20:26 <VoxPVoxD> How does one reach her these days, anyway? They've kept in touch, as best they could between the travel bans and the long lockdown of Brexit. It hasn't been easy; she keeps weird hours. Phone? Email? Does she Zoom? 20:29 <dammitwho> There is assuredly no Zoom. Willie has an old cell phone number that probably doesn't work anymore, but might... and an e-mail address. 20:41 <VoxPVoxD> Not going to bother with the phone number. 20:41 <VoxPVoxD> FROM: w.wellesley@mail.dia 20:41 <VoxPVoxD> SUBJ: Liebling, 20:41 <VoxPVoxD> I found myself acutely missing your company the other evening. I formally impose on your attention — we must Catch Up. Travel is dicey but we should chat. Correspondence is wonderfully anachronistic, but I would *love* to get you on phone or video. Do let me know! 20:41 <VoxPVoxD> Fondly, 20:41 <VoxPVoxD> Willie 20:44 <VoxPVoxD> And now we wait. And by wait Willie means, check on the sourdough, make a couple of adjustments to next week's meeting calendar, and winnow down the list by another few items. 20:45 <VoxPVoxD> She finds a song she was prompted to add by the same thought that motivated the email. Fun, very much so... but not her. She lets it play through before deleting it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bESGLojNYSo 20:54 <dammitwho> FROM: snmt@veil.seagull-int.so 20:54 <dammitwho> TO: w.wellesley@mail.dia 20:54 <dammitwho> SUBJ: But of course! 20:54 <dammitwho> It has been far too long, and I am eager to hear what you have been up to. I must disappoint on the question of video - I have reached my very limit and banished the hated Zoom from the premises. I can be reached in the more sensible, traditional manner at the attached number, so do, do call. 20:54 <dammitwho> My best regards and wishes, 20:54 <dammitwho> Sarah 20:54 <dammitwho> There's an attachment that would let Willie add a contact to her phone, or she could just copy the number. 20:55 <VoxPVoxD> Honestly... kind of a relief. Not a lot of women Willie feels insecure about her appearance in relation to, but it'll be nice not to have to exfoliate for a chat. 20:56 <VoxPVoxD> Still! She adds the contact and, after a not-looking-too-desperate interval, makes the call. 21:01 <dammitwho> When the connection is made, instead of an immediate voice on the other end there are three soft clicks, and then a low satisfied-sounding computerized hum that abruptly cuts off. Only after that: "Willie! Vilhelmina! So good it is to hear from you. You are well, I trust? One hears such things about this dreadful plague..." 21:04 <VoxPVoxD> Willie grins at her phone at the sound of her old friend's voice. It feels like it's been a decade or more. "Sarah! Darling. What a pleasure this is. There is a certain amount of flux but on the whole, I'm positively smashing. You?" 21:13 <dammitwho> While Sarah's voice is coming through loud and clear, there's an odd remote quality to it, as though she were calling from an old-fashioned landline or by radio from the surface of Mars. "Hale, I am pleased to say. Proper safety measures adopted early- with, it must be said, some encouragement. I even spoke at a meeting of the City Council, such was my fervour. You are still in London?" 21:17 <VoxPVoxD> Willie sounds just a bit worn down. Like she's been working hard, or a touch ill, or lived in constant awe and terror whilst being periodically partially exsanguinated. "Ah! How very civic. Speaking of which, alas. Her Majesty's Government has seen fit to relocate my entire department to Manchester. I have succumbed to the great leveller-up. But I am growing very fond of my new circumstances." 21:22 <dammitwho> Sarah: "Truly? ...Manchester has changed a great deal, then, since last I was there?" 21:22 <dammitwho> Sarah: "Truly? ...Manchester has changed a great deal, then, since last I was there?" 21:28 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "Enh, maybe. Rather, there are sides of it that are difficult to see at a glance. Like the bit of Edinburgh they keep hidden behind that big rock. But the work is good, I'm growing very fond of my colleagues, and I'm learning a great deal more than I was in London. Manchester's still Manchester - perhaps all the moreso when lorries from the continent are as rare as medicine by 21:28 <VoxPVoxD> dog-sled." 21:30 <VoxPVoxD> "Are you still Arctic?" 21:32 <dammitwho> Sarah: "Indeed so. I must be fair to Manchester, then, and admit I did not expect to grow fond of Sørøya either when I first arrived. A Casablanca on the tundra." 21:36 <VoxPVoxD> Willie wishes she had a phone cable to twirl with her fingers. It looks so satisfying in old movies. "Ahhhh, I was just thinking about Marrakesh the other night. Remember the disguises? That was a thrill I did not experience again for several years. I've got to get up there and see the sights, then, to hear it described so by such a keen observer." 21:36 <VoxPVoxD> "In fact... no, forget it. How's the company up there?" 