Chapter 15 Epilogue
Nuala is sitting on an ergonomic chair in the rooftop terrace of her apartment building. She is sitting on an ergonomic chair so as she does not have to feel that she is sitting down, so that sitting down feels like floating in a sensory deprivation chamber.
She is intravenously administering to herself blood at body temperature from a blood bag employing a drip chamber. She is doing that so as not to feel thirsty.
The universe tends to entropy. Life is an organized form state of matter. As such it is always being attacked, being ravaged by the universal tendency to entropy.
That is true even for unlife. The rate of decay might be slower and remain unchanged, enabling virtually eternal unlife, enabling a vampire to unlive indefinitely, but it was still there. A vampire needed blood to offset that decay, to provide its body with new matter and energy for the regenerative processes that offset that decay. A vampire, undead that he was, still needed sustenance to offset that decay, to sustain his unlife, like any living creature needed food and drink. Because all a vampire fed on was blood, and because the blood that a vampire drank was what was used to offset that decay, and because that meant that the blood that a vampire ingested was constantly being consumed, used, lost, in offsetting that decay and sustaining its unlife, that process was called bloodloss.
Nuala has adjusted the rate at which the drip chamber, to which the blood bag is connected and which connects to the IV line which connects to the hypodermic needle that is inserted in her vein, releases the blood to exactly mirror her rate of bloodloss, so that she does not even have to feel neither the need of thirst nor the comfort of its assuagement.
She has allowed herself to slip into catatonia, and even beyond. She has removed from herself as completely as she can manage any stimulus, internal or external, be it positive or negative, environmental stimulus or bodily needs. She is not paying any attention at all to her surroundings. She has also allowed her brain to stop producing any intrinsic activity, thoughts or emotions.
She has allowed herself to drift to as close to her Final Death as she can manage to.
The only sign of unlife in her is the exact balance she has established between bloodloss and blood replenishment, the eternal struggle between the regenerative powers of life – or unlife for that matter – which need sustenance to be maintained and the universal tendency for entropy which afflicts life with decay.
