Parallel World

Chapter 1

New York, Fall 2009

"We have made eight hundred million dollars since 1991 and most of it in recent years. Based on my sales projections we will earn the "missing" two hundred million within the next two-three years and become billionaires."

"You sound very sure about it."

"I am indeed. Our success is based on three things: Slood, Renviro and VampNet and it is VampNet that has brought in a lot of money recently. So, Elisa, what's it like to be one of the two most powerful vampires in the world?" he said with a wide smile on his face.

"It feels amazing, Jack."

The other half of the power duo was, of course, Jack himself. Thanks to our products there was no one else in the vampire world who could match our success, just a lot of copycats.

They called us rebels and innovators. We had a lot of supporters and an equal amount of enemies.

The beginning was humble, though. In 1965 I started to work on a formula for synthetic blood. The only part of my vampire life I did not enjoy was hunting. I started targeting criminals in the 1940s yet somehow I still had a guilty conscience.

When I started my work I was not sure where it would lead. I had a breakthrough in 1979 and the formula I came up with then is pretty much the one we still use today. I wanted to share it with others but in order to do so I had to be 100 % sure that my formula could fully replace the real thing, had no side effects, et cetera. I started taking synthetic blood myself and then invited a few friends to become guinea pigs, too. Jack joined me in 1982 and was a great help. In 1990 I had finally accumulated enough evidence to say that my synthetic blood could fully substitute real blood. Up until then my creation had no official name. I wanted it to be something catchy, something that would reflect what it is. After about sixty seconds of thinking I decided to call it "Slood". We started selling it in 1991 and it became an overnight success. It turned out there were a lot of vampires out there who wanted to give up hunting - either because they did not like to attack humans or were fed up (pun unintended) with high dry cleaning bills.

I was adamant that Slood must be affordable. For instance, a standard pack of Slood (450 ml) cost $20. To make it even more attractive to customers we offered different volumes and packaging: Slood in an energy drink can, champagne bottle, mini champagne bottle, glass bottle... Those immune to fancy stuff could get Slood in a plain plastic bag - the same you find in hospitals and blood banks. Presuming that a vampire feeds once a week and requires about four pints of blood, it worked out as $800 a month. For an average vampire that was equal to the amount spent on a new pair of boots. During the sale. 

It did not take long for competitors to appear. I was not concerned about that, on the contrary, I was happy to share my formula. However, to this day no one has managed to match us neither quality or price wise. Slood was still Number 1.

Our second invention, which was bringing in a colossal amount of money, was Renviro or, as we lovingly called it, Anti-freeze. It was a serum that temporarily enabled the vampire body to change. We knew a lot of vampires who would love to make some changes to their appearance but were unable to. Renviro allowed them to do it. In order to preserve the changes they simply had to stop using it. The first guinea pigs were, of course, yours truly. We started our day with Renviro and went straight to the gym. Jack got into body-building and his fabulous abs and muscles soon became the talk of the town. I lifted weights and did pilates. I wanted my body to be toned, but not too bulky - I wanted to be able to put my arms through the armholes of my favourite jackets. The first version of Renviro, which was later improved, was ready in 1995. We had a small group of vampires willing to take part in our experiment. Renviro was launched in 2001 and became a revolutionary product. I had so many orders the waiting list was a year long. The formula was my best kept secret and I produced it alone. I was pretty much working day and night until Jack managed to find a bigger production facility, which I still use today. Renviro was sold in 15 ml bottles and cost $70. It had to be taken once a day until the desired look was achieved. Until I had invented Renviro, I had never seen a vampire so keen to pay for anything.