On a slightly more serious note, we turn our attention now to the economic sustainability of Sedona. Sedona is not any small town, although it may retain characteristics of those places, such as the knowledge of everyone and everything, and the impossibility of maintaining secrets. Well, little secrets, anyway. The big secrets are perhaps still to be discovered, but we will leave these aside for now.
Sedona is unusual in that it is made up of the normal small town people – cooks and bartenders and school teachers and real estate agents – but also, crafted inside the town’s population is a majority of people just like Jack and Rose Halis. That is, college educated biologists, biochemists and other ‘smart’ people. As a result, one could walk down the streets of Sedona and see small children swinging on swings and playing on the monkey bars, and not two seconds later, see small children carefully collecting specimen from the ground to study under their parents’ microscope. The 911 calls for the area were not related to domestic abuse – instead, they were usually related to explosions and mysterious fires. Not less than once a week did the fire marshal have to listen to stories from people whose houses were set on fire because they were busy studying euglena or had accidently left the Bunsen burner on in their basement.
So why, then, was the population so densely infiltrated with people whose IQ scores were inversely proportional to their common sense ratings? The answer is one simple word, the name of the company which has dominated the small town for sometime: GreenTech. GreenTech, the well-known world leader in biotechnological advancements, chemically induced organic industries and agricultural medicinal research. GreenTech, who scaled both sides of the environmental industry with ease, with completely organic research methods and completely inorganic research methods in attempts to produce the most flavor, best texture, largest, most succulent fruits, vegetables, grains and other produce. GreenTech took part in both ends of the medicinal spectrum – both participating in and refining techniques stemming from centuries of folkloric and aboriginal medicine across cultures, as well as dominating the pharmaceutical industry with their cheap and effective drugs.
Needless to say, Sedona became a booming, albeit strange, small town when GreenTech announced, just over ten years ago, that it was moving its main Research and Development facilities to the small town. The GreenTech complex itself took up several acres of land, as completely environmentally friendly as it could get. Now, finally settled in, GreenTech and its employees had merged into the small town life well. Drawing the best of the scientific community, Sedona itself remained surprisingly a quaint and quiet village. With the introduction of GreenTech, and with it, excessive amounts of exotic plants, animals, and research subjects for biochemitechnomechanical experiments, it seems only fitting that a second, under the radar community began to move forth: vampires.
Charlie Johnson, the head of the R&D Department for unusual human conditions first received knowledge of this condition from a very business-like letter, on simple white paper, in an envelope which did not have a spot for a return address, but had been mailed out of Sedona, itself. It had, miraculously, not been filtered out of the mail he got and into the piles of mail considered as junk, irrelevant, or forwarded to other departments, such as Customer Happiness and Approval, by his request.
“Dear Sir:” it said, “It has come to our attention that, within your department, our condition may be treated with the utmost scientific integrity and respect. Nevertheless, we fear our safety, and so do not come forth at this time, but instead remain in secrecy. “
Charlie had paused at this moment, curious in the slightest sense of the word, for he had received similar letters from those confessing strange sexual obsessions - like the one about Chinese Gooseberries, and the individual who could not achieve orgasm unless he saw a pomegranate exploding. It seemed that the biological diversity connections were the stimuli for these revealing statements from individuals, and he was actually looking for something to lighten his day. Charlie read on.
“We seem to have picked up many titles over the years and throughout the ages, but the one that has stuck most often is that of vampire. Please, do not crumple this page up yet, laughing. We have a true condition which we have not been able to investigate due to limited resources. You can only get so much education at night school. If you would like, you can, a week from now, enter Grangie’s Pub around nine o’clock in the evening. I will be able to spot you. Then, if you would like, we will communicate more about my condition, and I will be the spokesperson for others like me.”
Intrigued momentarily, the head of the Research and Development department stared at the letter, looking for some mode of identification. He could not believe that the man, woman, or child attempting to pull this off had not even signed a name to the letter in his hand. He set it down in the stack of ‘to-be-dealt-with-later’ papers and moved on with his life.
