This chapter opens with a description of the dengue epidemic in the U.S. The narrator explains that dengue is the third strain of the disease, and that the heat and mosquitoes are the main cause of the epidemic. He tells us that he doesn't know how it happened, but that winter was the only hope. Soon, the bodies of the victims piled up on the streets, and the mosquitoes swarmed in endless waves. He explains that the man who died was a bleeder, and he was shot in the head. The bullet didn't kill him, but merely wounded him. The killer took the man's corpse to the slums and tried to make him look like a thief. The man who killed him was a doctor, and his name was Nestor Golochea. He was a major entomologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he was working on a dipterous research project. He died of a bullet wound to the head, not a gunshot wound. He bled to death "unconciously" . This means that the killer was not a professional hitman, and it also means that he killed the man because he was a thief, and not because of his scientific work. He also explains that there are no petty crimes anymore, because the main line against the epidemic is to protect the research subjects from being robbed. He asks if he can see Nestor's research papers, but he can't because they're confidential. He says that he's afraid to see them, because he'd rather be robbed than infected with the same disease again.