My chamber was comfortable enough, consisting of one barren-walled square room with a small wooden table, a few matching chairs, a luxurious bed, and a food area with some ancient metal box that kept foodstuff cold. There was a primitive drink dispenser beside that and a radiation-box, that they used to call a nuke, to warm up any food I might desire. Most happily, a small, simple door led to my own personal lavatory and shower. Soft towels made from some artificial fiber were neatly folded in a white basket made from plastic but designed to look like it was woven of reeds. The late twentieth century may have been the beginning of the end for life as they knew it, but they outdid themselves in the decadence department.

I showered, cleansed my mouth as best I could, and dried myself with the very soft towels while I basked in the warmth. One of my favorite vices of this era is the fine selection of cheeses. Either somebody remembered how much I enjoy them, or I just got lucky; there were lots of them in the cooler box cut up into little, bite-sized cubes and ornately laid out on a plain plastic dish. I wondered if they'd let me take some cheeses back to Time Central Station after I gave my report.

The decadence, warmth, and luxury of this era, in stark contrast to my time, consumed me. Reveling in being able to physically feel, I lay on the soft, comfortable bed and ate cheese while enjoying the sensation of the droplets of water evaporating off my nude body. Idly passing the time, my hands wandered over my flesh, feeling the tactile miracle of physical contact. It wasn’t long before one wandering hand played in the wetness between my legs, the other hand grasping and squeezing my full breasts, and lifting my hard nipples to my eager lips to suck and nibble upon. 

The sloshing sounds of my fingers penetrating my pussy filled the room, mixing with my moans, and I slowly fucked myself at a leisurely pace, feeling my heat rise and my body approach orgasm. That pre-orgasmic state, where nothing but pleasure exists, soon wrapped my soul, making my thighs quiver in passion.

I lay there enjoying the luxury of the past and all the creature comforts it provided, fingering myself into sweet oblivion. While probably much longer than it seemed, the door opened before I even had a chance to think about cumming, and a thin, frail-looking man walked in carrying a thin plastic box. I noted that there was a tiny blinking green light on one edge of the box. He seemed nervous, timid, and a little on edge.

He stopped, stared at me, and grew extremely flustered. 

“Cumming,” I announced. “Watch me. Watch me cum. Pull out your cock and show me how much you like what you see.”

Not waiting for his response, I violently crammed three fingers into my cunt, thrusting in and out rapidly, and moaning my passion. He watched, unable to move, for a few moments, then shrugged and pulled out his cock.

“Shove it in my mouth and fuck my face,” I begged. “Cum on my face when I reach orgasm. Fuck my slutty mouth.”

He approached, first setting down his blinking box, and did as I asked. I was on the cusp of orgasm, but the distraction of deriving pleasure from his shaft pumping in my mouth allowed me to stave off my impassioned, horny release just long enough to suck him to climax. He pulled it out, his fist furiously pumping his manhood, and unleashed several geysers of hot, sticky spunk all over my face and tits.

“Fucking cumming,” I announced as my body quaked and shook all over the bed. “Unnggh, aah, mmm.”

When we’d both emptied our liquid lust, he just stood there, awkwardly, trying to speak.

"I'm James," he finally said with a nervous smile. His voice was a little too loud, belaying his frail build. He put his cock back into his pants and sat at the table, setting the plastic box in front of him. He then unfolded it and I realized that it was a bulky, portable Vid-screen with an archaic keyboard. I watched with intrigued amusement as the screen lit up, and he began typing on the keyboard. 

He looked at me. "I heard you futurists were always horny. Wow! You've never seen a laptop before?" He showed me the ancient device.

I smiled meekly. "I read about them when computing was still in its infancy."

I sat across from him, holding some incredibly sugary sweet, but still tasty, brown beverage I had retrieved from the dispenser. His jaw dropped when I scooped up some of his cum from my bare tits and rubbed it over the rim of my cup.

"Fascinating,” I said. “So, what do you need to know about your future?”

James was friendly, although it seemed to me that he tried too hard to act confident and assertive. He was tall and gaunt with close-cropped, brown hair. He wore casual clothes of the era, as well as thick eyeglasses. I recalled that in this time, the science to correct the eyes themselves had not been developed. Science was still focused on creating artifices to compensate for a problem rather than solve the problem, altogether. Although he seemed nervous, he had a way of emphasizing with my statements, and, before long, I was delighted to discover that we were chatting like old friends.

