Oh. Well, alright. 1556 is less than 1557, so she settles in to be sick in bed.

She orders herself a big bowl of soup and a container of juice that looks tasty.

... she should stay up to eat, even though she's should maybe sleep after that. But she has finished her books, and she doesn't have a mask to go down to the library.

Does the library deliver, too?

The library does deliver; Emily can ask to have one of the library's books sent up to her apartment, and someone will volunteer to just walk up with it and hand it over to her.

She accepts the book with a blanket wrapped across her face, in lieu of a mask, and settles down to read, rest, recuperate, and sip her soup.

By mid-morning, she finds herself re-reading the same page for the third time, and leans back against her pillow with a sigh.

She dozes for a few minutes — or it feels like a few minutes at least — before she's woken once again by chills. She checks her temperature again. It's crept up to 1559.

She frowns. She doesn't want to leave her blanket nest again. But the advice on her phone was to seek medical care ... She should try to get Tylenol, at least, but she doesn't know what they call it.

She pages back through the search results. What should she do, now that her fever has worsened?

"Fevers in excess of 1557 are acceptably sensitive as indicators of an illness that can and should receive medical treatment. Initially, a sniffer box and an antipyretic are recommended, and if they indicate a worrisome condition, contacting a diagnostician and preparing for a course of at-home treatment is highly recommended as the next steps."

... ugh. That sounds like more steps that she doesn't want to have to do when she's sick.

But (after checking the definition of 'antipyretic'), it makes sense. She orders whatever the recommended child-safe antipyretic is, as well as a sniffer and some more soup. She likes sipping the soup as she reads.

There are several brands of child-safe antipyretics; the standard is sending over a bottle with several different types, in fact, so people can try out which one works best for them instead of sticking to the first one that they tried. They're different colors, but it only says which color is which antipyretic on the inside of the pill bottle's lid, so Emily won't be biased by whichever antipyretic has the nicest name or seems like it should work the best.

It takes another 20 minutes or so before the antipyretic sampler, soup and sniffer arrive at Emily's apartment, with the robot waiting outside again. Bringing the sniffer inside doesn't result in it producing any kind of response... which means that Emily has a Rare or Novel Illness, going by what she's read about sniffers online.

Well, she's never heard of a sniffer before coming here, so maybe this one is faulty?

In any case, she'll start with a random antipyretic — blue, because she likes blue — and then go sit and have a Rare or Novel Illness in bed.

About ten minutes later, she suddenly starts feeling hot, sets aside her soup, and casts off her blankets. She chugs some water from the bathroom as well. But as she sits and cools down for a minute, she really does start feeling significantly better.

... the sniffer probably isn't broken. She doesn't think she's seen a broken piece of technology since she got here. She checks to make sure it isn't obviously banged up or anything like that, and then looks up what you're supposed to do if you have a Rare or Novel Illness.

The sniffer looks like it's in utterly pristine condition; sniffers can be tested by using a piece of soap, which they're universally designed to be able to sense, and sniffers always have manuals where you can look up the illnesses they're designed to detect. People with Rare or Novel Illnesses are expected to use second-line sniffers and see if they find anything, and if those can't make a diagnosis, they're expected to send in samples of spit to a local testing lab; they're considered so important that people with such illnesses get paid a pretty penny for sending them in, in fact.

After the lab test, they're expected to be vigilant in case their illness worsens, and to be ready to get more medicine and equipment to facilitate at-home medical care, just in case. But first of all, those with Rare or Novel Illnesses are to use second-line sniffers to guarantee that their illness is just rare, not novel.

Alright, that makes sense. Although she does wonder whether the payment pays for ordering the sniffers, if people mostly don't have novel illnesses. That sounds a little too much like a homework problem for her to want to spend time on, though.

So she tests it with soap, orders a second-line sniffer, and spends her little bit of antipyretic-boosted energy dealing with dirty dishes and the like.

And then she returns to bed, pulls the blanket just over her feet, and rests with a book.

Bringing soap within a few meters of the sniffer (it's deliberately less sensitive to soap, to ensure that it provides a clear signal) results in it making the special test signal, letting her know that everything works in the sniffer. A second-line sniffer appears after giving Emily a bit more time to enjoy her reading in bed. It manages to sense the soap just as well as the first. And reveals that whatever she has is, indeed, not Rare, but Novel.

