A day is divided into 36 parts 3 times over; 36 "turns" forming 36 "loops" forming 36 "circuits", with each day starting 18 circuits to the turn after the previous noon. Everyday time is designed to be built around local noon in one of the very many finely divided time zones. This can result in clocks being set forwards or backwards, as there aren't precisely 36 turns, loops and circuits in every day, so an additional turn must be removed in order to follow the movements of the sun. This means that for important appointments like exams or elections, things are scheduled according to atomic clocks that run fully independently of the sun, if only behind the scenes.

The Novel Illness people guide Minaiyu towards the RRF Limited Written Sources, an organization dedicated to preserving and understanding the written history of peoples with limited, poorly understood or poorly preserved textual sources when he asks about who to send encyclopedia images and translations. They're hoping that Minaiyu would help them out on learning as much as they can about his culture.

The articles explain some of the very basics of being quarantined: washing your hands frequently and thoroughly, minimizing contact with others, and testing yourself regularly to be on top of any potential illnesses. Sniffers use specially trained insects that use olfactory receptors to detet the unique smells of people with different illnesses; this lets them know which of many diseases people have. There are several kinds of sniffer batteries, that use complicated combinations of insects trained on multiple different overlapping groups, meaning they need less than one insect for each illness. There are a bunch of mnemonics for washing your hands properly, and disinfecting anything you come in contact with, but it's not particularly interesting.

After that, there's a more in-depth explanation of various kinds of respirators and protective equipment for various illnesses. As the very simplest measure, there's a simple "don't spit on people when you talk" mask, available in transparent fabric that keeps your face visible if the bug is something really mild and non-infectious, as well as more effective disposable mask designs that protect better. Beyond that, there are respirators, with various kinds of more or less breathable exhalation valves, and respirators without exhalation valves being the most effective and protective unpowered protective equipment; and finally, there are the positive-pressure systems used in healthcare settings or the most severe illnesses or roleplay. They're all custom-fit, are available with rechargable or primary batteries, regularly have microphone and speaker systems to get the best possible voice quality, and some designs are meant to let everyone get a good look at your face; the article shows an image of a famous musician wearing a very elaborate kind of positive-pressure respirator that shows off her face while being light and breathable enough to let her dance energetically.

There's also a huge crowd of concertgoers, dressed in the face-revealing low-end type of mask. But they're just doing a Pandemic Awareness Day, so there are no endemic infectious diseases at the time and they have absolutely nothing to worry about! Finally, the article shows some of the musicians on stage dressed in "formalwear masks": they are cartoon heads of anthropomorphic animals, often worn on top of suits of foxes, wolves or other kinds of furry animals. Formalwear masks are big enough to hide tons of fans and filters to keep the performers cool, and they often help enormously with keeping them cool as they exert themselves playing music even in the heat of the summer. Maybe you'd want a cool, high-tech formalwear mask, or even a full outfit, of your own one day?, the article suggests.

The time system will take some getting used to, but he thinks he can manage. It's odd to think of the new day as beginning at midnight rather than dawn.

Huh. He's...kind of unnerved by the sniffers being biological, that seems hard to disinfect, but maybe they're bred in cleanrooms like those strains of microbiome-less lab mice.

They manufacture transparent fallback masks? He's not quite sure under what circumstances you would want this over an ordinary N99--if you're alone and are only looking to keep out dust, why would transparency be useful? "letting breath-bondmates read your lips when you have a dust mask on" seems like a small niche--but it's interesting that they can.

...he stops and stares for a while at the picture of the concertgoers and its caption. A huge, dense crowd...that is wearing merely low-end masks...and they're only even bothering with that much because they're doing a pandemic drill?

'There are no endemic infectious diseases at the time', it says. Just...just how good is this society's medical tech, to have gotten that much of an upper hand in the arms race against its parasites?

