Abandon The Night

Chapter Two: Diminishing Disappearances

Elise was drunk come the next morning and almost missed the new WWN broadcast. Anca smirked as the woman squealed and clutched her head.

As it was, Elise was proving rather unhelpful in supplying the news Anca's non-human brain wouldn't receive. She didn't know why she couldn't get the news. She didn't want to know why.

It was a fact of her life that scientific discovery left her behind. She was a relic of an era so far past that there wasn't any record of it anymore. Unification did that to many things, but it was the last war, World War 3, that had destroyed it all. A complete and utter wipe-out of everything: The world was a blank slate yet again.

That was when the new parliament swooped in and staked claim on the decimated remains of Earth. Unification was the utopia foretold. Bringing together everyone and everything under one rule created a peaceful reality. Or so the humans grew up learning in the brainwashing programs called education.

Anca swiveled in her hover chair and dropped the thought on unification. Things progressed gradually in the futuristic society she grew accustomed to mistrusting. Satellites were obsolete to the run-of-the-mill human but there were those who had access to technology from the past. Like the internet. It was not common knowledge anymore. It was a thing Anca had barely had time to grow accustomed to using when it all but vanished.

Interwebs was the only link to the old useful tool of the world wide web. It was a construct unlike the triple W in a way that it was on a blocked server. Everything was sent to a mainframe and deemed appropriate or non-appropriate by techies. Interwebs was used to further indoctrinate the fellowship of humanity.

Things like hover chairs and the news were subsidized by the government, though. Which was the exact reason why Anca didn't want to know why her brain wouldn't supply the WWN broadcast whatsoever. It was, again, the principle that mattered.

Elise, groaning, looked at her employer with great earnest. "You'd think the techies would invent a booze pill dissolver or something."

"You'd think." Anca placated. Then, "What of the news my dear?"

Sighing, the blonde subjected herself to another torrent of the WWN 'cast by pressing her earlobe. With the slight pinch, it was reissued. "There has been another disappearance." Elise squinted. "Something about a green haze and more about the purple acid being studied and almost under control."

"Green haze? Probably another acid attack spillover." Anca murmured, done with the news now and getting back to work. She just got in some old copies of Rdak, the Urkian's current version of Dracula. The coincidence nearly made Anca choke when she opened the package that morning.

Anca caught the blunder and grimaced. It was not like her to reveal the bloody history of the world . . . Unification, after all, was the clean slate everyone deserved. "Acid attack? When was there an acid attack?" Elise questioned with eyes of curiosity. Confusion too, but that was layered with distress.

Oops. "With the whole mining the PATS Mountains. Those acid attacks." Anca said. Hoping against her dhampir luck that the human girl would believe that nonsense. After all, the PATS mining was a huge controversy. Mining was outlawed during the 23rd century, Anca remembered, but that didn't make the unification. Something about gold being in what once was the Alps. Half the mountains were gone with time, and more than just that with the acid mining.

Said human girl narrowed her eyes the slightest bit but otherwise nodded. "Yea, I remember a 'cast about that awhile back."

Anca went back to work, not looking up. Time passed fast as she whittled away reading the Rdak novels. Both copies had irregularities in the text, and it was barely close to the original. Dracula was the myth that combined all other myths from around the world, but he was not real. At least, not to Anca's knowledge. If he was, wouldn't he had made an appearance since the 5th century?