A star is born

 It took Rock a while to accept his house was packed with movie stars and personnel, but that acknowledgment explained everything. Clearly, these people were in place for some sort of great film. Rock knew his cat Joe was a new celebrity as they walked to the front door.

Covid

 Rock was hopeful he did not have Covid, but he thought he might. In the early hours of his night's sleep, he and his cat Joe had flown back with the Arkansas-Little Rock men's basketball team from a game in Houston, Texas. Before that, he sat on a crowded press row in a large gymnasium filled to capacity. Rock had not exposed himself to this extent since the pandemic began eighteen months earlier. He considered that as lay in the predawn darkness. He did not feel well, and Joe seemed miserable.

No longer necessary

 It seemed as if Rock spent the entire night switching from one graduate class to another. Every time he added another, he was immediately disappointed to find their professors were no more than his intellectual equal. He knew college was no longer necessary for him.

Misplaced bounty

 The future of mankind hinged on the outcome of an episode of Wanted Dead or Alive entitled Bounty on Josh, a thirty-minute television western first broadcast on January 25, 1961. It was easy for Rock to see how important it was to learn whether Josh Randle, played by actor Steve McQueen, could overcome a head injury and remember who he was. Otherwise, mankind was in dire straights.