He's read the statistics. In the average year, about 10% of Tashayans contract a cold. They've made great strides since the bad old days, but children struggle to understand the importance of keeping their masks on and their dirty fingers away from their eyes--he certainly did, he had a cold when he was three (so he's been told: he doesn't remember it) and another when he was nine (the first five-day of it was the worst five-day of his life, and after that he truly understood what the adults were worried about)--and most people don't find getting one booster or another every three five-days to be worth it to maintain vaccination against all 160 of the currently-vaccinatable rhinovirus strains, given each person's individual life circumstances and individual level of proneness to side effects. (He does. It's encouraged in healthcare workers (though not mandatory for most roles), he doesn't have a needle phobia, and his side effects are very mild.) And then there's the constant struggle against evolution, the selection pressure towards vaccine-evading strains and strains with longer pre-symptomatic infectious periods...

(He wonders if his decision to onboard onto the rhinovirus vaccination cycle has saved the world: if not (necessarily) from death, then from tremendous suffering. He'll probably never know for sure, if that was the critical piece that prevented him from carrying one into this staggeringly clean society. assuming he didn't carry one in, his oldest boosters are almost two-thirds of a year old and wearing off, and then there's the fomites)

He does feel somewhat better about touching things that came with the house, after that.

He wonders if the formalwear descends from rituals aimed at communing with nature.

He would love to contribute to the Limited Written Sources archive.

Pictures! Of! An alien encyclopedia!!

The people from the Limited Written Sources association are utterly ecstatic about everything that Minaiyu sends them, as they excitedly work to help translate and understand everything written in Minaiyu's language. As this is happening, someone from the Novel Illness people asks Minaiyu how check-ins should be scheduled, and whether he'd feel safer if he could have some medical equipment kept on standby at the hut where he's quarantining.

He asks the Limited Written Sources contact if he should also send them copies of music recordings, or if there is some other archive that would be more suitable for those.

"I'll text you at these three times (I've set phone alarms for them), or within" ten loops is too short, he might be showering. twenty? no, eighteen is a rounder number in this system, let's go with that "18 loops thereafter. If I don't text you within that window, call me. If I don't answer, check if you can see me on the camera, and investigate if you can't figure out what's become of me or if you can see something's gone wrong.

I will let you know if a different schedule turns out to work better for me as I settle in here, and I will also let you know if I'm planning to do something that will leave me uninterruptible during a check-in window.

As for medical equipment, hmm...a pulse oximeter? I'll let you know if I think of something else."

He pauses for a moment.

"Oh, actually, we should put one of the analgesics from my bag on the list of alien substances to analyse. I feel like you have a word for 'paracetamol', but I'm not sure I trust the mysterious language implant to be giving me a direct translation for that and not a localisation. I'm not in any particular pain right now, and I have several of my own paracetamol(?) pills with me, but it seems good to check in advance."

The Limited Written Sources people want audio recordings sent to someone else, although they're not quite sure who. They don't have any recordings and want to leave working with them to the experts in that area.

"We're glad that we're able to reassure you by checking on you once in a while. And we're happy to send you a pulse oximeter together with the emergency summoning bracelet, and a camera that lets us observe you in the living room, as well as another just for good measure. Although we're quite sure that paracetamol refers to what we'd expect it to, we'd also wish to analyse it to guarantee that it does... although we're not quite sure about how to do that while you're still quarantined and we're worried about spreading illnesses both ways."

He'll still make copies of the music (including some recordings of himself singing folk songs and other such things he doesn't have professional recordings of), but he'll leave them on the phone for now. Once he gets a spending account, he can look into personal remote-backup services.

"I can include a paracetamol alongside the ration bar whenever we're ready to do that, however long that takes."

"That'd be an excellent time to do the analysis, yes. I can't think of anything else we need to hear from you? Are you happy to be by yourself while we stand by for the first checkin for today?"

"Yes, I think that's everything for now, thank you."

He's not quite hungry yet. He thinks he'll probably ask for breakfast during the late-morning check-in.

In the meantime, he'll work on archiving. He experiments with a few different setups, testing whether it's practical to run audio copying in the background while he takes pictures of text, propping the computers (carefully) up against different objects to find the most stable and convenient configuration. He sets up by a window so he can charge the joey off his solar panel.

