Chapter 16
November 3
rd
, 2020
It was ridiculous how fast the world could go tits up without warning.
The morning had started with some good news - one of the other research teams across the country thought they might have a different solution to the DuoHalo virus, one that wouldn't involve quite so many quirks and foibles. Initial non-human tests had gone well, and they were starting human tests today. If things went well, they could pivot to this other solution within a matter of weeks, ahead of the President's upcoming speech where all the facts were going to be laid out for not only the nation, but the world at large.
Phil had mixed feelings about the whole thing - he was hopeful that the other team's vaccine would work, but untested optimism had gotten them into a lot of the mess they were in now. The virus wouldn't spread that fast, they'd hoped. It wouldn't be that deadly to those that caught it, they'd hoped. The virus might have had an aggressive start but would die off after that when somehow humanity had developed herd immunity, they'd hoped. He'd learned not to trust hope, so until he had confirmation that the new vaccine worked without any long-term side effects, he wasn't going to go relying on it.
They were also approaching 25% of the surviving male population of the United States being partially staffed with imprinted women. The resistance rate varied from the 50s to the high 90s, but over 25% of the living men in the United States now had at least three or more partners pumping life giving Quaranteam serum into their veins. That number felt low, dangerously low, but the ramp up speed was accelerating, and the thought was they'd be at 50% before the end of the month, and in some cases, the 'stud trading' was in full effect.
In early September, Project: Funnel Cake had begun with just a handful of target countries: Japan, Spain, Portugal, Mexico, Canada and South Korea. The term 'stud trading' had been chosen explicitly to spell out what was going on - men of low education were being sent to other countries in exchange for more desirable (usually for education, but occasionally for things like beauty or exceptional physical health) women, often at a somewhat ridiculous exchange rate. This was because in several of these countries, the male survival rates were far worse than they'd been in the US.
South Korea, in particular, had only 10% of the men it had had a year ago, and was in desperate need of stabilization. As such, they were sending women at the rate of nearly twenty in exchange for one man to be sent back. Some of the men sent over to South Korea spoke Korean, but most of them were just being sent over to live lives on something of a stud farm, trying to sleep with and impregnate as many women as possible. Finding one woman to translate for all the others would be easy enough.
The rates varied from country to country, but none of them were anything less than ten to one rate. Poor Canada had had whole portions of it truly kicked in the teeth, but the more remote and disconnected parts were doing better, if it could be described that way. The casualties were astronomical in some areas, Vancouver particularly, but others, like Ontario, had been almost militant about their lockdowns and were holding on strong.
By early October, several other countries - Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, Ukraine, Italy, Greece, nearly half of Africa and most of South America - were offering blocks of women for 'stud trades,' although it was clear the US was no longer the only game in town, as it seemed Germany had somehow gotten their hands on enough of the Quaranteam serum to reverse engineer it and start mass production of their own, much as the UK was doing.
There were suspicions that the Russians might have also been doing some stud trading, although it was difficult to get a read on what their situation looked like, especially since the reports of heavy internal political infighting were clouding the matter.
China continued to be a giant dark void, although Phil had seen some satellite photos digging mass graves, and he suspected it was only going to be a matter of time before the Chinese were going to be asking for help. He'd seen a report floating around that one of the key aspects of giving aid to the Chinese was that Taiwan become a part of the United States, or that their independence would have to be completely and totally guaranteed, which Phil was certain were terms definitely chapping the hides of what little remained of the Chinese government power structure.
And lately, there were reports of Northern Korean women simply walking or driving out of North Korea into South Korea or China, as there were basically no men remaining left to stop them. The current operating intel was that NK might, in fact, be one of the first regions to hit a 0% male survival rate, due to second and third wave infections, but the complete media blackout from that country meant that information was, as of yet, unconfirmed.
