Quaranteam Ch. 50

"As opposed to the reporter, who wanted to make it sound like the other writer didn't lift a finger," Andy chuckled.

"She was right and you know it," Fiona said smugly, rolling her eyes.

"Was she you?" Sarah asked with a laugh.

"I plea the fifth, y-"

"She absolutely was," Andy cackled. "Tommy was apoplectic that his contribution got diminished to 'writing a couple of scenes,' but the people in the press generally get the last word on these sorts of things."

"Tommy was a little braggart who still dined out on that play's success for the rest of the school year, even with getting called out in the paper," Fiona sniffed. "So he's lucky you're as generous as you are, Andy."

The ads were wrapping up, and the sound of the ticking stopwatch brought everyone's focus back to the screen again, which was showing footage of them driving up towards Rook Manor, something Andy hadn't even realized they'd been filming.

"While he hasn't lived in this home very long, Andy Rook turned out to be a pivotal figure in our story, as someone who was introduced to the system at a very early point in the pandemic's development, because it many ways, he and his new family, or Team as they're being called, were on the front lines for just about all of it."

"Hey Ms. Couric," Andy heard himself say on the television, as he greeted her at his front door, more footage he hadn't realized they'd been filming. "Welcome to my home."

"As it turns out, just six months ago, Andy was sharing a two-bedroom condominium with his friend Eric Yang," Katie's voice narrated to them, as footage of Andy giving Katie a tour of the mansion played on the screen. "By sheer chance, their place was one of the areas selected at random for one of the very first round of pairings, in San Jose, California, only about an hour away from the base itself. Andy told me of how small and homey the old place was as he walked me through the new home the government had relocated him to at the beginning of September."

The image cut to show Andy and Katie standing out in the back yard, overlooking the huge amount of space available, as well as the pool and the pool house.

"He moved from Ohio to California in 2005 to work as a tech writer, but also lives a second life as a well-regarded, if slightly underperforming, sci-fi/fantasy writer under the name Blake Conrad. This detail is germane to our conversation, because it's how Andy got where he was."

They cut to a shot of him in the large ballroom, but it was cropped so that he was the only one in frame, even though it was clear there were other people around him. "The guy who came to come and test us, Dave he said his name was, it turned out he was a fan of my Druid Gunslinger series, and the next book in the series had been delayed because of the pandemic. Of course I had a bunch of advance copies just sitting taking up space in the condo, so I gave the guy a signed copy of 'High Noon At Stonehenge' because, shit, someone ought to be reading the damn thing, and Dave was risking his life with all of this pandemic stuff. As a result, he told Eric and I that we were being classified as Level 5s, which really only mattered for the first few months, I guess, but that's apparently when we needed it the most, as it's what got us here."

Cut to a shot of a man in military uniform the chyron identified as 'Major General Fielder, Head of Quaranteam Project' keeping as expressionless as possible. "Early on, during the most dire stages of the pandemic, we were told to implement a priority system, handed down to us by the President's office, with men being categorized somewhere between level 1 and level 5, with level 5s being the most critical members of society. This system was only in place until mid-September, when our casualty rates were identified as being catastrophic, and we moved into triage mode, where basically every surviving man was being considered a level 5 from that point onward, as there were so few of them remaining."

The video cut back to Andy, this time sitting in his writing room. "Aisling arrived first, and she was an absolute godsend," Andy said. "Like someone had picked my brain for what I thought a perfect woman would be like. She was smart, she was witty, she was playful, she was fun, she had a great sense of humor-"

"She's gorgeous," Katie added, helpfully.

"Oh absolutely she's gorgeous," Andy laughed. "I was sort of worried that she wouldn't be into me, because on a scale of one to ten, she's at least a twenty, and I'm a six on my best days."

The video cut to a one-on-one interview between Aisling and Katie that he hadn't seen any of before. "Andy probably told you he thinks I'm out of his league, didn't he?" she laughed, that Irish brogue tinging every word. "What a git. Andy's self-confidence was one'a the first things I started working on as soon as I got here, because I knew it needed proppin' up."

From there, it cut back to a wider shot, showing Aisling with Niko on one side of her and Andy on the other before cutting to Katie, in an exchange Andy very much remembered.

