Issue 1 Downtime

On the nameplate of the door, someone had scratched out the letters "ifred" from Winn's name. Winn's side of the room was a disaster area that constantly threatened to overwhelm the entire room. Her clothes were left wherever she had taken them off or thrown across the room. Her few possessions, a few books, a handful of old vinyl records, and a ratty looking stuffed elephant, had all been unceremoniously dumped onto her bed.

She was not a very good roommate.

Jennifer's side of the room isn't exactly impeccable, though it's less of a catastrophe than Winn's. She seems to be fairly orderly with her clothes but homework and various books tend to end up strewn about. Right now she's lieing on her bed, reading a book. Occasionally she furrows her brow and carefully let's go of the book, trying to balance it on a flimsy forcefield above her face.

Winn opens the door and stumbles in, laughing to herself about something that is, no doubt, very witty and high-brow.

"Hey, will you look at that," Winn says, seeing Jennifer's power on display. "No book will ever be able to hurt you ever again."

Winn collapses backwards onto her own bed.

"Gah!" she lets out when the door suddenly opens, which causes the forcefield to disappear and the book to fall on her face. "Books never hurt anybody. And don't burst in like that..."

"Hey, if you need privacy: sock on the door," Winn says, "Otherwise, it's fair game to come in. Capiche?"

"Someone's in a great mood." she observes.

"I'm always in a good mood," Winn retorts.

"Good, because I would hate to see you in a bad one."

"What the fuck are you reading anyway?" Winn asks. "Goosebumps? You look like an R.L. Stine kinda girl."

"Royal Pains. It's about European Royalty."

"Fuck those guys," Winn says. "Any monarchy is just an inbred bunch of scum, if you ask me."

"Well yeah. That's what the book's about. People like Erzsebet Bathory."

"The vampire queen?"

"Yeah. She didn't actually bathe in blood though."

"Yeah, no duh," Winn says. "She was trying to find a viable blood substitute. That's why the Illuminati prosecuted her and created a global smear campaign, because she discovered a way that would have let the vampires and humans live in harmony."

Growing up with a tabloid reporter, Winn didn't get the best history education.

"That makes no sense at all. Why would they need a smear campaign when she was torturing servant girls already?"

"That was all lies manufactured by the conspiracy," Winn says. "They made up the stories of her torturing servant girls to explain away the massive amounts of blood they found."

"That's stupid. The book says the blood part is what's made up. And it'd take way too many people to fill a tub anyway. That's, like, 30 gallons at least."

"Exactly. Mass-produced blood," Winn says. "No people required."

"But the Illuminati was founded by an apocalyptic cult that worshiped an ancient Egyptian mutant with access to alien technology. They believed that they had a divine mandate to wipe out all the vampires on Earth, so they sabotaged Bathory's efforts so that they could continue persecuting vampires. Now, they're practically extinct."

"That's dumb. You're dumb. Stop ruining history with your dumb stuff."

"Whatever. You're just close-minded," Winn says with a shrug.

"Am not. You're making stuff up. History is awesome enough already without you making up ridiculous things."

"It's not made up!" Winn says.

"Oh yeah? And how do you know that?"

"It's as true as whatever is in that stupid book of yours," Winn says.

"Okay first of all, it's not a stupid book. Second of all, both stories can't be equally true."

"Yeah, but you only question one of the stories, for some reason," Winn says. "'Cause, y'know, no history book ever got anything wrong."

"Well I like this version of the story better. Because it doesn't have any silly nonsense in it."

"Wow. You must be fantastic at parties," Winn says, rolling her eyes.

"I don't go to many parties." she says, somehow completely missing the insult. "But enjoy your Illuminati smear campaign parties, I guess. They're probably pretty wild and imaginary."

"Yeah, well, enjoy being a space case bitch," Winn says. She rolls her eyes and heads for the door, "I'm outta here."

"Buh-bye."

By the time Winn comes back, whenever that might be, there's a sock on the door.

Later in the evening, Winn stumbles into the room. She is obviously very drunk. She closes the door behind her loudly and tries to walk to the bed, but instead falls over her own damn feet and crashes into the floor.

She can't be too badly injured because she immediately starts giggling.

"Oh great, you're drunk." she says from where she's still lieing on her bed. She doesn't look like she's moved much. "Are you going to drown in your own vomit?"

This struck Winn as enormously funny for some reason. She busted out laughing and it took her a moment to recover and catch her breath.

"Probably," Winn slurred. "That, that would be perfect. Oh, man."

Winn snickers.

"Really drunk..." she sighs, putting down and swinging her legs over the edge of the bed. "You should roll over on your side, numb-nuts."

"Don't wanna," Winn says, managing to sit up. A bit.

"Hey."

"You really shouldn't drink this much." she points out as she gets up from the bed. Grabbing Winn underneath her arms she tries to pull her up so she can sit up against the bed.

Winn offers no resistance, but no help either. It's like trying to move an annoying carpet that smells like alcohol.

"You should drinks more," Winn says. "Everything is way more awesome."

Winn leans awkwardly against the bed.

"Your book. I called it dumb. A stupid book. You're not a stupid book."