The 6 AM Problem

"Someone is making something."

It's 5:22 AM, and Mara is still at her desk. She is always still at her desk. For a hundred and twelve years, she has arranged her life with considerable care: blackout curtains sealed against every edge of morning light, a thermostat fixed at nineteen degrees, the inbox always at zero, blood bags warming to room temperature on the second shelf of the refrigerator. She is a vampire, a software developer, and - by her own careful accounting - a person who has ma...