Surveillance report on meeting of Michael and Tracy in a London pub used here for context and enlightenment:

“Hey. You’re on your own. I noticed that. Fancy some company until presumably your friends turn up?”

Tracy liked the look of this one, she’d got a thing for men with goatees. “Okay sod it I might as well talk to you as this glass. You can buy me another large g&t but my mates are on the way.”

“No worries, I’m not the type to mess you around. Like the goatee? You’re staring at it. It grows fast on a full moon!”

“So you reckon you’re a werewolf eh? Interesting chatup technique!”

Mike smiled, Tracy saw he had good choppers. “I’m not chatting you up, only enjoying your company until your friends arrive. I’m Mike.”

“Tracy. Well go on then, where’s my drink?”

Mike signaled the barman, ordered two double g&ts. Best to match Tracy’s preference for now, he thought. Even though he wasn’t really the predatory type, it would still look suspicious if he ordered nothing more damaging than his usual Guinness.

“I’ll let you into a little secret –” said Mike, “– I’m glad they keep the noise down in here! I’m not really a big fan of modern stuff.”

“Good for you, I’d rather not have my ears pummelled out either. So many places nowadays keep shoving out all that hip-hop stuff at full volume it’s impossible to actually have a conversation.” Even so, Tracy was still having to speak up.

Mike didn’t seem to need to speak up, Tracy could hear his voice just fine like it was channelled, as if everything else was banked down. Nothing new, she noted, that’s my natural attraction to him.

“Well then, what sort of music do you like?” Mike asked.

“Okay, would you believe my favourite is disco – 1970s disco, not whatever the latest version is. I like to boogie to something easy to understand that isn’t full of weirdness.”

“That’s cool! I’m happy with that sort of thing too. You moving on to a disco when your friends arrive?”

“That’s the plan.” Tracy took a long swig of her drink which gave her another few seconds to eye up her new friend over the rim of her glass. “Why don’t you come along with us? You can howl like a werewolf in the choruses.”

“I might just do that!” Mike hesitated. “Wouldn’t your friends mind though? I might look grabby or even predatory and that’s not on.”

Tracy’s decision was made. “No sweat, I’ll vouch for you. Ah hang on that’s my mobby beeping... oh shit, one of them’s having a wardrobe crisis and they’re going straight to the disco. I’ll have to meet them there. Sod it, that’s another hour off. I don’t want to hang about – your werewolves might get me!”

Mike laughed. “Don’t worry, the werewolves won’t bother you. They don’t really chew on humans, that’s just something told in daft stories. They only have a nibble at bog-standard humans when mating season is over and they need a few of us to help keep their species alive.” He tried to hold an innocent expression on his face but couldn’t help smirking.

“Hmmm, really, where’d you hear that? Funny, but interesting – remarkably specific. It’s cobblers but it’s a good story, sounds like you’ve worked at it!”

Mike laughed. “No it’s true I tell you! Well maybe not, as it happens a friend of the family told me that old malarkey a long time ago. It’s only just popped back into my head, silly story. Listen, you’ve suddenly got another hour on your hands and I need some grub – how about a takeaway before the disco?”

“Yeah Mike, why not. I think it’s time for a bite...”
 

NOTES:

The preceding incident was pieced together from a combination of commonplace cctv, recruiter Tracy’s contact report and werewolf-developed beamed-surveillance technology. The interpretation of the meanings behind the conversation are regarded as contextually accurate and typical of many low level encounters instigated with species continuance as the result.

In my position as historian and chronicler of werewolf culture – the latest in a very long line of privileged humans, they prefer human believers in this biographer role to one of their own as an unbiased recorder – I commend the following entry of my current human understanding of the situation and transformation detail to the werewolf libraries deep beneath the surface of the Earth (for which reason I see no need for redaction) in the sure knowledge that one day our two species will learn to respect each other, living openly and without fear. I will mention culture only in passing, my main narrative making for an update on technical points serving to bring the old, rather flowery, descriptions into the latest vernacular.

(...Human reader please note, this paragraph will NOT appear in the werewolf library version – this particular copy will be placed in my personal safety deposit box, a practice I know would be dangerously frowned upon if they knew. I was a volunteer after discovering the truth but failed the transmutation process, instead being selected as chronicler, the previous incumbent having died around the same time I volunteered. But my engineered lifespan is ending and I am being rapidly overtaken by human frailty and deadly illnesses. A privileged reject whose time now is numbered in weeks and something inside my mind is causing me to undermine that privilege, to disobey the rules. In spite of my statement in the previous paragraph all I can hope is that when, or if, this report is read sometime in the future, it may serve to soften what I firmly believe will be an inescapable, bloodsoaked, destructive all-out world war between our cultures. To continue for the werewolf record...)

Werewolves have a science and rich civilisation of their own which in so many ways is superior to ours, or at least very different – it’s old, perhaps two million years or more according their history, although their longevity contributes to slower cultural and scientific progress. Werewolf civilisation has seen thousands of human empires spring up and wither away; they have records of marvels and remarkable histories undiscovered, unheard of and long lost to human knowledge. They have spoken betimes of an ancient, vast – and artificial! – land-bridge between the European and American continents, but with sly humour denounce any mention of Atlantis, claiming Plato’s popular fiction is romantic, without merit and placed in completely the wrong geological era. I would like to know more, but am allowed no access to information beyond the last three thousand years. I know written records exist from at least one million years ago as I have seen that section in one of the libraries, every page and tablet sheathed in something akin but superior to plastic.

The average lifespan of a werewolf is 900 years or thereabouts although with very careful living some can extend it by a few hundreds of years. Those choosing to spend most of their lives on the surface are under pressure to move on every twenty or thirty years in order to hide their longevity from the curious eyes of surface-dwelling mankind.

