Lunari
Without any surprise, you find yourself entering a professor’s office at the University of Lunari. The most renowned college in the entire drift system. What does surprise you is how big his 36th floor office is. A well dressed bespectacled man notices you looking out the window.
“I like having my office up so high as it minimizes the number of grad students that come visit me. It has to be truly important, at least in their own mind, to come all the way across campus and wait for our very slow old elevators to bring them up.”
“That explains the height, but why are you wearing glasses? Are they an affectation?”
The professor chuckles, “You are blunt. They are a necessity. Ordinarily a physician would have given me an injection of Retlax V to restore flexibility of the lens, but I have an allergy to Retlax, so it’s more sensible to have a pair of glasses. However, I did choose these old wire rimmed spectacles instead of something more modern and practical to provide, as you called it, an affectation.”
The professor clears his throat, “But to jump to our actual business at hand. This virus is quite unusual in the sense that it can attach itself to more types of cell hosts than other viruses that I’ve studied. It can find host cells in every creature I’ve introduced it to and can therefore be passed along through all animals whether they are humans, Ilex, Strayons, Zhians, or even avians, and insects. This wide range of potential hosts is what prevents a city from simply isolating itself till the disease is gone. A bird, a flying insect, or a woodland creature can simply carry it to the next populated area.”
“So are we doomed?”
“Hopefully not, even though it would not be easy to contain it to one city, or even just one continent. In a strictly practical sense you could probably destroy a world to contain it. My mother-in-law lives on Kemplar II, so perhaps destroying at least that world wouldn’t be all bad. We are better funded, and therefore have better equipment than any of my rivals on other worlds. Maybe the fact that we can provide better scans of the virus itself than anyone else will give Dr. Arken, then he will have the necessary details to come up with a solution before I have to tell my wife that her mother was killed for the good of the galaxy.”
Remove a virus token from your hold, and replace it with the blue triple helix token. This represents the data collected from Lunari. It may be taken to Merv’s Missiles or Arken’s Arsenal at any time. Gain 1 fame point when you deliver it to Merv’s Missiles or Arken’s Arsenal.