It was actually James' first time taking testimony, or so he said. He told me that he spent the past linear year, or so, comparing the original records from his future against the immutable past, before time travel was invented, and then noting the changes upstream.

One can only travel up and down the time stream from the beginning of the singularity arc to the end. The far end is in the year 2388, which is the era I hail from. While Doctor Epstein invented the Infernal in 1988, the furthest back anyone is allowed to go is the middle 1990s; which suits our efforts well, since things started going all fugazi just a couple of decades after the twenty-first century began.

James quizzed me on the division between peoples of the same countries, how identity politics and ignorance led to the rise of fascism under the mask of liberty and democracy, and how people gradually lost their freedoms and privileges as a select few gathered all the power and wealth for themselves. After that came a series of wars, plagues, disasters, and devastation the world had never before seen.

Our conversation segued into how life is in my present, and I was amazed to discover that as bad as it was with poverty and disease, violence and oppression, that things had been far worse than I had ever imagined. James seemed to take great pride in pointing out how things initially had been/ would be, if not for the efforts of our motley group of Time Orphans. Then, I offhandedly mentioned the vampires, the Biters, referencing an unrelated event. That drew a long empathetic look from James and he sighed heavily.

James lowered his eyes and slowly shook his head from side to side as if he were clearing his thoughts. When he raised his head to face me, his nervous demeanor faded into a resigned sort of seriousness. His voice lost its volume, and he spoke softly for the first time. "I told you that this was my first time taking the testimony of a Time Orphan. There is a reason for that."

His attitude had changed so much that I had to rethink my initial impression of the man. Perhaps James wasn't the nervous and mousy introvert I had originally suspected. "I'll take the bait," I said. "What is the reason?"

James sat upright for the first time since he had taken the chair, his laptop forgotten. "Normally, I compile data and compare records to help monitor the time stream." His voice grew pensive. "I began noting that about thirty years from now, up into your time, several mentions of Vamps, Biters, Bloodsuckers, and Vampires. I have some serious questions for you."

I took a swig of that sugary beverage and nibbled on a cube of cheese. Serious questions? "I assumed they were all serious questions, what with the future of mankind at stake and all."

James shook his head, a determined expression on his face. "You don't understand, I think." He paused and drew in a deep breath. "The thing is that everyone here thinks I'm crazy..."

I cut him off with a chuckle. "You should try things at Time Central Station. Being fugazi is a requirement around then."

"No," he continued. "I noted something in my research and cataloging, and I'm only here questioning you because Francis got tired of being confronted about it and told me that if I was so certain, I should find out for myself."

"Who's Francis, I haven't met him."

"Her," James shrugged. "Kimberly Francis, Ph.D., if you please!"

I laughed aloud at his chagrin. "That sounds exactly like Purley on our end! Don't you dare call her by just her last name!"

James raised his cup of whatever that addictive and sweet, brown, carbonated drink was, and we shared a silent salute. He continued. "The thing is that I firmly believe that all of these names for the next three or so centuries refer to a single group. Is that true?"

It was my turn to shrug. "Yes, as far as I know. They are technically Vampires but most of us, when I hail from, refer to them as Biters. I've also heard them called Vamps, Blood Suckers, Drainers, and several other related nicknames."

James' face lit up. "I knew it! They all think I'm crazy." He got excitedly animated, and his gestures grew fast and expansive. "So what we have here is a faction that starts somewhere in America, in the early twenty-first century, and is still active in your time. That's amazing! I bet they're responsible for a lot of the troubles that plague humanity."

"They're a plague, alright," I added, allowing my hatred to fill my words.

James went on. "So, this group that calls themselves the Vampires, what are they? Are they a political faction, drug lords, a crime syndicate, what?" His expression was unreadable. 

I shook my head in dismay and wondered if I might still be trapped in the Matrix, my mind finally splintered from the endless duress and loneliness. 

"No you tripper, they're vampires! You know, razor-sharp teeth, kill people, drink their blood." 

I rolled my sleeve and thrust the bite-mark scar in front of his face. "See this? A goddess-damned Biter gave me that the night it preyed on my family! They would have taken me as well had I not fallen into the river and been washed downstream."

