Susan Palwick

Meredith survived, as most people who weathered the virus did, because her family was wealthy enough to afford round-the-clock, individual medical care, teams of doctors to track the progress of CV in her system and treat its various manifestations as quickly as possible. The pandemic was relatively limited in the United States, thanks largely to Preston's swift recognition of the dire nature of his illness. Because he had called the Bio-containment Unit as soon as he had, everyone who had been on the company jet back from Africa, and all of their contacts since landing, were promptly isolated, at MacroCorp's expense. A few dozen people died - the pilot and several flight attendants, and various people they'd kissed, spoken to, or visited since landing - but at least so far, Preston's foresight seemed to have prevented a major outbreak in the US.

From the television news, when she was well enough to tell her father to vanish from the screen so that she could watch it, Meredith learned of the fate of thousands of Preston's African employees, one of whom had evidently infected him during a plant tour. Without access to isolation, they didn't survive. The virus spread so easily, especially in countries where people still spoke to each other most often in person, rather than by phone or the Net. Neither did vast numbers of their relatives and friends. The ill soon swelled into the tens of thousands, a complex web of human relationships ensuring that by the time the epidemic ended, much of Africa and large pockets of Asia and South America, already ravaged by HIV, would be further decimated.