Copying audio as he takes pictures of text works perfectly fine. There are a few books and a bedside table, and a few books do a fine job propping up both of the handheld computers.

He's more concerned about taxing himself by trying to keep up with both tasks than about whether the phone is capable of running both programs at once, as well as concerned about introducing background noise to the recordings by moving around, but those issues seem pretty workable also.

Late in the morning, the phone alarm beeps.

"Hello!" he texts. "Everything is coming along well so far."

"I'd like to get something to eat, please. Probably we should stick with the rice, beans, and wheat pancakes for another day or two before we start introducing more items?

My main meal is mid-evening, so I won't be able to eat as large a portion as last night right now, but it's probably more convenient for everyone to send larger amounts less frequently than to send small packages six times a day. I can keep the leftovers in the fridge."

He sends a picture of the empty food container, since the size information on that might have been lost in the handover.

"I think another package the same size would last me a few hours? I don't have my heart set on this exact size, though."

(He almost didn't bother to mention what general scale he was thinking of, but he is trying to make fewer assumptions with the aliens.)

"Well, we're used to eating twice a day, and that inevitably means fairly large portions. We're happy to get you rice, beans and pancakes, and we're hoping they'll still taste fine if you let them sit in the fridge if you don't think you'll want to eat everything at once. You don't need to send us the picture; food is made to fit within that size food container by default, so you'd have to ask us for a different-size portion. We can start sending over the food now; we hope you find it fresh and flavorful."

As this conversation is happening, Minaiyu hears a chime. Looking out, he can see a robot covered in plastic carrying a plastic bag with the things that he asked for: two cameras, a dark gray pulse oximeter with a bright, high-contrast LED screen, and an ultra-soft silicone wristband with a recessed button that'd work to summon emergency medical services to his location if he should ever have the need for them.

Twice a day? He...might be able to get used to that? Maybe he will ask to keep some non-perishable snacks around once he has sorted out which ones are safe to eat, so he can eat on a more normal schedule without having to bother them with weird portion sizes / frequent deliveries or eat leftover rice. It is kind of itching at him to be in a dwelling with no food stocks.

Ah, lovely. He gears up, fetches the delivery, and re-does the home-entering purification. (Another reason not to want to order food on six separate occasions.)

He puts on the wristband (what a nice design), sets up the cameras, and tries on the pulse oximeter. 99%.

It's mostly uneventful for another 2 circuits, until another robot, carrying a total of 5 different kinds of sniffers, arrives. They're small black boxes, come in another sealed plastic bag on a plastic-wrapped robot, and have strips of indicator lights on them. After leaving them somewhere in the room and waiting a bit, only one of the lights turns on, glowing red; it claims that Minaiyu is shedding some kind of Novel microorganism, and also reassures him that the hut is free from basically every plausible illness know to thomassia.

("Hi, bugs," he says to the sniffers in Singleton Literate Language, as he sets them up.

It feels objectively silly to take care to address the bugs in SLL, it's not like they'll understand him any better that way than they would in Tashayan, but he can't quite shake the feeling that it's more polite.)

Welp.

It's...not necessarily pathogenic to Thomassians.

or to any forest creatures that stepped on his footprints in the field he landed in

He texts the Novel Illness team.

"The 'novel microorganism detected' indicator lit up," he says. "What are the next steps?"

"Well, the last time this happened, the person in question rested at home until the virus or bacteria that caused the illness were beaten off and the illness faded! We think that this won't happen this time. Our thought is to see if an animal of some kind, perhaps a bird in a lab, catches something of you? But... I think that this is a situation that calls for us sending in someone to take a sample. And to try and find out what this very novel illness might be. We're taking this as seriously as is possible for us. Again, we see if whatever is triggering the sniffer goes away by itself, and in case it doesn't... we'll send in someone. To take a sample and find out what can be learned, and hopefully move on from there. I'll need to get the preparations going; I'll let you know as far as I can in advance, when we're thinking of sending someone in."

He winces at calling the microbe an "illness" when they don't yet know that for sure, but he certainly doesn't like the odds that it's not true.

"Alright.

