by

Max Feld

City Editor

[I received the following correspondence from a woman who has been stalking me for over two years. I have repeatedly spurned her advances after an unfortunate and ill-considered liaison at a newspaper editors convention. This vicious and vindictive note is this sick woman's latest ploy to win my affection. I have asked the op-ed page editor to print this shocking letter in its entirety. It is our hope that other men and women who are being stalked can take appropriate measures to protect themselves from the kind of intrusion that is described here. Moreover, our legal staff is advising our readers to do everything in their power to prevent their genetic information from falling into the wrong hands. Based upon current statutes, it is not clear whether this woman is criminally liable for extracting some of my blood without my permission. My own lawyer has advised me to withhold the woman's name as we pursue our legal options. I can only say that the receipt of this letter and its message has caused me the deepest consternation and sorrow.

What follows is the text of the letter without further comment.

- Max Feld]

Dearest beloved of my heart:

Do you think you can get away with this - withholding your affection from ME, the one who worships you like a god? What kind of cold-heartedness allows you to treat ME as if I were a mere nothing? Well, I may be many things, but I am not nothing. Are you forgetting that one night we spent together naked in each other's arms when your own wife could not satisfy those animal urges of yours? Just because she bore your two children, is that a reason to abandon the true love of your life? In your heart of hearts you know who that is.

Perhaps you recall our last encounter two weeks ago, at Ricardo's Restaurant, when I grabbed you from behind and you pushed me away with a look of hatred and disgust. Do you remember feeling a little needle prick in that wonderful rear end of yours? Perhaps you don't remember that, or perhaps you dismissed it from your mind. But I am not as dumb as you think. That little pin prick was a little trick of mine. I was extracting just enough of that hot blood of yours so I could send it off to a lab for analysis. That blood, naturally, contained a sample of your DNA and because of that genetic information, I now know more about you than you know about yourself.

Attached you will find the official lab report from BioKnowledge Informatics, Inc., in Silicon Valley. That report describes the various illnesses that will befall you during your regrettably brief life. I hope you will enjoy the lab report as much as I did.

But, perhaps you are not in the mood to read the lab report. Perhaps those beautiful hazel eyes of yours don't like to trouble themselves with all of that bioknowledge mumbo jumbo. So, here is my own synopsis of your biological destiny:

Please mark April 2032 on your calendar. You're a 1995 baby, so in 2032 you will be 37 years old. Well, you will begin to notice a cardiac arrhythmia in April 2032 according to the lab report. This is due to a combination of genetic factors, which are spelled out in detail in that report. Note that the cardiac arrhythmia will begin in April 2032 and not just any old month in 2032 and not in 2031 or in 2033 either. No, science has gone beyond that kind of imprecision. No, sometime in April of 2032 something is going to go wrong, terribly wrong, with that ticker of yours. You will not be such a confident sexual animal after that!

Talking about being a sexual animal: Don't think that I have lost any of the intense love that I have for you, even though the attached genetic profile clearly states that you are as gay as Gay Paree was back in the Gay 1890s. Perhaps your wife allows you to remain in that shell of hypocrisy, whereas, a real woman, such as MYSELF, could help you to overcome the strong genetic predisposition that forces you to find men more attractive than us women. Come to think of it, your wife, who I have seen on many occasions, is kind of masculine looking. No wonder you have not been able to respond fully to a real woman, such as yours truly.

But, perhaps your heart problem will interfere with any kind of sexual interest, male or female, once it really starts to click in during 2032. Did I mention the melanoma that will appear on you right cheek in December of that same year? (I am talking about your face, not the cheeks that I saw on that wonderful night we had together.) Oh, you can have that excised and your life will not be in danger if you catch it in time, which you probably will, since you have been forewarned, but your pretty boy face won't be so pretty after they remove the cancer. And, it doesn't matter how much sun you get between now and then, because the melanoma will be caused by a genetic predisposition and the sunshine that you have already been exposed to. You might recall that your aunt Dorothy (I researched this on my own, using information readily available on the Global Landscape) died of melanoma back in 1998. Of course, back then, there wasn't much that medicine could do for melanoma, but now, once melanoma is detected, they can torture you with new chemical therapies, so you can survive in absolute misery, a misery that is much worse than death, for five or even ten years. And just imagine how your doctors can profit from your illness, so it won't all be in vain. In all likelihood, because of your genetic predisposition towards hypochondria, and because of this letter, you will detect that mole in time, and you won't have to give over your life savings to the medical profession - not just yet.