"Let me ask you Aisling," Katie said. "Was Andy the sort of man you dreamed about ending up with when you entered into the process?"

"At first, my head was a little clouded, because the process when it started wasn't as refined as it is now, so when I met Andy, my mind was a little fogged up with lust, but he ticked all the boxes of what I wanted out of a man," Aisling replied, but this time, Andy noticed that she was squeezing his hand in the shot. He'd forgotten about that at the time. "He didn't look exactly like I expected him to, but yeah, within a couple of days, I knew I loved him pretty hard. Still do."

"Would he have been the kind of person you would've gravitated to in a bar?"

"I would've thought he was cute, but I was horrible at dating, and only had a couple'a boyfriends before him, so I'm a bad judge of character for that sort of question."

The video cut back to Andy in his writing room, his Russian blue Muninn sitting on his lap, purring. "After Aisling, Lauren showed up almost immediately after, and then like two or three weeks later, Niko showed up, and I figured that was going to be the end of it. The little two-bedroom condo we were living in was already starting to feel very cramped, what with seven of us living in it."

"Seven of you?"

"Me, Ash, Lauren and Niko in my bedroom, Eric and Eric's partners Lily and Jenny in his."

"Weren't they arriving in equal numbers for you and Eric?" Katie asked.

"At that point, Eric had put down on the questionnaire that he wasn't interested in polyamory, and Jenny joined him and Lily just because she was Lily's close friend. Anyway, with seven people sharing like 1100 square feet, I thought they wouldn't change us any further. Little did I know, it was all just getting started."

Again, it cut away and started panning slowly over all the individual faces of everyone on Team Rook who was in the ballroom for Katie's interview last week. "While Andy may have thought it was going to stop at four, the current count for Team Rook stands at 21 people, a few of whom aren't pictured here because they were still in the middle of the imprinting process when we arrived. It seems like quite a large number of women, but it also includes a couple of faces you may be surprised to see," the narration said, just as the camera stopped its panning to show Andy in the left portion of the panel with Emily in the center and Sarah in the right. "We'll be back to tell you their story, after this."

The show cut back to the ticking stopwatch clock before going to ads again, as Sarah laughed. "They need an entire commercial break to edit out all my fucking swearing," she giggled, making the entire room of gathered friends and family laugh with her.

"I'm so not looking forward to this, Andrew," Emily said to him nervously. "It's one thing to have a relationship, it is quite another to put it out on front street."

Niko sat up and leaned across him, cupping Emily's cheek, pulling her forward as the two kissed right in front of him, tender and soft, just for a moment. "Fuck'em if they can't handle it, Em," Niko told the willowy Brit, who blushed and smiled, nodding in response.

"Yes. Well. Quite right."

"I see the advertisers are already ahead of the curve on all this," Phil called over to him. "Diapers, baby formula, moving services... it's like everybody needed to get up and make sure we knew they'd lived through the disaster and were ready to sell us stuff they know we're going to need soon."

"You guys really gonna push on everyone having kids, Phil?" Jenna asked him. She'd always been pretty adamantly anti-kid, but since she'd gotten paired up with Dale, she'd been starting to soften on that stance a little.

"Don't look at me, Jenna," Phil said. "The government knows we need to bring our population back up and quick, so they're gonna do anything they can to make it as appealing to as many people as possible. It's a giant uphill battle, telling every woman you know it's time to get pregnant."

"Lie back and think of England," Emily joked.

"Close enough," Linda replied.

"Speaking of which, how soon are you going to try for it, Em?" Violet asked her.

"I want to get the movie based on Andy's book up and running first, but after filming of that is done, then perhaps I'll consider it," she said with a soft smile. "How about your household?"

"Found out this morning I'm pregnant," Linda said. "Who the hell knows how that happened..."

"Well, Linda, when a man and woman love each other very much-" Phil started.

"You finish that sentence and I'll have you sleeping on the couch for a month," Linda said, making Phil fall silent, although that grin plastered across his face spoke volumes.

