Terry had just gotten back into his truck when his phone began to ring.
“Hello.” He answered
“Where the hell are you, the test is about to begin.” stated his girlfriend’s voice on the other end.
“What? No, the test isn’t until another hour.” corrected Terry, he still had an hour to get to his class and the university was less than 5 minutes away.
“No…Pr. Smith moved the class time forward to give everyone time to finish the final.” Corrected his girlfriend. “And you know her, if you aren’t here on time, you get locked out.”
“Fuck.” Cursed Terry as he started his truck and began a mad dash toward the nearby university.
He all but slammed on the brakes as he pulled into the parking lot. He jumped out of his truck and ran into the nearby building. Luckily the lecture hall where his class was, was on the first floor. He just reached the door as his Professor Smith had just reached the door.
“Well Welcome Mr. Lu.” Said the elderly Math Professor as she closed the door behind him. “So glad that you could join us.”
All eyes where on him, the lecture hall wasn’t the largest on campus but there where over a hundred pair of eyes on him. He moved to his normal seat located beside his girlfriend and best friend who all shared the class with him.
“Mr. Lu you know the rules. Last person in passes out the tests.” Stated Pr. Smith as Lu placed his bag down and headed to the front of the class to grab the stack of test booklets. He began to hand them out, counting the number of people in each row of the hall before handing a stack of books to the first person to pass it down the line.
“Now, no cell phones, calculators only.” Stated the Professor, who had to be in her mid-60s or early 70s. “There is to be no talking, if you need to go to the restroom or sharpen a pencil raise your hand and I will come to you. Now you have 2 hours to finish this test, I wish you all the best of luck. You may begin.”
And with that everyone opened their booklets and began to answer the questions.
Looking back on this day, it would be noted that they were doing a test over percentiles and probabilities. And that since Terry Lu was a super spreader of the mermaid virus and that he had touched every test as he handed it out that 89 of the 100 people in this room would be leaving humanity behind before the day was out and most before the time the test was supposed to end.
None of them knew, their humanity was about to go away.