Quaranteam: Phil's Tale Ch. 07

Chapter Seven

The next few days, Phil found himself delving deep into the systems behind not only the Oracle program, but also how New Eden was being built up and scaled into, even as he and his small collection of partners were being moved into their new mansion.

Something about leaving the home that his parents had worked so hard to buy and pay off felt odd, but at the end of the day, there was just no chance he was going to be able to continue to live there, what with the collection of partners he was growing and cultivating.

The first day he had woken up to see Violet standing guard over him and Linda, that had felt more than a little weird, but she'd insisted it was necessary, and that he'd better get used to it. For the foreseeable future, she'd set her body clock to be sleeping from 10 in the morning to 6 in the evening, and at night, she would be making sure the house was safe.

It was odd, knowing there were two women who would literally lay their lives down for him at a moment's notice, but both women had insisted that he get used to the idea, because it wasn't going to be changing any time soon.

Sexually, the two women couldn't have been any further from each other if he'd tried. Linda was fun, active, sporty and adventurous in the sack, while Violet was extremely shy and traditional. Violet made love. Linda fucked. Violet liked to cuddle and spoon a little afterwards. Linda would be just as happy to watch him plowing into someone else once she'd gotten hers. Violet was as hetero as they come. Linda was down for just about anything. Both women had their appeal and their respective place in his life.

Audrey had told him time and time again that while she would love to take more oversight of the house, her job as the emotional counselor to the base had her feeling drained and exhausted nearly every single day, so when they were off work, all she wanted to do was to snuggle up next to Phil and Linda and watch the trashiest, least challenging TV she could find. The heavy mental toll that was affecting everyone was hitting her maybe hardest out of everyone.

Even the move had been taxing, despite the fact that there was a staff waiting to greet them, or maybe because of that fact. Linda had arranged everything for him in advance, setting him up with a majordomo for the house, a chef and a gardener. All three women would also contribute to keeping the mansion clean and tidy, as Linda felt like they wouldn't need someone full time, not yet anyway.

The trio of new women were gorgeous, and they'd all signed off on Phil, even if he hadn't initially signed off on them. Linda, of course, would not be dissuaded, and wanted Phil to go through a similar experience to what the men arriving in New Eden now were going to go through, including his friends Andy and Eric, who were scheduled to arrive in New Eden in just a few days. People being moved into the mansions were being presented with staffs, and while they had right of refusal, they had to do so to the woman's face, something that they suspected would be much harder to do. It was much easier to go along and get along than to tell someone you didn't want to be their lifeline.

Phil's majordomo's name was Valerie Staples, and she was the first of Phil's partners to be older than he was, at 38 years old, although she definitely didn't look it. With dark hair and soft blue eyes, dressed in a business suit and skirt, Val looked like she should be managing a Fortune 500 company, not looking after his ass. She was all business, and Phil worried that she didn't have a sense of humor at first, but within a few minutes, he'd determined she had a sense of humor, but that it was as dry as the Gobi desert, and if a person wasn't perceptive, it could easily come across as mean.

Valerie's partner, Winnie Brookmeyer, was the cook. She was dark haired with blue eyes, like Valerie, but had a much more elfin appearance, with rosy cheeks and pale cream colored skin. Winnie was 34, and she and Val had gotten married a few years ago, but both of them still liked the occasional piece of male distraction, which they'd agreed with Linda was a role that Phil could just take care of moving forward. (Phil jokingly referred to it as being their "stunt cock.") Where Val was serious, Winnie was the life of every party, boisterous, loud and laughing all the time, but not in a way that annoyed. She also had a love of Filipino cooking, and promised Phil that she would do her best to keep his heritage in a regular portion of her meals for the household.

For the gardener, Linda had brought in her friend Bella Porter, a 26 year old tall and slender brunette with vaguely Italian features. Bella, it turned out, had been a 'budtender,' or for the unhip, she'd been a marijuana grower for a local dispensary, and she and Linda had been friends for a couple of years, since Linda's arrival in the Bay, long before her arrival working at the lab at New Eden. Bella was laid back, easy going and wicked smart, although she hid a lot of that behind the ruse of a typical stoner, trying to make herself seem far more checked out than she actually was.

