Quaranteam Damaged Goods Ch 01

This is a story set in the Quaranteam Universe created by CorruptingPower. It is strongly recommended that you read at the very least the first half of the original work or it won't make sense. You should probably just read all his work and come back when you're desperate for more.

My thanks to CorruptingPower for letting me play in his pool, and to the rest of the QT writers room for their input. Particularly AgathonWrites, The_Licentious_Laureate and BreakTheBar

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My name is Steve Goode, and I'm depressed. I know that sounds like I'm introducing myself to some kind of support group but in recent years I've come to realise that depression might be my most defining attribute. I'm a straight, white, thirty eight year old man. I'm English, middle class, able bodied and university educated with no remarkable talents to speak of. I'm pretty good at my tedious job; good enough that I don't really worry about money. I'm forty pounds overweight but I'm big enough that I carry it without looking like a blimp, just a heavy guy who lives his life in jeans and scruffy T-shirts. I am about as boring as it's humanly possible to be without actually being dead.

I married my high school girlfriend and we were happy for a while, right up until we made each other miserable. So I've been living alone for over two years now since she left, just me and all the neighbourhood cats who know a soft touch when they see one. I work remotely and I was a bit of a shut in before lockdown literally shut me in. For me, depression manifests as doing the bare minimum to get by. Day after day, I work because I know I have to, but I can't motivate myself to do anything really new; I exist in unchanging limbo. Then there are my bad days where the only reason I don't cry is because I can't summon the willpower to care about myself enough.

On a more positive note, I'm recording this because my boring life is about to change dramatically. A therapist I used to see suggested that diaries would help me keep life events "in context" and that stuck with me, even if not much else he said did. I only saw him because Jane wanted to try couples therapy and, if I'm honest, I blame those sessions for being the final nails in the coffin of my marriage. Still, that diary suggestion made sense to me, but I've just never had much of interest to record. After the conversation I had with my boss earlier today though, it seems like a good idea to document what's coming.

If you're listening to this and you're not me, then I'm very surprised, but you probably know all about DuoHalo, the Quaranteam serum and its weird-ass side effects. Personally, I know bugger all about the workings of the wonder serum, I'm just a techie. I'm a freelance software developer and for the last few weeks I've been contracted to work on Delphi; a giant, creepy and intrusive, government backed dating website based on an American system called Oracle. Specifically, I'm the senior engineer on the team producing the web portal you will likely have already used to complete your own survey. I'm the one who suggested we include the sidebar with helpful definitions for the dozens of sexual practices and kinks that you had to rate and rank, most of which you probably wish you could scrub out of your mind. Sorry. Be grateful we decided not to include pictures.

Normally I wouldn't touch a public sector contract with a bargepole but an old boss of mine reached out desperate for experienced hands to deliver a big urgent project he was woefully ill-equipped to handle. God knows how he landed the contract for it; probably sucked off someone who went to Eton with Boris Bloody Johnson, I gather that's how things get done at Whitehall these days. He promised me a truckload of money and business has been slow over lockdown so I said yes and have been regretting it ever since. The only upside to this clusterfuck is that when Averna, the big-pharmas making the UK version of the vaccine, put out the call for the first wave of people to get their new jab, the bureaucrats gave them us. Officially the MOD want to protect everyone with any connection to the vaccination program that hasn't already had one of the American made doses they started from, but personally I think the real reasoning is simpler and lazier than that. I had already signed the NDA so that saved them time and paperwork. I've never met a public official who wouldn't avoid work if they could. I won't complain because it's getting me vaccinated faster but I'll just have to hope they know what they're doing. I don't want to grow another head or something.

I don't know when they're going public with the full details of the end of the world, but the briefing I just got from Averna told me the death rate in the UK is still climbing. Over a third of the population is already confirmed to be dead, more than that for men, and who knows how many more bodies are lying in their homes undiscovered or how many will die before they can roll out this vaccine. If they can't make everyone understand how important it is, make them understand that the world as they knew it really has ended and now they have to buy into the new normal or die, we could lose so many people that the country might never recover. They were quick to tell us we're better off than a lot of other countries, which is a fucking scary thought.