21:43 <dammitwho> Sarah: "Ah, there the climate works in our favour, as the worst of the Set never think to come. I've played some intriguing little games, met a few people whose conversation doesn't begin to pall at lightning pace. It passes the time admirably. Your colleagues at the Benefits Office, you get along well, then? In spite of these lockdowns?" 21:47 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "In part because of them. Being unmiserly with remote time and working flexibility pays huge dividends, as well as staving off the lingering churlish feelings of management. I've taken on a consulting job in my off hours, and I quite adore almost all of my colleagues." 21:50 <dammitwho> Sarah: "Indeed? What manner of consulting, if I might ask?" 21:53 <VoxPVoxD> Willie's evasive. She's good but she's not Thalmann good. "Aaaah, well, you know... research, acquisitions, liaisons... optimising our stakeholders' burn rates..." 21:58 <dammitwho> Fortunately, saying 'please don't ask about this' quietly is, in this case, as good as saying it openly. "I see. Good fortune to you, then, although I doubt you need any more if you've found bonhomie in two workplaces." 22:02 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "You do meet the most interesting people. Eccentrics, to say the least. I've heard some outlandish stories." 22:02 <VoxPVoxD> "People professing... the most bizarre affectations, and living them to the hilt." 22:03 <dammitwho> Sarah: "Oh? Do tell." 22:05 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "Well... forgive me, I feel a certain vicarious embarrassment. It's most unbecoming. But you're well-travelled. You're fluent in the underground, and welcome in... exalted circles..." 22:06 <VoxPVoxD> "...have you by chance ever met anyone claiming to be a vampire?" 22:11 <dammitwho> Sarah: "We both have, remember? In Amsterdam, at that club... but I sense that is not quite what you mean." 22:13 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "Yeah, I don't mean, people who are really into Bauhaus. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Anything non-obvious wrong with that, I should say." 22:15 <VoxPVoxD> "I mean adults, with money and breeding. People who could pass for ordinary aristocrats, except they profess to be physically incapable, and act consistently as if that were true. No meetings before sundown. Very cold hands. A certain... well I won't devolve into fantasia." 22:19 <dammitwho> Cautiously. If Willie is feeling out Sarah, Sarah is doing the same. "I believe I recall the type. At least, something similar. One meets so many people... What are you getting at, liebling?" 22:20 <VoxPVoxD> Deep breath. "Well... insofar as one stipulates their existence, in whatever capacity one does so... I have something of a Vampire Problem." 22:21 <VoxPVoxD> "Not me, personally, so much as a friend of mine. A very dear friend." 22:22 <dammitwho> Is this an intervention? Sarah privately considers the possibility of putting a recording of this conversation in her private museum. "You intrigue me. Do go on." 22:27 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "My friend has accrued a debt — an underground sort of debt — with a group of people who make these professions. A debt incurred by... induction. The group of people, who insist in the finest tradition of mafiosi that they do not comprise an organisation, have my friend in a kind of bondage. Not only are its terms onerous and cultish on their face, but they make him party 22:27 <VoxPVoxD> to... most unwholesome things. And they implicate him, by association, in dire stories of which he had no part." 22:32 <dammitwho> Sarah: "Groups who insist they aren't groups usually have a name to define what they aren't. Does this one?" 22:34 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "Yes. Latinate. Do you know the William Ernest Henley poem?" 22:34 <VoxPVoxD> He wrote more than one, but, he also sort of didn't. 22:40 <dammitwho> There's a long pause, and then the same soft computerized hum. When Sarah speaks again, her voice is less relaxed. "I apologize for that. I dislike being overheard, and wished to be certain... it doesn't matter. I'm sure you know your 'friend' is in deadly peril. Describe your situation as best as you are able, without fearing my disbelief." 22:44 <VoxPVoxD> Something about the tautness in Sarah's voice is paradoxically reassuring. It comes out in a flood. "He was dying. They offered him a second chance, to use their curse to do the one truly moral thing it can: save a life. To allow a flourishing cut short to continue. But the cost... it belongs to them now, for ever and ever. He's bound to the one who made him. Compromised beyond sense or 22:44 <VoxPVoxD> sensibility." 22:45 <VoxPVoxD> "Enslaved him at his most desperate extremity. And yet this does not even rate among their crimes." 22:45 <VoxPVoxD> "Simpson Kirkpatrick. Emily De La Warr." 22:45 <VoxPVoxD> "Have you heard these names?" 22:51 <dammitwho> Sarah: "The family names are not familiar to me, but there is no reason they should be." 22:53 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "I have a place to stand." 22:53 <VoxPVoxD> "But I need leverage." 