There were so many people in the room that conversations were happening in little pockets all over the place, but as soon as the commercials began to wrap up, and the image of the ticking stopwatch reappeared on the screen, the room fell silent once more.

On the screen before them, a shot of Emily, Sarah and Katie Couric in a room together, Katie sitting across from each other. "You may recognize both of these two women," Katie said in narration, "but may also be surprised to see them together. They have a very interesting story to tell, one that started well before the pandemic set in."

"So the two of you are both part of Team Rook?" Katie said.

"We are, but we were actually together before we arrived here," Emily said. "Together together."

"We've very privately been a couple in Hollywood for, oh, around the last two years," Sarah added. "In a full, committed relationship."

"You're not even swearing," Andy whispered to her.

"It's really fucking hard," Sarah grumbled, cracking her knuckles nervously.

"You may be familiar with both of these actresses separately," the narration said as the video cut to footage of Sarah in 'Ballerina Badasses.' "Sarah Washington won the hearts of many in the quirky art house meets action film series 'Ballerina Badasses,' where she alternated between high-precision dance and dark, murderous comedy, but we first came to know her from her star-making turn in 'Airway Mishaps,' where she was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar."

The screen jumped again, and a much younger version of Emily popped to life. "Emily Stevens, on the other hand, is likely better known to younger members of our audience, who grew up watching her as Dahlia Hairtrigger in 'The Dagger Academy' movies, based on the worldwide best-selling children's books by E.F. Winston, which remain some of the most profitable movies of all times. Since that franchise ended in 2014, however, she has had trouble securing another breakout role."

"We were both, like, visiting a set where a mutual friend of ours was shooting a movie, and the two of us totally hit it off right from the start," Sarah said. "And dinner after the day's shooting turned into drinks, drinks turned into dancing, and before either of us knew it, we found ourselves together. In a relationship."

"Why keep it quiet?" Katie asked.

"As open and positive as Hollywood likes to present itself as," Emily said, "the idea of two bisexual women still seemed to take people aback. I was already having trouble following up 'Dagger Academy,' and Sarah also found herself somewhat trapped in the 'Ballerina Badasses' shadows, so we decided that once we had new large-scale projects to be promoting, then we would disclose our relationship publicly."

"It's not like we're all that different from loads of other Hollywood couples," Sarah added. "Straight, bi, gay and anywhere in-between, actors loathe the idea of talking about our relationships instead of our work. There are loads and loads and loads of actors in relationships in Hollywood that they're not talking about publicly because they want to keep some parts of their lives to themselves, and who can blame them, am I right?"

"And yet you're willing to talk about it now, here, today," Katie said to them.

"Well, I think it's important that everyone know that the Oracle process is looking out for them and their interests, and is willing to protect existing relationships as long as they're disclosed in advance," Emily said, which made Andy frown a little bit, knowing damn well that they hadn't disclosed their relationship before they arrived, and that the Oracle system hadn't had anything to do with their arrival in his household.

"Andy Rook's 'Druid Gunslinger' books weren't massive successes, but they were cult hits," the voiceover said, panning over a handful of the covers of the most recent books in the series. "But as it turned out, Andy's nom de plume of Blake Conrad had at least one very famous fan, so famous that they attended one of his panels at the 2019 OmegaCon, just to get a chance to talk to him," the narration said as it cut back to large group shot for a moment before cutting to a panel room that Andy remembered only vaguely. "We were able to track down this footage, which served as the first 'meeting' of Sarah Washington and Andy Rook. That's Washington in the Chewbacca costume and Emily Stevens in the Greedo costume next to her."

"Do you ever imagine actors playing any of the parts you've written in the Druid Gunslinger books, and if so, who do you see playing the various parts?" Sarah as Chewbacca asked him on-screen, the room crowded with a couple thousand of his fans. "Not just the protagonist, but all those strong female characters in all your stories."

"Oh my god," Sarah said, burying her face in her hands, unable to look at the screen. "They found the fucking footage. I wish I was fucking dead. I fucking wish I was dead, and I super fucking wish Katie Fucking Couric was dead."

