The title Just a Couple of Days comes from a piece of graffiti which appeared on both sides of an overpass just outside Athens, Ohio on U.S. Route 33 and remained there for over two years.

Each chapter also begins with a selection from the "Book o' Billets-Doux" ("love letters" in French), which he found in the dome and is apparently an extended conversation between Blip and Sophia which they wrote, eventually while succumbing to the virus.

In time Flake discovers that the people "afflicted" with the virus can apparently communicate, and he surmises that they connect on a deeper level without the hindrance of a language and its capacity to obscure the truth.

Blip and Sophia: The happily married hippie friends of Flake's, and parents of a daughter named Dandelion (Dandy).

They were both infected with the Pied Piper virus (Blip to compel Flake to continue his research, Sophia accidentally) and finished writing the Book o' Billets-Doux while losing their capacity for language to the disease.