REAL HUMAN BLOOD
By John C. Stevens
Larry,
Please explain your recent scheduling actions: You approved Darwin Durwood’s Request Off for December 21 and 22, the Friday and Saturday before Christmas, without my authorization. We are considering disciplinary action against you and Mr. Durwood after the Holiday Sale fiasco at your store. You knew the scheduling needs, and Darwin signed a document when he started last month, acknowledging that he understood that he was not eligible for a day off from a mandatory shift except for the death of an immediate family member. The reason listed on his request reads “Family Business.” I saw that you submitted the request for my authorization while I was on vacation, but you didn’t wait for an answer before you told Darwin to go ahead.
I am quite puzzled at your decision, Larry. This is the same guy for whom you had to make a pretty convincing case in order for us to hire him, given his criminal record. Then, you invested quite a bit of time coaching him on interacting with customers. You were right about Darwin’s ability to talk about the new household robots in terms anyone could understand. He just needed to watch his tone so he didn’t sound impatient or condescending. Your bet paid off. Darwin has exceeded expectations, impressively.
My guess is that you owed Mr. Durwood a big favor, or something. Please let me know what’s going on.
Howard
Howard,
I didn’t owe Darwin a favor, but his parole officer convinced me that doing this particular favor was critical to Darwin’s rehabilitation. By extension, I figured that having those two days off would be critical to Darwin’s continued success.
As you know, Darwin was a successful robotics engineer before his incarceration. He was a partner in a company that made robots that worked in conjunction with virtual reality systems. They started out making these systems to help train medical personnel. The robots provide a life-like feel to a virtual patient, and the virtual reality goggles help the medical personnel practice interacting with patients. The business really took off after they made such a system to train gynecologists. Darwin said after that, he and his partners felt like they had to consult psychotherapists to offer diversion programs on virtual reality that might help people overcome their sexual problems.
Darwin’s problems started when his partners asked him to design a blood victim robot. This would be for people who like to be a vampire in virtual reality, but want to drink real human blood from the neck of a life-like victim. Some of them already have sharpened incisors. It would be similar to the robot they made to train phlebotomists, but the vein would be in the neck instead of the arm. It would have a tank and a pump to send the blood through the robot’s jugular. The customers would insist on real human blood, so Darwin would have to take that into account in order to design it in such a way as to make it as easy to clean as possible.
Darwin refused to design the blood victim robot. He told his partners at the time that he had moral objections against it. They asked him why he didn’t object to taking his profits from the sex robot sales. He told them that vampires are evil. Masturbating with expensive toys like robots and VR goggles is just kind of pathetic. Darwin also told his partners that he didn’t want to be part of any scheme involving rich people buying blood from poor people just for sport.
What Darwin didn’t tell his partners was that his 17-year-old son, Arthur, had become obsessed with vampires. It worried Darwin, because the boy talked about getting his teeth sharpened. Darwin felt guilty about this because he’d put in long hours at his job when Arthur was very young. He wasn’t around to answer questions about mortality and death and the afterlife, and it looked like Arthur had gotten confused ideas from TV and movies. Arthur would get mad and storm out of the room when Darwin tried to remind him that vampires are fictional.
Darwin and his wife, Samantha, had had a lot of disagreements about how to raise Arthur, starting with naming him. Darwin thought Samantha’s names were too trendy or special, and Samantha thought that Darwin’s names were dull. Darwin thought Samantha helped Arthur too much when he needed to learn to do something. He thought she shielded him from the consequences of his actions. Samantha thought Darwin neglected Arthur.
Samantha loved Halloween. She loved to dress Arthur in a vampire costume every year, starting when he was four. Darwin didn’t object to this. It was one thing that Arthur and his mother could do together without yelling at each other. He didn’t think of it as evil. The first thing he thought of when he heard about vampires was either a counting puppet from a children’s TV show, or a nutty old grandpa from a black-and-white TV situation comedy. Darwin never took an interest in the vampire movies and TV shows that came out after he grew up, but Arthur and Samantha watched some of them together.
I asked Darwin about his crime in my initial interview with him. He said that when he continued to refuse to work on the blood victim robot, he and his partners got so angry with each other that they couldn’t work together anymore. They voted to oust him from the partnership and sue him for failure to perform his duties. His lawyer told him that the moral objection argument probably wouldn’t hold up in court, and advised him to show that the market for blood victim robots wasn’t big enough to justify the outlay of capital to develop the product.
Darwin surprised Samantha and Arthur one evening by getting home in time for dinner. When Darwin told them that he wouldn’t be going back to the office anymore, and why, they both got loud and angry with him. He hadn’t told them about getting kicked out of the partnership or the lawsuit before that day. Samantha was furious that Darwin lost a fantastic job because he wanted to spite his own son. Arthur was mad because he wanted a blood victim robot, himself.
