Transcription of Interview #4 - Subject: Adam Pitch (VAMPIRE)

Adam Pitch (AP): My God, that is obnoxiously loud.

Layla Finch (LF): What is?

AP: Your heartbeat.

LF: My heartbeat?

AP: (Sighs) Yes, your heartbeat.

LF: You can hear my heartbeat?

AP: (Sighs) Yes.

LF: Please could you elaborate?

AP: Elaborate how?

LF: Well, most people cannot hear heartbeats. Especially not from this distance anyway.

AP: I’m not most people. In fact, I am not people at all.

LF: You don’t consider yourself a person?

AP: I don’t consider myself human.

LF: Interesting.

AP: What?

LF: Nothing. Just interesting.

AP: You’re not very good at this, are you?

LF: Excuse me?

AP: Aren’t you supposed to be asking me questions?

LF: Yep, I am.

AP: Well?

LF: I’m just trying to make sure my recorder is on first. I don’t want to miss anything.

AP: Looks like it’s on. The light is green.

LF: Interesting. So you’ve been keeping up to date with technology, then.

AP: Here and there. But I don’t need to know technology to know what green means.

LF: And what does it mean?

AP: Go.

LF: Has it always been that way?

AP: (Sighs) What am I - Google?

LF: So you know about Google.

AP: (Sighs) I have not been living under a rock, Miss Finch. Of course, I know about Google.

LF: You’re getting frustrated.

AP: Am I? You’re a smart one, aren’t you?

LF: Sorry. I just wanted to know if you remember a time when "green" didn’t mean "go".

AP: Oh. That’s quite a good question, actually.

LF: See! I am good at this!

AP: Remains to be seen.

AP: But to answer your question - yes, I do. I think it must’ve been before cars were invented. Wait, no, probably the railroads.

LF: Whoa, and how old were you then?

AP: It’s impolite to ask someone their age.

LF: It’s kind of important for my research, though.

AP: And remind me what that is again?

LF: Let’s begin the interview here, and I will get to that.

LF: Are you ready to begin?

AP: Yes.

LF: Okay, great. For the benefit of the recording, please could you state your name.

AP: Adam Pitch.

LF: And in your own words, could you describe your condition?

AP: My condition?

LF: Yep.

AP: I don’t think I agree with that term.

LF: What term would you like me to use instead?

AP: Species.

LF: Interesting. Please could you tell me what species you are then?

AP: Why is that interesting?

LF: Species implies non-human. I’d like to get into that later.

AP: Well, I’m not human.

LF: So you’ve mentioned twice now. What are you then?

AP: You already know.

LF: For the recording, please.

AP: I’m a vampire.

LF: Thank you, Mr Pitch - or Adam. Actually, can I call you Adam? Quicker to transcribe later.

AP: You just did.

LF: Great, thank you, Adam.

AP: I didn’t say yes.

LF: Oh.

AP: Never mind, you can. Just get on with it.

LF: Lovely, thanks, Adam. So you’re here today as an interviewee for my research. To use your term, I am interviewing different ‘species’. To use mine, I am looking at a specific attribute that comes from “supernatural” conditions that humans are either born with or develop later in life. My area of interest is slow ageing - or as some may call it, immortality.

LF: Eventually, I’d like to get into genetics, but I want qualitative data as a foundation for my research. Please be advised that, to be as accurate and fair as possible, this interview will be limited to fifteen minutes, the same as all the others. Thank you very much for agreeing to be here today.

AP: I did not agree, not really. You interrupted my years of solitude with your ridiculous interview request. It came in the post, and I was so disturbed I had to respond immediately.

LF: Sorry, but what about it was ridiculous? And did you say years of solitude?

AP: Yes. I had decided I wanted to see what it was like to spend a few years doing absolutely nothing to challenge my brain. I’m writing a novel, you see. I wanted to know what I could come up with if I were just left alone with my thoughts for a while.

AP: Anyway, I have not spoken to a person or responded to anything in, hmm, let’s say, about three years. But I still have a few papers delivered to me to keep up to date with the outside world. Just in case. And imagine my utter horror to see you were looking to interview different kinds of immortals and that you were classifying us as humans of all things. And then, even worse, I leave the house, and because I have been in silence for so long, everything is amplified. Like God has dialled up the volume to spite me.

LF: You mentioned earlier that you could hear my heartbeat. Is that what you meant?

