Disease conquers the world all at once. It is distinctly attracted to the Negro population of the five inhabited continents and they die in large numbers, a prejudice existing in the disease that indicates white supremacy involvement. The government has obviously planned this but it’s gotten out of control and the population begins to be decimated, dying at a rate of 1 of 6. But there are rumors that the mojo men of voodoo, the great sheiks of later religions, are making a white-targeting virus that will end everything for the white race. Missiles are fired randomly and the whole world seems to end at once.

But on the Frontier nothing happens, people just move in or out, same as always. The Frontier is cut off from the rest of the world, a happy island far west of civilization, where gunslinger days transpire again, some sort of grotesque capitalist charade forming the basis of the economy. It’s an economy of need. My Baroline supply is well tended because it is readily available here at the black market, as well as with prescriptions from Dr. Baker on the orders of Dr. Stevenson. Baker’s obsession with Stevenson is eerie and unsettling.

But we talk about the disease and Baker’s take on it, which is really just Stevenson’s published recording of his own thoughts on the matter. “It’s a retro-virus,” Baker quotes. “There’s no doubt about that. Communicability is hard to pin down as there are equal numbers of airborne mutations. The virus changes rapidly to the point that we can’t pin down exactly how it’s being spread because it’s a different strain with each infection. We know for a fact that it attacks the lymph nodes first and the first sign of infection is swelling of the nodes. The testicles follow shortly as it moves into the reproductive system. In women, ovaries swell and explode, thousands of eggs pouring out of the vagina.”

I ask for another prescription of Baroline and he writes out the script. It takes me an hour to find a shop that will cash it in. Spend the rest of the day staring at a wall covered with blood. Whose blood is uncertain and if it really is blood, then why does it flow in such patterns? It’s not an abstract painting style, there is distinct structure in this. I believe that someone was murdered in front of this wall in a ritual manner.