"I might have made you really sick. And it would be really, really bad if you made anyone else sick like that."

"Huh. Kids get sick from each other all the time, though. Is it really that bad?"

"I'm the only one who has it." Not quite true, of course, but an easier explanation. "And this sickness would kill most all kids! And then the adults are gonna be in a bad spot, too!"

"Our Lord, grant us from Yourself mercy and prepare for us from our affair right guidance."

Okay. Now. How to (ugh) handle this. 

"Yeah. As I understand it, you don't particularly want to go back to that brick farm, right, um, whatever your name is?"

"Aliyeh. And no, I don't."

"So, say I help you go even further away, and find you food for a time?"

Is this the part of the story where she's tempted? Or is is maybe not that story, but the part of the story with the Allah sends help and you are supposed to accept it?

"How would you even help me go?"

"Carry you. I'm really, really, really strong and fast."

Hop! And he's up. Zip! And he's over there. Zap! And he's back.

Huh. That's scary.

Also, that's him being naked all in my face again.

"Okay. You should cover up your shameful parts, though."

Shameful parts. LOL, okay.

"Fair enough! With what, though?"

"Take some of. Uh. My clothes. I guess."

How is he even without clothing. That's not a thing that is allowed to happen by the laws of nature, people who aren't very little infants being outside of their homes without any clothes.

Laws of motion only ever specify clothing as a specific thing when it comes to some Miracle powers, you know? 

She definitely doesn't! 

"Okay, thank you. But it might get torn or fall off when I'm going really fast."

Why's she nervous about lending him her clothes? Oh, right, probably gender taboos of some sort, whatever.

So, he doesn't, strictly speaking, have to carry her.

And close potentially transmissive contact would be unavoidable if he did.

But he's gonna have to constantly watch her to not get into contact with anyone for a week.

And if he prevented her being infected for 5 days, but infected her on the sixth, Huxley's Flu could again be stealthy for up to a week.

He's... cautiously optimistic on cooperating with her as a Miracle to self-quarantine. She seems ultimately reasonable and compassionate, not because but despite socially-instilled qualities that Transhumanization could erode.

There's a quiet, mathematical voice inside of him, that's saying that there's one simple and foolproof solution to the problem of not infecting anyone else through her.

It's gonna be ignored.

Okay. Let's stop being scatterbrained and think clearly.

Option 1: Try his damnedest not to infest her. Wait a week. Hope really hard for no stealthy slipups or outliers in the incubation term.

Option 2: Infest her deliberately. Wait out a week. She doesn't really have good chances, but if she could became a Miracle, it would probably be a massive positive in unimaginably many ways, considering the situation. But there's no ambiguity in the outcome. 

Option 3: Simply make sure she doesn't infest anyone, regardless of whether she is infected. No. Fuck that. Brain, why. She was being nice to me and she was helping me and is that how we want to contact a new world I don't think so.

...he could do Option 1 for a long time, like two months.

If he doesn't infest her in 5 weeks of consistent behavior, she's unlikely to be infested in the end of 6th.

And viruses don't randomly do incubation periods nearly that long, right? I don't remember hearing about it. But I didn't read any medical encyclopedias either.

Yeah, okay, that kinda solves every problem neatly. 

Inconvenient as hell, but what’cha gonna do? 

And, you know, there's still some risk of being wrong.

But Jean isn't gonna let tiny chances rule his decisionmaking when it, like, really fucking matters and the trap is obvious?

He'll need to actually calculate the necessary time, which he trusts himself to do. 

For now, though:

"On a second thought, I don't think carrying you is a good idea. What if I haven't infected you, and then accidentally do it while carrying?"