45th Experiment [Audio]
Immortality: Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah
No one ever tells you the whole deal. You just get the punchline: "You will live forever".
Sometimes it's customized a bit: "You're sick and you're going to die unless I make you immortal" "You'll be able to learn forever".
And it's not a lie. That's the very important part. It is not a lie.
I was twenty seven when I met Amelie. I was already ill with a disease that was driving me a bit mad. Or maybe I was mad and then I got ill. Or maybe, as Claire has begun to suspect back home, it is the genius that drives you mad. The brain burns so bright and so clear that insanity is the obvious outcome. It's all very unclear. Perhaps I even had the Plague...no, I was pre-plague. Anyway! Amelie changed me because I was sick and I am a genius and she had determined that the world would be better off with me than without me. Or perhaps she just had decided that her world would be better off with me because you do understand as much as I adore Amelie, she is, at heart, a very selfish creature. She can't help it. It's part and parcel of our kind of immortality. Or possibly it's just immortality. When you live forever it's really very easy to lose one's humanity.
And now I'm just getting sidetracked.
I was twenty seven, sick, a genius doing ground breaking work---ground breaking at the time including washing one's hands--half out of my mind with insanity and I was a Lord of a good bit of land. I had peasants and bits of farmland and sheep. And one giant weakness that Amelie used to her every advantage. I loved to learn. I literally ached with the idea that I only had a finite amount of time to learn.
I can't blame her, not being what she is. I would have--and have--used human weakness in order to get what I wanted. In any case, I said yes. She made me immortal and the easy thing here would be to say 'The rest is history' but that's what this is about, isn't it? The history.
I'll pick the important bits out for you. Blood, peasants, lots of murder and then The Plague which made the murder easier to hide but the blood less than appealing. It also severely depleted my peasants: both the plague and the murder. Control and the concept of supply and demand took a few years for me to learn because they are concepts that require a bit of sanity and a bit of humanity.
Blah. Blah. Blah. Mostly boring bits, The Plague ended--for the most part and then there was Queen Elizabeth. The first one. Now she was fetching. And charming and entirely besotted with me. All of it: the intelligence, the experiments, the immortality, the biting. Of course everything was very hush, hush. It's not as if you can flaunt an affair with a Queen, even if you are a Lord. Of course it had to come to an end. Those things always do, don't they?
Some more boring bits, running amok, doing some very interesting research about the human brain, the vampire brain and devices that would use both to the utmost potential. Things turned interesting when vampires became the en vogue then and hunting became foreplay. I'd like to take this moment to thank the original Goth Club, Lord Byron and the Shelley's for that fascinating bit of history and the decadent parties. The man could make you weep with his writing and still throw a fantastic shin dig.
More boring bits, a romp across Paris and then Oscar Wilde. Another writer who threw a magnificent affair.
Boring bits. Boring bits. No longer a Lord because my kingdom was dissolved. Of course at this point I was pretending to be my great, great grandson. It was tiresome and really there's so much upkeep involved when you've got peasants.
Woodstock. Boring bits. Fantastic drugs and then Amelie calls to let me know she's a proposal I might be interested in. She called it Morganville and if she was to be their Queen, she would make me their puppeteer. You see my interesting neurological work was beginning to pay off. Human brains were of no use. They broke down, couldn't handle the stress and fractured but a vampire brain held a great deal of potential. I was lucky enough to come upon one although I can't remember the exact circumstances involved in that... [Because the City has wiped Ada as a human & vampire from his mind in order to return Menolly's life to her.]
In any case, Morganville. Such an exciting time when it was being settled and founded. We'd thoroughly grasped the concept of supply and demand by this time. Transfusions were commonplace and blood banks were standard. Of course convincing everyone to follow the rules took a bit but Amelie is very convincing when she wants to be.
I might mention there was a disease. Yes another one. A plague of sorts on Amelie's kind. Those of her bloodline were going insane. Absolutely bonkers, murdering insane and I was to be the savior. Imagine, me a savior. The tricky bit came with the deadline. I was just as ill as any of Amelie's bloodline and my sanity was slipping bit by bit.
Boring bits. Insanity, accidental murder and more boring bits. Enter Claire. Brilliant. My little genius lab assistant and the brightest human I've yet to meet--which of course means she'll probably go insane by the time she's twenty. If I was meant to be Morganville's savior, Claire was meant to be mine and in many ways, she has been. She makes me care whether I'm a monster or a person. She makes me want to be a person rather than a monster, which I hadn't cared about for many years.
