Me, you know, I never even got it. Off him, I mean. That piece of him in everybody now. Couldn’t see the point at my age and anyway I never held with medicine. Happened I never got the other kind either, not that I didn’t have plenty of chances. You’re too young to remember how it felt, though. Oh, I know, I know you all think you live in all the times at once, everything recorded for you, it’s all there to play back. Digital. That’s all that is, though: playback. You still don’t remember what it felt like, watching them pile up like that. Not here so much, bad as it was, but Thailand, Africa, Brazil. Jesus, Scooter. That thing was just romping on us. But slow, slow, slow-motion thing. Those retroviruses are. One man told me once, and he had the old kind, and died of it, how we’d lived in this funny little pocket of time when a lot of people got to feel like a piece of ass wasn’t going to kill anybody, not even a woman. See, they always had to worry anyway, every time it’s a chance, get knocked up and maybe die in childbirth, die getting rid of it, or anyway your life’s not gonna be the same. But in that pocket, there, there were pills for that, whatnot, shots for the other things, even the ones had killed people all over hell, before. That was a time, Scooter. So here this thing comes along, changes it back. And we’re sliding up on 2000, shit’s changing all over, got civil wars in Europe already and this AIDS thing just kicking along. You know they tried to say it was the gays, said it was the CIA, said it was the U.S. Army in some fort in Maryland. Said it was people cornholing green monkeys. I swear to God. You know what it was? People. Just too goddamn many of ’em, Scooter. Flying all the fuck over everywhere and walking around back in there. Bet your ass somebody’s gonna pick up a bug or two. Every place on the damn planet just a couple of hours from any other place. So here’s poor fucking Shapely comes along, he’s got this mutant strain won’t kill you. Won’t do shit to you at all, ’cept it eats the old kind for breakfast. And I don’t buy any of that bullshit he was Jesus, Scooter. Didn’t think Jesus was, either.