So You Used to Be Human - Book 3 (Original Version)

Chapter 34: Forty-four Minutes and Counting...

Forty-four minutes.  That's all it took.

Imagine for a second here that you're a dude named Chris Mannigan, an average looking twenty-two year old from Toronto who has somehow or the other lucked himself into an impressive sounding 43.2 million views on his YouTube channel. The channel in question is a combination of reviews and Chris himself being a charming dork, the kind of dork that millions of teenage girls seemed to have responded to in a very positive way to earn him some internet notoriety. Chris knows he's a bit of a dork and the fans know he's a bit of a dork and that seems to have been his particular dorky formula for success. People like people being dorks for some reason; go figure. Chris has also gained some male followers but they seem to be a combination of haters and wannabe YouTube kingpins, some of whom desperately want to partner with him to get some "synergy going on between the channels".

Word to the wise: anyone using the words "synergy" and "cross-platform" is usually talking out of their ass.

"I can feel the synergy in the room already man. You and me doing a cross-platform thing would be just about the coolest thing ever!" This of course was from the young man with the unfortunate and badly planned username of DoodWithAttitude_546. We can just call him Paul since that's his real name and a lot easier to type and to remember.

One of the downsides of YouTube fame was being invited out for drinks/beer/coffee only to have someone talk at you for the whole night about why synergy between your channels was inevitable and not a stupid fucking desperate plea for attention. Chris was still trying to figure out what Paul's angle was , but he ad already decided that he was just going to humor the dude, get a good meal out of the deal and maybe some beer and then get the hell out of there.

"Synergy. Right. You know I don't do the vampire thing, right?"

"After tonight, the vampire thing is all you're going to want to do, I guarantee you."

"Whatever man. Just as long as you know you're buying."

Paul smiled nervously and nodded eagerly. Chris almost felt sorry for him as he could sense that money was tight for Paul from whatever shitty job he was currently managing to stay employed at, but so what? It wasn't his responsibility to manage Paul's money and he had tried to warn him off, so...

"So 'Real Vampires' huh? What's your pitch?"

Paul was flabberghasted. He looked around nervously and then seemed a little disappointed.

"That was the pitch right there. Real Vampires man! They're real! They seem to like this diner... but none of them seem to be here right now, or I'd show you and you'd have to believe me."

No free meal was going to be worth listening to this shit.

"You're fucking kidding me right?"

Paul turned back to him, absolutely focused for the first time since he had met us with Chris at the subway stop two blocks down. He held his iPhone in a death grip and Chris knew instantly that he was waiting for his opportunity to begin filming at any minute, if that was what you would call it. A lot of the videos on Paul's channel were filmed from the iPhone with no lighting, sound or quality control whatsoever. Frigging amateurs, right?

"I have this inner ear imbalance, plus my doctor says I've got some kind of thyroid thing going on, and believe me, this causes all kinds of problems like you wouldn't believe. My weight fluctuates all over the place and some days I'm tired as shit, but here's the kicker: every now and again I get these killer headaches and for hours after they've passed I get these hallucinations, like auras over people's heads and shit. Sometimes I think I see ghosts and I know they're ghosts cuz they're staring right back at me, see? But I always just shrugged it off as just freaky shit, my mind playing tricks with me. One day I was recording on my phone and I just turned the camera around to record some of it, right? If you watched my channel, you've seen it—"