Rise Of The Immaterial Man

Understanding

When I had been a kid I’d always preferred science over fantasy. 

My favourite movie? Star Wars. 

Favourite TV show? Doctor Who. 

Favourite book series? Well okay, that had been Harry Potter, but in my defence, I’m pretty sure that was every kid's favourite book series when they had been growing up at my age. 

Anyway, the point I’m trying to make here is that vampires were always something that I thought was ridiculous. 

Blood-sucking creatures that couldn’t be seen in a mirror, hated sunlight and garlic, but could only be killed by a wooden stick through where their hearts should be? 

Absolutely absurd, none of it made any sense. 

Now, all of a sudden, it was my reality. 

“I’m sorry, walk me through it again?” I said. 

I was sitting on the end of my bed, fresh off of a panic attack, with the vampire woman standing fully nude in front of me. 

She’d explained the concept of the Immateria twice already, but for some reason, it just wasn’t sticking in my brain. 

“This is the final time,” She sighed, “If you don’t understand this time it’s tough luck, and honestly, I might just behead you due to stupidity. Some genius you’re meant to be.” 

I rankled under the statement but kept my mouth shut. Clearly, I’d already pissed her off, and I didn’t want to push that any further. 

“Okay,” She went on, “It’s really pretty basic. You’re an Immateria now, which is one of the primary Immaterial Races on the planet. You’re functionally immortal, the only way to kill an immateria is to reduce their bodies to a point where it can no longer reform. Many choose to burn the body. Even this will not truly kill an Immateria. It’s more of a… unconscious, untethered existence.”

I shivered at the thought. 

I wouldn’t be able to die even if my body was rendered to its atoms. 

Even then, over time, after the universe had undergone the big crunch in the far distant future and all the atoms across the cosmos had been brought back together… would the Immateria reform then? 

It was a terrifying notion. 

“And what happens if I don’t, you know, feed on human blood?” I asked. 

This was where I was struggling. 

If an Immateria was truly immortal, then why would I need to consume the blood of humans? In fact, why would I need to consume the blood of anything at all? Surely if I were immortal then I could just go through my days not drinking or eating a damn thing. 

And yet… 

I could already feel a sort of thirst clawing away at the back of my throat. It was subtle, a slight sense of discomfort niggling away at the base of my throat. But if left unchecked? It felt like the sort of thing that could blossom into a raging inferno. 

“You will turn, for lack of a better term, feral,” The woman said, “You will lose all sense of your mind and all that will be left is a cold intelligence, and all that intelligence will want is to feed. It will get what it wants.” 

I couldn’t let that happen. 

A cold and emotionless version of myself set only to devour the blood of other humans? It would be apocalyptic. Some of my detractors would already say that I was cold and emotionless, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. I had limits and boundaries that were set in stone. I couldn’t imagine what could be done if that side of me was unleashed. 

“It still sounds so ridiculous,” I said, before following up at the woman’s glare with, “But okay, I’m forced to believe you… at least for now. I can’t explain the fangs or the thirst, so until something comes up that truly disproves what you’ve said… I’m an Immateria.” 

The scowl turned into a renewed smirk, “Glad we’ve got that cleared up, you’re really dense for someone who’s meant to be a tech genius.” 

I bit back a retort, I wanted to tell her that believing in vampires and mythical creatures was one step too far removed from what I did on a day-to-day basis, but it wasn’t worth the hassle. 

“Now that we’ve got all that sorted I’ve got one more bit of bad news that I have to break to you,” She said, and I immediately felt my heart sink. 

“What are you gonna tell me now? That you’ve drafted me into a war against a bunch of werewolves or something,” I said, only half joking. 

She’d said that there were multiple species of Immateria and that our type was the only Prime Immateria. Other species were sure to exist, why not werewolves at this point?

“Nothing so contrite, no,” She replied, “Earlier you implied you thought only a night had passed. Metamorphosis from one species to another takes much longer than that. It’s been closer to two weeks.”

There are moments that bring your life into perspective. 

You would think that, for me, being turned into some weird immortal vampire creature would be the worst thing that could happen in a single day. 

That wasn’t even the slightest bit close to the truth. 

Work was special to me. 

Work had allowed me to pull myself out of poverty, it had allowed me to create incredible things and had started me on a journey to something truly incredible. 

Without it I was nothing. 

Being away from it for two weeks? Away from the meetings and the projects and the innovation for that long?

It was unthinkable. It was terrible. I needed to verify it. 

I was off like a shot, scrambling to find my phone. It would have been in my jacket pocket, I dove to the ground at the woman’s feet and tore through the pockets until I found the device. 

After two weeks it was dead as a doornail, so I slammed it down on the wireless charging pad next to my bed and waited… waited some more… and then it flickered back into life. 

Revealing missed message after missed message. Missed call after missed call. 

I was in even deeper trouble than I had thought.