I want to record what happens next so that I have something to look back on years from now. If it's interesting enough, and some of the rumours I've heard about the US serum's effects are very interesting, then I might pad the diary out with some personal memories and publish it. I've never written anything before so don't expect Dickens.

++++ Fri 11th Sept 2020 ++++

I met Patricia Pixie O'Connell at university nearly twenty years ago when we were both freshers on the same computer science course. I was alone, as usual, and I came across her bawling her eyes out in a hallway after her girlfriend had dumped her by text. I stopped to try and help, stood with her while she pulled herself together and I snarled at a few idiots for gawping at her as they passed by. Apparently, that was all it took to make a friend back then. We got to be close over the next few years, but we were always an odd pair. I was six foot and solidly built even before I got overweight. She was all of four foot five and built naturally slim. She hated her small chest and routinely dressed in crop tops and cut-off shorts, even in winter, determined to take advantage of what figure she did have. She certainly wasn't boyish though, she had cute, rounded features and a wicked grin that combined with her bubbly and outgoing nature to give her an irresistible sex appeal. Thanks to her slightly odd, flowerchild mother, her legal middle name was really Pixie. She preferred it to Patricia and she leaned into the aesthetic pretty hard. Short "pixie" haircut that she dyed a new vibrant colour every other week. One pierced eyebrow and one ear with enough silver in it to choke a pack of werewolves. I was never a big talker but she had permanent verbal diarrhoea and a thick west country farmers accent that sounded ridiculous coming from her tiny mouth.

Depending on how your tastes ran she was either the personification of a specific male fantasy or a sidekick character that had escaped from a romcom. If she hadn't been gay, my then girlfriend would have been right to worry because I thought Pixie was gorgeous. I knew she was just using me as a shield to deflect unwanted male attention but I didn't mind; being around her made my world feel a little less dark... most of the time. I'd only known her a few weeks when she first told me about her condition; "rapid cycling bipolar disorder two". Her symptoms were relatively mild and well managed with meds but every now and then the erratic tendencies would show through her default high-energy state and after a while I got to be pretty good at recognising when she needed to be reined in or boosted up and she trusted me enough to go see her doctor when I suggested it. Sadly, we lost touch after graduation, she went back to Devon and I got married. She came to the wedding back in 2008 but I hadn't seen her since then when she suddenly showed up a few weeks ago in a team meeting video call at my new job.

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"How did your one-on-one meeting go this morning? Did you get the same offer I did?" I asked her warily.

"Maybe," she smirked from the screen I used for my video calls. "Did you get offered what I got offered?"

"This is going to be a tedious conversation unless one of us takes the plunge and risks the wrath of the NDA gods."

"Fine, I'll be the brave one, shall I?" she rolled her eyes at me. "Did you say yes to the vaccine?"

"Of course I did," I was relieved she'd said it first. Call me paranoid but I still suspected some government flunky was routinely monitoring our calls. "Still bloody reeling from the details though. How has no one noticed that many deaths?"

"I probably would have if I was allowed to leave the fucking flat once in a while!" Lockdown had not been kind to the naturally gregarious Pixie. She'd been forced to let her hair go back to its natural dirty blonde and, more seriously, it had interfered with her supply of medications. She'd had to make the tough decision to carefully wean herself off them sooner rather than risk a sudden interruption later. We'd got into the habit of keeping an open video call between us while we worked. She hadn't asked me to, but I knew she felt better knowing that I was "there" even if we didn't always talk that much.

"I've barely left this house in a couple of years now," I said idly. "Never would have thought that being a miserable shut-in would save my life though. I guess I know why I've stopped hearing from my old gaming group recently." There was a natural pause in the conversation as we both unconsciously listed the people the virus might have taken from us. I didn't have a lot of friends to lose but I could think of half a dozen names who hadn't posted to social media in a while. I'd never been grateful to have no living family before, but the idea of my mum living through this was horrible. Great, now I was apparently glad my mum's dead. Thanks for that, brain.

