Free Regarding Ducks and Universes by Neve Maslakovic

the health center; whether the guard posted at the double doors was there to prevent people from going in or out, I had no idea. I followed Chang down the corridor, catching glimpses through half-open doors of rooms already occupied, presumably by the other twenty-one patients who’d come in contact with the pet Murphina. My room was at the far end. It looked like I was among the last to be found and brought in.
    The next couple of hours, now dressed in a salmon-tinted patient gown, I spent lying in bed receiving far more attention than I’ve ever received at a medical establishment. I continued to feel fine, as I told Chang and other personnel who kept coming into the room to ask questions—” Does your face itch?”—” Have you been sneezing?”—” Are you feeling nauseous at all?”—and made sure to refrain from accidentally scratching any body part in their presence.
    As the door swung shut behind Chang for the third time, I eyed my jacket, which was hanging on a door hook along with a bag containing the rest of my clothes; one of its pockets, I’d remembered, held a chocolate bar. There’s something about being in a health center that makes you want to stuff your face: The starkness of the white walls. The utilitarian furniture. The unnatural cleanliness of the place. The aura of other people’s sickness. Besides, no one had warned me about dietary restrictions or brought me a snack.
    I got up to fetch the chocolate bar, then got back in bed. Lying next to me was the questionnaire Chang had left regarding my whereabouts since my arrival in Universe B. I ate most of the chocolate bar (no loss of appetite for me so far) and then looked the questionnaire over. Among other things, it posed some very personal questions regarding possible exchanges of bodily fluids. I must have been their easiest patient ever. Potentially full of contagious germs, loose on the streets of San Francisco B, free to do anything, what had I done really—fondled a few paper books and stared out a bus window.
    Halfway through the questionnaire, I took a break to finish the chocolate bar. I tossed the empty wrapper in the direction of the bedside bin, missed, and had to get up and pick up the wrapper off the floor and drop it into the bin. A quarantine, of all things. I would be a guest at the Palo Alto Health Center until Monday—longer if I came down with facial itching and heavy sneezing—with nothing to do but wait until I got out of the Palo Alto Health Center to begin my sleuthing.
    At least I had Noor & Brood working on the case.
    I was absentmindedly rubbing my lip (where there was a chocolate smudge), when I realized that the action could be misconstrued as scratching and ceased immediately. In response to my new fear of itching, my face and scalp instantly developed thousands of prickly spots, like ants crawling all over my skin. I busied myself with the questionnaire.

     
    By late afternoon, interest in me having somewhat dissipated and the chocolate bar having long been digested, I decided to venture out of my cramped, windowless room in search of dinner. I put on a pair of padded sock-slippers, made sure my gown was tied securely in the back, and went out into the hallway. The math B-dweller from the crossing was standing at the far end, by a door marked Cafeteria . She too was in a patient gown and padded socks, and was talking into her clunky omni. As I neared she gave me a nervous grin as she carried on her conversation. “—But Arni, isn’t the direct approach the best?—No, I know we have to be careful…I can be subtle. What? Yes, I do know how , Arni—”
    After a brief internal debate about the wisdom of eating in a room filled with quarantine patients, some of whom might actually be infected with the pet bug, hunger won and I went into the cafeteria. Set out on a long table covered with a plastic tablecloth was the usual warmed-over health center fare, but having essentially skipped lunch, I wasn’t