1953 Watson and Crick discover the DNA double-helix model. Collaborating with Rosalind Franklin, they use Cold War funding for their own research instead of for space and unconventional weapon development. This greatly advances the understanding of genetic manipulation as the US develops genetic weapons instead of nuclear. Space exploration fizzles out.
1958 Rosalind Franklin continues her research, helping to push genetic understanding up for the following twenty years and giving us a wealth of genetically produced drugs in the 1960s.
1962 Genetic insulin becomes readily available.
1966-1969 Turn begins and ends. The T4 Angel virus transported by a tomato designed to feed the people of the third worlds.
1979 Ivy and Trent are born.
1980 Kisten is born.
1981 Rachel is born. Personal computers become available.
1995 Trent and Rachel's fathers die. Leon Bairn quits the I.S. and is assassinated to keep his findings quiet.
1997 Rachel graduates High School and starts classes at a two-year school.
1999-2003 Rachel interns with the I.S.
2001 Ivy joins the I.S. as a full runner after graduating from a four-year course of study.
2003 Rachel and Ivy work together during Rachel's last year as an intern.
2006 Rachel quits the I.S.
Of Vampires—Living and Not So Living
Published in conjunction with Cincinnati’s FIB Inderland Department;
FIB Inderlander Handbook, issue 7.23
By Rachel Morga n
Even before the Turn, vampires have held a place in literature as figures of power and terror, lusting after both our blood and will. They’re capable of horrific actions with no sense of remorse, instilling humans and Inderlanders alike with a healthy respect born in fear. But even more dangerous than a hungry vampire is trying to confront one in ignorance. It is with this in mind that I agreed to put on paper the distinctions that separate the big-bad-ugly wannabes from the really big-bad-uglies. Both can kill you, but if you know their limits and liabilities, this very powerful, manipulative branch of the Inderland family can be understood and handled in a successful manner. And if that fails, shoot ‘em until they stop moving.
Living vampires are either high-blood—vampires conceived within a living vampire and therefore having an inactive vampire virus fixed into their fetal genome to modify their development, or low-blood—humans bitten by an undead and existing in a tenuous, halfway-turned status. Only an undead vampire has the active form of the virus that can infect a human. The virus happily settles itself within cells of the blood-producing bone marrow of its new host and immediately goes dormant. Very little of the vampire’s abilities or liabilities are imparted to the hapless human.
Bitten humans half-turned are at the bottom of the vampiric rung, constantly currying the favor of their undead sires for a chance to ingest more of his or her blood in the hopes of achieving a higher level of vampire characteristics. With their human teeth, human frailties, and lacking any blood lust but in their imaginations, they’re little more than a willing source of blood to the undead and an object of hidden ridicule to the rest of Inderland.
Low-blood vampires rightly live in fear that the undead