"How... er... how are you feeling about the whole 'partnership' thing?" I changed the subject. "Being forced into a straight relationship has got to be a real kick in the teeth for the gay community. Are you going to be ok?"

"I'll manage," she replied. "I'm just filling out my survey now. This website is crap; it's sooo slow." Pixie's a UI designer, a good one, and I'm mostly a plumbing guy so if the site is slow then it's my fault. I'm not so dense that I can't tell when she's changing the subject away from my change of subject, but I let her do it. We can talk about harsh realities later.

"It's probably all the crappy visual optimisation," I shot back automatically. "Client-side garbage weighing it down."

Delphi wasn't even close to ready for real use yet. This contract had been one long inter-team bitchfest up to this point. The backend team blamed the data guys; the data guys blamed the server people; the server people blamed literally everyone else for moving the goalposts all the time. Fortunately, I've seen this movie before and I got our web team set up so we wouldn't need anyone else until it comes together right at the end. Good job too; it was going to be hard enough to deliver to the politicians' timescale without other teams slowing us down. The algorithm team completely disintegrated the week before when they had to admit the bleeding obvious; that they couldn't write an entire replacement for Oracle's guts in a month. The new plan was to copy the US system logic, stick a union jack on it and call it ours.

Pixie and I spent some time filling in the same forms that we'd been testing every day, only now we were beta users of our own system and we knew that our answers really mattered. Under the hood there still wasn't enough British data so our answers were going to the US for now, but we were using it as a test for our web portal. Our usual murmuring and rhetorical comments took on a pretty weird tone as we slogged through the endless questions.

"Is boob size more or less important than who they vote for?"

"Could I live with an artsy-type person, or would they just end up wanting to murder me?"

"Oh god, really? With a cheese grater?"

"Do I care if they have a hairy back?"

"Who is really into that stuff?"

"Is there actually such a thing as a sexy clown I wonder?"

After I was done ranking and rating all the physical and mental attributes I consider turn-ons and deal breakers I was left feeling pretty sleazy. I was in the middle of a discussion with Pixie about reordering the questions to help alleviate that when I had another of the irritating rolling blackouts that have been plaguing the area lately. I assume there's been a lot of people suddenly promoted to running power infrastructure who aren't really qualified for the job their predecessors died doing.

On that cheery thought, I went to bed early for a wank and a long sleep because why the hell not?

++++ Sat 12th Sept 2020 ++++

The power came back on but Pixie's not online today. I texted her and got no reply. She's a grown woman who's looked after herself without me for more than fifteen years but I'm still beginning to get worried. She was fine yesterday, and it would be a bit sudden for her to shift into a manic or a depressive episode with so little warning, but it's not impossible and I'm conscious that she must be stressed out. We've been working seven days a week to get this system up and running and, although we've made better progress than any of the other teams, the project managers are relentless in their nagging. The government seems to have bottomless pockets as far as this project is concerned so we've been working the hours we need to and billing them for every minute of overtime, but that seems less important today than it was last week. Add in the news we had yesterday, the idea of being forced into a partnership with a man, and you get why I really wanted to talk to Pixie about it rather than let her stew on her own. Why won't she answer the damn phone?

++++ Sun 13th Sept 2020 ++++

Still no answer from Pixie and I am definitely worried now. I've been trying to talk to people at work to see if they've heard anything but, between blackouts and sickness, everybody's either MIA or too busy to respond. She doesn't have to work on a Sunday of course but I'm still worried. I'm no stranger to the anxiety that comes hand in hand with depression but this feels different. I'm desperately trying to remember if I've heard her coughing lately. I work from home by choice so lockdown has been no huge trial for me up until now. I like being alone. I hadn't even realised that I'd latched onto Pixie so hard since she came back into my life.