AP: I suppose so. It’s such an overwhelming sound; it’s having such a terrible impact on my mood.

LF: Overwhelming? In what way?

AP: It sounds so fragile. I can quite literally hear the thing that is keeping you alive. You are such delicate little creatures; a few missed beats and you’re at death's door. I no longer have a beating heart, you know. It stopped the moment I became a vampire. I believe that’s the first time I realised I was no longer human.

LF: You think having a beating heart makes us human?

AP: Well, among other things. An animal has a heart, and it’s not a human, is it? There’s a reason all of your strongest emotions are tied to your heart. How you feel pain there when someone hurts you. My heart is dead. I do not even remember what a broken heart feels like. I think that pain is part of whatever makes you human.

LF: Is it? If somebody dies, does that mean they aren’t human anymore?

AP: Obviously, they still are. Come on, Miss Finch!

LF: So if it’s not the heartbeat that makes us human, why do you not classify yourself as one? You've still got the stuff science says makes us humans - bipedalism, the DNA, and the brain. What’s changed?

AP: Well, for one, I am undead. I am immortal now.

LF: Are you really immortal, though? You can be killed like any other human; just in a different way - like with sunlight or a stake, for example.

AP: I’m immune to all diseases, too.

LF: Lots of people spend most of their lives not being sick. I don’t think an amazing immune system removes you from the folds of humanity. And science will eventually figure out how to cure most, if not all, diseases. The only thing that really makes you different is that you have more time than the rest of us. And eventually, science will catch up to that, too.

AP: Your relationship with finiteness, time, and death is a fundamental human experience. I was a human. So I know. Infinite time changes you. All the best parts about being human, the good stuff, it cheapens with too much time.

LF: If scientists suddenly developed something that made us age more slowly, would that mean we aren't human? People used to die super young, you know. Does that mean they would consider the one hundred years we can live up to now as an eternity? The way they would think about me is how I think about you. You’ve been lucky enough to experience so much more of the “good stuff” that shapes us. Surely, you’ve had more of a life than I have. I’m not that old - I know nothing compared to you. But I do know you experienced more humanity than most people, Adam.

AP: How old are you now?

LF: It’s impolite to ask someone their age.

AP: Touché.

AP: But regardless of how old you are, early twenties, mid twenties, or even your thirties. You have not lived even one tenth of my life. You could die tomorrow, Miss Finch, and you would still be more alive and human than me. Because you have one thing I don’t - a definite end.

LF: Why does that make a difference?

AP: Because it means you are more intentional with the life you live. That’s special. I don’t have that drive anymore.

LF: But we aren't more intentional with our time. Some of us spend our entire lives doing things we don’t want to do, making choices we regret.

AP: Exactly! How wonderful.

LF: Forgive me, but I don’t see how living a life like that could ever be wonderful.

AP: That’s how you played your cards, and that’s it. You might think you played the game badly, but the results don’t matter. You still played. You still get your participation trophy.

LF: So you don’t think people deserve a rematch?

AP: Sometimes it’s not about what you think you deserve.

LF: Do you not think it’s unfair that people lose?

AP: I think that losing isn’t a bad thing. Throughout their lives, humans willingly put themselves in situations where they might lose. You fall in love, and then you hurt and get hurt. You attempt the climb, you fall, you get embarrassed. That’s okay. That’s great even. The privilege of failing.

AP: How lucky you all are.

LF: Adam, your perspective on all this is absolutely fascinating, but let’s agree to disagree because I am afraid I must steer us back to the science. Let’s start with the slow ageing; what can you tell me about it?

AP: Ah, yes, one of the little quirks that come with my “condition”, as you called it. Why did you call it that?

LF: In my opinion, it is. It’s just something that you have that you live with. Like I have ADHD, and sometimes it means I hyperfocus for hours on end. It’s led me to some of the best discoveries of my life that I probably would have missed if I had stopped my work at a reasonable time. There are positives and negatives. And if we study these things scientifically, maybe we can replicate them.

AP: You really want to replicate slow ageing?

LF: Yes, ideally.

AP: I see.

LF: I hate to interrupt this train of thought, but could you tell me what it feels like in your body to not age?

AP: How dull! Why do you only focus on the science?

LF: Because I am a scientist. It’s what I know.

AP: I cannot stand this black-and-white thinking; nothing is ever just one thing. You have the science, and then you have... I don’t know. The real stuff. Empathy. Love. Curiosity.