With the stud trading going on, Phil and his team had been required to add a small amount of information to their Oracle files - languages that they and their existing Team spoke. Phil spoke English, Tagalog, Japanese and Spanish fluently, Vietnamese and Korean passingly and knew enough French to tell a few bawdy jokes. High profile, high importance members were going to get their numbers up well beyond the recommended number, but if that meant they could take on imports from other countries, the more the merrier. Bill McKenna had joked with the Major General when he'd asked them for the updates if the summer he'd spent studying in Sweden back when he'd been in college oh so long ago meant he was going to be sent members of the Swedish Bikini Team. Neither Phil or Bill had been certain the Major General had been kidding when he'd responded, "Would you like them to?"
Phil had been told in no uncertain terms that he needed to get his numbers up, and if he didn't, they'd eventually just start telling him he couldn't say no anymore. He didn't particularly care for the way they were saying that as of late, but he also knew that he couldn't decline them forever, so he was letting Audrey and Linda do initial screenings of profiles, and reviewing the ones they and Oracle thought would be good matches for his Team. They wanted him up to at least a dozen by the end of the month and would prefer him to be closing in on 18 by the end of the year, so that he was overly protected. He was too important to be allowed to be down dealing with even the shortest bouts of DuoHalo.
The same applied for poor Bill, but Bill's wife was thankfully doing the job of turning women down for him, trying to make sure that while some hot young things got through, he was also doing his fair share to take on more age-appropriate women. She knew that Bill was going to be expected to be fathering more kids soon but was okay with those women making up the minority of Team McKenna, considering her and Bill's only daughter was in her early 20s, and had been paired up early on in the process to her long-term boyfriend.
Phil's most recent addition had arrived two days ago direct on a flight from Helsinki, Finland. Her name was Ingrid Virtanen, she was 23, she was a physical therapist, and she was a titanic Nordic blonde goddess of a woman, clocking in at 6'8". Even Linda's first words to the woman had been, "Damn, I hope you come with a built-in ladder." She was going to function as his house's personal doctor, or at least their front-line defense.
That was the good news he'd had over the last few days, however, and now it felt like shitty news was starting to drop left and right. There had been a lot of folks who'd been reported dead, and most of the time, it was easy to look at them as statistics rather than as individuals, but there were handfuls of people that Phil had a lookout for, people who were on the priority list to get the serum as soon as they could. But priority still meant 'as soon as possible' and in some cases, that just wasn't soon enough.
A couple of days ago, Phil's friend Andy's older brother Matthew Rook, had checked into a hospital with DuoHalo symptoms in full effect. Phil had dispatched a group to get a handful of vaccinated women to the man as quickly as possible, but by the time his life raft had arrived, Matty had already died. Phil had done what he could for most of the direct family of his good friends as he could, but Matty had been very much 'I'll be fine' right up until the very end, and Phil hadn't been quick enough on the draw to see past that. He was going to resolve to stop taking people at their word unless it was absolutely necessary.
As that information was rolling around in Phil's head, while he was decided how he could possibly tell one of his oldest friends that his only brother was dead, the most unexpected thing happened - Andy
called.
"Hey Phil, sorry to bug you at work," Andy said. "You got a moment?"
"Sure," Phil said, deciding not to bring his brother's death up right at the start. Clearly Andy had called him with a reason in mind. "What's up?"
"Would you be willing to take Doctor Charlotte Varma on as one of your partners?"
That threw Phil completely for a loop. "What the hell are you talking about, Andy? The good doctor was dispatched to join someone's household yesterday."
"She was, and now she's currently with me, and unpaired. Dr. Varma didn't think it would be a good idea for both her and her daughter to be paired to the same man, so her daughter, Asha, is now paired with me."
"Andy, you're not making any sense. What about the man she was supposed to be paired with?"
Andy sighed on the other end of the line. "You're going to be mad at me, Phil, and frankly, you have every right to be, but I have to tell you, I didn't know what the hell to do here..."
"What to do... Andy, give me a straight answer and tell me what the fuck you're going on about, and I mean right now."
"Alright, so I know Niko is working on the Quaranteam project in some way or another, and she found out that Dr. Varma and her daughter were going to be sent to a man neither she or I think is a very good person, Arthur Covington the 4
th
."
"I already hate where this is going, Andy," Phil sighed, "but continue."
"Covington has a poker game where he and a handful of other men from New Eden gamble with women before they're imprinted, allowing them to be reassigned to other men in question."
