Tuesday, October 21st

Startled awake by what could most likely be discerned as the centrifuge-assisted separation of a cat skin from its internal squishy bits, the occupants of the fourth floor of the Neighboring Acres apartment complex came to their doors at 5:30am for further investigation. Peering out into the hallway, they would observe the tennant of apartment 407A - the pole-thin and unnervingly pale Van Irving - collapsing underneath the weight of his bicycle just at the top of the stairs. 

"Who's that?," a young man in the hall asked aloud. 

"407A. The 'vampire' kid. Looks like he passed out and fell leaning across his bike and rolled backwards down the stairs. Guys, it looks like he's not breathing." 

Seventeen minutes later, the EMT driver declared Van Irving legally dead of trauma to the neck and spinal column. His death was instant and painless, considering he had apparently passed out of exhaustion from exertion and malnutrition before the fall. Also involved in the accident was Mister Socks, 403B's short-haired feline. She had gotten out and was in the stairwell, and apparently was the source of the screeching noise amalgamated with the crashing noise of Irving's bike. Mister Socks survived with only a minor concussion, and recovered nicely at the Chicago Veterinary Clinic.

Wednesday, October 22nd

"Mom, it's 9 o'clock in the morning, you know I'm working late tonight, and we're two hours behind you here - can you call me later in the afternoon?"

Andrew Laughton rubbed his eyes and then groaned at the sound of his mother's voice frantically trying to explain something to him as he  held the phone away from his head to shield his ears from the sheer volume of her panicked shrieking. 

"Mom, calm down. What's wrong? What's going on? Just take a deep breath, then explain to me calmly. Better? Now go. What's up?"

"Van... Van is dead. Just... shutdown and died..." was all Andrew could make out from her.

"Van? What do you mean? You don't have a van, and neither do I. What are you talking... oh God. You mean Paul? How did he... I mean... what happened Mom? Are you OK? Of course you're not OK. Mom, I'll be on the first flight out." 

Andrew dropped his cellular phone on the pillow beside him. Work. I have to call work.

"Yeah this is Sean. What do you want so early, Andy? Oh God. I'm so sorry. Sure. Take all the time you need. Blake's been looking to pick up some extra hours anyway, so it's all good. Do you need some cash to help cover the plane ticket? OK. Take care of yourself. Call me if you need anything. Bye."

The next few hours were all a blur as Andrew made plane reservations, packed a bag with half his belongings - which for most would be saying a lot more, but Andrew didn't have much in his adequate living space - and got on a bus to the airport. Andrew wasn't much for keepsakes or baubles. He kept a journal - a spreadsheet really - for almost purely scientific purposes as a log of his existence in the hopes of figuring out some great truth or direction for his life. On the bus, he took one of his two anti-anxiety pills brought along for this trip: one for the plane ride, and one for the return trip. He kept his prescription on hand and the pills were in their appropriate pharmacy container - airport security was a little uptight about restricted narcotics in the past. Since he just had the one carry-on, he had packed his clothes, three well-worn paperback sci-fi books, laptop, digital music player with headphones, and 20-something dice of various denominations. He didn't plan on playing any games on this trip, but you never know. They just made him feel good. 

The three hour flight would have been a much longer drive. Andrew never bothered getting his license in the crowded downtown Los Angeles. His work was close enough to take the bus. He usually could get most anywhere in the city by bus or walking, although Andrew wasn't much of a socialite. 

Paul...Van. What the hell were you thinking?

Paul Helverson, Andrew's half-brother, had recently taken to calling himself "Van Irving" - his new name for his new undead lifestyle. Andrew grew up with Paul and until Andrew left for college they had been as close as two brothers could be expected to grow together. They had your usual fights and crazy schemes that kids cook up.  

Andrew laughed to himself thinking about their childhood days: like the time they tried to build a rocket ship to travel to outer space. Paul tried to superglue wings onto his bike, while Andrew mocked his shameless disregard for physics, propulsion, and mathematics. Andrew burned one of his eyebrows off at one point trying to develop the rocket fuel in their garage. "A mere mathematical calculation, eh?" Paul mocked.

When Andrew left for UCLA to study computer programming languages and mathematical algorithms, Paul developed his own circle of friends. He drifted this way and that through high school, following trends and fashions to fit in - even the utterly ridiculous. One week he would be a devoted hip-hop music fan, the next he was a stylish prep with a popped up shirt collar. Andy would check in on Paul via his online internet profile, but the two hardly exchanged words after his first year of college. Not even so much as an e-poke. 

