Literally corporate vampires
Kia ora!
Not gonna lie, this post is coming in hot. I forgot until pretty much just now (5:46pm on Sunday) that I didn’t have a post scheduled for tomorrow (8am on Monday), so I was kind of scrambling a bit to find something I was ready to share. But I did find something!
This story is one I have planned from the beginning to not be a short short story like the things I have posted before so it’s going to be a while before it’s even close to a finished draft, but I think you’ll be able to get the vibe of it from the excerpt here today. It’s about what if a huge multinational corporation was run by literally vampires. It’s maybe a bit of an odd premise, especially since I’m not really going for comedy here - and that said, please let me know what you think, if the serious vibe goes over or if it’s just cheese, so I can tweak it.
I don’t have a ton else to say today, so let’s just dive in.
Sadavir stood silently in the middle of the pristine white, brightly lit technology lab, looking up at the raised platform and the sleek, matte black armoured suit suspended a few centimetres above it. “Is it ready for production yet?” he asked without breaking eye contact with the suit. “We are just putting on the finishing touches now, sir.” replied the middle-aged human man in a white lab coat standing to the side of the raised platform, checking a diagnostic screen. “It won’t be long.” “Good.” Sadavir turned on his heel and walked briskly out of the lab and into the corridor where Astrid was waiting impatiently. “Well? What did he say?” she demanded, annoyed. Sadavir gave Astrid a cold stare. “Soon. Just wait, will you? We have waited a thousand years for this moment, it will not kill you to wait another day or two. Once the work is finished and we begin mass production, we will have another thousand years to enjoy the fruits of our… their labour.” Astrid snorted angrily. “We are paying them hundreds of millions of dollars for this, and they promised it would be finished a year ago! Perhaps we ought to give them an incentive to speed up their work efforts.” Through the glass wall of the lab, she eyed the scientist hungrily. “Maybe I ought to just eat him and find someone else to replace him.” she thought out loud. “You know that would only set things back.” Sadavir watched Astrid closely, trying to discern if she actually meant what she had just said. “Yes, I know that.” she relented. “Come, we should inform the others.” Astrid turned and started down the hallway, Sadavir followed closely.
The building they were currently in was the headquarters of Artemis Heavy Industries. Based in Tromsø, Norway, Artemis Heavy Industries was a global conglomerate of various technology and weapons manufacturers acquired slowly over decades. It had made a name for itself across many industries, from consumer electronics to military equipment and vehicles. It supplied cutting edge technology to the richest nations of the world, but also had a lower-end range for smaller countries and PMCs. And it was founded and run by vampires. Their goal was not for humanity to destroy itself, but to be the leading supplier of all military forces on the planet, with a secret backdoor into all the equipment they sold so that when the time was right, they could render it useless. Their goal was subjugation of the entire human race. Artemis Heavy Industries not only developed weapons and technology for humans, but also for themselves, and the key focus of their efforts for vampire-kind was a type of exoskeleton, known as Exos, that would make them faster, stronger, and protected from almost all harm – even from the sun.
Followed by Sadavir, Astrid walked into the conference room where the heads of Artemis Heavy Industries sat waiting expectantly for the result. “I trust you have good news for us?” queried Dar Mahmoud, the CEO, as Astrid stepped up to the end of the large mahogany table. She stood with her hands folded behind her back.
“The work is almost complete. The scientists say-“
“Almost?” Dar cut her off. “This project was projected to be finished last February. We have given them a great deal more time, but our patience is beginning to wear thin.”
“Yes sir. Sadavir and the team assures me that it will be completed within a few days.”
“And you’re sure there will be no further delays?”
“Yes sir.”
“Good. You are dismissed.”
“Sir I-“
“You are dismissed, Astrid.”
“Yes sir.”
So that’s it! I do have a little more than this written down already, but this is the main gist of it. While this story will be a standalone thing, I am planning for it to tie into some other things I’ve shared here before. I’m not sure how successful I will be, but I’m gonna give it a try!
Thanks so much for reading! If you want to see more things written by me, I review movies on my Letterboxd sometimes. According to my stats page there I have reviewed 186 movies since joining the platform a few years ago, so not a ton, but also not nothing. I recently watched and reviewd Girltrash: All Night Long (I adored it), the new David Cronenberg film Crimes of the Future, cult classic Clueless, and 2018’s Greta starring Chloë Grace Moretz (queen!) and Isabelle Huppert (terrifying!).
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That’s all for now, I’ll talk to you all again soon.
Ka kite anō au i a koe. 💚