My chamber was comfortable enough, consisting of one barren-walled square room with a small wooden table, a few matching chairs, a luxurious bed, and a food area with some ancient metal box that kept foodstuff cold. There was a primitive drink dispenser beside that and a radiation-box, that they used to call a nuke, to warm up any food I might desire. Most happily, a small, simple door led to my own personal lavatory and shower. Soft towels made from some artificial fiber were neatly folded in a white basket made from plastic but designed to look like it was woven of reeds. The late twentieth century may have been the beginning of the end for life as they knew it, but they outdid themselves in the decadence department.
I showered, cleansed my mouth as best I could, and dried myself with the very soft towels while I basked in the warmth. One of my favorite vices of this era is the fine selection of cheeses. Either somebody remembered how much I enjoy them, or I just got lucky; there were lots of them in the cooler box cut up into little, bite-sized cubes and ornately laid out on a plain plastic dish. I wondered if they'd let me take some cheeses back to Time Central Station after I gave my report.
The decadence, warmth, and luxury of this era, in stark contrast to my time, consumed me. Reveling in being able to physically feel, I lay on the soft, comfortable bed and ate cheese while enjoying the sensation of the droplets of water evaporating off my nude body. Idly passing the time, my hands wandered over my flesh, feeling the tactile miracle of physical contact. It wasn’t long before one wandering hand played in the wetness between my legs, the other hand grasping and squeezing my full breasts, and lifting my hard nipples to my eager lips to suck and nibble upon.
The sloshing sounds of my fingers penetrating my pussy filled the room, mixing with my moans, and I slowly fucked myself at a leisurely pace, feeling my heat rise and my body approach orgasm. That pre-orgasmic state, where nothing but pleasure exists, soon wrapped my soul, making my thighs quiver in passion.
I lay there enjoying the luxury of the past and all the creature comforts it provided, fingering myself into sweet oblivion. While probably much longer than it seemed, the door opened before I even had a chance to think about cumming, and a thin, frail-looking man walked in carrying a thin plastic box. I noted that there was a tiny blinking green light on one edge of the box. He seemed nervous, timid, and a little on edge.
He stopped, stared at me, and grew extremely flustered.
“Cumming,” I announced. “Watch me. Watch me cum. Pull out your cock and show me how much you like what you see.”
Not waiting for his response, I violently crammed three fingers into my cunt, thrusting in and out rapidly, and moaning my passion. He watched, unable to move, for a few moments, then shrugged and pulled out his cock.
“Shove it in my mouth and fuck my face,” I begged. “Cum on my face when I reach orgasm. Fuck my slutty mouth.”
He approached, first setting down his blinking box, and did as I asked. I was on the cusp of orgasm, but the distraction of deriving pleasure from his shaft pumping in my mouth allowed me to stave off my impassioned, horny release just long enough to suck him to climax. He pulled it out, his fist furiously pumping his manhood, and unleashed several geysers of hot, sticky spunk all over my face and tits.
“Fucking cumming,” I announced as my body quaked and shook all over the bed. “Unnggh, aah, mmm.”
When we’d both emptied our liquid lust, he just stood there, awkwardly, trying to speak.
"I'm James," he finally said with a nervous smile. His voice was a little too loud, belaying his frail build. He put his cock back into his pants and sat at the table, setting the plastic box in front of him. He then unfolded it and I realized that it was a bulky, portable Vid-screen with an archaic keyboard. I watched with intrigued amusement as the screen lit up, and he began typing on the keyboard.
He looked at me. "I heard you futurists were always horny. Wow! You've never seen a laptop before?" He showed me the ancient device.
I smiled meekly. "I read about them when computing was still in its infancy."
I sat across from him, holding some incredibly sugary sweet, but still tasty, brown beverage I had retrieved from the dispenser. His jaw dropped when I scooped up some of his cum from my bare tits and rubbed it over the rim of my cup.
"Fascinating,” I said. “So, what do you need to know about your future?”
James was friendly, although it seemed to me that he tried too hard to act confident and assertive. He was tall and gaunt with close-cropped, brown hair. He wore casual clothes of the era, as well as thick eyeglasses. I recalled that in this time, the science to correct the eyes themselves had not been developed. Science was still focused on creating artifices to compensate for a problem rather than solve the problem, altogether. Although he seemed nervous, he had a way of emphasizing with my statements, and, before long, I was delighted to discover that we were chatting like old friends.