They don't show this part, in the books.

She knows that different places have different diseases, and it only stands to reason that different worlds will too. But it's not heroic, is it, bringing a new disease with you.

She spits in a sample jar and hands it back to the delivery robot.

And she sits near the window, no longer feeling chilled, but still with the general malaise she's learned to associate with sickness, and watches the tiny figures walking down the street below.

She wants to go home.

After a while she sighs, and goes to drink some more soup.

If she wants to go home, she'll have to figure out the means herself. And the first step must be getting over her illness. She doesn't know what the next step is, but she'll figure it out from there. Maybe it's a Narnia sort of situation, and she has to become Queen.

She dozes. Time slips away like it does when one is sick, and soon enough it is nighttime. She takes another dose of antipyretic before bed, and sleeps.

When she wakes, she doesn't feel much better. In fact, she wakes with a particularly phlegmatic and unpleasant cough.

She doesn't want to get up, so she doesn't. But after a while she feels so grungy, sleeping in uncleaned sheets, that she drags herself to the shower. After her shower, she hangs off the bed upsidedown and beats her chest, like her parent taught her, to try and get the stuff out of her lungs. She coughs it up into the bathroom sink.

Afterwards, she's feeling much more comfortable. She orders more soup, because she sees no particular reason to eat anything else. She likes soup, and it's important to have fluids when you're sick. She also, belatedly, remembers that she needs to cancel her tests, and tries to figure out how to do so. They must let you reschedule tests if you're sick, right?

That's entirely correct; rescheduling is essentially as simple as ordering an exam, and you only pay a fee for canceling if you ended up taking an exam slot which someone else might have taken, which Emily thankfully didn't. Also, while she was asleep, someone had her spit sample tested. She got a phone from the lab that did the testing. "We have confirmed that you have been infected with a NOVEL pathogen. Be careful and proactive in terms of treatment, and reduce the strain on your body to its absolute minimum. We're here to support and care for you; please accept this payment as a reward for informing us about the novel pathogen." Checking, a respectable amount of money has been added to Emily's account.

... being paid to be sick is honestly so weird. But it does mean that she doesn't worry too much about lounging around the house, ordering in large quantities of soup and library books. It would be enjoyable, if she weren't still too cold and too hot at turns, and coughing up unmentionable substances with some regularity.

She spends a lot of time napping. She's never really liked napping during the day — it's hard to rest when it's bright out — but being sick greatly increases her tolerance.

In between the napping, she orders more books, and frets about whether anyone else would have caught what she is pretty sure is the flu from her.

She looks it up ­— what do the people here do when they detect a novel pathogen? Because surely they must do something about it, to make reporting one worth a payment.

Novel pathogens lead to starting races to create tests, and ideally sniffers, for detecting it, followed by highly-publicized races to invent theoretically-useful treatments for it. It's treated as almost a sporting event, where everyone is excited to see what kinds of treatments and tests that all the scientists manage to come up with.

... huh.

She's not a doctor, but she's pretty sure this is the flu? It seems like flu, anyway. But she doesn't know how to treat the flu, exactly, other than bed rest and fluids, which was already their default advice, so she probably can't contribute much to the races.

Actually, does anyone want to see pictures of her phlegm?

Reading up on what little has been done in the "race" so far, it seems like there are people interested in trying to talk to whoever got the Novel Illness to try learning as much as possible through getting more info about what symptoms you get from it. So they'd probably also want to get a look at Emily's phlegm, if she felt like talking to the people working on tests and treatments for it? They're offering rewards for whoever sent in the sample to talk about their illness on a video call.

Um.

She's not very sure about a video call — she is currently a mess. Because she has a fever.

Instead she writes up a detailed textual description of how she feels, what her temperature was at various points, and some vaguely remembered facts about Flu from her world: more common in the winter, often not serious, unless someone's lungs fill up or they're already not healthy.

She sends it off to the researchers, and indicates that she can answer questions, she just doesn't want to video call.

And then she hides her phone under her pillow because she doesn't want to look in case responding like that was rude, and tries to read a book instead, for about 30 seconds, before checking her messages. There are no new messages. Because it has been 30 seconds.