Obviously, in their transformed state, werewolves live with the necessity of restricting their interactions with the majority human population. Of course that does occasionally fail, hence all the horror stories over the years.

They don’t die of old age as such – it’s more of a sudden, rapid and complete cellular breakdown lasting only a few days, leaving very little physical debris. Why death occurs in this fashion is one of their most closely guarded secrets and no amount of guile on my part, or my predecessors, has succeeded in bringing that information to light. They do mourn their dead, but in a celebratory fashion, believing that cheering their dead comrades helps their souls to enter another realm. Much as some human cultures do.

Werewolf clusters exist well below the deepest man-made mineshaft, anything from seventy-five to two hundred fifty miles beneath the Earth’s surface in hot, humid conditions that they find suitable and comprise thousands of beings in each when not surface-dwelling. In their human form they are far more intelligent than us and once transformed into werewolves, even more so.

According to werelore (most of which is extensively documented in their deep-earth libraries), at some point around three million years ago there was a blending of DNA between a protohuman (possibly an Australopith) and a long-extinct ancestor of the canidae family, probably a salival infection through a bite and the evolution of the werehuman species began.

Although the werewolf scientists themselves can’t precisely pin down the species of extinct canidae, the deduction through their research is that in that distant prehistory an ancient virus from the creature locked on to the cells in the protohumans, eventually transferring as a mutation into the proto’s offspring and becoming a functional mutation which the subsequent werehuman species learned to control as it evolved. The mental and physical strength of this duospecies mutation is phenomenal as this symbiosis has transcended the various extinctions of branches such as Homo Erectus, Neanderthals et al, gaining inroads into each successive humanotype.

These events are linked directly to the progress of human civilisation, meaning that most of unaware humanity owes a debt of existence to the lycanthropic genome and the quiet, hidden influence of werewolf civilisation. There has long been concern in the werewolf world about the rapid technological achievements of humans; they see imminent destruction in every new invention. The advent of the atomic age spurred many of them to risk exposure by working their way into powerful and influential political and commercial positions in order to “clip our wings”, so to speak, a policy which has been mostly effective so far with few failures.

They don’t need a full moon to transmute, that’s a self-perpetuated falsity intended to mislead and maintain fictional legend on the rare occasions a werewolf is confronted with suspicion and potential discovery. In reality, the bodily transformation is voluntary and accomplished by a pulse of mental concentration which switches on the mutation throughout their bodies, a switch which werewolf science prefers to consider a natural evolutionary augmentation rather than a mutation.

Depending on age, it takes approximately two hours to effect the transformation due to the physical limits imposed by what any organic structure can take as it goes through rapid fundamental cellular and skeletal alterations. 

Internal human/werewolf plumbing and tissue is very complicated. Every internal organ reorganises itself to accommodate the new, enlarged body state, expanding and toughening along with the skeletal transformation. The braincase expands to approximately twice the size of a human skull leading to an increase in brain matter, which is the last soft tissue to manifest after the baincase change sets. To reduce trauma the normal-sized brain temporarily enters a period of stasis until the skeletal, internal and external alterations have completed, at which stage the brain matter comes out of stasis and grows at a fantastic rate to fill the enlarged braincase.

In their humanoid state werewolf DNA consists of 92 pairs of chromosomes while regular human DNA consists of 46 pairs. In humans this would result in triploidy and death but werewolf chemistry works in a fundamentally different way. During the transformation process their chromosome numbers ‘awake’, increasing from 92 pairs to 176 pairs. This larger number is considered to be inherited from the original prehistoric canidae and lie dormant while in their humanoid form. This difference between humans and werewolves is a major contributor to their intelligence and societal expertise, which is contrary in the extreme to standard humans who suffer physical and mindful problems if their chromosomes do not match the norm.

Once the brain matter has grown to fill the expanded cranium, the transition from undistinguished humanoid to werewolf is then complete.

And the misunderstandings continue. They are, however, omnivorous. They have no need to feast on humans, only to occasionally infect a select few in order to maintain their numbers as mating is seasonal along with other dependencies such as the werewolf clusters beneath the Earth’s surface waxing and waning and the difficulties, in our modern world of widespread surveillance, of transportation for interbreeding between clusters. The stories help by maintaining a dark corner in the human consciousness, an inverse law that allows for some latitude and freedom of movement within the pervue of legend.

The humans thus infected become of the werewolf species within approximately ten days, during which period they are held in isolation and carefully monitored in case of rejection – which is, with my own exception, exceedingly rare. In the event of rejection a serum is administered to reverse the process, memories altered and they are released at least fifty miles from their seizure point, usually with a condition resembling a bad hangover. In the successful recruits the massively widespread but subtle alterations are unnoticeable to any previous acquaintances. New recruits do often bluster, panic and threaten, initially not understanding what’s happening to them but once altered, self-protection becomes axiomatic and secrecy is maintained, more or less.

NB. The term ‘werewolf’ is a populist misnomer used only for reference. After three million years of evolution through successive humanotypes they have become a completely different species distinct from humans (and animals), even though to all intents and purposes they still resemble the general human population.

This little missive is by no means complete. It is nothing more than a stand-alone contraction of many previous writings and my own observations. I have no need to ramble on, my time is up and the future of the werewolf chronicles will be taken care of.

My name is Howard Conran. I was born in Liverpool, England and I am now 236 years old. In my role I have travelled the world above and below, observed and written of many wonders. This is the final entry in my contribution to the hundreds of thousands of years’ worth of werewolf chronicles; I have decided to return to the surface to die, fading into the numberless deaths of non-entities in the star washed land of my birth. I thank the werewolf scientists for keeping their promise of 200 years of perfect health and I pass this role to my successor who will no doubt be as utterly amazed as I and my thousands of predecessors have been.