next six months.
“There’s too much,” I said. “I don’t even know where to start.”
“We could tag team it. Cover twice as much ground,” Ben said, looking much less awestruck.
“What are you interested in?”
He pointed to one of the evening’s lectures: “Case Law and Paranatural Citizens: A Survey.”
“Huh. Better you than me,” I said.
“Forewarned is forearmed,” he said.
“Then you’d darned well better sit through that. I’m trying to decide between ‘In Plain Sight: Did Hammer Film Studios Know Something We Didn’t?’ and ‘Theoretical Notions of Space and Time as Applied to Vampire Physiology.’”
“What does that even mean?” Ben said.
“I don’t know, but I’d like to find out.”
Conferencegoers filed in, the auditorium filled with the white noise of dozens of murmured conversations. Only five minutes after the scheduled time, a middle-aged man in a smart gray suit and wire-rimmed glasses came onstage with a set of note cards. Our presenter, obviously. Polite applause greeted him.
“Since the National Institutes of Health in the United States made the announcement four years ago, a vast new field of study has opened to us, encompassing not only biology but sociology, anthropology, and even folklore…”
His perfunctory account of the controversial field of paranatural studies made no mention of my own contribution in mainstreaming the topic, my role in prompting Dr. Paul Flemming of the NIH to make his announcement proclaiming the existence of vampires and lycanthropes to the world, his role in trapping me in order to broadcast me shape-shifting on live TV, which meant that no one could really ignore us anymore. Probably just as well.
The PowerPoint slides, which he did in fact include in his presentation, did reference Flemming’s work. Footnotes mentioned his name, papers he’d written, research he’d sponsored. I tensed, wanting to stand and declare—Flemming had been thoroughly discredited, how could anyone possibly even mention his name? Surely his research had to be discredited right along with him? The presenter may not have actually spoken the name, but it was there, clearly written, blazing across the room. Because even after everything that had happened, Flemming had helped establish the paranatural as a legitimate field of study. He’d be here in spirit, if not in flesh, all week.
The slides were mostly pie charts that had disclaimers about how no one could really be sure of the number of vampires and lycanthropes in a given population, these were estimates, and so on. Nothing nefarious, nothing earth-shattering. At least the guy’s British accent was fun to listen to.
The whole conference was going to be very staid, I gathered, which was probably a good thing. The subject was so sensationalist on its own we hardly needed to be adding to the hype. If we were all calm and boring about it maybe we could counteract the proto-riot going on outside.
Maybe I could work some of this into my speech—why the supernatural evoked so much emotion in people, why establishing much less maintaining objectivity was so difficult, and what that meant for all of us here. And whether maybe the topic deserved a little sensationalism.
* * *
“T HEORETICAL NOTIONS of Space and Time as Applied to Vampire Physiology” turned out to involve a dark room and another PowerPoint presentation describing obscure bits of quantum physics and string theory. Not good in combination with lingering jet lag. I sat in the back of the room, notepad and pen in hand, trying to make sense of what the lecturer, a physics professor from the University of California at Berkeley was saying. Dr. Shumacher had worked with the guy on some of his research and recommended the talk. When the lecture opened with a physics joke—“Vampires: alive or dead? Does Schrödinger’s cat walk among us?”—I knew I was in trouble.
He went on to describe his hypothesis that vampirism was
“There’s too much,” I said. “I don’t even know where to start.”
“We could tag team it. Cover twice as much ground,” Ben said, looking much less awestruck.
“What are you interested in?”
He pointed to one of the evening’s lectures: “Case Law and Paranatural Citizens: A Survey.”
“Huh. Better you than me,” I said.
“Forewarned is forearmed,” he said.
“Then you’d darned well better sit through that. I’m trying to decide between ‘In Plain Sight: Did Hammer Film Studios Know Something We Didn’t?’ and ‘Theoretical Notions of Space and Time as Applied to Vampire Physiology.’”
“What does that even mean?” Ben said.
“I don’t know, but I’d like to find out.”
Conferencegoers filed in, the auditorium filled with the white noise of dozens of murmured conversations. Only five minutes after the scheduled time, a middle-aged man in a smart gray suit and wire-rimmed glasses came onstage with a set of note cards. Our presenter, obviously. Polite applause greeted him.
“Since the National Institutes of Health in the United States made the announcement four years ago, a vast new field of study has opened to us, encompassing not only biology but sociology, anthropology, and even folklore…”
His perfunctory account of the controversial field of paranatural studies made no mention of my own contribution in mainstreaming the topic, my role in prompting Dr. Paul Flemming of the NIH to make his announcement proclaiming the existence of vampires and lycanthropes to the world, his role in trapping me in order to broadcast me shape-shifting on live TV, which meant that no one could really ignore us anymore. Probably just as well.
The PowerPoint slides, which he did in fact include in his presentation, did reference Flemming’s work. Footnotes mentioned his name, papers he’d written, research he’d sponsored. I tensed, wanting to stand and declare—Flemming had been thoroughly discredited, how could anyone possibly even mention his name? Surely his research had to be discredited right along with him? The presenter may not have actually spoken the name, but it was there, clearly written, blazing across the room. Because even after everything that had happened, Flemming had helped establish the paranatural as a legitimate field of study. He’d be here in spirit, if not in flesh, all week.
The slides were mostly pie charts that had disclaimers about how no one could really be sure of the number of vampires and lycanthropes in a given population, these were estimates, and so on. Nothing nefarious, nothing earth-shattering. At least the guy’s British accent was fun to listen to.
The whole conference was going to be very staid, I gathered, which was probably a good thing. The subject was so sensationalist on its own we hardly needed to be adding to the hype. If we were all calm and boring about it maybe we could counteract the proto-riot going on outside.
Maybe I could work some of this into my speech—why the supernatural evoked so much emotion in people, why establishing much less maintaining objectivity was so difficult, and what that meant for all of us here. And whether maybe the topic deserved a little sensationalism.
* * *
“T HEORETICAL NOTIONS of Space and Time as Applied to Vampire Physiology” turned out to involve a dark room and another PowerPoint presentation describing obscure bits of quantum physics and string theory. Not good in combination with lingering jet lag. I sat in the back of the room, notepad and pen in hand, trying to make sense of what the lecturer, a physics professor from the University of California at Berkeley was saying. Dr. Shumacher had worked with the guy on some of his research and recommended the talk. When the lecture opened with a physics joke—“Vampires: alive or dead? Does Schrödinger’s cat walk among us?”—I knew I was in trouble.
He went on to describe his hypothesis that vampirism was
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