I Have Found the Cause of the Corona Virus

by Ryan Dell and Michele REDACTED We acknowledge the Traditional Owners and Custodians of the land on which we work. We pay our respects to Indigenous Elders past, present and emerging. Sovereignty has never been ceded. It always was, and always will be, Aboriginal land. Co-Author’s Note Early in 2019, my lovely roommate sat me down after I'd returned home from work and informed me she had some big news: she was moving back home, and that as a subletter I’d need to take her place on the lease if I wanted to stay in the apartment. What to do? I felt unprepared for that level of responsibility, so I decided it was time for me to find a new place to live - fast. It didn’t take long. Within two weeks I’d found a lovely shared apartment in the inner West, on the second floor of a large strata estate. It was right above what later became my favorite Thai restaurant, it was a short walk away from an amazing GP, and it was extremely affordable. The only catch was that the sole other tenant wasn’t the cool, 18-35 year old millenial I’d asked for in the template form I’d filled out on Flatmates.com. It was , although she preferred just Michele. She was more than three times my agei, an eccentric brunette who always smelled of what she claimed to be "incense" that started our first conversation together by pitching me on a science fiction novel which she called " her ". But she was nice. We vibed. As I was about to get into the lift and leave, she offhandedly mentioned Lars von Trier, enveloping me into a lengthy digression about film culture so engaging that it made me late to a family dinner. I'd never even talked to anyone in real life about the movie Nymphomaniac before. I remember thinking that, simple a gesture as it was, she was the only landlord I'd met who'd even tried to make the inspection go longer than it absolutely had to. Lessii than 48 hours later, I called her on her Nokia and said I'd love to move in. As I got to know her better, my private life changed dramatically. I got involved in the local Sydney comedy scene and I went from having a small network of i Under normal circumstances I wouldn't directly address something so gauche, but I feel it becomes contextually crucial for events later in this book for the reader to understand her age. ii Far. 21 mostly digital friends to a vast connection of performers and eccentrics who I saw regularly. They encouraged me to make my live comedy debut, politely asked for favors, and in a small gesture that was of huge importance to me at the time - they invited me to their parties. For the first time in my adult life, I truly understood solidarity, and felt like I belonged. During this weird transition, Michele became a weird confidant and ad-hoc therapist of sorts. I slowly got the impression that as my social life expanded, she became more and more jealous of experiencing it so peripherally. So many of my friends and idols became imaginary characters for her in a soap opera that slowly played out in her mind's third eye, on a distended and warped timeline completely different to my own. I was generally aware that she was extremely withdrawn and private, never having friends over or staying out late. In my inner monologue, I just tried not to think about it too much. What could I do? I callously assumed that, due to her age, there wouldn't be a place for her in my network of friends. Besides, we had a collaborative partnership that felt vibrant. Michele would never describe herself as an artist or an illustrator, but while half-watching TV or listening to podcasts she would use a Sharpie to scribble absent-mindedly into journals, notepads, and countless stacks of Post-It notes. She had a real knack for drawing weird little icons and symbols. She described it as a tactile pleasure - she found it captured the satisfaction of highlighting a profound passage without having to keep ruining any of the titles in her massive library of books. I'd occasionally "commission" her to sketch something, or ask her to give me a couple of scribbles to integrate into my graphic design work for a handmade touch. Whenever I needed to make a PowerPoint for work or rough a logo up for some comedy show, her sketches would be somewhere in there. There's dozens of them on my professionaliii website. Even just earlier this yeariv when I wanted to make a nice promo graphic to post on Instagram for my Austin Powers spec script, she was there to help out, approximating Mike Myers' iconic glasses and cravat for me. Once we'd established this unorthodox partnership, she got addicted to the positive feedback loop and would politely inquire most nights about how I was doing and if I needed anything scribbled out tonight actually? So I had my different social circles. I had my family, my new friends, and, in her iii Quotation marks omitted but implied here. iv Pre-COVID. This sentence was written in 2020. 22 own category, Michele. And on it went: until the coronavirus crisis started. I came home one night in March of 2020, after a really rough day at work which ended up being, as of writing, the second-last time I ever set foot into that office.v Michele and I talked about our days, my office, her keeping house, and the weird coincidence that I previously mentioned in that footnote on page 13. I found an organic segue outvi, briefly went to the kitchen, and had the impulse to double back and thank Michele. As I circled back, I tried to thank her, choked on my words a bit, and started sobbing and dry-heaving in that pathetic way where I'm trying to talk but physically can't muster it. In spurts, I mourned the life I'd built, and how after years of making mistakes I'd finally figured out my priorities. It was then that Michele told me something I'll never forget. Actually, I don't quite recall the exact words she used, or even her syntax, but the sentiment was roughly, "I know what you