"Just because we few are dropping out of the game doesn’t mean that the Great Game will end," said another poker player. He looked vaguely Asian, with a West Coast accent. There weren’t any black people among these people. No Hispanics, either. Jane got the strong impression that ethnic balance hadn’t been high on the agenda when they did their recruiting, however people like this did their recruiting. Floating Nietzschean Übermensch IQ tests in obscure corners of networks, maybe. Intriguing intellectual puzzles that only those of a certain cast of mind could win. Little suction spots in the Net where people could slip into the Underground and never, ever come out ... "Like AIDS for instance. That bug is a godsend, we might have cured it by now, but there are brave, determined, clever people who will guard every last AIDS variant like a Holy Grail.... A virus that kills sexually careless people! While at the same time lowering immunity, so that afflicted people become a giant natural reservoir for epidemics. It’s thanks mainly to AIDS that new tuberculosis treatments become so useless so quickly.... If AIDS didn’t exist, we’d have been forced to invent it. If it weren’t for AIDS, we’d have ten billion people now, not eight."