The residents of Archanis Station might have been cowering in fear, but for Dr. Luke Lockwood, the contagion was little more than an afterthought. He had more important things to worry about, mysteries of the universe itself to unlock, and after the symposium, he was feeling energized about the prospect. Would Dr. Keynes or one of the folks from Bilana III, Tomobiki, or Mempa V take him up on his offer? He certainly hoped so. This could be the next great leap forward in superluminal travel as long as one of them was willing to take the plunge.

On this particular evening though, recognizing it would take some time for them to dissect his findings from the Underspace, the astrophysicist turned his attention to another problem that had been eluding him for some time. He’d constructed a derivation of the chronogeometric curvature invariant within a simplified Lorentzian manifold, and now he just needed to translate it into the real spacetime manifold in order to achieve a major breakthrough in the field of temporal mechanics.  Of course, this was an unsolved problem that had eluded physicists for centuries, but he didn’t doubt for a second he could be the one to solve it. 

Today wasn’t that day though. Even the easy stuff, like the Ricci tensor needed within the field equations of the extended model, just wasn’t coming together. The math wasn’t working, but math didn’t just not work. It was brains that didn’t work, and right now, his was the culprit. His thoughts felt foggy, and he was tired. Very tired. But that didn’t make sense. He’d slept in, and he was only nine or ten hours into his workday.

Maybe he just needed another cup of coffee?

Dr. Lockwood stepped away from the board and walked over to the replicator. “Coffee, black, extra strong,” he ordered. And then he coughed. Once, and then again. He felt warm too, and a bit clammy. Maybe it was the late nights before the symposium? His first opportunity to present to competent peers in some time, he’d poured his heart and soul into the works he’d presented.

As the coffee cup began to materialize, his combadge chirped. 

“Henderson to Lockwood.”

Didn’t the doctor have something better to be doing right now than calling down to him? There was a contagion rampaging across Archanis Station and Dr. Henderson was knee deep in his work to develop a cure. “Lockwood here. Go ahead.”

“Where are you right now?”

“I’m in my office,” Dr. Lockwood replied. “As the computer could have confirmed for you.”

“Are you alone?”

“Yeah, just me and my equations,” Dr. Lockwood grumbled as he looked over at the mess of unsolved equations on his board. “Why do you ask?”

“I need you to stay put and to isolate from any contacts. Someone will be down soon to collect you, and in the meantime, I need you to report all your contacts to Captain Bishop.”

“Oh…” Dr. Lockwood growned. He didn’t have to ask why the instructions. He knew exactly what they meant. If he was being told to isolate and to provide his contacts to the Polaris’ security chief, that meant they’d determined he’d come into contact with someone that had contracted the virus. “Who’s got it?”

“This afternoon, Archanis Station found a deceased woman in her quarters, someone who attended the symposium and, according to badge logs, was in close proximity to you for an extended period of time.”

Dr. Lockwood thought back to the auditorium aboard Archanis Station where, just three days prior, he’d stood proudly presenting his findings on the Underspace to five hundred of the sharpest minds in the quadrant. They’d been mostly at a distance, more than the five meters of separation distance defined by the protocol… except for those who’d come to see him after. “It was Dr. Elizabeth Kynes from the ASDB, wasn’t it?” 

“Yes. How’d you know?”

“Was just a hunch,” Dr. Lockwood frowned. The subspace propulsion researcher from the Advanced Starship Design Bureau had looked a bit sickly when she’d approached the front to ask a question about achieving the appropriate excitation for an Underspace-like compression of subspace anthropogenically. At the time, he’d thought nothing of it, but now with hindsight, it was easy to see. “What a shame. I was looking forward to working with her on the next era of superluminal travel.”

“This is just precautionary though. I’m sure you’ll be alright.”

“Don’t sugarcoat bad news to an empiricist,” Dr. Lockwood countered. “You have no reason to be sure I’ll be alright..” And in his mind, he began to worry. He had been feeling a bit under the weather, if he was honest with himself, and the Ricci tensor really shouldn’t have been giving him so many problems. “I’ll stay put until you guys come for me. I know the routine.”

“I appreciate it, and I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news. Henderson out.”

The comlink disconnected, and no sooner had the physicist picked up his coffee from the replicator than a voice came over the loudspeaker.

“All hands. This is the captain.”

As Dr. Lockwood listened, he could hear the fear in Fleet Captain Devreux’s voice.

“We had hoped this moment would not come, but unfortunately it has. While we do not have any confirmed cases aboard the Polaris at this time, based on new information, effective immediately, we are implementing virological containment protocols.”

That new information was about him, Dr. Lockwood knew.

“Except as necessary for continued essential operations, all staff are ordered to return to their quarters and to shelter-in-place until further notice. Department heads will be in touch with further instructions. Devreux out.”

This was real. They were in it now. And it had started with him. But what could he do? His gaze returned to the board. Might as well try to make something of the time while he still had time. Soon, they’d come for him, and if he tested positive for the contagion, well… that wasn’t something he wanted to even think about.