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This was grim odd rich fun, sitting in that quiet room, learning about horrors that would never hurt us. One day, our teacher arrived with an unexpected treasure. The original residents in Salvation had left behind furniture and clothes, plus fancy machines like sky-watching dishes and digital recording equipment. Also abandoned was a nondescript box tucked into a tornado shelter in the basement of one house. The box was full of hundreds and maybe thousands of hours of news reports. Somebody had worked hard to record the end of civilization. Each one of those bright silvery discs was carefully marked with dates and the network of origin. Not all of the disks worked, and most were surprisingly boring. But our teacher had made it her mission to hunt for the most interesting survivors.

The old player began to run. The room was full of patient, enthralled children. We watched the Chinese plague flare up twice and then die back again. Nearly ten per cent of the stricken had died, and maybe half of the rest were left with scarred faces and shrunken lungs. If that virus got loose, as many as ten million people would die, and a hundred million more would be left as invalids. That's why the hard push for a vaccine. And that's why there was celebration when a pharmaceutical company mass-produced an injection that would protect everybody who rolled up his sleeve, offering a willing arm.

Some nations did better than others. To me, Canada was that big green splotch at the top of a favorite old map. But it was also country with money and an efficient health care system, and the Canadians achieved a nearly perfect inoculation rate. Finland and Denmark and Costa Rica were equally successful. Japan and much of Europe exceeded ninety-seven per cent compliance. But the United States was falling behind in this critical race. Too many of us were poor or isolated. Empty rumors and misguided beliefs were huge problems. In the end, emergency laws and the National Guard managed to bring up the totals. Every doctor and nurse, teacher and law enforcement officer was inoculated. Every soldier and prisoner and hospital patient was inoculated. But there were always stubborn people who refused, and in the end we never even achieved ninety-five per cent saturation.

I remember being five and sitting in my bedroom, listening to my father and mother arguing. Mom didn't want to obey Caesar's Law. She didn't want the government to force her to do anything. Dad didn't want to hear about prayer and God's decency staving off illness. But mom kept insisting, batting aside dad's logic until he finally found his own way out the trap: if everybody else was inoculated, then we would be safe too.

As a family, we visited a fat little man who only seemed to be a doctor. The man took our money and filled out the proper forms, and in the eyes of the state, we were inoculated. Then we went home, and dad came into my room, sitting on my bed while explaining that this was what married people did. They compromised. And despite what he knew to be best, we could sleep easy because so many of the people around us had done the smart right noble thing.

China, where the murderous plague was born, managed to do better than the United States. India did less well, and parts of Latin America fell behind. But even those poor places managed to beat that ninety per cent mark. The meanest, saddest corners of the world were the most exposed. Africa and the wild nations in Asia achieved one-third compliance, if that. But charities and volunteer doctors didn't stop fighting. Brave defenders of the public good, they tirelessly pushed needles into little brown arms, even as word began to find its way to them that the first people who had received the vaccine - the subjects in the hurry-up trials - were beginning to shake, growing weaker by the day and profoundly confused.

According to the dates displayed on the recordings, the world's fate was decided on my sixth birthday. An old man stood before the cameras, the seal of his doomed nation behind him.