23:00 <dammitwho> Sarah: "If you could convince your friend to flee the country and ensure he was not followed, then after a long period he might escape. The nature of his... bond makes convincing him of that unlikely, as I'm sure you know. The other choice is to kill the one who has bound him. This is difficult in itself and dangerous in the accomplishment. A nest of vipers will stop striking each other to 23:00 <dammitwho> attack an outside threat, and what is done in Manchester will be heard in London." 23:01 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "...those are the only options? Fight or flight?" 23:03 <dammitwho> Sarah: "Your friend. He has an unnatural affection for the one that made him? Obeys with a smile orders beneath his dignity?" 23:03 <VoxPVoxD> "Yes." 23:08 <dammitwho> There's a short hiss. "You might keep him hidden until the bond breaks, but he would grow desperate and overrule you. You might keep them apart by force, but he would not thank you and might not forgive." 23:09 <dammitwho> "If you choose violence, take this advice- your quarry must be isolated, made politically friendless. Assurances given that this is a private vendetta." 23:09 <dammitwho> "Above all, he must not know. He will betray you, without wanting to." 23:09 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "Yes." 23:12 <dammitwho> Sarah: "Ahhhh... liebling, I wish that you had not known any of this. Shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again." 23:13 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "You're going to think me mad." 23:13 <VoxPVoxD> "But this feels... very right to me." 23:13 <VoxPVoxD> "Am I sober? Only literally." 23:13 <VoxPVoxD> "But I am feeling unbowed." 23:15 <VoxPVoxD> "A hard man to bring down." 23:15 <VoxPVoxD> "But certainly... not impossible." 23:15 <dammitwho> Sarah: "Ah, that is the Vilhelmina I know. You are, I hope, physically protected?" 23:17 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "Yes. Though one's strength can never be too great. Fitting challenges always exist. Fights for the fearless. Goals for the eager." 23:17 <VoxPVoxD> "It can be done. Across the bloody sweep of history... it has been done. Time and again." 23:18 <VoxPVoxD> "Immortality is a political appointment." 23:20 <dammitwho> Sarah: "A good aphorism. I will remember it. It occurs to me... your consultancy. You would not, I hope, be contracting to the Human Office?" 23:22 <dammitwho> "One hears things. Even out here." 23:23 <VoxPVoxD> Willie's laugh has bite to it. "Contracting from, more like, One of my dear colleagues seconded himself therefrom with what he charmingly terms 'moderate treason'. No... my colleagues and I are building our House within the night-city. On behalf of those who must reside within it, but do not have the protection or support of it." 23:27 <dammitwho> Sarah: "Indeed?" There's a pause as she ruminates. "Interesting. Very interesting... That opens up a possibility, if you have a mind to hear it." 23:28 <VoxPVoxD> "Eagerly, liebling." 23:33 <dammitwho> Sarah: "The night-city, as you call it, shatters the common model of the universe. Every cherished axiom called into question. What little knowledge I have of the truer, darker world I have bought with pain and bitter regret. I want more, paid for in more pleasant coin." 23:34 <dammitwho> "I have a man in London. He can easily have a man in Manchester. I have a list, a very long list, of things I must know about. I will not suggest anything so destructive to friendship as a business partnership, but if you were to come across - well, there is no other word but 'lore' - in your work, he might see it sent to me and you handsomely remunerated for the gesture." 23:36 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "I find that... very agreeable. We can reach ever-greater heights of sobriety." 23:45 <dammitwho> Sarah: "I am so pleased. I will not deceive by omitting that the occasional mysterious tome or typed report would assuage my- well, it would be tedious to say 'worry'. You have not asked for a mother. My respectful concern for your safety, then. The occasional cupful of ectoplasm says so much more than even a phone call, no?" 23:47 <VoxPVoxD> Willie's recovered from the period of emotional intensity. "Yes, quite. We must make secure arrangements for that sort of thing. Shall I leave it to your hypothesised man in Manchester to be in contact?" 23:55 <dammitwho> Sarah: "That will do, though it may take a few days. I can give you a few things to contemplate right now, if you'd like. Ghosts, for one. Difficult to perceive directly, but every attempt I make seems to find them no matter where I look, which is alarming. I need population density estimates, EVP recordings, personal interviews if you can get them..." 23:56 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "...I believe I may be of assistance on this." 23:57 <VoxPVoxD> "You will get your ectoplasm. And it will serve as assurance that my endoplasm is precisely where it's supposed to be." 00:00 <dammitwho> Sarah: "Lovely."