Pat Weiss is a middle-aged man sitting with his buddies, playing poker and drinking beer. He decides to tell them the story of a Mexican inventor he once knew, named Oliveira. Back in the 1970s, there was a flu epidemic that spread through the United States. After contracting the flu, people would become as hairy as chimps. Weiss worked with Oliveira to develop a cure for the hairiness in New York City, but by the time that they succeeded, it was too late: people had gotten used to being covered in hair like animals. The change is now referred to as the Great Change. It’s no more strange a part of life than having two eyes. Weiss’s poker buddies laugh at the story and wonder if he made any money off of his cosmetics stocks; unfortunately, he neglected them while he was working on the cure, and they were worth nothing by the time that he checked them.