Arthur told Darwin that if he wasn’t going to build a blood victim robot for him, he would have to drink Darwin’s blood. Darwin laughed and asked how he was going to do that when he still needed his mother to cut up his steak for him. The laughing enraged Arthur. He moved in to strike Darwin. Darwin stopped him with a slap to the face, but Samantha moved in to protect Arthur.
Darwin backhanded Samantha across the face. Samantha was a big woman, so she couldn't hold her own weight to keep from falling backward down the basement stairs. She ended up with a broken wrist and heavy bruising on her back.
Arthur lifted a kitchen chair over his head to hit Darwin. Darwin kicked Arthur in the ribs and broke three of them. Samantha called 911 and told them that her husband was trying to kill her and her son. Darwin didn’t resist when the police arrested him, and didn’t say anything about Arthur or Samantha trying to hit him first.
Arthur graduated from high school and had his incisors sharpened while Darwin was serving his time. He bought some VR goggles and played vampire role-playing games on the computer. This thrilled for Arthur at first, because it looked like he was right there in Transylvania or 19th-Century London.
After a while, role-playing a vampire, even with the VR goggles, got old. He started stalking a young woman in his neighborhood who liked to jog at night. He wanted to try to seduce her, but she told him to get lost as soon as she saw a creepy tall guy walking up to her. He attacked her the next night. It didn’t go well for him. He had never learned any fighting skills, and he was weak and out of shape. The jogger knew how to get his legs out from under him, and did so quickly. She called 911. She let him get up and run away before the cops got there, but he didn’t get far.
Arthur got sent up for assault and attempted rape. His sentence overlapped with Darwin’s sentence by about six months. Darwin was on cadre at the intake center when Arthur got transported there from the county jail. Darwin worked a few favors, and arranged for a 30-minute private visit with his son.
Darwin told me he told his son not to discuss his business with anyone. He told him if he had to tell someone something, to come up with something better than what actually happened, except for the prison psychologist or the chaplain. He told him that the other prisoners don’t treat sex criminals very well, and Arthur wouldn’t want to let on that he couldn’t tell the difference between fiction and reality. Arthur told Darwin that his mother had told him something pretty close to that when she made him get his incisors capped while he was still out on bond. Darwin told his son to stay away from drugs, gambling and prostitutes while incarcerated, and he would avoid 95 percent of the trouble he could get into.
Arthur participated in some recovery programs while incarcerated. When he got his release date, he told the chaplain and the prison psychologist that he wanted both of his parents there to meet him when he got out, and then have extended visits that day and the next day. Arthur’s release was scheduled for December 21st, the Friday before Christmas. The chaplain had to work hard to get Samantha to agree to include Darwin in the visits.
Darwin told me and his parole officer that he felt that the extended visits would be his last chance to salvage his relationship with his son. He got the impression that Arthur listened to him during their visit at the intake center, and he saw some hope in the fact that Arthur had requested the visits. Darwin isn’t interested in getting back with his wife, but he wants to be able to get along with her to help with Arthur’s rehabilitation.
I didn’t wait for an answer from you on Darwin’s request mostly because of the timing. He needed an answer before you were scheduled to be back from vacation. Also, I thought you would say no, and I was thinking about my store’s long term profitability with Darwin there. I really want to keep him, and I think letting him go on his visit will do that.
Yours,
Larry
Larry,
Thanks for the explanation. We won’t start any disciplinary action against you or Darwin, but I can’t very well give you a year-end bonus after your dismal Holiday Sale numbers.
By the way, has Darwin said anything to you about the visit? He’s put up some pretty good numbers since then, so I hope the visit accomplished what you hoped it would accomplish. A friend of mine is also interested. I ran into one of my fraternity buddies on New Year's Eve, who happens to be one of Darwin's former partners.
My friend said that he wished Darwin would have said something about the situation with his son at the time. He said if they had known about the kid wanting to get his teeth sharpened, they might not have gotten so angry at him. They might have worked something out - like dropping the blood victim robot idea - if they had known that Darwin was so biased that he needed to recuse himself.
The suit turned out to be a pretty bad idea, anyway. The partners had just put down a big retainer when Darwin got locked up, and they lost contracts because Darwin wasn’t there anymore. I thought you would want to know.
Howard
Howard,
Darwin is doing well. It looks like the visits accomplished what he hoped. As a matter of fact, he asked me about Arthur coming to work at the store. He said that Arthur is pretty knowledgeable about virtual reality systems, and he picked up some interpersonal skills while he was locked up. He said he seems to have a better idea of the difference between fiction and reality now.
I’ll have to meet with Arthur to evaluate his interpersonal skills myself. If he’s like his father, he’ll probably be productive. I’ll also have to find out about his state of mind. I mean, some of the customers who buy the VR units are into some dark stuff. They might appreciate an ex-vampire as a salesman, but would it mess Arthur up if we ask him to dress up as a vampire or other monster on Halloween? I wouldn’t want to be responsible for him going back to a dark place.
Larry
The End
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