From: covin@tartarus.uchicago.edu (David Covin)
Subject: Re: How do vampires become rich?
Organization: University of Chicago Computer Science
	<Bx9DtC.EI8@inews.Intel.COM> <1dcrb1INNoju@bigboote.WPI.EDU>
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1992 17:29:58 GMT

In article <1dcrb1INNoju@bigboote.WPI.EDU> kat@bigwpi.WPI.EDU (Flame's Passion) writes:
   In article <Bx9DtC.EI8@inews.Intel.COM> bcohen@cad721.intel.com (Benjamin Cohen ) writes:

>>Actually, interest on bank deposits rarely exceeds inflation by more
>>than 2-3 %. This can result in a loss of real wealth after taxes.
>
>Since when do vampires pay taxes?

:)

Since they first deposit their money in a bank, I'd guess.  Unless
that's one of the loopholes in the tax code that hasn't been ironed
out yet ("I just check the little box on the 1040EZ that says,
'Vampire exemption'"), the long arm of the IRS will get you.  And
don't think to get around it by being dead-- in most jurisdictions,
the dead have *fewer* rights than the living!  Oddly enough...

You could make foresighted investments in long-term growth companies.
If you have foresight.  And money to start with.  But how do you
*get* that money to start with?  And what do you do while you're
waiting for your investments to grow, and hoping for no civil
unrest to threaten your germinating money?  In many legends, vampires
get *hungry* if they don't eat every night.

If you truly don't show up on film, robbery might be a fine way
to go.  If you kill all the witnesses, that is.  And have no morals.
You might try nighttime robberies of ATM machines, if you don't
like killing.

Crime seems to go along with vampirism pretty well, since vampires
are generally assumed to kill frequently and remorselessly-- if 
you're killing, why not rob as well?  The group in the movie Near
Dark lived this way.  However, the police are exactly the people
you *don't* want attention from.  As a group, they have vast
resources, which actually *increase* the more of them you cut down
(as they gain authorization to call in the FBI, the National Guard,
etc).  They are fairly organized and have rapid communication with
each other over large distances.  They are trained to find out
what they're dealing with, to fight if necessary, to kill if it's
unavoidable.  If any group of humans poses a danger to you, the
police do.

And unless you're damn careful, they *will* get on your tail!  The
murder rate in Chicago, which is a large, high-crime city, is slightly
over one per night.  The vampires in the movie Near Dark, like those
in most recent vampire flicks, killed one person per night *each*!
A city the size of New York *might* get away with hiding *one* such
hungry vampire; however, the sudden doubling of the murder rate just
might tip off the police that something was up...  And forensic
science is pretty advanced these days.  Unless you actually incinerate
the bodies, investigators looking into this sudden rash of killings
are unlikely to miss the fact that each victim was drained of blood.
If, God help you, you leave intact bodies with puncture marks, then
it's just a matter of how fast you can move that determines how long
you'll stick around.

You could feed off of other animals for a while.  Cattle-mutilation
will be noticed pretty quickly, though that doesn't mean you won't
be able to get away with it for some time.  You can buy, or steal,
small animals from pet-stores, though again you'll have to do 
something with the bodies.  In fact, no matter what you'll have to
do something with the bodies, or you'll leave quite a waste trail.

You're best off acquiring a group of humans whom you can talk, 
bribe, or charm into letting you feed from them a little at a time,
so they don't die and you don't starve.  Someone on this group
must know how much blood an average human has in them-- anyone?
I know that a healthy adult can donate a pint every 30 days or
so, safely.  So, for every pint per night that you need to drink,
you need 30 humans to get it from.  Say 32 to be on the safe side--
some of them might have down-time for being sick at any given moment.
If you need 8 pints of blood per night (is this reasonable?), 
then that's 256 people you need to draw from, if you don't want
to raise too much attention.

Heh.  A secret shared...

Of course, this is assuming that it's *blood* that you need, not
some metaphysical or psychic essence.  If you actually need to kill
a person every night, well, you're screwed.  On the other hand, this
is also assuming nothing about whatever powers you might have to
cloud the minds of mortal folk.  Perhaps you *can* handily just
charm 250 people into letting you suck on their necks once a month.
Depending on how cute you are, and how sensual, and how considerate
and careful about transfer of fluids (be sure to gargle with alcohol
between feedings, now!), some people might be happy to have their
necks sucked on, or their arms, or their legs...

The money thing is a problem.  Feeding on 8 people per night won't
leave you with much time to work, even if you could find a nice
job with flexible hours.  For a while, you could rely on the 
hospitality of your food group-- floor space is relatively cheap,
you don't buy food, and general living expenses for 1 person divided
among 250 doesn't work out to much money per person.  It would be
nice to do *something* to repay this, after a while, though. If you're
very attractive, you might, in effect, prostitute yourself for
blood and board...

Or you could do odd jobs for your food-folk.  If you can remain 
awake during daylight, but just don't like to stand in/cannot stand
the sun, you might draw all the blinds and clean house while your
host is away at work.  "Oh, that's just my house-vampire-- he comes
in once a month and dusts and sweeps and mops and all that, and I
give him some blood."  You could offer city hosts the service of
escorting them home in the evening.  "Trust me-- I'm very good with
muggers."

Or, you could work at some job that doesn't rely on your being at
a fixed place at a fixed time.  Some programming jobs can be this
way, if you have a portable computer and a modem.  And, of course,
there's always stuffing envelopes.

I think, overall, that you'd have to be very smart and extremely
lucky to make it through the initial transition from normal human
life to a vampiric existence.  The first couple months would be
an extremely difficult time, during which you'd be trying to
figure out and implement some arrangement for getting fed regularly
that didn't have too many problems, while trying to take care
of your day-to-day hunger with almost no useful resources and no
experience.  Once past that, it could easily become rather dull.
If you could *only* go out at night, and had to take care of your
hunger as well as work as well as whatever day-to-day errands cropped
up, your social life would suffer terribly.  In desperation, you
might be driven to turn to forums that don't have specific opening
and closing times... like Usenet..

The horror... the horror...

--
David Covin                           covin@despair.uchicago.edu