Ever since public lighting had been introduced into the cities of Europe and America, the world had gotten better and better for the Undead. Did they not grasp the miracle of the gas lamps of Paris, the arc lighting that could bring virtual daylight to a park or plaza anywhere in the world, the miracle of electricity that penetrated homes as well as public places bringing the brilliance of the sun into cottages and palaces alike? Did they have no inkling of how the advances in lighting had affected the behavior and the minds of people, what it meant for the tiniest hamlet to have its brilliantly lighted drugstores and supermarkets, and for people to wander at eight o’clock of an evening with the same energetic curiosity and eagerness for work and experience that they enjoyed during the sunlight hours?

The planet had been transformed by lighting and by the sheer magic of television and computers, leveling the playing field for blood drinkers as never before.

Well, he could understand if Lestat and Louis took such things for granted; they’d been born during the Industrial Revolution whether they knew it or not. But what about the great Marius? Why didn’t he go into raptures about the brightly lighted modern world? Why didn’t he cherish the huge upsurge in human freedom and physical and social mobility in modern times?

Why, these times were perfect for the Undead. Nothing was denied to them. They could be privy to every aspect of daylight and daylight activity through television and film. They were no longer really Children of Darkness at all. Darkness had been essentially banished from the Earth. It had become a choice.

Oh, how much he wanted to discuss his views of things with Lestat. How must this be affecting the destiny of the world’s blood drinkers? And now that the internet had embraced the planet, wasn’t Benji Mahmoud’s radio broadcast out of his very own house just the beginning?

When would we see the data banks enabling blood drinkers everywhere, regardless of age and isolation, to find their lost ones, their loved ones, immortals who had been mere legend to them for too long?

And what about glass? Look at what had happened to the world through the invention, evolution, and perfection of glass? Spectacles, telescopes, microscopes, plate glass, walls of glass, palaces of glass, towers of glass! Why, the architecture of the modern world had been transformed by the use of glass. Science had advanced in dramatic and mysterious ways due to the availability and use of glass!