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While many have doomily predicted the death of literary culture...few have wrestled with the possibility that deaths—actual human fatalities—will result. Indeed, in this not-so-distant-and-inevitable future, people will begin to sicken and the weaker among them will perish. Initially a batch of E.coli-tainted produce will be fingered as the culprit, but eventually the source of the contagion will be determined to have emanated from a most innocuous source: books. The sick and the deceased, the investigation will show, each read two or more books published during the Exxon Mobil Holiday Gifts '25 season. A team of crack scientists in Hazmat suits will convene in Houston's Astrodome with box upon box of Exxon Mobil test product. While their tests will prove inconclusive—was the literary DNA of books so tampered with that a viral mutation was unwittingly released? Have terrorists finally perfected the Text Bioweapon, thereby rendering all acts of reading potentially fatal?—the consumer panic will result in a conclusive cultural shift. (Death of the intellect was one thing, but actual death is quite another.)
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