“I’m fine,” yelled Wally.

“How about you turn on your microphone so you don’t have to scream?”

“I’m not one of the stricken, if that’s what you’re thinking,” said Wally in an irritable tone, flicking a switch embedded into the strap of his mask. “I’m fifty-eight damn years old and I’m working twenty damn hours a day, so consequently, I look offensive.”

“Go home and rest, Wally, please. Sleep until you wake up. The country is not going to crumble if you take one day off.”

“That’s exactly what would happen. And you know it, or you wouldn’t be here yourself”—he directed a pointed look at his watch—“at five thirty in the morning.”

I acknowledged this with a nod. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a full night’s sleep or a decent meal or sufficient time with the children. The days had blurred into a stream of indistinguishable videoconferences and report generating and media interfacing and lab supervising and task force coordinating and data analysis, measured only in retrospect by milestones both good and bad. These kept rolling in, at a pace difficult to absorb: Europe and India were ablaze. East Asia, which had a population cooperative with public health measures, was faring relatively well, as were a few areas in Western Africa that had put their experience with prior pandemics—especially Ebola—to good use. Other countries, starved of even basic resources, faced a humanitarian crisis beyond comprehension. New Zealand, Australia, and Hawaii—all islands—had been among the earliest to fully close their borders while instituting a robust quarantine and, as a consequence, had almost no circulating disease. South America was as yet fairly calm.

The United States varied by region. New York’s title as the most-affected city per capita had been taken over by Houston, which in turn had been replaced by, of all places, Des Moines, Iowa. Most other cities were less affected. Researchers announced they were edging closer to vaccine trials. Other researchers admitted the failure of every antiviral drug they’d tried so far. A handful of very famous people had died: the governor of Florida, Leonardo DiCaprio, half the bench of the L.A. Lakers. An experimental drug developed to work against paramyxoviruses had been showing some promise until researchers realized it made you deaf.

In my pocket, my phone buzzed. I eased it into view and held a finger to Wally to indicate I’d be a moment. He nodded and leaned against the wall as I slipped back into my office to answer an incoming call from Declan.

I’d begun to worry about him. The last time we’d spoken—more than three weeks ago—I’d expected the same collective dejection present in everyone’s voices these days, but his tone had surprised me.

“It’s going super well,” he’d said. This had been a phone call at the end of September, not a video chat; Declan said his bandwidth was overwhelmed, what with everyone streaming all day. A tinny strain of music chimed from somewhere behind him, along with the sound of someone repeatedly but cheerfully swearing under their breath.