Note: This story was dynamically reformatted for online reading convenience.
 
 For anyone interested, here are the conditions of the fictional timeline
where The Disease, and The Epidemic, are facts of life.  I believe there
are a lot of stories in this timeline.  I have not the time, energy,
imagination, or inclination to try to write them all, but I would like to
see what other authors make of it.  If this universe takes on a life of its
own, that would be really cool.

   We don't know anything about the Disease, but we suspect it started as a
virus.  No virus has ever been identified, so we speculate that the virus
no longer exists.  Current thinking is that the virus modified human DNA in
a way that is passed on from generation to generation, and the Disease is
now a universal feature of the human genome.  There is no treatment, no
immunity, and no cure.

   We do know that one fine summer day, everybody in the world who had
reached puberty got sick, all within a few days.  We know that the symptoms
are like the flu, with cramps, low fever, nausea, and an overwhelming need
to sleep, and we know the symptoms last between two and three weeks.  This
is the event we call The Epidemic.  Other than a couple of weeks when
nothing got done, it doesn't seem to have had much of an effect.

   We know the Disease is never fatal, and even without treatment the
recovery rate is 100%.

   We now know that every child in the world will get the Disease at the
onset of puberty, and we know that nobody ever becomes sick with the
Disease more than once.

   We know that after the Epidemic, the first Alphas appeared, so we
suspect a causal relationship between the Disease and Alphas.