James' eyes grew huge, but he remained silent.

"That night, I hid in an abandoned building, shivering and terrified, until dawn came. I managed to track the pack down and got the one that killed my mother; the others got away."

"Vampires," was the only word he said. He smiled and sat back, looking quite satisfied. I just stared at him. How could he look so happy?

"It's nothing to smile about," I corrected him. "Why do you look so pleased?" I wouldn't say that I'm a violent person, although I have no qualms about it when the situation demands it. I was beginning to believe the situation demanded it.

James held his hands out, palms facing me, in an attempt to quell my ire. "No, no, I'm sorry. Very sorry. I believe you. I drew the same conclusion, and everyone here thinks I'm nuts! This is my vindication!"

I stopped at that. My fury subsided to something akin to embarrassment. "What, you don't have vampires here in the past?"

"No," he said with an empathetic sort of amusement. "There are stories, myths, and legends, but almost nobody believes they exist and those that do are weirdos, the lunatic fringe...all fugazi as you'd say, Gail."

"Fooh-Gah-Zee," I corrected him while attempting a smile. "Even in the present, some don't believe they exist; my present, that is."

"Look at this, "he said, reaching for his archaic Vid-screen and swiveling it around, so I could see the display. He quickly accessed some documents he had stored on the unit and quickly jumped down a few pages to show me a graph. I could see years, marked off by decades, along the bottom and a line, originating at the year 2000 at the zero mark. As the years went by, it arched upwards, gradually, until about 2100, and then rose steeply. I was looking at a logarithmic exponential increase of something.

James pointed at the display. "This graph represents sightings, murders, or other events that I believe are vampire activity. You see, here that in the present, my present, there's nothing. But, about twenty-five to thirty years from now, there will be a series of murders and events in the Midwest. Here." James pulled up a map of the continent and pointed to an area beneath the Great Lakes, his hand circling about. He continued. "After about seventy more years, the Biters, as you call them, seem to have spread Westward and are almost commonplace."

I looked at him, not quite understanding what he was driving at. "So, you've pinpointed ground zero for the vilest plague of the future because you have access to the records of multiple versions of the time stream. What do you intend to do with all of that?"

"No, Gail," James' voice had grown intense and his eyes glowed. "You are a field agent for the sole proprietor of time travel. I have discovered both where and when Vampires come out of hiding and start openly and aggressively preying on humankind. The real question is what are you going to do about it?"

My jaw dropped in disbelief. "Me? What am I going to do about it?"

"Exactly!" James proclaimed. "You are the upstream authority on all things vampire, are you not?"

There had to be some mistake. "I think you have the wrong impression of me. I don't know snarf about them other than what everyone else knows."

"Gail, this may be hard to accept, but you were chosen by Epstein himself. I requested the resident expert on the vamps, and he sent you."

"There must be some mistake. Not only do I not know anything more about them than any other shooter could tell you, I'm not qualified to do anything!" My dialect and accent were slipping a bit, but I didn't care. "I know frag-frak about them other than the obvious, and I'm not qualified for field missions." As soon as the words escaped my lips, I recalled Dr. Epstein back at Time Central. He seemed to already know and let it slip. "I've shot four times, counting this one, and they've only used me for food deliveries and such. What am I going to do, fetch the damned Biters' dinner order?"

"No, Gail, " James seemed to be genuinely pleased. "You're going to find out what happened, where, and when. Then, you're going to wipe them out! As far as we know, you're not only the only one that has encountered them, but the only one of us that has ever killed one."

I opened my mouth to refute what he was suggesting, but my hatred for the Biters held me back. I looked at my scar and the memory of what they had taken from me filled me with remorse and that dark, black hatred that I had kept buried for years consumed me. Still, I was afraid. I was afraid of dying, terrified of becoming one of them. I was much more afraid that I wouldn't be able to make any changes. To cover for my lack of words, I took another drink of that brown beverage, threw on some clothes, and eyed my plate of cheese. My appetite had fled.

"I don't know," I sighed. "I know they can die because I made it happen. I just don't have a clue where to start. For frak, I don't even know how the Time Shooters zero in on the events that have the least T-mass. If you want egg rolls, I can manage that. Isn't there somebody stationed at a near-when waypoint that has better, or at least some, field experience?"

James shook his head from side to side slowly. "You're the girl. If Epstein felt there was somebody better, he'd have sent them instead."