We did save Morganville, by the way.
No one ever tells you the whole deal. You just get the punchline: "You will live forever".
Sometimes it's customized a bit: "You're sick and you're going to die unless I make you immortal" "You'll be able to learn forever".
And it's not a lie. That's the very important part. It is not a lie.
I was twenty seven when I met Amelie. I was already ill with a disease that was driving me a bit mad. Or maybe I was mad and then I got ill. Or maybe, as Claire has begun to suspect back home, it is the genius that drives you mad. The brain burns so bright and so clear that insanity is the obvious outcome. It's all very unclear. Perhaps I even had the Plague...no, I was pre-plague. Anyway! Amelie changed me because I was sick and I am a genius and she had determined that the world would be better off with me than without me. Or perhaps she just had decided that her world would be better off with me because you do understand as much as I adore Amelie, she is, at heart, a very selfish creature. She can't help it. It's part and parcel of our kind of immortality. Or possibly it's just immortality. When you live forever it's really very easy to lose one's humanity.
And now I'm just getting sidetracked.
I was twenty seven, sick, a genius doing ground breaking work---ground breaking at the time including washing one's hands--half out of my mind with insanity and I was a Lord of a good bit of land. I had peasants and bits of farmland and sheep. And one giant weakness that Amelie used to her every advantage. I loved to learn. I literally ached with the idea that I only had a finite amount of time to learn.
I can't blame her, not being what she is. I would have--and have--used human weakness in order to get what I wanted. In any case, I said yes. She made me immortal and the easy thing here would be to say 'The rest is history' but that's what this is about, isn't it? The history.
I'll pick the important bits out for you. Blood, peasants, lots of murder and then The Plague which made the murder easier to hide but the blood less than appealing. It also severely depleted my peasants: both the plague and the murder. Control and the concept of supply and demand took a few years for me to learn because they are concepts that require a bit of sanity and a bit of humanity.
Blah. Blah. Blah. Mostly boring bits, The Plague ended--for the most part and then there was Queen Elizabeth. The first one. Now she was fetching. And charming and entirely besotted with me. All of it: the intelligence, the experiments, the immortality, the biting. Of course everything was very hush, hush. It's not as if you can flaunt an affair with a Queen, even if you are a Lord. Of course it had to come to an end. Those things always do, don't they?
Some more boring bits, running amok, doing some very interesting research about the human brain, the vampire brain and devices that would use both to the utmost potential. Things turned interesting when vampires became the en vogue then and hunting became foreplay. I'd like to take this moment to thank the original Goth Club, Lord Byron and the Shelley's for that fascinating bit of history and the decadent parties. The man could make you weep with his writing and still throw a fantastic shin dig.
More boring bits, a romp across Paris and then Oscar Wilde. Another writer who threw a magnificent affair.
Boring bits. Boring bits. No longer a Lord because my kingdom was dissolved. Of course at this point I was pretending to be my great, great grandson. It was tiresome and really there's so much upkeep involved when you've got peasants.
Woodstock. Boring bits. Fantastic drugs and then Amelie calls to let me know she's a proposal I might be interested in. She called it Morganville and if she was to be their Queen, she would make me their puppeteer. You see my interesting neurological work was beginning to pay off. Human brains were of no use. They broke down, couldn't handle the stress and fractured but a vampire brain held a great deal of potential. I was lucky enough to come upon one although I can't remember the exact circumstances involved in that... [Because the City has wiped Ada as a human & vampire from his mind in order to return Menolly's life to her.]
In any case, Morganville. Such an exciting time when it was being settled and founded. We'd thoroughly grasped the concept of supply and demand by this time. Transfusions were commonplace and blood banks were standard. Of course convincing everyone to follow the rules took a bit but Amelie is very convincing when she wants to be.
I might mention there was a disease. Yes another one. A plague of sorts on Amelie's kind. Those of her bloodline were going insane. Absolutely bonkers, murdering insane and I was to be the savior. Imagine, me a savior. The tricky bit came with the deadline. I was just as ill as any of Amelie's bloodline and my sanity was slipping bit by bit.
Boring bits. Insanity, accidental murder and more boring bits. Enter Claire. Brilliant. My little genius lab assistant and the brightest human I've yet to meet--which of course means she'll probably go insane by the time she's twenty. If I was meant to be Morganville's savior, Claire was meant to be mine and in many ways, she has been. She makes me care whether I'm a monster or a person. She makes me want to be a person rather than a monster, which I hadn't cared about for many years.
We did save Morganville, by the way.