10

Chapter One

Around day eighteen of the quarantine, Andy was starting to lose his damn mind. The governor of California had gotten on the television and announced that everyone who wasn't essential was under house arrest, essentially. Sure, the grocery stores were open, but restaurants were only doing delivery, and every bar in town was closed. The most time he'd spent outdoors in the last week had been walking out to the mailbox cluster for the complex down at the end of the street.

Despite the fact that both of them had decent paying jobs - Eric as a software engineer and Andy as a marketing writer - neither could afford an entire place to themselves, so Andy paid rent to Eric, who owned the condo (or at least was paying it down).

Andy also had a side hustle as a novelist, and was getting frustrated as hell that the quarantine was keeping him in place meant that his newest book was being pushed back. There was a warehouse full of fifty thousand copies of his next novel, and they were all just sitting there.

"They'll come out eventually," his agent had told him, but the whole thing felt very much like a death sentence to his literary ambitions. Andy even had a box of copies sitting on their kitchen table, along with a movie poster styled promotional in a frame.

"Did you get the mail today?" Andy asked his roommate.

"Nah," Eric said. "Didn't see the point."

"Fair enough."

Wham wham wham.

"You order food?"

"Nope. You?"

A voice came from outside their front door. "CDC. Open the door, please."

Eric moved to the door and peered through the peephole. On the other side, he saw a man in a biohazard suit, covered completely from head to toe. He raised one covered hand and waved. "I'm perfectly safe, as you can see. We're going door to door and testing people for the virus."

Eric looked back at his roommate and shrugged. Andy grabbed his two cats, scooping one up in each arm as Eric opened the door. It was like something out of The Andromeda Strain, seeing the man in the yellow hazmat outside, a small box in one hand. "CDC?"

"Yeah. I'm Dave. Invite me in?"

Andy shrugged and Eric laughed. "Sure, c'mon in. We just need to close the door behind you so the cats don't get out."

"Sure sure, I get that. I'm here to test if you guys are clear. Is there some place I can set up?"

"Go ahead and use the kitchen. You want us together or one at a time?"

"The test only takes fifteen minutes and I can run up to four of them at a time, so come on. I can run you both." He lugged the kit with a world weariness, as if he'd been doing this thirty times a day since the lockdown had started. "Paperwork says you've got two guys living here - Eric Yang and Andrew Rook. That you two?"

"That's us."

"Nobody else in the condo?"

"Nope. Nobody else."

"Cool," Dave said as he set the kit down on the kitchen table. He glanced up at the movie poster promotional on the wall above the kitchen table. "Oh hey, you guys are fan of the Druid Gunslinger books too? I fucking love those things."

Eric laughed a little bit, sitting down in one of the kitchen chairs, rolling up his sleeve. "I mean, you could say that, I guess. He writes'em."

"What? No, they're written by some guy named Blake Conrad." He glanced at Eric and grinned. "I don't need blood, man. Here, just rub this swab on the inside of your cheek for a bit."

Andy smiled a bit sheepishly, putting the cats down. "Yeah, that's me. It's a pen name."

"Why the hell would you want a pen name when you've got an awesome last name like Rook?"

"I'm friends with Arthur McStevenson. You know, the guy who writes all those thrillers you see on sale in the airports? Anyway, he told me that he wished he'd have taken a pen name before he got started, so people just couldn't look him up and track him down at home."

Dave took the cotton swap that Eric handed him and put it into one of the four slots on the little machine he carried with him. "Oh hey, I'm sorry man. I don't want to bother you about it."

"Nah, you didn't come tap on my window in the middle of the night or anything. What do I care?" Andy waved his hand before taking a cotton swab from him, rubbing it along the inside of his cheek, and then handed it back to the man in the biosuit.

"While this is running, I just gotta ask you guys a few other questions. Do you guys each have a twin bed?"

Eric rolled his eyes. "Are you kidding me? Ask him about his bed. Just ask him."

Andy crossed his arms over his chest, as if this was a discussion they'd had a number of times. "Eric's got a queen sized bed and I've got a California king sized bed. Even though I've got the smaller bedroom. But what can I say? When I got out of college, I bought a big ass bed, so I'd always be comfortable, and never wanted to give it up."