It was actually James' first time taking testimony, or so he said. He told me that he spent the past linear year, or so, comparing the original records from his future against the immutable past, before time travel was invented, and then noting the changes upstream.
One can only travel up and down the time stream from the beginning of the singularity arc to the end. The far end is in the year 2388, which is the era I hail from. While Doctor Epstein invented the Infernal in 1988, the furthest back anyone is allowed to go is the middle 1990s; which suits our efforts well, since things started going all fugazi just a couple of decades after the twenty-first century began.
James quizzed me on the division between peoples of the same countries, how identity politics and ignorance led to the rise of fascism under the mask of liberty and democracy, and how people gradually lost their freedoms and privileges as a select few gathered all the power and wealth for themselves. After that came a series of wars, plagues, disasters, and devastation the world had never before seen.
Our conversation segued into how life is in my present, and I was amazed to discover that as bad as it was with poverty and disease, violence and oppression, that things had been far worse than I had ever imagined. James seemed to take great pride in pointing out how things initially had been/ would be, if not for the efforts of our motley group of Time Orphans. Then, I offhandedly mentioned the vampires, the Biters, referencing an unrelated event. That drew a long empathetic look from James and he sighed heavily.
James lowered his eyes and slowly shook his head from side to side as if he were clearing his thoughts. When he raised his head to face me, his nervous demeanor faded into a resigned sort of seriousness. His voice lost its volume, and he spoke softly for the first time. "I told you that this was my first time taking the testimony of a Time Orphan. There is a reason for that."
His attitude had changed so much that I had to rethink my initial impression of the man. Perhaps James wasn't the nervous and mousy introvert I had originally suspected. "I'll take the bait," I said. "What is the reason?"
James sat upright for the first time since he had taken the chair, his laptop forgotten. "Normally, I compile data and compare records to help monitor the time stream." His voice grew pensive. "I began noting that about thirty years from now, up into your time, several mentions of Vamps, Biters, Bloodsuckers, and Vampires. I have some serious questions for you."
I took a swig of that sugary beverage and nibbled on a cube of cheese. Serious questions? "I assumed they were all serious questions, what with the future of mankind at stake and all."
James shook his head, a determined expression on his face. "You don't understand, I think." He paused and drew in a deep breath. "The thing is that everyone here thinks I'm crazy..."
I cut him off with a chuckle. "You should try things at Time Central Station. Being fugazi is a requirement around then."
"No," he continued. "I noted something in my research and cataloging, and I'm only here questioning you because Francis got tired of being confronted about it and told me that if I was so certain, I should find out for myself."
"Who's Francis, I haven't met him."
"Her," James shrugged. "Kimberly Francis, Ph.D., if you please!"
I laughed aloud at his chagrin. "That sounds exactly like Purley on our end! Don't you dare call her by just her last name!"
James raised his cup of whatever that addictive and sweet, brown, carbonated drink was, and we shared a silent salute. He continued. "The thing is that I firmly believe that all of these names for the next three or so centuries refer to a single group. Is that true?"
It was my turn to shrug. "Yes, as far as I know. They are technically Vampires but most of us, when I hail from, refer to them as Biters. I've also heard them called Vamps, Blood Suckers, Drainers, and several other related nicknames."
James' face lit up. "I knew it! They all think I'm crazy." He got excitedly animated, and his gestures grew fast and expansive. "So what we have here is a faction that starts somewhere in America, in the early twenty-first century, and is still active in your time. That's amazing! I bet they're responsible for a lot of the troubles that plague humanity."
"They're a plague, alright," I added, allowing my hatred to fill my words.
James went on. "So, this group that calls themselves the Vampires, what are they? Are they a political faction, drug lords, a crime syndicate, what?" His expression was unreadable.
I shook my head in dismay and wondered if I might still be trapped in the Matrix, my mind finally splintered from the endless duress and loneliness.
"No you tripper, they're vampires! You know, razor-sharp teeth, kill people, drink their blood."
I rolled my sleeve and thrust the bite-mark scar in front of his face. "See this? A goddess-damned Biter gave me that the night it preyed on my family! They would have taken me as well had I not fallen into the river and been washed downstream."
James' eyes grew huge, but he remained silent.
"That night, I hid in an abandoned building, shivering and terrified, until dawn came. I managed to track the pack down and got the one that killed my mother; the others got away."