Damn it! Now that the internet connection is back up I've got a dozen ways to message her and she's not looking at any of them.

++++ Mon 14th Sept 2020 ++++

Work has all but ground to a halt. It seems that almost everyone has been co-opted for the vaccine rollout so there's a lot of no-shows. Not a disaster for us, the web team is ahead of all the other components so we've got some slack and I usually get my best work done when I'm uninterrupted, but my anxiety for Pixie made it difficult to concentrate on work all day.

It was late afternoon and I was half-dressed when I answered the door. I've been doing everything else half-dressed lately so that was nothing new, but at least I put down my sandwich and pulled some jeans on under my Star Wars Emperor bathrobe. I'm classy like that.

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"What the hell are you doing here?" I blurted out.

"Nice to see you too, smiley," Pixie replied with a mischievous grin. She took an iPad from the tired looking woman in protective gear behind her and handed it to me. "Special delivery! Sign here."

I signed it automatically without reading it. Not the smartest thing to do but I was too busy looking at the woman in front of me and trying to assess if she was fully manic or just bouncy. I used to be a good judge but it had been a long time since I'd seen her in person. I'd seen her a lot on our video calls of course, but the screen only showed her from the shoulders up. She looked great. She's aged much better than me, if I hadn't known she was my age I'd have guessed at under 30. Here she was dressed in daisy dukes and a low-cut top that showed more skin than is normal for England in September. She may not have a big bust but what she had suited her tiny frame and she put a lot of effort into maximising it with clothes. She had her hands behind her back, body leaning forwards slightly as she looked up at me, subtly moving back and forth like a nervous little girl. It brought an instant smile to my face, not only because I had a great view down her top, but because it was a move I recognised from the good old days that she would deploy against tall men when she wanted something from them. It never failed her then and now it told me that she was ok.

"For fuck's sake Pix, you couldn't answer your bloody phone? I was worried sick about you!" I could feel the anxiety dissipating now that I had an answer. She took the iPad out of my unresisting hands and passed it back to the waiting hazmat suit who said something muffled by their mask before turning to go back to a nearby van. With a girly squeal, Pixie threw herself into the house, jumped to put her arms around my neck and hugged me. I put my arms around her and after a moment of simply enjoying the rarity of human contact I straightened up, lifting her off her feet and prompting another giggly squeal.

"If I'd known you were coming, I would have shaved this week," I muttered, putting her down.

"I like a little fuzz. Makes you look all rugged and manly," she lied and stroked my cheek. Her nose wrinkled. "Brushing your teeth might be a good idea though." By now she was past me and giving herself a tour around my house, opening doors and peering into cupboards. I stood dumbfounded as she wandered in and out, never breaking the stream of one-way conversation. Something about army reservists and driving up from Devon I think. None of what she was saying filtered through my bewilderment.

"Wait, wait," my brain got moving again, albeit slowly. "You can't be here Pix! Lockdown. The virus. You can't be here!"

"Yes I can," she had the tone of someone explaining to a child. "Did you not see the uniform that dropped me off? You signed for me and everything."

"Signed..." I never said I was bright. "You didn't?! You picked me? To be a partner?"

"Oh, how I've missed this scintillating conversation. This is gonna be so great!" She was giggling and grinning like a lunatic as she ducked back out the front door and reappeared towing a suitcase nearly as big as she was. "Maybe I should start calling you darling? or how about loverboy?"

"But I assumed... I wanted to talk to you about it the other day. I figured you'd wait until they came up with something that would work for you? I mean, we can't... I'm not going to... we can't!"

"Still so oblivious sweetcheeks?" she pinched my arse as she stepped past me again, going back outside for a box with a PC in it. She was clearly intending to stay and would need to work from my house. "Did you really never figure out that I was batting for both teams? I had the hots for you back in the day you know? But I wasn't going to jump your bones while you were still with Jane. Sorry to hear that didn't work out by the way. She looked so happy at the wedding. Fuckable too. I woulda jumped both of you at the reception if I'd had one more drink."