"Why do you ask?"

"They're starting to force people to house additional people in their places, so we can keep the uncontaminated together, at least for a while."

"What?" Eric said, his face scowling. "There's no way that's legal."

"It's temporary, and we're doing everything we can to make sure people are at least okay with it. At this point, we're just doing what we can to get people through it. But the death toll is starting to stack up. I mean, have you seen the footage coming out of New York City?"

Andy nodded. "Trailer trucks stacked full with body bags. It's terrifying."

"Besides, it's not all that bad. The virus seems to be targeting men a lot more than women, so guys are scoring with women way out of their league. And the women seem to be a little friskier once they've developed an immunity to the virus. I'm sure you'll see eventually."

Andy arched an eyebrow in the man's direction. "That sounds ominous."

The man in the biohazard suit waved a hand dismissively in their direction. "Not at all. Just relax and enjoy the ride. That's all I should say about it. So when's the next Druid Gunslinger book coming out? It's really soon, isn't it?"

Andy stepped over to the fridge, opening it to take out a can of soda, using the fridge to hide his sigh, although he wasn't entirely successful. "It was supposed to be out in three weeks, but because of the virus, the publisher's pushing it back to the fall. I mean, I understand. I get a lot of additional sales off of in-store appearances and whatnot. I get it. And I'm already working on writing the next one. But it's always rough having a book release pushed back."

"Man, that sucks. I was really looking forward to reading it during my downtime when they're driving us between locations."

"Y'know what, you're a fan, so let me do you a favor. I better not see this show up on eBay or the internet though, otherwise I'm gonna know who it was." Andy moved over to the box on the kitchen and opened the top of it, taking one of the books out. "They call these advance reader copies. They send me a few boxes of them so I can sell them at appearances or give them away to friends and such. I haven't even sent my family copies yet. I think the only other person than my agent and my editor who's read the book is Eric here."

Eric nodded. "It's not as good as 'Have Totem, Will Travel' but it's one of the better books in the series, I thought. Way better than 'The Trouble With Werebears,' but then again, that's not hard."

"Everyone's a critic," Andy said, grabbing a pen from near the box. "Fair, though. I had to bang that one out in five weeks because the publisher just wanted to cram another one onto store shelves while it was hot. I wasn't satisfied with it either, but it still sold okay. You said your name was Dave, right?"

"Yeah," Dave answered.

Andy opened the front cover of the hardback ARC and wrote in the front of it, "For Dave, Jake thinks you're one of the real heroes. Yours, Blake Conrad." He blew over the ink for a second, making sure it was dry, before closing it up and offering it to Dave. "There you go. Autographed, personalized copy months in advance of when you can get it in stores."

"That's awesome, man!" Dave said, genuine enthusiasm in his voice. The machine on the table beeped, a cheerful tri-tone medley. "You guys are both 100% virus clear. And let me pay you back for this," he said, patting the book on the table next to him. He flipped a little toggle switch on the machine and then pushed the large green button on the side. A small little printout scrolled out of the machine. He tore it off and then pushed the green button again. "Okay, this one is for you," he said, holding out the receipt to Eric. "And this one is for you, Mr. Conrad," he said with a laugh, holding out the second slip to Andy. "You need to go onto the website today and fill out the questionnaire. I know it's going to seem weird, but just answer the questions honestly and openly, and go through the whole thing. You'll be very glad you did later, okay?"

"What's it for?"

"It'll help you be happy with your pair ups when we bring them by in a few days. You know that giant condo complex a mile or two over?"

"What, the 30 story skyscraper?"

"Yeah. That's being converted into a triage hospital, so all the tenants are being evicted. Lots of people who are going to be relocated. There's a range of five possible questionnaires that uninfected men can get, and it's at the test giver's discretion. Most people, we just give them level one or two questionnaires."

"What did you give us?"

"Welcome to level 5, fellas. It's mostly reserved for medical professionals and high rollers, but it's my discretion, and this little baby's going to keep me from losing my mind for the next few weeks, so I gotta make sure we're square," he said while patting the book. "This should more than even us out."

