I have no political leanings, nor do I intend this as a reflection of my own personal views. I got to thinking about the onslaught of ads this morning and wondered WWTD?
"Would you stop that?"
"I'm sorry?"
"Every four years I see more of you than I'm used to. Always at this time of the night, always fiddling with my DVR."
Bright, silvery blue eyes focused up at her, a face poised somewhere between amused, offended and confused.
Helen sighed and pursed her lips, letting a hand rest on her hip. "You do realize they're all over the internet. Saved on YouTube and other horrifying places."
The vampire seated on her couch shrugged and leaned forward toward the TV, looking back at the frozen, glowing screen. "It's more fun this way. And I don't have this kind of control on the internet."
Helen crossed her arms next, groaned softly and sat down beside him, staring at the image of a candidate, mid-speech. "You are probably the only being alive that refers to campaign ads as 'fun'."
"Well they are. I find them fascinating." Tesla muttered, inching the image forward a few frames.
"You don't even vote." Helen said, staring at him.
"No." He answered, eyes fixed to the screen.
"You don't believe in democracy."
His eyes flashed her way and she saw the beginnings of a self-satisfied smirk. "When my race is reborn and the new reign begins, I won't need presidents."
"Then why the interest? Why the hours of footage saved where I might have wanted room for-"
"For what…? Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Please Helen, you have no more use for televised drama than I do for cold medicine."
Helen pursed her lips, giving the slightest of nods in agreement. It was true. But it was hardly the point.
Triumphantly Nikola gave a satisfied sigh and leaned back into the cushions of the couch, hitting the play button. The sound was muted but the ads for opposing sides played with the closed captioning activated.
Helen continued to stare at the brilliant inventor until he met her gaze again.
"You said it yourself Helen. Most people in this nation hate the things. And yet, despite their wishes they are subjected to them. In a country that touts freedom of speech and a have-it-your-way-every-time mentality, you would think the majority would vote these things off their regularly scheduled programming. But, of course, they can't because that would be a violation of freedom of speech. It's a Catch 22."
"Most of us choose to turn them off instead of recording them for posterity."
"Helen…we aren't talking about you and I. We're talking about the common man. John and Jill Doe, with their 3.5 children- although, come to think of it, that isn't really the norm any more is it? No, no…" Tesla poked a finger at the air and stood, warming up to a lecture that Helen realized he had been preparing for some time.
"Let's update the status quo…Jill or John Doe, living separately with two children between them, several half-, or step-children under their care and one of them still live with Mum or Dad." Tesla presented the tableau of modern society on open palms and waited for Helen to respond.
"Sadly, yes." She said, her eyes sparkling despite her irritated tone.
"Right…now. Jill Doe comes home from her work at the local diner where she is forced to seek employment because her education requirements were not met in childhood. She feeds and beds the wee brats, complains about her miserable existence on half-a-dozen social networks and settles down on the sofa to enjoy an evening of entertainment. She hates her life but doesn't want to go through the effort of improving her education so that she can improve her living situation. She is trapped and worn and watching…" Tesla waved a hand, stalled for a moment.
Helen hatched a wicked grin and said, "Twilight."
It got his attention and he sneered at her. He'd been informed of the fictional world by at least one of her employees and it hadn't improved his view of the entertainment world.
"Watching Twilight, despite its glaring inaccuracies, offers her some solace. However, the midnight showing is interrupted at ever increasing intervals by sincere men and women voiced over a slew of badly retouched photographs pulling her away from the depressing world of angst-ridden, dysfunctional early adults who have the ability to sparkle when placed in direct sunlight."
Helen waited, watching as Tesla leaned forward towards a waiting pair wine glasses and a bottle. Apparently having made his point, he took care in breaking the waxen seal at the top of the bottle neck, pulling the cork with practiced ease and giving it a moment to breathe before he poured a sample and inspected it.
Once he had tasted and approved his choice he gave Helen an expectant look.
"You see the irony of course. Miss Doe is upset that her fictional entertainment has been usurped by more fictional entertainment."
Helen suddenly knew where he was going and she gave him a disapproving frown before she leaned forward to accept the glass of wine he had poured for her. He poured another for himself, leaned in as if toasting and tapped the crystal of his glass against hers. "To the greatest collection of liars on the planet."
"That's hardly fair, Nikola."
"Mm, no you're right, it's not. But it's true." Nikola cradled his glass in the fingers of his left hand and bent to retrieve the remote with his right. He flicked a signal toward the TV that Helen realized he just as easily could have done with his abilities. She appreciated that he hadn't tried.
"One candidate spews negative propaganda against the other, and moments later…" Nikola waited for the subject of the ad to change. "…you hear the exact opposite from the second candidate. Logic dictates that both contradicting tales cannot be true. Therefore one of them is lying. Occam's Razor would indicate that the greatest likelihood is that both are lying.
Every president this nation has elected has come under harsh scrutiny since the sixties. No man can be trusted in this world, and no citizen is ever entirely certain that anything they see, hear or touch actually exists. The 'real world' that Jane Doe so desperately wishes to ignore is almost more fictional and deceptive than vampiric adolescents biting one another to make more vampires."
Nikola spread his hands as he finished, like a magician demonstrating that he had nothing up his sleeves. He turned to sit down again, his eyes once more landing on the screen, using the remote to backtrack to the beginning of the campaign ads that he had recorded, playing them again.
"You know it's not even the candidates that are at fault, either." He continued.
Helen sipped from her glass. The wine was good, quite good, and she realized distractedly that he had been waiting for her to get there before he opened it.
"It's those PR people." Nikola's hand shot out a second later, punching at the remote and freezing the image on a cluster of mother and children super imposed over a factory belching smoke. He began to dissect the imagery, gesticulating with the remote, pointing out falsehoods and gimmicks with a detached air.
As she watched him Helen was suddenly struck with an image. It came so fast that she hardly had time to swallow her wine and keep it from shooting out of her nose. She lurched forward, slapping a hand over her face, desperately drawing in a breath. Nikola straightened, halted mid-rant, and stared at her in confusion and concern.
Once her diaphragm ceased to spasm she swallowed and waved a hand at her now glowing red face. She was desperately fighting a smile, and still choking a bit on the wine that had gone the wrong way but she managed to say, "Go on," and leaned slowly back into the couch.
As he picked up his diatribe Helen smiled softly.
'Tesla for President' she thought. She could just see the campaign ads now. And for kicks she envisioned the Uncle Sam poster popularized in the war years, with a vamped Nikola pointing an extended fingernail at a doomed nation.
She would have to talk Will and Henry into working something up for her.