Andrew had graduated and decided to stay in L.A. working tech support for a start-up company that survived the "Dot Com Bubble" and its subsequent burst. Three years behind him, Paul gravitated towards theater arts, partly because he hoped to one day go out to Hollywood and "make it big." In Paul's second year of community college, he fell in with some outcast kids who were into vampire lore. He became a "vegetarian" because he thought that blood oranges and bloody mary's counted towards a wholesome vampire diet. Paul was lactose intolerant, and try as he may have he was unable to put on any significant weight or muscle. "A strong breeze would knock him over," his mother would say. Paul would occasionally post pictures to his profile of the vamp-themed parties and night clubs he would frequent. Surprisingly, Chicago had a few of these. They never met in any particular establishment on a regular basis, but would hold events and rent out places around town, Paul explained once in a short online update. 

Paul would often blast a message online on his profile to this effect:

"OMG," [Oh My God, in internet slang] "this book is soooo not accurate - vampires do NOT sparkle in the sunlight. This is NOT cannon. Has this woman even READ a single vampire book in her life? LOL" [Laughing Out Loud]

This would happen everytime a new book in the latest teen vampire series came out. Paul got so passionate about his disagreement with this series that he started an online campaign against it. The online retribution from thousands of outraged, angsty teens was fairly immense, but he only seemed smugly satisfied with his own "authentic" superiority. 

Andrew had no real friends to speak of in L.A., at least not in person. There were his "guildies" - members of his guild in the online role playing game he spent most of his off-hours playing. They would communicate via voice chat online, or over a web-connected digital video camera for video chat. He had just enough time before take-off to send an email letting them know he would miss events for the next few days online for his brother's funeral in Chicago, and the connection through his mom's DSL would be abysmal at best. 

I can't imagine it. I can't imagine it happening to me. There's no way Paul woke up and thought "Today is the day I will die." He had big plans, and as of his last blog update, he was certainly still planning to fullfill those dreams. 

Late Thursday Afternoon, October 23rd

"Hey kiddo. Want some coffee?" Andrew's mom peeked her head in the door, cautiously at first, out of habit ever since raising two boys who went through adolescence in her household. 

"Oh man, that'd be great," he answered groggily, stretching his tired body. "At least with such a short flight, there's no jet lag. I just wish I had a normal person's work schedule so I didn't feel like a zombie in the daytime."

"We have some things to take care of today: apparently your brother actually took some steps to have his affairs in order last year when he started hanging out with those zombie people." 

"Well, if you think about it," Andrew smirked, "obsession with death and the afterlife lends itself to preparedness."

"Haha, very funny. Get up and get cleaned up - we have to stop by his agent's office to get a copy of his power of attourney and last will and testament." 

"Paul left a Will? I didn't think a starving actor had anything to leave behind besides whatever was in his apartment. I really don't want Paul's laundry," Andrew griped. 

In reality, Andrew would have traded anything in his own possession to have his brother back. Humor was his family's way of dealing with grief. Since their father passed when they were very little, they knew mourning and they knew how to be resilient and do what it takes to make it through the current moment. It wasn't quite shock, but really just disbelief that Paul wasn't really gone. At any moment, he could come bounding through the door wondering what his big brother was doing in town. 

The car ride over to the agent's office wasn't any different than any other car ride they'd taken in the past. Paul's agent Harold was a one-man talent operation whose only claim to fame was finding the kid who eventually starred in a Pepsi commercial. The kid left him after two mainstage productions of "Annie" and signed with a bigger agency. Harold also had a drinking problem; that is to say - he drank water and sports drinks constantly. He was a health-maniac, always pushing the latest nutrition bar or sports drink mix or protein shake on anyone who walked into his office. Andrew's mom had told him many times over the phone about the multi-level marketing schemes in which Harold was involved and tried to involve Paul. Some of it rubbed off on Paul, at least to the degree of convincing him that in order to really perform on stage or in front of the camera, he needed to be in top physical condition - makeup could handle the rest. 

"Huhllo there dahlings, I know you must be sooo exhausted after your flight and awl you've been through."

Harold also happened to be slightly effeminate, and hails from the great state of New Jersey, though he tells people he was born and raised on Broadway. Andrew immediately thought he sounded like the Jewish mother he never had, and could see why Paul would collaborate with this man. Harold had a standing desk attached to a treadmill so he could walk steadily as he shuffled papers around. 

"Ah, here it is, sweet'arts. Deeyah Pawlie's Last Will and Testament. 'To Be Opened Only In The Event of My Untimely Demise,' - ah, that kid. I loved him, but he was always an ovah-actor, ya know what I mean? Oh sorry, Gawd rest his soul." Harold handed over the documents, and Andrew and his mother started looking them over. 

