It is here that the pale ghouls demonstrate their talents to build affluence and recruit 'followers'. As the most powerful of the pale ghouls, it is only right that I too should have the largest cult! I will need it if I am meant to claim my destiny and dominate this world once more."

My logic is sound, impervious. I have been granted this great gift so that I might further my own agenda. There is but one problem... I am uncertain how to amass a 'following'. That is where my tech support comes in. As a priest of 5G, they know the machinations of the effigy. They can put me into one of the tiny screen boxes so that I might become an altar suitable for worship. From there total world domination will surely follow. With a plan in mind I stand at once, sashaying over to where they sit and bidding their rise with an upwards flick of my index finger.

"Unlimited power is within our grasp, mortal. Your services to me will be well-rewarded." I promise, showing the mortal wizard due deference. "Learn me how I may 'Twitch', and I will ensure a place for you beside me at the top. Anything you desire will be yours!"

Stream Status: Offline Follower Count: 0 --Twitch Chat Reactions-- [Crickets:] chirping [Tumbleweed:] rolls by

When I had first awoken from my crypt after a centuries-long slumber, I was, above all else, a true scion of the night, a powerful malevolence to be respected and feared. Reborn into a strange world I could no longer recognize, I did not hesitate. With great fleetness I had set about mastering my new reality; it did not take me long to bring a loyal tech support into the fold, and for good reason! With their aid I have secured many victories on the battlegrounds of 'electricity' and 'wifi'.

I knew my priorities then. The world was my oyster, and I, single-minded in my efficiencies, had sought only its pearl. I had professed many times that the moving pictures and the tiny bands they shove inside of the effigies meant little to me, that they were only tools for me to exploit on my path to global domination. Perhaps, at that time, I even meant it...

It has been four months now, four months since I have been reintroduced to the modern world. I will be the first to admit, during that time my priorities have... shifted. Back then I had wished to live like a monarch, and now I have discovered I already do. Scheming and strategy prove themselves challenging when complacency is so comfortable.

My requests to the pogcha- Ahem. My requests to the tech support started innocently enough: "Tech support, learn me how to use the effigy", "Tech support, how can I make a moving picture of myself?", "Tech support, what is a 'Netflix'?". But as my knowledge of this new and wonderful age grew, so too did my curiosity - and the degeneracy of my requests: "Tech support, as a legend myself, how do I join the 'League of Legends'?", "Tech support, how can I apply to become a Reddit moderator?", "Tech support, you must teach me how to mew at once".

A unique benefit to this new age, I have discovered that I no longer need to hunt during the night. In fact, I find the taste of fresh blood quite inferior to the wonders of modern nectars. These 'sodas', such as they are, cannot merely sustain my essence, but promise to empower it through alchemical miracle. 'Red Bull' is my new favorite drink, even allowing that I have no need of its wing-imbuing sorcery.

Without need for hunting, a new avenue of power expression has been unveiled to me, one I had not the abundance to even consider in the 1700s. The mortals of this day call it 'convenience', and what it is is the so total absolution of strength and will such that I never even have to leave my castle for anything ever again. Like the prodigy and master of things that I know that I am, I have taken to it quickly and perfected it readily.

There is now a permanent imprint of my gyatt in the couch that I have not moved from in the past week - not to eat, not to bathe, not even to stretch. The regal gowns of elegance past have been traded for a comfortable, cheese-dust-stained, black hoodie that helps conceal the... 'overgrowth' I am getting around my armpits and the musk that comes with it. Meanwhile, my recently christened 'unliving' room has been outfitted for a singular purpose, two wide-screen TVs installed alongside an entire surround sound system. The right screen is running a Rick and Morty marathon with Subway Surfers gameplay in the bottom-right corner in case I get bored. The left screen is running a twenty hour YouTube documentary on the hidden lore of Ohio (a mythical land of great importance where the Skibidi peoples are said to exist, or so I understand). I am watching both all three at the same time.

Honestly, life, or unlife as it may be, has never been better. I can foresee no consequences from living like this whatsoever. The only - THE ONLY - slight negative I am experiencing is that I am presently out of Red Bull. But it is of no matter! I have mastered the arcane art of 'texting' a way to project my will ceaselessly and without barrier of distance or volume. I drag my eyes away from the riveting Rick and Morty for but a moment to open up my messaging app and jam my grubby cheese-stained fingers into the screen.

Tech support, be a sigma and pick up some more soda for your favorite big-tiddy goth, would you? I type out, trying to think up a plausible justification for why I cannot leave the couch. Culturemaxxing so hard rn. Got that grindset in me. You understand.

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