"Just so you know, from the start, I'm nervous, a little shaken up by all of this, and clueless. Do you have any ideas, James?"

"Yes!" he exclaimed with glee. James jumped up out of his chair so excitedly that the chair slid backward and nearly toppled over. "My research! Wait here!" He ran towards the door and flung it open and almost ran out of my chamber. I could hear his voice as he went down the hall crying out, "they're real, they're real. I was right!" His voice stopped suddenly, and I heard heavy footfalls approaching the still-open doorway. 

A sheepish-looking James popped his head around the door frame. "Uh, please wait here, Gail. I'll be back shortly."

I shook my head in dismay. I had assumed that if I were to ever be given a field assignment, I'd drop off or pick up some investments or materials, maybe help out a veteran agent or serve as misdirection for the more combat-oriented Time Orphans we call the Thuggies. I would have never guessed in a million infinities that my first assignment would be to stave off the rise of the vampires. It wasn't as if I cannot fight or that I didn't know the high points of this particular era, I just felt that perhaps somebody that knows the ins and outs of time-shooting and looping should probably have been chosen for such an important task.

My trepidation grew to worry, and my worry began to undermine what little confidence I had in myself. Hunting down a single Biter and lighting it on fire or shooting it from a distance is one thing, but this was something I was ill-equipped to fathom, let alone orchestrate.

To keep my mind off this, I raided the icebox once more and refilled my cup with that brown carbonated sugar water, tugging on my clit to keep myself distracted. I noted a music box with some dials and knobs, and, after fiddling with it for a few minutes, I could hear something called a Rock Station on the tiny speakers. I turned that off quickly, as the music they played reminded me too much of the type the docs were piping in back in the Infernal lab. 

James returned, shouldering a good-sized file box that was all but overflowing with notebooks and papers. In his other hand, he held two glass bottles by their necks. They clanked with each of his excited steps. He bent at the knees and skidded the box onto the table, pushing his laptop aside. With a triumphant gesture, he then plopped the bottles on the table in front of me.

"Do they have bourbon in the 24th?"

"Of course we do. Not my favorite, but since you're hosting, I'd be honored."

James went to the drink dispenser and grabbed two cups and filled each of them about halfway with the same brown, carbonated, sweet beverage I had been drinking earlier, humming some unknown tune. He opened one of the bottles with a plopping noise as the syrupy liquid sloshed around. "Ten-year-old Kentucky bourbon!"

I laughed at that as he filled both cups most of the way to the top and swished the liquids inside to help mix them. "You mean four-hundred-year-old bourbon for me."

James rifled through the box of documents as we drank, and he pulled out a well-used and distressed-looking map of the world with several other sheets taped behind it, and, then, he produced a small, black notebook. He handed me an ink pen. "In case you want to take notes." He then pointed to Western Asia on the map. 

"As far back as 3000 BC, we have written records, in myths and legends, of various humanoid entities that we could classify as vampires." He traced a drawn line on the map that headed East toward China with his cup. "A few hundred years later, similar stories surface here," he then jabbed at the African continent with his free hand, "and here, in this region of what was then tribal Africa."

I nodded, not knowing what to say or even if it were true. He continued. "As civilization grew into the Greeks, then the Romans, Vandals, Mongols, and more, stories of bloodsucking entities, usually as individuals but occasionally working in packs arose on the outskirts of all of these civilizations." 

James reached again into his box and searched for a moment and pulled out a large ream of paper. "Here, I have all the major known references to vampires in Asia, Africa, and Europe from legends up until about the 1700s." He plopped it down with a self-pleased grin on his face. "Therein lies the source of all the lore, superstitions, and legends."

I was impressed. "Impressive," I said. "But I fail to see how your meticulous cataloging of legends helps us."

He smiled, raising his cup towards me and then finishing it off with a single gulp. "Actually, it is our starting point. Most myths and legends, as you probably know, have some basis in truth." 

He then folded his map back, revealing the next page beneath it; a map of North America. "About the same time that the New World was beginning to be colonized, the stories and sightings of vampires across the Atlantic subsided to almost nothing, pushing the creatures into the darkness of legend and old wife's tales."

