key word "bright" title "symbiosis" in misc. flash fiction

It’s a mutually-beneficial arrangement for both sides or, to state it more honestly, for the two of the sides that have any say in the matter, anyway. That’s the whole point of making big money.

The DeBeers Corporation received a few dozen hard workers, truly inhumanly strong laborers, who could do the diamond mining of ten men in around half the time, who could ply their trade in the deepest darkest part of the mines where even the long-exploited locals would rarely agree to toil, even for higher salary, even under all kinds of duress. Vampires do not get cancer from the terrible things one must breathe in a mineshaft and if there’s a cave-in or explosion, they do not die, either. They’re already dead. They’re an almost perfect workforce.

The newly-minted miners themselves were granted a sanctuary so far in the bowels of the earth that the bright of the sun would never burn them, could never hope to touch them. Yes, they must work hard for stretches of time, but they have scads more leverage than the standard workers in the shallower parts of the mine ever did, those poor oppressed souls have almost no rights at all.

First, stating the obvious, vampires possessing unworldly powers, employee relations are harder when your employees can non-figuratively eat you for lunch. More importantly, though, it would be a public relations nightmare if journalists got wind of the fact that not only are vampires real, they’re also what chopped your wedding ring out of the earth. That bought the vampires more than a few concessions, they work only seven hours a night, five nights a week, the company pumps cable and internet down to them while their other more… pressing needs are met too.

If a few of the locals, the impoverished people who work in the upper parts of the mines, the ones who only know of the ghouls at the bottom as whispers, if a few of those people need be given over as food every month, well, that’s just business, right? Some of the executive V.P.s rationalize that those people would have died in accidents anyway if they had to do the jobs that the vampires did. But most of the higher-ups don’t take the time to think about anything, really, they’re too busy counting their stock options and goals-met bonuses.

It’s a mutually-beneficial arrangement for both sides or, to state it more honestly, for the two of the sides that have any say in the matter, anyway. That’s the whole point of making big money.

It’s harder to state, of course, who the worse monsters are in the whole bargain, if it’s the blood sucking creatures doing whatever they can to thrive and maintain their power or if the worse of the parties are the literal vampires. Either way, I guess that is the reason why the human rights groups call the things “blood diamonds”, though I suppose, not the way they think they mean it.