Category: Jonah Howell

October 15, New York—Three patients have now been placed into negative-pressure quarantine units at Mount Sinai hospital following infection with a mysterious new illness. Two further patients have checked into SUNY’s Downstate Teaching Hospital in Brooklyn with similarly bizarre symptoms. The CDC has yet to release a public announcement regarding the outbreak, but a whistle-blower reports panic at the agency’s Washington, D.C. headquarters as new case-reports flood in from hospitals around the northeast.

Caused by a novel pathogen most similar to a virus, the syndrome responds to no approved medication and spreads via unknown mechanisms. Before this morning, experts thought the pathogen had emerged from prehistory, released from melting permafrost. However, a woman named Jane Dee has submitted a manifesto that claims she herself invented the disease in an ad hoc laboratory in her Hell’s Kitchen loft.

Her strangely-phrased letter to the Times belies a deranged mind; but she claims that, if we publish her manifesto, entitled “Love Sickness,” she will send the CDC and Johns Hopkins University the chemical formula and manufacturing instructions for a vaccine against her creation. She has further demanded that, in all future reporting, we refer to her vaccine as an “enochulation,” but she refuses to clarify this requested misspelling.

Ms. Dee, according to her own letter, was a high-ranking virologist for WHO and lecturer at Cornell’s Weill School of Medicine before, in late 2019, she abruptly quit both positions after overhearing what she calls “disturbingly cold hypotheticals” through a locked conference-room door at the WHO’s Manhattan office. Since then, she writes, she has “occupied herself with the grand question of HOW TO PREVENT those “”hypotheticals”” from becoming reality.”

The disease Ms. Dee claims to have invented presents, at first, with chills, oddly viscous sweat, heightened libido, and a distinct feeling that the infected’s skin is stretching. Anyone expressing any such symptoms, especially in Kings, Orange, and Queens counties, is encouraged to contact emergency medical personnel immediately. The duration and severity of the disease are not yet known.

“Get your sperm here! Get your sperm here!”

Ralph used to say it once and let it rest, but market analytics bawled him out. “Forty-three percent better sales,” they said. “Put your heart in it,” they said. Ralph has a big mustache. Hasn’t had time to wash it in a while, so it looks like a squid’s eating his face. He’s proud of it anyway.

“Get your sperm here!” Fuck it, he thinks. Motherfuckers can hear the fucking music. Indeed. Another gimmick from analytics, loud shit no one else in their right (or wrong) mind would play, like an ice-cream truck. He used to like it, kind of. It was bearable. Now he hears it in his nightmares. Hard life, being a jizz hawker. But he sure as shit wouldn’t go back to medical insurance, not in this climate, no sir.

“Get your sperm here!” He waves a brown bag. Thick plastic. Label claims “100% Recycled, Ethically Sourced, Compassionate Capital Certified.” He doubts it. Heard some garish rumors. Something something makes Rana Plaza look like Disneyland something something. Through an actual grapevine, so he won’t swear by it.

“Get your sperm here!” One thing he knows, only poor folks’ sperm is marketable. The poorer the better. Labels on the bags brag, “Duration on EBT: 6 Years.” Another: “Lifelong Janitor.” Rich folks all tried CRISPr before they figured out how to work the oven, got their shit burnt. Top dogs claim it’s a one-generation crisis, but now there’s this big new business, well, Ralph has his doubts.