DATELINE: Charlotte, North Carolina

Uni does not vote, has never voted, and has no intention to start voting in the future. He doesn’t trust any of the candidates. He likes Obama the best, but does not trust him either.

Uni is smart, charismatic, and knows everything that there has ever been to know about movies. He is also a vampire; a black vampire at that. His teeth are permanently re-modelled to have two fangs attached. “It was this game that made me want to start biting things in the first place”, he says when a friend puts Pacman on the X-Box 360. His house – which slightly worryingly does not exist, according to our GPS system – is a frazzled, smoky den full of frazzled, smoky people. He and his friend Alan both work at the movie theatre, and their tardis of knives, movie posters and video games is actually a very friendly place.

Uni and Alan may have no interest in the Presidential Primaries, but they have thought through the contingencies for surviving the coming zombie apocalypse. This is no idle back-of-an-envelope plan either. It involves running baths to store up water (for when the zombies cut off the supply, I assume?), and then a careful dispensation of the particular butterfly knives and machetes that adorn Uni’s walls, ready for combat.

The only time a political conversation comes up in the four or so hours we’re hanging out, it is prompted by Microsoft’s slightly unnerving use of their own ‘currency’, in the form of the tokens that are used to buy online games for the X-Box:

“I’m just waiting for the government to come out and openly admit they are essentially a corporation as well, with a profit motive and all. If the government just said ‘hey, the United States is now just a very large company’ I’d have at least some respect for them.”