He refilled his drink, refilled mine. I accepted. "But here," he declared with the fervor of a devout student in his voice. He gestured toward the East Coast of America so quickly that some of his bourbon sloshed onto the map, darkening the area that used to be New York. "Here, the tales start rising about the same time they dwindle across the sea. Do you see what that means?"

"That the Biters mostly moved from Europe into the West." I still couldn't see why that made a difference.

"Yes," James declared loudly. "Your biters are not some new phenomenon! They have been around since the dawn of history. What is odd, though, is that the sightings and attacks are so sparse that nobody ever made the connection until about twenty-five years from now. Your vampires are not some new mutation, as you said, but an old one that somehow gained a foothold in the near future."

"And this is how you discovered the where and when?"

"Almost," James said. His voice quieted down again to almost normal. 

He quaffed another drink. It seemed like a good idea, so I copied his gestures, feeling the warmth in my stomach. “As I was back-logging encounters and sightings from about 2200 on down, I stumbled across this man."

He pulled out another notebook with the name Omar Shadah scrawled on the front cover. James opened it, and I saw a standard dossier that we use up and down the time stream. There were various pictures of a man, Omar I assume, from various stages in his life, one-line blurbs of his notable accomplishments, and several pages of background. Dr. Shadah was, or is, an anthropologist with a peculiar fixation on myths and legends.

"I see," I said, not exactly understanding, but intrigued.

"Dr. Shadah was a renowned anthropologist at Covington University, published broadly, and well-respected. Until about..." he flipped through some pages, "...until about 2008 or so. After that, he became convinced that the vampires of lore were all based on a real creature. He published a few books on the topic, did the talk-show and horror convention circuit, and, around the tail end of 2018, he gives a final lecture on the topic and then just disappears; or will disappear."

I still didn't get what James was driving at. I decided to bolster my comprehension by refilling my cup. "So your research was greatly aided by some doc from the beginning of the twenty-first. How's that help?"

James sighed and flipped through more pages of his notebook. Not pleased with the results, he opened up another one and leafed through that until he found what he was looking for. He showed it to me. The headline read, "ousted anthropologist claims vampires roam the heartland."

James regained his too-loud voice, given extra enunciation from the bourbon. "See! Right here! It says in the article, or, rather, will say, that Doctor Shadah claimed, err will claim, that he knew where they were. Don't you see? He's your best shot at finding their most fragile beginning. If you can find the time and place where they are the most vulnerable, then..." he looked at me as understanding dawned in my face.

I finished his sentence for him. "Then I find my butterfly where the T-mass is easier to alter."

James raised his red plastic cup. "I'll drink to that!" It sounded like a good idea to me, too. Then, he added, "I know, for certain, of two exact places and times that he can be found. One is in the middle of 2007, right before he published his first book." He again rifled through the box and pulled out a piece of paper with a picture of a book cover upon it. The title read "Monsters Among Us". 

He continued. "The other time is about a decade later, his last known seminar as far as I can tell."

I thought about it—a fifty-fifty shot, time shoot, really. "I would guess that earlier down the stream would be better. More of a chance to find the least amount of T-mass there. I'll intercept him and find the location, and then do whatever needs to be done, I guess."

James beamed triumphantly and reached back into his box of research. He eventually produced a very worn copy of Monsters Among Us and a manila binder stuffed with papers. "Here's his book and a condensed version of his research that I compiled myself. It has most of Shadah's research in there in a cliff-notes version. It might come in handy for you."

I didn't bother to ask what a cliff-note version was. We spent a long time going over James' notes and research. I helped him fill in some of the blanks with what little knowledge I had about the Biters. I knew that most people bitten by them die from whatever mutating virus runs through their saliva. A very scant few that are bitten don't die, but become one of them. 

From what I recalled, there are certain genetic bits of flotsam floating about in our DNA that not all of us have. Those that have these particular genes, when the vampire spit is introduced into their system, mutate rather quickly into one of the bloodsuckers. Most of the Vamps that I had encountered were more like savage animals than humans. They neither talked nor seemed to be concerned about anything other than their base instincts. However, there seems to be a more intelligent vampire, one that has at least some of its human intellect intact; alongside the primal, blood-sucker parts. The pack I tracked and tried to eliminate seemed, to me, to have an alpha Biter that led them. I caught sight of it twice; once during the initial attack, when they massacred my family, and once more, almost a year later, when I found their lair. As the others attacked me like rabid beasts, it held back and seemed to direct them.

