"Wow," Dom breathed, the child-like word seeming uncharacteristic in his deep, manly voice. "You\'ve been asleep longer than I\'ve been alive," he explained, his tone awed. Just as he\'d begun feeling mature, approaching twenty-four years of age, here was another surprise that left him floored.
For the first time, he wondered how old the vampire actually was, if he could sleep off twenty-five years like it was nothing - and to Dom, it was a lifetime. He wasn\'t in the habit of asking such a question, for he figured it was as rude to ask a vampire such things as it was to ask a lady how much she weighed... but he did want to know.
Taking Sebastian\'s final question as an instruction, Dom began recounting what he thought might be the important events in the past - well, in his life time. He began by admitting he didn\'t pay much attention to the news but recounted the changes in politics and politicians in their country first. He began to give details about the wars the world had partaken in but soon became confused by the background to all of them and left that particular discussion alone.
Turning to technology and movies got him back on track and he briefly reviewed (as best he was able) the changes in computing and the rise of the internet, recounting a funny picture he\'d seen on a website somewhere that detailed the differences in hearing a song you liked but didn\'t know the name of on the radio now as opposed to the seventies. Back then, you\'d have no idea at the end of the day what the song was or who sang it, but you\'d know you liked it and would hope to hear it again. Today you could Google a few words you\'d heard, hear the song in full, watch the clip on YouTube, download it - and the group\'s entire album - to your ipod, play it endlessly, decide you hated it by the end of the day, blog about its merits and how crap the band is, start up a hate thread, Tweet about how boring the song is now and go to bed. It summed up pretty nicely how technology had affected the world, in Dom\'s opinion; everything was open now.
After he\'d shown Sebastian how to use his iphone and given demonstrations of YouTube - sharing some Lady Gaga, telling him Michael Jackson was dead, reviewing a few other YouTube clips of bands that were big at the moment - there was some discussion about movies and television and how culture had changed. Vampires were the latest craze in pretty much all forms of media and Dom laughed with Sebastian about undead that merely glittered in the sunlight, rather than simply dying. Dominic was fairly sure the notion was offensive on many levels to Sebastian, so he changed the subject quickly.
Finally, he talked about how the city had changed, describing the Apocalypse and the Oligarchy as the outcome. He couldn\'t give too many details - beyond where he knew the headquarters of such an organisation to be - about recent supernatural events, though he could say with certainty that things operated under a guise of normality in this city, that just wasn\'t accurate. He talked about Risk, its purposes and how Sebastian could find all sorts of willing victims there, if he chose.
When he finally stopped talking, he realised just how long he\'d been going for, because his throat was parched. He excused himself and got up to go to the bathroom to use the toilet and get a drink from the tap at the sink, wondering what Sebastian would have to say when he got back (and if he\'d stopped fiddling with his phone yet, for that matter). Idly, he pondered having a shower and leaving - he didn\'t have work the next day, but he didn\'t want to be up all night or his work rhythms would be completely thrown off after the weekend.
