Rachel came to the office. I was not expecting her. Denise and Anne are huddled over the desk, looking at Boot Camp stuff.
"Hi, Adrian. Can we talk?" Rachel asked.
"Sure. Why we have a conference room." I answered and stood up.
Denise looked up, interested, but was not invited to the meeting, so went back to her work.
I led us into the 'Olsen and Sagan' side of the suite, and the conference room we have there. I mentally added 'conference room for Council BS' to my construction buildout checklist. Also bigger shower. Also 'rainwater collection'. A lot of new buildings in Austin come with that, but this one is too old. To have a bigger shower, I need to have a rainwater collection system to lessen the guilt over water usage. I wish I could take the drain water out into plant areas, but that is not code.
Angel looked up from her desk as we walked by.
"Hi, Rachel. You are looking a bit pensive. Can I get you something? Tea?" Angel offered.
Rachel smiled at our housemate. "Thanks, Angel. Just some water maybe?" Rachel answered.
Rachel and I seated ourselves in the conference room's big comfy chairs. Morgan likes her clients to feel comfortable. Sort of the opposite of an interrogation room.
Mental note: Council is buying me nice chairs for the new conference room.
Angel popped in with chilled water for Rachel and a beer for me. We keep the kitchen stocked here.
"Thanks, Angel." I looked at the beer curiously.
"You'll want it." Angel answered the unasked question.
Angel bopped on out and closed the door, but it seems as if Angel already knows what the conference with my housemate and Council-mate is about. That made one of us. Two, counting Rachel.
"I came by to apologize." Rachel said. "I told Helen there were better ways to do what we did to you. I waited until now to talk to you because... Well... Many reasons. One is, you have been so angry. I hoped that would taper off. It hasn't, so I decided now is as good a time as any. I figured if you were angry, you would not hear me as well." Rachel said.
"Rachel. I understand. I know I have been a super pissed off person, and it's everything I can do to not let my daughters feel my rage. Not really helping with Nakoma. She can tell. Chip off the old Angel."
"She is indeed. She is the one that told me it was time to come up here." Rachel said. "Your daughter loves you. I have always known that blood is not the important thing about being a parent, but I have never really understood it the way I do now. In the house. The girls and being one of their mothers. Me. A mum. Nakoma and you. It's all a gift."
I could not help but agree with that. "It is, and that is part of why what Helen did to me is a curse. She has made it so very much harder to not have them be affected."
"Not to defend her actions, because I do not agree with her methods, however, Helen thinks she is thinking long term. Bigger picture kind of thing. About the future for all the kids and all our kind. Helen is convinced in her heart of hearts that in order to protect them and all of us that you need to be on Council. Helen can be a force of nature when she thinks she is right about something."
"That is one way to put it. All hurricanes and natural disasters should be named 'Helen' from now on." I agreed. "I worry about the future too. All the time. Humans finding out about us would be a disaster, but ... It's going to happen someday. For real. We have kept the HPA at bay so far, but eventually, we are going to get caught out and all our tricks won't be enough to save us. Part of the reason the hiding under a rock thing PacRim does won't work. It's not only about killing male Vampires, but that they want to keep everything like it is, and the world is changing."
"Oh. I know." Rachel said. "I see it all the time, at the paper. You are Crew now: You have been briefed in on the project called Operation 'All Together'. Right?"
"I have." I agreed. I did not editorialize on how Operations get names. This one is better than most.
"And? Your thoughts on it?" Rachel asked.
"I am kind of married to the head of Starfleet Medical so I have lots of details. Less of an Operation and more an idea suggested by the Siren lab project. Not thought out yet, but they know it. Needs a better delivery system." I said. "Darts do not scale up. Has to be aerosolized. There will be serious technical challenges there since it is a complex, not a single organism, and the VMC has very environmentally delicate attributes. I can't see any way it works as an ingestible or a contact solution. Have to survive too many defenses of the body and threats from the world such as UV light, for example. If we solve the delivery issues, and if it gets used, then the health care system will be overwhelmed."
Rachel found my answer funny. "Directly to the technical issues. So you. I meant, what do you think about the core idea?"