That brought Phil's partner count to eight, which was one over last week's recommended minimum. But last week's recommendation was last week's recommendation, and the oversight group was already revising those numbers, based on the ever increasing casualty numbers that just kept rolling in, day after day. This week's recommendation was an even dozen per man, although the reports were that the number might go as high as fifteen. Current data was suggesting that if a man hit eighteen or more partners, he would have 99.98% immunity from DuoHalo, as long as he maintained his sexual regimen, and that even if he were to contract the disease, an encounter with a partner would cleanse it from his system within minutes.

Those numbers would've been thought of as impossible just a few weeks ago, but now... now they were almost starting to seem inevitable. The number of dead and dying men across the world wasn't just terrifying, it was civilization redefining.

Phil was coming to dread the morning meetings on the base more than anything else he ever had in his life. It felt a little like being part of a strategy meeting on how to get people off the Titanic, some twenty minutes after the ship had hit the iceberg, and the meeting was being held in the first life raft to hit the water. They were safe, and they knew they were safe, but the question now was how to get more people to that level of safety, and how to keep the country afloat while they did it. (Not to mention how to avoid pissing some people off that they weren't getting treated as quickly as others, or how to get people to take the treatment if they were rabidly against vaccinations. Phil's opinion was that natural selection clearly wanted these people to remove themselves from the gene pool, so the only thing they should do was let them.)

That last question, how to keep the country from crashing and burning, was well above the pay grade of the team at New Eden, and so thankfully they were just working on getting the serum out to as many people as they could, and to ensure those people would survive their inevitable exposure to DuoHalo. Someone else could make sure that civilization carried onward; all Phil's team had to do was make sure there were people there to do that.

Dr. Varma had been able to increase the potency of the vaccine that they had grafted onto the serum they were now affectionately calling the Quaranteam serum around the base, and while it still required several women to be feeding into the immunity of one man, resistance to the virus was on the rise. In fact, Dr. Varma had told Phil just the other day that based on her research, he could probably go walking through a field of people infected with DuoHalo and wouldn't so much as get the sniffles, although she very much urged him not to test that.

Talking with Dr. Varma had been difficult over the past few weeks, because as much as Phil was trying to convince her to get paired up to some man, any man, she simply wouldn't have it, insisting that since her husband had died, she had no interest in remarrying or even partnering up with anyone. The entire base was trying to respect her grief, but Phil knew that sooner or later, the decision was going to be taken out of her hands, and it would mandated to her that she get a partner. Phil hoped when it came time for that, they would at least work with her to get her someone she would be happy with, and not just some asshole who would make her miserable.

Niko, Andy's new partner, had actually formed a good friendship with her, so maybe Phil thought to himself, she could convince Charlotte to join Andy's household if need be. When she was on the base, Niko was in many ways serving as Dr. Charlotte Varma's bodyguard, keeping tabs on her surroundings for her, although that had stopped since Niko had been assigned to Andy, since she was being given time to get to know him and the rest of his family.

According to all reports that Niko had given Linda (and that Linda had sort of informally relayed over to Phil), she and the rest of the Rook household were a good match, and that Phil had been right to trust his instincts in putting them together. She was a little young for Andy's type, but if he was going to have Linda pushing teenagers at him, it only seemed fair that he be able to do the same back to Andy and the rest of his friends.

Pretty soon, they were going to have to start pushing additional people on Eric, Andy's roommate. The days of monogamy in the pandemic era were coming to a rapid close. They literally couldn't afford to let any man have the luxury of only having one partner, because to do so might well have been a death sentence. It was better than nothing, but a single partner was estimated to provide only a 20-30% resistance to DuoHalo, and with men rapidly becoming more rare than diamonds, it wasn't a luxury they could allow him to have.

