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It was not a good day in the laboratory.

Dr. Matthew Keller had already set up these bacterial cultures twice before, but the large, floor-mounted centrifuge in the constantly whirring equipment room insisted on stopping violently half-way through each time he carefully loaded his samples into the machine and set it to spin up to the speed he required to separate the bacteria from the culture media that supported their growth.

"You'd think for a government-run lab in a brand-new building they could afford to buy a new centrifuge," he muttered, through a clenched muzzle, to no one in particular.

But, in fact, the shiny new appearance of the Joint Centers for Contagious Sterility Research was only a skin-deep veneer. Beneath the facade, and despite the strong smell of fresh paint, many of the laboratories within were decades-old, and had the equipment to match.

Matt had been persuaded to come work in one such laboratory shortly after completing his doctoral studies in virology and immunology at Central Lupine University. In fact, he joined the lab just after it had moved into the JCCSR from its previous accommodations at his alma mater. Dr. James Stoneking's now-relocated laboratory had a long and storied history of studying viruses and bacteria that affected reproductive health, making it a good fit both for the JCCSR and for the advancement of Dr. Keller's career.

However, the freshly minted postdoctoral fellow hadn't expected Dr. Stoneking to bring all of his laboratory's old and dilapidated equipment along to the new facilities. After all, the Office of the Alpha Canid had provided Dr. Stoneking with a very generous grant to study the new affliction that had tongues wagging and tails stilled all across the nation.

Wolves and the other canid species were suddenly finding it impossible to mate successfully, and the new pup birth rate had fallen precipitously in the last year. Public health officials had come to the conclusion that some sort of infectious agent might be the culprit, based on the case reports and the population centers where the condition seemed to be most common, but nothing was for sure.

The OAC had been caught flat-pawed, and so had hastily ordered the construction of the JCCSR in a refurbished hospital building, scurried to recruit scientists with what seemed like relevant expertise, and poured money into studying the basis for the "insidious new disease that was robbing the Canid nation of its next generation," as the evening news had been calling it.

Apparently, though, even flush with fresh grant money from the OAC's research initiative, Dr. Stoneking thought it wise to rely upon a creaky centrifuge that still had rotary dials and displayed labels from the old veteran's hospital down the road from Central Lupine, suggesting the centrifuge was bought at auction after the hospital closed a few years back.

Still a relatively young wolf, the 26-year-old Dr. Keller retained a zeal for research that five years of doctoral studies and an active undergraduate research career somehow failed to beat out of him. The gray wolf enjoyed his work, though less so when he had to repeat even the most basic of bacterial transformations four times because of faulty equipment. His sharp sense of smell made working with the pungent bacteria nearly unbearable, but almost nine years of laboratory work had inured him to most of the offensive smells he constantly found himself exposed to in the lab.

"Hey, Julie, d'you know if this thing has a service contract on it or something? I doubt it, since it's probably older than I am, but we gotta do something about it," Matt called to Dr. Stoneking's laboratory manager, a bushy-tailed gray fox who'd been working for Dr. Stoneking for decades.

"Yeah, I don't think so," she replied. "Why don't you just put a sign on it and go use the one upstairs in Dr. Badesch's lab?"

"Uh, because I'm pelleting bacteria that contain recombinant DNA, and it's against policy to -"

"-Transport between floors? Right. Listen, Matt, I know you don't want to step on the wrong paws since you're still new and everything, but you're never going to get anything done if you follow all the rules."

Julie probably meant well, but her advice still stung for Matt, who hated being reminded that he was inexperienced in his new position. His tail suddenly tucked in to his laboratory coat and ears flattened to his head, Matt wordlessly took his ruined bacterial samples out of the malfunctioning centrifuge and set about preparing a fourth transformation reaction. That had to be a new record.

Finally done for the day after setting the fresh bacterial cultures to grow overnight in the incubator, Matt headed home to his studio apartment a few blocks from the JCCSR. He passed the hulking cement barriers designed to keep terrorists or inattentive truck drivers or whomever from crashing into the research center and unleashing whatever biological horrors it contains upon the rest of the city and made it out onto the street.

It was late, and Matt didn't feel like cooking, so he ordered a plate from the food cart just outside the JCSSR perimeter. The friendly old raccoon dog who seemed to run the stand at all hours, catering to harried scientists with erratic shifts and little time between experimental procedures, gave Matt his meal promptly and wished him a good evening.

Aside from Dr. Stoneking and Julie and the raccoon dog, whose name Matt felt awkward asking for after ordering from him so many times, Matt hadn't spoken with anyone all day. The loneliness didn't really get to him while he was at work, but Matt felt it as the brisk evening air ruffled his fur and he walked home to his empty apartment with a rapidly cooling plate of cart food.

As Matt walked and contemplated his current solitary lifestyle, isolated from his college and now his graduate school friends, and living in a new city, it occurred to him that he would have at least one new person to talk to soon. Dr. Stoneking was still putting his new laboratory group together, after leaving behind most of his old staff, and as one of the first recruits, Matt had had some say in who was to be hired.

A red fox named Malcolm Twain had just graduated from the master's program in viral epidemiology at Eastern Vulpine Technical Institute with very high marks and a glowing recommendation from his master's thesis supervisor. Dr. Stoneking was delighted the fox had applied to work in his laboratory, and the old wolf invited Matt into his office shortly after receiving the fox's application to discuss the prospect.

According to his curriculum vitae, Malcolm's research on the propagation of uncharacterized viruses in the laboratory had been published in the leading virological journals, and Malcolm had been asked to present his research in a keynote address at the annual meeting of the Canid Virological Society, despite not even having his master's degree yet. Dr. Stoneking's tail wagged despite itself as the lab head related the details of Mr. Twain's brief-but-thus-far-illustrious career to his postdoc, Matt, who would be supervising Malcolm directly. Matt had to agree the fox sounded like a good fit for the lab and its current goals, so Dr. Stoneking promptly extended an offer to him.

The fox was supposed to be moving into Matt's bay in the lab the next day, and Matt made a mental note to make sure none of his reagent bottles had creeped over onto what was soon to be Malcolm's laboratory bench.

After unlocking the door to his apartment and setting down his keys, Matt turned on his desktop computer and brought up his news feeds to read while he ate his evening meal. Naturally, one of the top stories was about the JCCSR and how hotly anticipated a cure or vaccine for the mysterious sterility was. Matt liked to read these articles, because they reminded him of how important his work was on the grand scale, even if he made glacial progress because of stupid setbacks like a malfunctioning centrifuge.

Something about the particular article Matt was reading troubled him, though: Apparently, husbands were leaving their wives and vice versa because one or both partners had contracted the strange sterility condition and couldn't properly mate. This seemed to be a lousy reason to break up a marriage, in Matt's opinion. After all, Matt had always thought his own marriage would have to be one without pups, as he'd come out as gay in graduate school after denying his sexual attractions all throughout high school and college. A wry grin crossed his muzzle as he thought about the fact that he would now spend his days trying to correct a condition that prevented canids from having pups, when he himself suffered from the condition of homosexuality, which produced largely the same effects.

His meal and news feeds both fully consumed for the evening, Matt decided to go for a quick jog to wind down and calm himself for sleep. He had to get to the lab early if he wanted to get any experiments started before playing tour guide to the fresh-faced fox who'd soon be occupying his time.