I think you should really worry about that heart problem, if you don't mind my returning to that subject, which will worsen into a full blown instance of atrial fibrillation in November of 2038. At this point, you will be in and out of the hospitals for eighteen months. Then, in May of 2040 your doctor's will recommend a pig heart transplant, and that would save your miserable life, but because of another genetic predisposition, this one a psychological predisposition towards pig-headedness, you will refuse to have a pig's heart plugged into that proud chest of yours, and you will be in and out of the hospital for most of the 2040s. You will take medications that will impair your mental functioning and your journalistic career will be flushed down the toilet (this is just speculation on my part - this is not in the official genetic report).

Then, in June of 2049 your heart will revert back to normal (this is not speculation, see page 3 of the attached report - another genetic factor is involved here, something your doctors will forget to mention back in 2040 because, from your doctor's point of view, if you do not get the pig heart transplant, then he won't get that new yacht that he has his pig's heart set upon), just in time for a pre cancerous condition to be detected in your colon. This will emerge, according to the genetic evidence, which is incontrovertible, in July of 2049, which will give you about one month to enjoy your renewed cardiac health.

After minor surgery in August of 2049 for the removal of polyps (another speculation: polyps will buy your doctor a new entertainment center for his new summer home on San Francisco Bay), things will go along fine until your nervous breakdown in January of 2050. It seems like you have been living on the edge all along. There is a long history of manic-depressive illness in your family, all genetically determined, and in January 2050 that will emerge as a full-blown psychotic episode during which you will claim to be the reincarnation of Edward R. Murrow. This is all in the attached report, as you can see. I am not making this up.

But, massive doses of drugs will get you back on your feet, and the rest of your life, which will end soon after this, will be spent trying to adjust your various blood levels so that you can function as a true human being, that is, as a human being according to the medical view of things. Unfortunately, that drug-induced peace will not last for long, because in January of 2053 you will be diagnosed with adult-onset diabetes. It seems like all of those drugs you will be taking will have multiple side effects on multiple organs, including your pancreas. This, combined with your genetic predisposition towards diabetes (see page 4 of the report), will pretty much seal your fate. You will have a stroke in November of 2053, followed by massive kidney failure. You will spend about three years in a nursing home, and this period of your life will begin about two years after the death of your wife from leukemia in 2051 (her genetic information is readily available from a genetic information database that I am privy to at work because she donated blood on one occasion), so it will be pretty lonely during those last three years in the nursing home, unless you find yourself a gentle and compassionate woman (such as YOURS TRULY) who can share your life and your passions with you, if you get my drift.

In any event, I plan to attend your funeral, which should follow shortly after your death on May 10, 2057. This estimated DOD (day of death as it is called in the bioknowledge industry) is accurate to within three days (unless you die prematurely in an accident) with p = 0.003.

As you know, I am interested in all sorts of weird things, especially magic, sorcery and witchcraft. When we made love that night, the one night in your life when you were with a REAL WOMAN, you lovingly called ME your "little witch". Well, there may be more truth to those sweet, endearing words than you might have realized at that time. It used to be, when you wanted to scare someone to death, all you had to do was hire the local witch or witch doctor, and he or she would cast a spell on your enemy, and your enemy would die a terrible death. Well, thanks to the marvels of modern medicine, we no longer need witch doctors to scare people to death. These days, if you want to scare a person to death, all you have to do is call in a real doctor! Their magic is the most potent magic of all. They can literally talk a person to death. A good doctor can turn a fully happy human being into a pile of depressed, worthless mush with a few choice words; words like: terminal cancer! But, the real financial challenge, as far as the medical profession is concerned, is to perpetuate life in misery as long as possible, so that death is less like a kiss, and more like a horrible, drawn out murder. And, of course, this prolonged misery has one and one purpose only - to suck your bank account dry. And all of the genetic evidence suggests that your doctors will be able to profit mightily from your many years of otherwise useless suffering.

I hope you find this information useful as you plan out the remainder of your life.

If you have a change of heart, you know where you can reach me.

With deepest yearning and desire,

I am forever yours,

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