Phil's phone beeped at him, a message from the Signal messenger app coming through. The days in which nobody had been allowed to bring a phone on base were long since dead and buried, as more and more people came into the lab. Keeping in constant contact with people outside had gone from being something people needed to worry about occasionally to something people needed to do all the damn time. He unlocked his phone and opened up Signal, seeing the message was from Andy. Speak of the devil, he thought. The message just said "Meet up in an hour at the usual spot?"

Andy should've been hip deep in packing by now, so the fact that he was reaching out to Phil meant something was up, so Phil shot back an immediate response. "Make it two." No way in hell Linda would approve him leaving on such short notice, and even with two hours instead of one, she was likely to give him grief over it.

Linda had made it abundantly clear that she didn't like him leaving the security of New Eden, and so Phil had gone to give her plenty of advance notice. She'd been about to argue and then Phil had told her it was to meet Andy, and she had relented at that point, knowing Phil was always going to put himself on the line for his friends. Audrey was swamped with work, and so Phil would appear to go alone, but Linda would be watching from the distance with a sniper rifle trained on the area, and they'd woken Violet up a little early, so that she could be laying down in the back seat of the car, ready to spring into action if needed. Phil had tried telling her that it was all very unnecessary, but Linda absolutely would not have it, and so all the extra security stayed.

Just about ten minutes before Andy and Niko arrived, Linda set up shop in a little makeshift sniper's hidey hole, something that had put Linda a little more at ease, based on the text she'd sent him. "Andy here w/Niko in tow, so gtg." It was about as secure as they were going to get outside of New Eden, but it would also likely be the last time they would need to be worried, as Phil had just gotten the confirmation that Andy would be picked up tomorrow or the day after. Most of the people who were being relocated into New Eden were being given a basic ten minutes to gather anything they absolutely needed, then taken away, with the rest of their stuff to arrive weeks, maybe even months, later. But since Phil could give Andy a little bit of warning, he figured there wasn't any harm in the matter.

Phil decided it would be best to still play up the paranoia and uncertainty about how the DuoHalo virus worked for the time being, so he went the full regalia, with mask and goggles, although this time he was also wearing a kevlar vest on beneath the baggy t-shirt, at Linda's unwavering insistence, and he hoped like hell Andy wouldn't notice it.

They parked on the opposite side of the empty lot and walked partway across, just as they had last time. The mask and goggles together covered Phil's ears, so there was no chance Andy could see that he had a little earwig transmitter stuffed into one, with Linda on the other end of the line, talking in his ear. "No other car sounds," she said to him, "so unless you're being ambushed on foot or by people in an electric car, I think we're generally in the clear, although I'm going to keep overwatch."

"Paranoid much?" he muttered beneath his breath, the mask making sure Andy couldn't see his lips move, and the level of his voice quiet enough that his distant friend couldn't have heard. He pushed his vape pen behind his mask to take a drag from it, then tugged the mask down briefly to blow out a cloud of vapor into the air, the THC calming his nerves just a little bit. He knew he needed to cut down on the use of it, but hell, if tomorrow could be the last day of your life, live every one without regrets or hangups, he figured. "So what's the 911 call about, Andy?"

"First, let me introduce you -"

"2^nd Lieutenant Redwolf," Phil said, cutting him off. Andy would easily suss out that Phil and Niko knew each other prior to this moment eventually, and he felt it best that she had to do as little lying to Andy as possible.

"Mr. Marcos," Niko replied, to his amusement, leaving off the 'Doctor' he had worked so hard to ingrain in everyone in the office. "Didn't know your name was Phil."

So that was how she wanted to play it, huh, Phil thought to himself. Office colleagues who may have bumped into each other now and again, but no real familiarity. Okay, he decided, I can roll with that. "I'm surprised you even remember me, Redwolf. You were pretty out of it when I sort nudged you towards Andy."

Andy cocked his head. "You sent her my way?"