"Sure, I think a lot of writers typically write with actors in mind for our characters," Andy said on screen, his voice a little muffled as the microphone attempted to project his words to the gathered audience of a few thousand. "I know I certainly do it. No one'll ever see them, but I usually have a 'cast list' of actors who I'm imaging for each part in my books. I've been pretty vocal for a long time that if I could have anyone I want play the Gunslinger himself, I'd get Christian Kane from the show 'Leverage' to come and do it, but you're asking about some of the other parts, so let me see here... well I've been pretty partial to the idea of Olivia Munn playing Dr. Erika Shirow, and I don't know if you ever saw a film called 'Airway Mishaps' but there was this remarkable, charming actress named Sarah Washington in it, and I've always thought she'd make an excellent Layla Heartseye, the Barbarian Queen. She's got confidence and swagger while still sort of having a playful attitude, but you can also still imagine her beating the shit out of someone while making fun of them with a giant grin plastered on her face, something I think we can all agree on that Layla needs." The audience cheered in response to his comment, as he smiled out at them. It even made modern Andy smile a little.

Sarah in the Chewbacca costume seemed to be visibly vibrating with excitement, giving a quick, blurted "Thank you!" before grabbing Emily by the hand and almost fleeing from the convention meeting room.

The video cut back to Emily and Sarah sitting across from Katie Couric, as Katie said to them, "So you both asked to be assigned to Andy Rook, when you found out about that option?"

Emily and Sarah had warned him about this in advance, so he knew it was coming. As part of the ongoing investigation into how Covington and his friends had been able to bypass the Oracle system, Emily and Sarah would stick to the story that they'd asked to join Andy themselves, and omit all conversation about the poker game.

"We were quarantining together, so when the lovely people from the Air Force came to administer the tests to us, I asked, on Sarah's behalf, if it was possible for us to request someone specific to be with, and put forth Andrew's name, to send our names to him for his consideration," Emily said, clearly more comfortable towing the party line than Sarah was. "Andrew accepted, although he certainly seemed a little starstruck that two Hollywood actors would choose him personally seemingly out of nowhere, but after we arrived, we told him about Sarah's love for his writing, and all's well that ends well."

On screen, the image switched back to the group shot, showing Andy surrounded by all the women, clearly spare footage from when Katie's team were getting the microphones all set up, as Team Rook was involved in a variety of conversations, little pockets of people talking, while the narration continued.

"Team Rook relocated from the small condo it had been living in before to their new home where we caught up with them in New Eden in September, when it became clear that the number of partners a man needed to have was escalating quickly."

Cut to Phil in his office, leaning back in his chair. "Obviously there's a minimum viable number and a recommended number, but as it stands the minimum viable number is three, to avoid any fatal effects from DuoHalo. The recommended number, however, is twelve, to provide as much immunity to DuoHalo as possible. At eighteen or more partners, a man has a 99.9825% immunity to the DuoHalo virus, but obviously that can be a big ask for many people, and I have to admit, even as a man who likes a lot of sex, that much sex in a week can be more than a little exhausting," Phil laughed, Linda squeezing his shoulder. "Even with the enhancements we're getting as a byproduct of the Quaranteam serum, we're still only human after all."

"What sort of enhancements?" Katie asked him.

"Men and women affected by the Quaranteam serum typically have increased circulation, decreased refractory periods, increased sexual fluid production and increased stamina, along with slightly increased appetites," Phil told them. "Our bodies are now working at an elevated rate."

"When Andy Rook, Aisling Blake, Lauren White and Niko Redwolf left the condo in San Jose to move into this mansion in New Eden," the narration said, showing the outside of Rook Manor, a panning wide shot to establish the size and scale of the house, "they didn't really know what to expect, and it came as quite the shock to Andy that the mansion already had staff, who expected to regularly engage with him sexually in some rather surprising ways."

"So, Andy," Katie said to him on screen, cutting back to their group interview. "Explain to me the difference between family and staff, and how you decide that."

When he put his hands up on screen, everyone in the room gathered to watch laughed a little, a reaction which put Andy more at ease. "First and foremost, I do not decide that. When the military came and relocated us from our little condo and brought us here to New Eden, the house also came with three members of staff attached with it, all of whom I was told had been selected to mesh with me, and whose boxes I would tick as well."