Mind the Thorns

Chapter 10

So far, being a vampire just plain sucked.

Regan looked around the abandoned Denny’s where she had been ordered to come and spy on a recruitment meeting for vampire hunters.  A dozen people glared back, most of them brandishing some kind of weapon, and all of them fully intent on killing her, again.  As her mind raced with options and choices she had to focus not to come back to that particular word, “Again.”  Being dead once was quite enough for her.

She licked her lips and let her mind go.

“Look, this is just a bad idea all around,” she started.  “Shooting me, even with normal bullets is a wretchedly bad investment option for you.”

Brother Sam continued to level his pistols at her, while the sisters had stood and slid their chairs back so as to have an clear path at Regan.  They each twisted their hands around a wooden stake.  According to Daryl, the thrall she had met when she first rose from the ground, a stake to the heart would not be fatal.  It would, however, leave her immobilized, not exactly a healthy alternative.

“You think that you can buy your way out of your fate, vampiress?”  Brother Sam seemed anxious to prove himself, his fingers sliding inside the trigger guards.

“Oh, God, no,” Regan confessed quickly.  “But it’s funny you should mention buying something because I really don’t think you’ve done an adequate cost-benefit analysis here.”  The words were picking up speed as she talked.  She lowered her hands and started to gesture as she talked, like she often did in a meeting with the owners who had little knowledge of how their company’s money was distributed.  “Now if we assume you’re using standard lead-based bullets, a case of fifty of them runs, what ten bucks?”  She continued before anyone could answer.  “So break that down and you’re looking at twenty cents per shot.  Of course, a single shot probably won’t end me (you saw I can take a few hits) so let’s assume ten shots to get the job done, costing you an even two dollars in ammunition.”

“Two dollars well spent, vamper,” Glenn swore, brandishing a very long and very sharp looking combat knife.  

“I would absolutely agree, if there weren’t better investments on a simple dollar per hour of satisfaction and opportunity cost.”

“Opportunie what?”  Glenn looked lost.  Regan smiled and continued, her voice taking on an unnatural cadence and tone.  She almost did not recognize it as her own; she just kept going.

“Look, how long do you think the satisfaction of ending me, again, will last?  Given that you’ll have to dispose of what’s left me so as not to break the grand illusion, and that’s not going to be easy or pretty.  For all most of you know it’s like that one show where they explode, and then that satisfaction is going to fade fast.  Let’s be generous and assume that it lasts twenty minutes.  That means that you’re looking at simple dollar per hour ratio of six dollars per hour.  Now that sounds great, except let’s compare it to a considerably less fatal form of entertainment.  You can, and check me there on the laptop, get a copy of Blood Gangs Four for fifty dollars, give or take, with tax and shipping.”  She looked pointedly at Brother Sam.  “Go on and look it up while I explain.  We should have good data for this.”  Regan pointed at the laptop connected to the projector.  She began to grin as Brother Sam did just as she instructed, setting his pistols on the table in front of him.  “Now unless I’m mistaken, you can expect somewhere around fifty hours of gameplay, but there is also the multiplayer, some new content coming soon, let’s call it seventy five hours.  Factor that against the cost and the ratio works out to be a neat sixty seven cents per hour of enjoyment, which is itself three times the same ratio of shooting me.”  She paused for effect.

“You can get the same amount of fun for a third of the cost.”  Everyone looked around at each other, their eyes starting to glow with a light of opportunity.