God, Andy, Phil thought, for someone who can pick up on the most subtle of things in a heartbeat, you truly do have a blindspot when it comes to the women in your life.

"She's part of our tribe, Andy. Geek cred through and through, and I figured it wouldn't hurt to have her kept in the family, so I just made a connection in the system. She had decent odds to end up with you anyway, but why take a chance, right?"

"Guess I owe you one then, Mr. Marcos," Niko said. He could hear the genuine tone in her voice, and he could tell that the two actually made a pretty good couple, as he suspected they would, despite the age difference.

Phil swiped his hand in the air. At this point, Andy had to have put two and two together, and realized that Phil was at least somewhat involved in the development and deployment of the Quaranteam vaccine, even if neither of them was explicitly calling it out. They'd get to it when they got to it. Until then, Phil was happy enough to pretend they both didn't know. "Then I'll call in that favor to insist you never, ever call me Mr. Marcos unless we're at work. Deal?"

"I can make that promise."

"This what you called me about, Andy?" Phil said, suspecting it probably wasn't. He stepped a few paces back and just pulled off his mask so he could just continually draw from the vape pen, hoping his sort of cavalier attitude towards the masking would rub off on Andy without him having to actually explain it. The two of them were certainly protected enough that they could be having this conversation standing right next to each other, but being overly cautious cost them nothing.

"Nah. I've got a bigger problem. So Eric's picked up a runaway."

Phil frowned a little bit. He hadn't heard hide nor hair about this, and this was partially the reason he'd helped steer Niko into the Rook household, so he wouldn't get fucking surprised. "Niko sent me a text last night that they'd added someone unauthorized to their household, but that I shouldn't worry and that we'd get an update soon, so I'm guessing this is that update," Linda said into his ear.

"How do you mean?" Phil wasn't sure if he was talking to Andy, to Linda or to both of them, but Linda remained silent and Andy carried on.

"So Eric's partner, Lily," Andy said, with the expression of a guy who was tired of asking for favors, but knew he had to ask another one. Phil actually liked seeing it, because Andy had always been the one going out of his way to help other people and so it was nice to be able to pay off some of that karmic debt. "She had a roommate before the whole pandemic, name of Jenny. Now apparently Jenny was set up with some guy."

"That's how it works, Andy." Was Lily just unhappy with the guy her friend had been set up with? The system was designed to make optimal matches, so Phil didn't see what all the fuss was about, unless maybe there had been some minor glitch in the system. He hadn't met Lily, but based on her posts to the group Discord, she could be a bit feisty.

"I get that, Phil," Andy said, frustration in his voice. "But it turns out the guy she was set up with was some kind of domestic abuser."

"Wait, what?" Phil genuinely scowled. "That sort of thing should've shown up before he got paired up with anyone." Men were getting paired up as fast as they could, but there were some very notable exceptions, which were violent criminals/ex-convicts and anyone, anyone, who had a history of domestic violence. It was something Phil had been very explicit about, and something the team had agreed to make a major priority.

They were bonding people for what might be the rest of their lives, and the last thing anyone wanted was for them to be stuck with someone cruel or abusive. It wasn't just a red flag, it was maybe the only real red flag that they were working around. Being married, being divorced, hell, even being divorced for being unfaithful - none of these were true deal-breakers, but guys who beat their wives and girlfriends could get fucked and die off for all Phil cared.

And yet, the system was being worked on by so many people now, it was possible that that one hard and fast guideline had gotten overlooked, overwritten or just left off in an update, someone trying to prune code cutting out something vital and earth shatteringly important.

Now he understood why Niko had wanted this to get to him personally, so he could ask questions and figure out what the hell was happening. This was far too important to be given in a regular update - it was priority one news and something Phil was going to be all over the second he got back to the base. Someone's head was going to fucking roll for this.

"I dunno," Andy answered, interrupting Phil's rage filled train of thought. "Maybe it didn't get reported before, maybe this was his first time and he was trying it on. But before Jenny could get imprinted on him, he tried to take a swing at her."