AP: God, I haven't felt curious in years.

LF: Looks like you were curious enough to respond to my ad in the paper.

AP: More like annoyed.

LF: Well, I am grateful for your annoyance.

AP: And see! This is exactly what I mean. You’ve been dealt a bad card with me. An interview that, let’s face it, is going against everything you are trying to do. And yet.

LF: And yet?

AP: And yet, the look on your face tells me you are enjoying this conversation immensely. You’re still choosing to play the game rather than send me away.

LF: I’m a scientist, Adam. I love a challenge. I love being challenged. It means I have to work harder to prove I’m right. Or find out I’m wrong. Both are equally exciting to me.

LF: You’re smiling.

AP: Yes, I am.

LF: What’s funny?

AP: Not funny at all. You’re so passionate! So alive! How refreshing.

LF: And you really believe that more time kills that passion? Instead of feeding it?

AP: What would you do with more time, Miss Finch?

LF: Hmm. I would study everything. Learn all the languages, probably save up and travel. Spend more time with my family. Try every food. Just all the typical things that everyone always says.

AP: Well - I have so much of it now. Time. You know this, of course. You would think that when you are given infinite time, you would do exactly as you said. Study, travel everywhere, and try every food. But then, about fifty years in, you wake up one morning, and you think: what’s the point? You have plenty of time to do everything. You’ll get to it eventually. And you’ve pretty much tried everything you wanted to try. You’ve learned the languages. You’ve made so much money. You fall in love. You fall in love again. You try the family thing. You outlive your lovers. You outlive your kids. Fuck, you even outlive your grandkids. And then you’re alone, and you think about trying again, but you think: what’s the point? There is no one alive who knows you anymore, and anyone else worth knowing will never understand what being immortal actually means. But still, you wait for something to happen to you anyway. And sometimes good things happen. Someone like Mozart or Michelangelo will come along and make you feel something again, but how long does that last? And you stop feeling fear and empathy, because there’s another war, and people dying doesn't scare or upset you anymore, because people always die. And you easily turn a blind eye to people suffering because people always suffer. And you even start to ignore joy because people have always been happy, and it’s fleeting. And then one morning centuries in you wake up and think you might as well try something new so you try writing a novel because you have seen absolutely everything there is to see and you think this might be a good way to share it but for the life of you you don’t know where to start because you realise you’re beginning to forget everything, and if youre forgetting all the old stuff you’re not even sure what the point of immortality is. So you isolate yourself in your home and just sit and contemplate, and you spend years in solitude until one day you get a newspaper in your letterbox that catches your eye because of how utterly stupid it is. Because you see a young girl calling you a human of all things. And you think, well, I must go and tell her how absolutely wrong she is because you have not been a human in centuries, because all the good stuff that makes you a human leaves you the second you have infinity. If you know your time is finite, you have to calculate how you spend it with so much more thought. Take exercise, for example! You can wake up and decide you don't like exercise, so you don't do it. Even though you know how good it is for you, you enjoy those extra hours you didn’t lose to exercising, and when those years pass, and you’re struggling with walking for more than half an hour without being in pain, you get to feel regret. I don’t feel regret anymore. Or you exercise, and you feel great, and you spend your sixties pleased and proud that all your effort paid off. I haven't felt proud in a long time. Why would I? Nothing is an accomplishment when you can achieve everything. I have my cake, and I eat it too. The thing that makes human life so beautiful is that in choosing what you want to do, you let go of so many other possibilities. And there is so much beauty in that loss. That you get to decide you want one thing so much that you let go of all the other versions of you that you could be. You have infinite pathways until you don’t. I am just so sick of having nothing but infinite pathways. I have travelled far enough now. I am tired, and I am lost. And it’s all just so..

LF: Just so what?

AP: Oh my. Please do forgive me, I haven't had the opportunity to talk to someone in such a long time. I’m afraid I have gotten rather carried away.

LF: It must have been lonely living in solitude.

AP: I suppose you are right.

LF: Thank you for sharing. And for your time today, your insight has been incredibly helpful.

AP: Well, since you wanted my thoughts, I don’t suppose there’s any harm in continuing, is there?

LF: Oh, that would be excellent, but -

AP: But my God, what is that hideously uncouth beeping noise coming from your device? This is extremely unprofessional and distracting, you know.

LF: That’s our fifteen-minute timer, Adam.

LF: Your time is up.