Vampires in Space

What ARE You Going To Do?

"Yes. What ARE you going to do about that, husband?" Helen asked me. Her tone was teasing because her question had a second level to it, as my hand was firmly trapped between her legs. Helen is stronger than me, so there is nothing I can do about that. My hand will have to stay where it is.

I started my security soliloquy with a straightforward explanation, laying out the IE plans to protect the overpasses, place response teams along the route, and increase the drone overflights and tag-a-longs of the rails.

"That's the IE side of the response. All standard corporate resources and security stuff." I added the part that would be more interesting to the rest of the Council. "The Crew side is being handled by Denise and Luciana. Crew has better resources. Undercover and behind-the-scenes type of things. Researching and understanding who each of the Humanists are. Where they live, what they have done and said in the past. Olivia has this local weed patch of malcontents under full surveillance. If these people make a move, we'll know about it. Also worth pointing out here, given our history with similar groups is that while these bozos are named 'Humanists' they are not in any way related to any of the human supremacists we have dealt with in the past. This group of supremacists is not aware of Vampires."

"That's a nice change." Victoria commented.

"Their problem as it relates to us is that they are invested in the old ways. By nature or by fiscal reasons."

"They placed the wrong bets, invested in the wrong things, and now they are mad about it?" Helen asked.

"In essence. For whatever reason, these idiots are against progress. All the things we are doing to get off planets and otherwise hide from humans as Vampires? All the technology we created to achieve this? Not only better recycling, but all the myriad tech that came out of figuring out how to live in space like Fusion power, better solar panels, better medical tech, and on and on? It is all an anathema to them. They are not anti-tech exactly. We are not talking about a religious group that eschews anything past horse-drawn carts. The Humanist's problem is high tech. Anything hard for them to understand. They understand burning oil and coal. They do not understand fusing hydrogen. Multi-layer solar panels using different substrate compositions to extract power from different parts of the spectrum. They don't want electric vehicles humming quietly all over the place. They want Internal combustion engines. Bring back the V-8s and burn oil. Take off the mufflers and go screaming up and down the roads. They hate auto-drive and want people back in charge of the vehicle. They want the government to stop telling them they have to do things safely. That they have to consider others. These self-centered, self-important jerks want what they want and they do not want to have to even remotely consider how it affects anyone else. All they see is how they are affected."

"Sounds like a lovely little group of fuckheads."Helen said, "Sorry I missed them popping up down here while I was running around a rotating space cylinder."

"Their threat to Vampires is that they are against all the tech we are using to get to space. Also against, I assume, things like space mining. Space manufacturing?" Rachel asked.

"This group of so-called humanists are not all of a kind." I explained to Rachel. "They are united around being anti-progress, but which particular progress gets up which self-involved nose varies."

A picture appeared on the wall display with a bio. "Take for example this woman. A many generations removed descendent of J Paul Getty. She says, anyway. Her name is Patricia Pauline Getty. No one dares call her 'PP' to her face, because she is as mean as they come. Patty only to her friends. Patrica to everyone else, when they are not calling her 'Ms. Getty'. And yes: She uses 'Ms.'. She has a string of male toys she appears to take out her anger on. Her feeling is her family was robbed. That governmental anti-trust actions in the 20th century were unfair to her wealth. It never got any better in the 21st century as global warming forced the reduction of oil usage. J Paul was actually something of a philanthropist, but Patty cakes? Not so much. She wants her money back. She wants to go into high society as 'old money'."

"Sheesh." Helen said. Other heads nodded in agreement with that assessment.

Another picture appeared. "Kind of the same story here. Jerry Timtchenko. Descendent of a Russian Oligarch. Or so he thinks. That is the family story. There has never been any genetic testing to verify this. The American woman who claimed to have had an affair and started the US-based line of Timtchemnko's may have been influenced by the politics of her day into making up that story. The entire family history is about nothing having ever gone right for them. Money stolen. Investments lost. The good old days when natural gas was a ticket to being a billionaire."

Another picture. "This guy's family was tossed from power and influence when his great grandfather's scam around selling gold, as well as their later attempts to sell homeopathic remedies, were all chased to the ground and squashed. He is focused on overturning laws that have to do with medical advances having to prove they are effective and useful. He hates tech like implants to reduce nerve pain."

Another picture appeared. "This one's family owned a tire manufacturer. How they made their money. Hates the fact that trains and trolleys have steel wheels. Also hates that the new-tech rubber made in space and based upon our advanced carbon fiber technology is technically superior to their synthetics. They have been riding the tech they have into the ground. Their R&D budget is tiny. They are just money because they always used to get money. Never mind that the product line has not changed in years."

Another. "This one hates any AI-driven tech that puts people out of work. Want's cars to need chauffeurs. Trains should require engineers. The attitude is not that different from many full-employment social movements. Make it so people don't have to train to higher skill levels. Wants to lower the skills needed to do things that pay money. For that reason, this lovely individual also hates nanobots. Auto-repair mechanisms. Is it about full employment? No. For this ass it's about having a lot of people who report to you and make you feel important. Tech makes them feel unimportant. This person earns the title of 'most like the old HPA group', because in their feeling unimportant and insignificant, they also work hard to keep people of color, other religions, women ... all the usual groups ... under them. Underpaid, overworked, and not valued as people."

I stopped throwing up pictures. "It goes on and on like that. People of money and power in days gone by that lost their fiscal and or social position due to progress. Did not adapt to changing times. Driven largely by us and competition with us. That is the threat to Vampires. Our human-facing institutions, which we go out of our way to make as innocuous and pleasant as possible. We intentionally do NOT compete with many other companies but still win sometimes merely by being the best and most advanced. These kinds of people, now organized under the Humanist banner, are coming after us. They do not care who they hurt to get what they want, because what they want are wealth and power, and we are in the way."

"We are head and shoulders ahead because of Ben and Heather, and their envelope-pushing research into Localverse physics. Because space exploration and all the related research gave us an edge. Because all the follow-on tech to learning to live outside the Earth's biosphere paid dividend after dividend. In every technological area." Rachel said.

"Layered on top of that is we re-invested over and over. Kept growing as fast as we could because we are driven by the survival of the subspecies. We know what the humans will do to us if they find us." Helen expanded on Rachel's point.

"One reason we try so hard not to compete. Not to draw attention to us." I said. "Humans will be humans, and nothing we could do could stop anti-progress groups like this from forming. This is not like the Amish or any similar anti-tech group who are the way they are for religious or lifestyle reasons. People who want to live in no or low-tech environments. They are no threat because they are happy where they are. We have made sure to the degree we have influence that society is tolerant of groups like the Amish. Their farms are not encroached upon. Some groups feel like there should be no tech. They think everyone should live like them. They hate progress, but their religion and general lack of technical know-how keep them from being violent about it. The proselytizers that come out into society and preach a return to the land or whatever is fine, as long as they are not 'Be like us or we kill you.' The Taliban, for example, had to go. The irony of their demise was dying at the hands of women. The humanists here are nothing like any of those. They are united in greed, and the way forward for them is to return to the ways of the past, when their way made them rich."

"How will you stop these bloody fools?" Helen asked.

"We know where they live." I said and left it at that.