"Oh. Sorry. I think it's an ultimate solution to an ultimate problem and also sadly utterly required to have it ready if needed. When the time comes and if we go to war with the humans, they will want to eradicate us. No mercy. How they are. We have to be ready to solve it the same way we did the Assembly. You can't commit genocide on us if you are all like us. It's biological warfare at its worst, so there would be war crimes tribunals. Those that pulled the trigger would be tried and punished even in an all-Vampire world. Defending ourselves from humans would be no defense. It's OK to kill us, but not for us to change them. It would kick off massive medical research into what the original goal of the Siren lab was: How to change back to human. That would lead to massive conflict as there would be those that would not want to change back. In particular, if you are in a place in the world where you are a woman who is a second-class citizen, and suddenly you have all the power, in a very literal way? Why change back? The people that would actually take the change and revert back to human would be human purists. The Luddites. There would be a lot of belief based conflicts for years and years. Gender-based ones too. The world of men upside down. That would be a good thing: Patriarchy is a corrupt system for sure. I say that as a male fighting for my rights in a matriarchy. This is bad for me, but we know the evils and excesses of patriarchy overshadow anything in the Vampire world."
"The world will spiral into darkness for a while." Rachel said, much more succinctly than I did.
"It will. Assuming we get it to work, then there is no avoiding the bad times if we have to use it. That is part of why we need to delay as long as possible until we are spread out among the solar system, or even farther. Also, there is a version of the plan that subverts the human population by making it a slow takeover, so that when the reveal happens, our numbers are too large already. All of it depends on how well we can delay things. I see other options."
"Oh?" Rachel asked me.
"Yeah. Psy-ops things. I have found no references to how it came to be that Vampires came up with the idea of fictionalizing us, for example. With no written history, that is no enormous shock. I think that was an awesome idea, but the law of unintended consequences is now in full effect."
"That idea came out of Europe. NorthAm was late to that party. What do you mean about the consequences?"
"Making it horror. Now if the humans find out we are actually real, we are their worst nightmares."
"I see." Rachel said. "So you think we need a psychological operation initiative to take the scare out?"
"Exactly. I don't like horror as a genre. It has always been one of the weird things about me being a comic book nerd. Jessica is this way too. Something we have in common. I love superhero stuff, but hate horror, yet they are often lumped together. Go to ComicCon, you will see Wonder Woman pictures right next to Frankenstein ones. Hollywood took Heinlein's 'Starship Troopers', a pure sci-fi/war/social commentary, and turned it into a horror film in space about big squishy bugs. Jump scares and bugs blowing spaceships out of orbit with anal emissions. I have never understood how people into one thing are into the other, but then it's like sports. I don't get that either. None of that is about my dislike of a genre though. I think Vampires need to be soft and cuddly in the human mind. No threat. We need to be aspirational. Every family should want one. Mom! Can we get a Vampire? Please?!?! I'll clean my room..."
Rachel laughed at my imagery. "You think we need a global effort to take the threat out of us. A soft landing."
"Yes. I don't know how to do that. Psychology is a very soft science. There are people that are good at it though. Conservatives have been convincing poor people for decades that giving rich people all their money is a great idea. Men have been telling women forever that they need to be in charge when they demonstratedly, as a group, suck at it. Wars are always started by men, and often over women and access to them. They create cultures where men are favored, women are killed at birth, the balance goes off, so they have to raid the next island over to get some women. Dumb."
"I did not say that: You did. I see the outlines of what you are suggesting. Going to have to think about that harder. If we could engineer a soft landing, we maybe could avoid all-out war." Rachel mused and paused for some of her water.
"I know matriarchies are not perfect. Still run by people. I, of all people, know that. I have been on Parole and had my existence threatened if I did not do the right thing. You could call that a protective overreaction to William, but let us face facts: Women have been given little reason to trust men since the beginning of time. Historically speaking the few matriarchies that have existed have been far better than patriarchies for the people that live in them."
"Fair enough." Rachel said.
"Turning back to the chief topic: I think Vampires need a multi-prong solution. It starts with delay, always delay. Spread out. Slow turn. Better PR. Keep the ultimate stuff in our pocket. If we have to do a mass turn, the fatality rate will be equally massive, especially among men. A human woman can survive a three-day turn without medical resources far easier than an average of an eight-day turn for a man." I said. "I would just as soon avoid being a mass murderer, even if it means protecting my kids."
"I completely agree. Why I have the job that I have now, although after this conversation I am seeing we need a better all-media push. I was there to find out and head off things. To misdirect. Now I see I could be part of the removal of some of the horror too. The 'delay things' you are talking about is why we absolutely HAD to get the Sirens under control, and why we need to do the same thing to the HPA, by whatever name they are using in the world." Rachel said.
I understood the beer that our resident Angel provided now. I took a hit on the bottle.