Vampires in Space

Clinic Tour

The Adam's family took a tour of the medical clinic and got the best possible guides. My mom started it off, standing in a research lab, and gesturing around at the medical equipment as she talked.

"Genetic sequencers. Scanning tunneling microscopes. Genetic crystallography. This specialized set of isolated breeding environments for the VMC." Mom stopped to editorialize. "Those little fuckers are hard as hell to get to breed in captivity, outside a human body."

"Why there are not that many Vampires in nature." Nakoma said.

The room we are in is pretty good-sized and full of gear. "Spectrographs. Gas chromatographs. Full body imaging and in numerous wavelengths and illumination technologies. Reagents for every known medical reaction one needs to test for and study. Everything one needs to figure out pheromones. Effects on brains. Mapping of different brain structures. Looking at the smallest structures in DNA, RNA, Mitocondia. Whatever we need, we have gear here. Or can get it. Every human medical advance is tracked and applied to Astral, Siren, human, and Vampire. We have tried to get Mers to participate, but so far have not had any luck."

"Mers... Merpeople." Cristine filled in.

Denise added "Exactly. We are talking to a few we can find. Trying to convince them that they need to work with us. Humans are destroying their world. They are going to have to leave when we do. They know they are threatened and are few and far between, but their culture is to hide ever deeper in the oceans, hoping the humans never figure out they are there."

"I read about them in your notes." Heather gave a wave at a computer station. "I went looking for them underwater. I can't find them at all."

Morgan sighed. "No encryption works with you, does it?"

"No. None." Heather agreed equitably. " I'm not a threat. Not to any of you. Not to anyone really."

Jessica took up the narration. "When a voluntary transition to Vampire from any of the human subspecies — human, Siren, or Astral — became possible, the required medical support for the sub-species changeover was added to the mission of the fertility clinic in Ninovan. It was no longer about helping someone get pregnant no matter what the parents' two subspecies starting point is. It did not matter if it was a difficult human-human, human-Siren, human-Astral, human-Vampire, Astral-Vampire, Vampire-Vampire, or Astral-Astral. That mission did not require a stay in the clinic. Maybe at the end of the pregnancy, or if there were difficulties requiring hospitalizations that could not go to a human-run institution. "

Nakoma took over. "No Vampire combination, no matter who the mother is, could ever go to a human hospital. A human, Astral, or Siren mother with a Vampire baby would be suspicious. There would be anomalies in the child. Nothing that could not ultimately be explained away. But you'd have to explain them, and that would require possible Crew intervention. Medical records being altered. That type of thing. It is different when the mother is the Vampire. Vampires were 'designed' by nature long before human medical science was a thing. Exposure to humans by any other name is a fully-turned Vampire in a human hospital."

"Such a pain." Denise said. "We have to clean up messes like that all the time."

"Blood tests, X-rays: hell, just X-rays would show Vampires as different and get the staff curious. Weight would show out of proportion kilograms to body size ratios. That medical mission — Fertility and Vampire medical care — dictated the original size of the clinic." Jessica said.

"As you saw when we looked at the various hospital suites." Nakoma said "Supporting the multi-day transition to Vampire required serious expansion of the original facility. What used to be a clinic is now a small regional hospital. Transition, even in its current slightly sped-up version, requires a bed, and full support hookups for days to support the transitioning person."