"It makes that much of a difference?"

Dave smiled like a Cheshire cat beneath his biohazard helmet and nodded. "You'll see. Just trust me on this. Go fill it out right away, though! They'll probably have someone here tomorrow or the day after, and you want to be ready." The scientist picked up the book in one hand and his testing kit in the other. "And with that, I'm off! I won't be able to get started on this tonight, but I'll see if I can swing by on one of the dropoffs and let you know what I think of it."

"Hey, it's always nice to meet a fan," Andy said. He moved to scoop up the two cats into his arms again before he and Eric walked him to the door.

Dave shuffled toward the door, as Eric opened it for him. "Remember guys, the questionnaire is completely confidential and no one's going to judge you on any of it, so be completely honest. Got it? Completely. Honest."

"With all the hyping you've been doing, I can't wait to see this questionnaire," Andy laughed. "Go on, go! You've got more people to be saving, I'm sure."

"Take care, fellas!" Dave said.

Eric closed the door on him, then flipped the lock, and then the deadbolt before putting the chain on. He liked to make sure it was secure. "So I suppose we both better go take this thing, huh?" he said to Andy, who was putting down the cats again.

"Guess so."

Eric's desk was in the living room, while Andy's was part of the adjacent dining room. They'd been known to politely yell at one another from their desks. Andy typed in the website on the slip and hit return. A rather bland looking government website popped up. There Andy entered his name, his address, his social security number and address.

"He wasn't kidding when he said this quiz was unorthodox," Eric called over to him, clearly ahead of him in the process. "These are not the kind of questions I expect a government website to be asking me."

"Oh yeah? I can't wait to find out." Andy typed in the personalization code at the bottom of the slip. It was a long series of characters, a mix of numbers and letters, both capital and lower case, with a variety of special characters mixed in - 25 characters in all. Andy had to enter the series twice because the first time he hadn't realized it was case sensitive and the site had rejected it.

The first question immediately surprised him. "Are you attracted to: Women, Men, Both?" It wasn't at all what he expected, but he checked "women" and the site moved onward. There was a small button marked back, in case he made errors, obviously.

The next page asked him what ages of women he was attracted to. There were two little slider bars, with the low end going as far down at 18 and the high end going up to 70+. Andy was nearly 40, but the words of Dave rang through his head. "Be honest." Andy shrugged, leaving the low end set to 18 and brought the high end to 35.

He was a more than a little caught off guard by the next question. "Would you consider yourself: Monogamous, polyamorous, no preference?" He had to think about it for a long moment, but eventually clicked "no preference." If he was truly honest with himself, if he found himself with a girlfriend who had another girlfriend, he wouldn't have been bothered by it.

For the next twenty minutes, Andy continued to work through the website, filling in all the options about what he was and wasn't attracted to. Height, weight, race, hair color, hair length, eye color, nationality, education, physique... the questions went on and on and on. After he went through any given category, he was then given a follow up page to rank all of the things from most attracted to at the top down to least attracted to at the bottom.

Towards the back half, he started to understand what Eric had found so surprising. The quiz had a page with a seemingly limitless collections of fetishes and kinks. At the top was the message "Click all that apply." Following that, all of the things Andy had clicked on were in another list he was expected to order.

When he had to order all of his turn ons, he became more than a little aware how at odds with each other some of them were. In fact, he had aggressive women and submissive women next to one another in the ordered list. He wondered what the algorithm would make of that.

The last page was the same fetish and kinks list presented again with a different message at the top. "Click all those that are hard turn offs for you. Be thorough." It was this page that Andy found himself clicking a lot of buttons.

He also had to look up a handful of the terms that did not include clarification. He was sure there were people out there who liked pissing on each other, but he certainly wasn't one of those. He also had to make sure to reject women who were allergic to cats. He wondered if all this information was just going to ensure no one showed up.

All in all, the whole thing felt a little like a thing he'd taken in college called the Purity Test, a thousand question party game where people who had been drinking would compare sexual histories.

The final page was all the information he'd entered presented in an ordered list, with a message in large friendly red letters at the top. "Review all the information below for accuracy! Once you hit submit, you cannot revise this information!"