She puts her phone down again, focuses on her book, and drinks more of her soup.

The researchers are happy to ask questions about Emily's Novel Illness via text. They ask about what the symptoms are like, what kinds of treatments she's tried, her theories about how the treatment is going to progress, and what might be some possible ways of improving her quality of life.

Right.

Well, she hasn't had anything other than soup and antipyretics. And she doesn't feel great, but that seems basically fine? It's what she would expect the treatment for something like this to be, unless she got worse, and then there are antibiotics and stuff?

She's not sure if the Flu is bacterial or viral, though. She's not entirely clear on whether you can even tell that without a microscope. Anyway, generalized antibiotics or antivirals are a thing if someone actually gets very sick, she thinks.

The symptoms are just the normal disease stuff — generally feeling bad, coughing, sneezing, a bit of nausea, fever. Personally, she thinks the fever is the worst, because it makes her feel bad. Also she has had less energy, but that's normal for any sickness. When she's gotten sick like this in the past, things have been pretty steady, and then all of a sudden her fever breaks and she feels fine, basically. A little weaker than normal for a while, maybe?

But maybe that steadiness is just because her parent gave her medicine. Tylenol, which they don't have here, and which is normally a painkiller but she's pretty sure it's an antipyretic too, now that she knows that word.

As for her quality of life, she actually can't think of much? Being sick sucks, but she's getting spicy soup and books on demand, and not being made to take tests or go anywhere, and that is pretty much all you need when you're sick.

She isn't really thinking about whether the researchers know she's from another world. Normally, she might realize that they probably don't, but it takes enough concentration just to put her reply together that she doesn't really think of it.

...they're quite confused by the advantages of "not being made to take tests or go anywhere", which seems a bit unlikely for someone who's literate and would presumably have passed the relevant exams? They feel a bit confused by how she doesn't seem to have mentioned anything about trying to use a humidifier so she can have moist air that often feels better or try one of the inhalational medicines that usually ease the coughing and sneezing; most people feel like it makes things really just to try it, and renting the equipment for just a few days is cheap enough anyway.

Oh. She had no idea that they made humidifiers or medicine for that. She's pretty sure that they didn't have those in Vermont? Or, they had humidifiers, but people didn't use them when they were sick.

Also she's not sure whether she would really want things to be more humid. She's been inhaling the steam off the soups, and ordering spicy soups because they help clear her sinuses, and that seems fine? Her eyes do get dry and scratchy when she has a fever, so maybe a humidifier would be helpful. She'll try one and let them know.

She sends a response off to the researchers, and then looks at what it would cost to rent a humidifier.

The cost to rent a humidifier is indeed a very small number! The researchers also ask her about if she's ever properly participated in a Pandemic Awareness Week, and what kind of mask she has, if any, just in case she feels like going outside and wants to not have to worry about making anyone else sick.

She'll order in a humidifier.

It has occurred to her, by now, that the researchers definitely don't know she's from another world. Which ... she feels like she should have been more on top of that? Should she have not let that slip? On the other hand, it's not like it would be hard for a shadowy antagonist to figure things out from what she has said.

She spends a little while trying to figure out if this is the kind of story where being from another world gets her locked up in a lab, or the kind of story where the moral is about learning to trust other people. She watches clouds scuttle across the sky.

The truth is this isn't any kind of story at all.

She hugs her knees, trying to figure out how to respond. Finally, she remembers something that her older cousin Peter told her once, at a different cousin's wedding, when she found him sitting on the dock with a mug, his feet dangling in the water: "tell the cops nothing, and doctors everything".

Disease researchers are probably relevantly doctors, she decides.

No, she tells them. She's never participated in a Pandemic Awareness Week, because she's from another world. And she doesn't have a mask, because she just came here with a book and her clothes and didn't realize masks were standard.

As soon as she's sent it, she realizes that she probably sounds delusional.

She tells them that they can check, maybe, with the teacher who found her when she arrived. She has their phone number.

She looks up masks on her phone, her eyes drooping closed for long stretches. She should probably nap again, but she wants to see what the masks are like. Something about the idea of wearing one in public really appeals to her.