Chapter 36

November 15^th, 2020

Half an hour later, his phone rang and Andy glanced down to see it was Phil calling, a picture of him with the words “Phil The Elder” superimposed over part of it. The poker group actually had two Phils in it – Phil Marcos and Phil Pak. The two men were dramatically different from one another, but also remarkably similar in others. They shared the same first name, so the group had given them nicknames when they were talking about them if it could’ve been either of them.

Phil Marcos a.k.a. Phil The Elder a.k.a. Greater Phil was 34, Filipino and worked for Boeing with the Air Force at a base in the East Bay, and was certainly the closer friend to Andy. They’d met at a local comic book store just after Andy had moved out to the West Coast, and had hit it off immediately. When Andy had started his poker group up a few years later as a way to have some regular face time with people, Phil was one of the first people Andy had called.

Phil Pak, a.k.a. Phil The Younger a.k.a. Lesser Phil was 32, Korean and worked for the NSA out of San Francisco, and not someone they’d seen as often as they liked. For the last couple of years, Lesser Phil had been trying to convince Andy to come work as a data analyst for the NSA in terms of interpretation and extrapolation.

Lesser Phil had been a college friend of Eric’s, and had been introduced to Andy only a few months after he’d met Greater Phil. While Andy still typically thought of them as Greater and Lesser Phil, he tried not to call them that out loud, and had them as Phil The Elder and Phil The Younger in his phone. Andy asked if it was a common name, and Eric remarked that he knew at least a couple more Phils but none he knew that well. Andy told him he’d had a similar problem with Jennys in high school.

“Talk to me, Phil,” Andy said to his friend. “You heard the recording. Should I be worried?”

“Concerned, yes. Worried, no,” Phil sighed. He sounded exhausted on the other end of the line, but as of late, Phil had always sounded exhausted. Whatever he was doing over at the base, it was certainly taking a toll on his friend. “The good news is that in the long run, it shouldn’t make too much of a difference. But that reaction means that Lexi had been infected with the Orange Variant of the DuoHalo virus before we introduced the serum to her body.”

“The ‘Orange Variant?’”

“We started naming them after colors, working our way through the spectrum. The Red Variant was first, but it died off very quickly, so this is the second one,” he grumbled. “But she isn’t our first exposure to it, so we know how the serum’s going to generally react to it, and what it’s going to do to her. There are only two real major differences you’re going to need to worry about.”

“Is she going to be okay?”

“I told you, in the long run, it shouldn’t make too much of a difference. The two differences you need to pay attention to are this – first, her margin of error for recursion is far less forgiving. That means don’t ever make her go more than a week without getting some Rook juice, if you know what I mean, otherwise she’ll see temporary cognitive decline set in pretty fast, and she’ll be ripping your clothes off no matter where you are, so keep that in mind.”

“Every seven days minimum,” Andy repeated, writing it down on a notepad in his writing office. “What’s the other major difference I need to worry about?”

“It shouldn’t even be a concern, but you should still know about it. You know how other men’s semen will typically make an imprinted woman ill?”

“Sure?”

“Those who’ve been exposed to the Orange Variant, if they come in contact with the semen of a man other than those they’re imprinted with, they go into a violent fit of rage, attacking anyone other than their imprinted man on sight. Those rage fits tend to be relatively short-lived – only an hour at most – but they’re still incredibly dangerous and not the kind of thing you want sprung on you as a surprise.”

“And this is my bodyguard who has this,” Andy sighed.

“Oh, it’s fine,” Phil chuckled. “She won’t harm you, and you know how to protect your family better than anyone. I think anyone who tried to use it as a weakness against Lexi would probably not live to regret it. She’ll also be imprinting for longer than normal, so if she’s sleeping for like a day and a half, don’t worry about it. That’s to be expected.”

“You doing okay, Phil?” Andy asked. “You look like shit, and I’m more worried about you now than I am Lexi.”

Phil sighed then laughed a little bit. “You know me. I’ll sleep when I’m dead. Lots of long days in the office turning into long nights, and on top of that, Audrey and Linda are making sure that I have several partners as well, so that my immunity to DuoHalo continues to be strong. We’re not entirely sure of the science of it yet, but it looks like the more people inside a particular polypod, the stronger the internal herd immunity the male at the center get is. Once we knew that for certain, my two queens made sure I had a good litter of partners in our household. I’m up to eleven myself now.”

“I still can’t believe I’m a level five and you’re not, Phil,” Andy said, deliberately testing a theory by trying to bait it out of his friend.

“Okay, Andy, you got me,” Phil said with amusement. “I’m also a level five. I was lying to you earlier, for security reasons. In fact, I think technically I was one of the first level fives. I’ve also technically had DuoHalo, but I can’t really get into the details of that all that much. Let’s just say that when we’re finally through this whole pandemic, I’m going to have a bunch of stories to tell you that will blow your mind. I probably have to get clearance for you so that I can tell you some of them, but it’ll be worth it.”

“I’ve always known you were up to something over there, Phil,” Andy laughed. “I just couldn’t figure out what it was.”

“Greater Phil, International Man of Mystery. It’s got a nice ring to it.”

“Speaking of Mystery. Poker, this week. Let’s do it.”

“Yeah, sure,” Phil said. “I could use a break, so you call everyone else, and I’ll make a point of coming over with as much of the family as I can convince to come out, although it has that weird side effect of making every poker night feel like a giant party where we’re all hiding from our wives. Maybe we should see if there’s enough interest to set up a second table and we can mix-and-match, so you can spend a bit more time meeting my partners and vice versa.”

“Well, you see Niko all the time, what with her being at your work, so you probably know her about as well as I do.”

“That girl’s got secrets upon secrets, Andy.”

That caught him a little off guard. He wasn’t bothered by it, but he was amused at the idea of her trying to hide something from him. “Niko? My Niko? I can’t see it. She’s open and transparent about everything with me.”

“Sure, okay. Didn’t you feel that way about Erin?”

“That was different?”

“Was it though?” Phil said in a tone that immediately conjured the Smug Thor meme to his mind. “I mean, sure, Niko’s secrets are probably being kept from you for the right reasons, as opposed to Erin’s, but secrets are secrets.”