James was also unaware of the Interstitium organ in the body. One treatise about the Biters, written in the 22nd century, which I had read, but James hadn't discovered, seemed to indicate that that particular organ helped the bloodsuckers turn the blood into energy. After some disbelief and confusion on James' part, he believed me on that. As it turned out, the Interstitium hadn't been discovered, yet, where-when Wayback is positioned. He'd need to wait a little over twenty years before that became common knowledge.

Well into our second bottle, we had hashed out a plan of sorts. James eventually staggered off, leaving me to my own devices to rest up before I went through another time shoot. I took that time to both sober up and read up on Dr. Shadah's research. I was impressed. James was a thorough and detailed researcher. Not only did he expertly compile Shadah's research, but James' supporting notes and independent research were all backed by evidence and testimony, as well as cross-notated and referenced. Realizing that the vast majority of it was based upon, or a direct copy of, Dr. Shadah's research, I looked forward to meeting the mind that figured it all out before James.

I grabbed the manila folder and stowed it with my gear. If I were shooting forward to meet this Dr. Shadah, I felt that it would be a good idea to study his material, so I wouldn't give the good doctor the impression that I was some fugazi loon. James had cleared the shoot to 2007 with the docs and Francis, her even dropping by once to greet me and ask me if I needed anything.

I requisitioned a small array of equipment and weaponry that I thought might be useful. She also told me that the planet wasn't in quite the proper position to make the shoot just yet, so I had plenty of time to rest up. I must have read Dr. Shadah's introduction to Monsters Among Us thirty times before I was satisfied that I knew the exact place and time. 

'For most of us, Friday the 13th is an unlucky day. For me, it was a life-defining event. I remember it as if it happened yesterday. On July 13th, 2007 I sat in an out-of-the-way diner situated off of route twenty-three, just outside of Covington called Johansen's Family Restaurant, enjoying a warm slice of Apple pie, at exactly 1:13 PM, 13:13 in military time. I had just had the epiphany that Vampires are real and have walked among us since the dawn of time. I was debating whether this was true or a mere flight of fancy when a life-changing encounter convinced me that I was correct.' 

It was perfect. I knew the exact place, time, and date to meet up with Doctor Omar Shadah. Of course, knowing where and when he would be did not mean that I'd be able to get there at the precise moment needed, nor did it mean that he'd be willing to help me.

Time Shoots from one end-point to the other along the singularity arc are easy, but inserting one into any time-place between them always comes with a margin of error. If the current alignment of the planet isn't an exact match to the tilt and position of the planet at the destination point, one can pop up in the wrong place or at the wrong time. Time and space might very well be illusions, but we still have to work within our very limited human perceptions of reality. This means that at any given moment, the Earth is in a decidedly different spot in the universe than it was a split-second ago. I was supposed to have learned the formulae for working out the positions from relativistic, human-centrist measurements of space and time, but I never had any success with those.

I did eventually lie down in that very soft and very luxurious bed, but I couldn't rest. Sleep eluded me for a long while. A lucky discovery of some long, plastic rod, the top tip rounded, rescued my angst. Plunging the phallic object into my aching cunt for hours on end, until I was too exhausted to orgasm again, finally put me to sleep.

I eventually awoke to the sensation of James shaking me awake. I felt worse than I did before I went to sleep. James seemed to be unaffected by the copious amounts of bourbon we imbibed the night before. I hated him, briefly.

"Are you ready to shoot?" He asked with all the enthusiasm of a child ready to go on a trip.

I was mostly not but nodded anyway. As soon as I stood up, I realized that I might not need to worry about the Infernal wrenching my stomach and making me spill my guts out when the shoot was completed; the bourbon took care of that for me in advance. I barely made it to the commode before my stomach emptied itself of its contents. I washed up and cleansed my mouth again, and it was time once more to walk the walk of doom and reenter the Infernal. At least, I was only jumping forward about a decade or so; that was only a minor piece of infinity.

“Here’s the notes in paper form,” James said to me as I walked toward the Infernal’s chamber. “And, I hope you’re not easily offended by overt sexuality.  The era and area you’re heading to will be famous in future-history as a den on sexual debauchery.”

I laughed with geneuine delight. “You should have mentioned that, first. I’m more than down for that.”