After a final pass to make sure he hadn't marked anything incorrectly, he hit submit. The screen went blank for a second before a confirmation message popped up. "A copy of this has been mailed to the email address you provided. Thank you for helping us keep California safe!"

Andy closed the web browser and rose up from his seat, heading over to talk to his roommate. "Okay, yeah, that was definitely weird."

"What did you say to the polyamory question?" Eric asked him.

"I put no preference."

"Really? Man, I couldn't click the monogamous button fast enough. Last thing I want is a girlfriend who's shacking up with another guy."

Andy smirked. "What if she was shacking up with another girl?"

"Ah shit, I didn't even think of that."

He shrugged at Eric with a wry smile. "Like it's going to make any fucking difference anyway. I'm sure the whole thing is just an optimistic pipe dream. When was the last time our government brought any real change with a website?"

"Heh. Guess we'll see."

"Yep, suppose so."

And that was the last they talked about it for the rest of the day. But it certainly wouldn't be the last time they talked about it.

Chapter Two

It was a little past noon the next day when there came a knock at the door. "Open up! CDC!" the voice on the other side shouted at them. "Delivery and I don't have time to fuck about so let's go."

Andy was in the living room working on his laptop, and glanced over at Eric, who was hip deep in a conference call. "Don't worry, I got it. They probably just forgot some questions yesterday or something." Eric waved his hand as Andy set his laptop aside, carrying on with his conversation with his coworkers.

Andy rose from the couch and made his way over to the front door, opening it without thinking to look through the peephole. The cats were both upstairs asleep, so he didn't worry about them. When he opened the door, there were three people outside of it, not the one he'd expected. The person in the middle looked a lot like Dave had, except for the face. The man inside this biohazard suit was a black man in his late forties. He looked a lot less jovial than Dave had.

To the left and right of the man in the biohazard suit was a woman covered from head to toe. From the clothing, it was almost impossible to make out any details other than the woman to the left of him was short and the woman to the right was tall. Both of them wore hoodies with the hoods pulled up. They wore ski visors over their eyes and scarves over their noses and mouths. Both wore long sweatpants and had those fuzzy lined boots he'd never thought were fashionable. He couldn't see an inch of skin from either. Each of them had a small roller suitcase with them, the kind of travel bag someone takes for a holiday no longer than a week. They also each had a large bag under their arm, an oversized purse maybe, or a laptop bag. The whole appearance was almost like Berkas by Gucci.

"You Eric or Andy?" the man in the gear asked him.

"Andy."

"Copy," the man said, tapping at his little pad with a stylus that dangled from it. He let the stylus drop and then opened a pouch on the outside of his suit, unholstering a bottle of Lysol. He sprayed the surface of the tablet for a few seconds then held it out to Andy. "Just use your finger to sign on the line. Any day now. I've got another seven deliveries to make today, and people are on the bus waiting so let's go."

Andy lifted a finger up and signed an approximation of his name on the tablet's surface. "So how long is this for? That these people are staying with us?"

"Which room is Eric's and which room is Andy's?" the shorter of the two women asked.

"Upstairs and turn right for Eric's room and left for my, uh, Andy's room," he said, as the two women immediately brushed past him and ran upstairs. "How long?"

"The fuck should I know, pal? I just deliver them." He took the tablet back from Andy and glanced down at it. "Anyway, that's it for this batch. I'll see you again in a few days, maybe a week or so, with the next one."

"The next one?" Andy asked, but the man had already turned and started walking back to a school bus that was idling in the street. "What do you mean the next one?" But the man had already moved on, and either didn't hear Andy or didn't care. Andy suspected it was the latter. Behind him, up the stairs, he heard both his and Eric's bedroom doors shut.

He closed the door and locked it, then turned the padlock and put the chain back on. Andy looked over his shoulder, then glanced and Eric, who shrugged. He moved upstairs and knocked on his own bedroom door. "Uh, hello?"

"Five minutes please!" a voice on the other side of the door said to him.

Andy sighed, turned around and walked downstairs. His roommate looked over at him, having just wrapped up his conference call. "She wants five minutes."