"IIIII had that sweet kid take his affairs to my friend Laramie, who specializes in property and legal affairs of the deceased. He seemed so convinced that he would eventually become a REAL vampire. I told him, 'Sweety, showbizniss is mohstly at night anyhow, you'll fit right in. Just stock up on fowndation and concealer,' ha!" Harold boasted of his departed client. 

Most of what was on the document was in legal-ese, but what Andrew understood of it was this:

• The Departed possessed assets in stocks, bonds, and insurance benefits totalling in excess of two (2) million dollars. 
• After legal expenses, fees, and burial costs, the remainder of his assets would be divided between his mother and brother. 
• Paul and Andrew's mother is to take her half to return to school and obtain her nursing degree like she always wanted.
• Andrew is to take his share and use Paul's connections, night school business class textbooks, and market investments to take the opportunity to set up his own internet start-up company like he always wanted. 
• Harold is to keep the picture of Paul on the wall up for as long as the agency remained open. 

Andrew re-read these particulars over and over again, and started to panic. It was an amazing gift that Paul had left behind. 'Van" apparently had made so many connections in the vampire world that he had learned basic investing strategy and had a knack for it. He planned for the future and purchased long-term life insurance. He went to night school and learned to develop basic business plans. There was another page to the document. 

"Andy - oh dear Andy. You're the only big brother I could have wished for. You were there for me growing up. I know we grew apart - and if you're reading this - I've either successfully become a vampire and am legally dead, or I'm actually dead. In either case, I know that's gotta be kind of a bummer - you were always the practical type and wouldn't have bought into that sorta thing. I know you didn't disapprove of me, but you still would have probably mocked me a few times, to say the least, and I would have still been glad you were my brother. You kept me as level-headed as anyone could have expected. You taught me to embrace my dreams, but to get there as practically as I could. 

So listen brother - I know things didn't work out, if you're reading this I mean. My plan was to get everything ready so that you could take your brains and I could take my dreams and we could make it big together. I was going to do the creative and marketing for your start-up. I'd come out to L.A. and show you my business plan, and then if you agreed we'd move in together for a while until the company took off. But now you'll have to dream for both of us. I know whatever you do as long as you try - you will make Mom and I proud. 

Your Little Brother, 

Van (Paul)

10 Years Later

The streets outside the Chicago data center of Van Irving Technologies are empty. In the Chicago Industrial Bloc, all the buildings looked the same - as though someone had copy and pasted a model over and over again. This was by design. Aesthetics gave way to practicality as the city divided into functional divisions throughout the years. Storefronts, offices for executives, entertainment complexes, and popular eateries were all located downtown on what was named "New Broadway," by suggestion of Mayor Jason DuFrane - a former actor / singer elected for two terms running.

A loud buzzer breaks the nighttime silence as a figure stands in the rain, pulling up the collar of his raincoat and pushing the button on the secured door again. 

"Your request has been received. Please wait while authorization is processed," an automated voice prompted from a speaker beside the console with the call button. 

"Please present retinal scan," the voice said and the figure complied. 

"Andrew Laughton identified. Security chip detected. Access Level 85 granted. Please continue inside, sir."

The figure walked forward as the door opened for him and promptly closed behind him automatically with a hermatic seal. A warm gust of air from vents in several directions quickly dry the man as he proceeds and hands his raincoat to a young and eager university intern, a young Something-or-Other whose name he couldn't be bothered with learning. 

"IPTV - news." The command was almost barked. A series of soothing tones and then the screen to the left of the oak desk came to life. 

"Authorities are still searching for the man, but believe he may have escaped into the sub-sewer basement. They will be working with Van Irving Technologies to monitor systems in case this escape is enroute to sabotage of critical city environmental systems. More after the break..."

The screen cut to a familiar commercial. A man is seen running up a football field towards the end zone with a massive crowd of spectators cheering him on. He avoids each defenseman with impressive maneuvering, and ultimately delivers a touch down. The scene then cuts away to a young man in a dimly lit room, lying in bed asleep with a cheerful grin on his face. The camera slowly pans to reveal a wheelchair beside the bed and several assistive rails on the wall. He has a small but comfortably-fit device covering his ears and wrapped around the back of his neck. It appears to be blinking in rapid succession, then solid with a soft green glow. The scene cuts away to doctors and scientists and technicians surrounding a patient on a table, a chart reads "comatose, 18 months" - another technician sits in a chair with the same device as the patient equipped, and moments later the patient awakens to greet loved ones and cheering doctors. 

Van Irving Technologies' unconscious reality perception engineers, or Dreamscapers (TM), not only help you create the ultimate in dream experiences, but VIT works with medical scientists to create breakthroughs for people who otherwise would still be waiting to realize their dreams.