"Vampires," was the only word he said. He smiled and sat back, looking quite satisfied. I just stared at him. How could he look so happy?
"It's nothing to smile about," I corrected him. "Why do you look so pleased?" I wouldn't say that I'm a violent person, although I have no qualms about it when the situation demands it. I was beginning to believe the situation demanded it.
James held his hands out, palms facing me, in an attempt to quell my ire. "No, no, I'm sorry. Very sorry. I believe you. I drew the same conclusion, and everyone here thinks I'm nuts! This is my vindication!"
I stopped at that. My fury subsided to something akin to embarrassment. "What, you don't have vampires here in the past?"
"No," he said with an empathetic sort of amusement. "There are stories, myths, and legends, but almost nobody believes they exist and those that do are weirdos, the lunatic fringe...all fugazi as you'd say, Gail."
"Fooh-Gah-Zee," I corrected him while attempting a smile. "Even in the present, some don't believe they exist; my present, that is."
"Look at this, "he said, reaching for his archaic Vid-screen and swiveling it around, so I could see the display. He quickly accessed some documents he had stored on the unit and quickly jumped down a few pages to show me a graph. I could see years, marked off by decades, along the bottom and a line, originating at the year 2000 at the zero mark. As the years went by, it arched upwards, gradually, until about 2100, and then rose steeply. I was looking at a logarithmic exponential increase of something.
James pointed at the display. "This graph represents sightings, murders, or other events that I believe are vampire activity. You see, here that in the present, my present, there's nothing. But, about twenty-five to thirty years from now, there will be a series of murders and events in the Midwest. Here." James pulled up a map of the continent and pointed to an area beneath the Great Lakes, his hand circling about. He continued. "After about seventy more years, the Biters, as you call them, seem to have spread Westward and are almost commonplace."
I looked at him, not quite understanding what he was driving at. "So, you've pinpointed ground zero for the vilest plague of the future because you have access to the records of multiple versions of the time stream. What do you intend to do with all of that?"
"No, Gail," James' voice had grown intense and his eyes glowed. "You are a field agent for the sole proprietor of time travel. I have discovered both where and when Vampires come out of hiding and start openly and aggressively preying on humankind. The real question is what are you going to do about it?"
My jaw dropped in disbelief. "Me? What am I going to do about it?"
"Exactly!" James proclaimed. "You are the upstream authority on all things vampire, are you not?"
There had to be some mistake. "I think you have the wrong impression of me. I don't know snarf about them other than what everyone else knows."
"Gail, this may be hard to accept, but you were chosen by Epstein himself. I requested the resident expert on the vamps, and he sent you."
"There must be some mistake. Not only do I not know anything more about them than any other shooter could tell you, I'm not qualified to do anything!" My dialect and accent were slipping a bit, but I didn't care. "I know frag-frak about them other than the obvious, and I'm not qualified for field missions." As soon as the words escaped my lips, I recalled Dr. Epstein back at Time Central. He seemed to already know and let it slip. "I've shot four times, counting this one, and they've only used me for food deliveries and such. What am I going to do, fetch the damned Biters' dinner order?"
"No, Gail, " James seemed to be genuinely pleased. "You're going to find out what happened, where, and when. Then, you're going to wipe them out! As far as we know, you're not only the only one that has encountered them, but the only one of us that has ever killed one."
I opened my mouth to refute what he was suggesting, but my hatred for the Biters held me back. I looked at my scar and the memory of what they had taken from me filled me with remorse and that dark, black hatred that I had kept buried for years consumed me. Still, I was afraid. I was afraid of dying, terrified of becoming one of them. I was much more afraid that I wouldn't be able to make any changes. To cover for my lack of words, I took another drink of that brown beverage, threw on some clothes, and eyed my plate of cheese. My appetite had fled.
"I don't know," I sighed. "I know they can die because I made it happen. I just don't have a clue where to start. For frak, I don't even know how the Time Shooters zero in on the events that have the least T-mass. If you want egg rolls, I can manage that. Isn't there somebody stationed at a near-when waypoint that has better, or at least some, field experience?"
James shook his head from side to side slowly. "You're the girl. If Epstein felt there was somebody better, he'd have sent them instead."
"Just so you know, from the start, I'm nervous, a little shaken up by all of this, and clueless. Do you have any ideas, James?"