What will the sample-taking process involve? It's not that I expect to balk at it or anything," honestly, if they decided it was too dangerous to leave him alive he doesn't think he would fight back, given the stakes (and the fact that he knows his existence isn't at risk, even if they likely don't), "but it would be good to know what to expect."

"Well, we're going to land one of our helicopters in that clearing of yours, and have someone walk out in a pressurized suit, with an extremely well-reinforced airtight steel box kept inside a heat-sealed plastic bag inside a plastic bag to hold the sample, and then we're going to track its location until it reaches our maximally remote biosafety lab."

That is good to know, but he was primarily asking about what he will need to do. Maybe someday he will get the hang of talking to the aliens.

(At least he doesn't need to learn Singleton Literate Language from scratch: that would have been so much worse.)

"What actions will I need to take during the sampling process? Will you need a blood draw, or a spit vial, or for me to blow into something, or is it passive like the sniffers, etc?"

"Oh, we only need a spit vial and to take some samples from the air... most likely; I was going to give you the instructions once everything was done and finalized, but I'm quite sure they're going to just do those 2 things."

"Ah, I see."

He will...pace for a while, and manage one leftover pancake, before he goes back to archiving.

what if he never gets to hug anyone again, what if he's stuck in quarantine for the rest of his life then he will contribute to his host society remotely, and when the time comes for him to shed this tainted body they can study it in a heavily warded biohazard lab until they have learned all they can, and then they can cremate it, and one day he will land elsewhere having brought nothing physical with him at all and can he hopes make new friends there that he can safely touch

Into the phone's audio recorder, he sings a song about how to develop antibiotics.

The next few days aren't quite enough to form a routine, but things at least begin to settle into patterns.

Minaiyu records articles and songs and some translations and a few books. He pokes cautiously at the Internet, trying to stick to the shallows until he has a better sense of the appropriate security practices. (He finds and plays a game designed to help people practise their typing skills.) He paces and does push-ups and jumping jacks, for the time being. He gradually adds more variety to his food orders, and none of it seems to harm him. (He avoids asking for the thing the sourceless-semantic-bleedover is telling him is "strawberries", since Rekkan strawberries give him a rash. He is curious if Thomassian strawberries would too, but now really doesn't seem like the time to test it.)

He isn't sure which of his dreams are worse: the ones full of fire and destruction, or the ones where he is happy and safe.

He sleeps hugging a pillow.

He doesn't, subjectively, come down with any symptoms.

Ultimately, the sniffer still gives the scary positive result as it always had; Minaiyu gets told a few circuits in advance that a helicopter is going to land, with someone walking out to take spit samples and the ambient air. And, as scheduled with immaculate punctuality, a very loud wooshing noise can be heard as a helicopter makes its approach to the clearing. Someone wearing a very large and bulky positive pressure suit starts taking a few surprisingly nimble steps towards Minaiyu, holding an incredibly durable-looking metal box on top of 2 plastic bags, and a tiny vial perfect for taking a spit sample. The man waves at Minaiyu, his voice coming through crystal clear, only slightly muffled by the wall separating him from Minaiyu.

"If you wish, you can walk to the floor above or hide in the bathroom while I take some samples and leave the vial for you to use, and then I'll return to take it back to get it sampled and tested? You seem to be quite careful concerning biosafety, and I thought that would possibly put you at more ease than me walking into your personal space."

Minaiyu puts his respirator on: it sounds like leftover breath will be sufficient at this point and there is no need for him to be actively putting more unfiltered breaths into this airspace right now, and it's good to gear up before opening an external door (he still hasn't dared test the pollen, after all).

"I think probably a good balance would be me taking the vial from you and then hiding upstairs to do the spit sample while you sample the air?"

"Yes, that'd also mean me spending the absolute minimum of time here in addition to everything else... I also feel like it's more appropriate that you open the door. So, shall we?" He takes a few steps closer and gets ready to hand over the vial.

He nods, and opens the door to another person for the first time.

He carefully plucks the vial from the man's grasp (still not touching anyone, even through the hazmat suit) and goes upstairs to lift his respirator and take the sample.