mean." She disappeared for a moment then came back with a gigantic green plastic bin full of crumpled up paperwork and letters. She pulled one out then broke down in tears. It was a postcard from her husband of 35 years, . I'd never even known she was married. She told me in broad strokes about her life. I was fascinated. Years spent volunteering, decades spent mourning. Children she now knew nothing about. An extremely oblique reference to moving out, foreshadowed in a manner that was very upfront. With weeks of spare time on my hands and hundreds of pages to sort through, I knew I'd found my newest art project: telling Michele's story. After briefly talking to her and looking through her things, I was able to finally piece together a rough sense of her life - the things she'd seen, the lost loves, her diet. But more contigent to the title of this book, I slowly uncovered something startling and undeniable. The scope of her experience, her assorted posts on the social network sites she used, and the different personal affects Michele had kept made something horrifyingly clear that simply could not be denied. Michele knew exactly what had caused the corona virus, and how it had spread into a devistating pandemic. I've never pictured myself as a journalist. The profession as I understand it is v Don't feel comfortable elaborating on this, partly because I'm still wrestling with it personally and partly because those same coworkers are probably reading this right now. Hi, vi Finished what I was eatinga and had to put the dirty dishes away. a Burger. 23 too mentally and physicallyvii rigorous for my constitution. I'm also not very good at listening to others: whenever I perform improv comedy on-stage, I straight-up ignore my scene partners for the entire performance every single time. But sometimes, like a certain Oscar-winning drama I will not explicitly name here out of fear of being justifiably accused of making an insensitive comparision, the man must rise to meet the moment. As I've now stated three times, I could simply not deny the truth. Throughout my self-isolation and occasional quarantine, I felt I had an ethical obligation to pursue what Michele gave me as far as I possibly could. But I couldn't just take her word for it alone. Using the scant info within that box that wasn't reliant on obsolete tech or a complete dead-end, I started to put everything together like a sideways Jenga tower made out of spaghetti. I spent countless hours on the phone, reading interviews and scheduling emails. Through all my research and deduction, I think I've been able to assemble a comprehensive timeline of Michele's life. The whole story gave me a life-changing understanding of the COVID-19 pandemic.viii As part of the process of researching what became a surprisingly intense depiction of her life, and a condition specifically of Michele's disclosure, she's asked me for editorial control. I've given her the ability on the publishing side of things to censor and black out anything she's not comfortable sharing with the public. I've also collaborated with her on some illustrative artwork, using Adobe Illustrator to assemble gigantic elaborate geometric pattern grids that she slowly filled in over the course of lockdown, piece by painstaking piece. I miss Michele dearly.ix Hopefully, her story can not only elevate my public profile as a writer and possibly get me nominated for some kind of lucrative prize, but also teach us all something crucial in this pivotal moment in human history. vii Hurts my fingers. viii If you're a journalist who doesn't care about the full context, and is just looking for time and date information to repackage and broadcast, the info you're looking for on page 86. ix Just to be clear, she hasn't passed away. I know this phrasing is loaded with that implication, but felt it was too strong an opening line for this paragraph to omit. But, that said, she is quite frail, so it's entirely possible that by the time I finish this book she will have passed away. If that's the case, I'll be quite sad about it and I plan on grieving her. 24 One of the worksheets I produced for Michele. She'd attach six Post-it notes into these squares, trace an outline through the paper, then hand me the sheet. I'd peel off the Post-it notes, stick them to a black piece of cardboard, photograph that, then digitally composit them back onto my digital illustration to replace the silhouette with a grid full of her tracings. While finishing this book's final galleys and revisions, I did the math and calculated that Michele completed exactly 2,286 of these worksheets over the course of 2020. While I don't want to overshadow her accomplishment, I'd like to also note that I was the one responsible for printing 2,286 of these worksheets over the course of 2020. If you shine too much sunlight on something, you' ll burn it. A NON chapter one At a point in time impossible to comprehend Something sacred is changed irrepairably, without remorse or compassion. 34 Appoximately 10,000 BCE By some interpretations of Genesis, They manifest the creation of planet Earth from betwixt Their fingers. From silence and kismet come the universe. Michele insisted that this illustration be the first "real" spread in the book. I'm very sorry about this. 36 June 14, 1878 Iriçois Marceau, legendary French author, releases his groundbreaking and green book The Sickness of Women and How to Efficiently Cure Iti, where he becomes the first author or physicianii to professionally advocate for women giving birth whilst reclined instead of standing or sitting. Although we may consider this common practice now, at the time his ideas were considered extremely radical. i Michele wasa an avid bibliophile who regularly purchased books and would only partially complete them before starting another, tearing through all her purchases slowly but simultaneously. She had a private account on Goodreadsb where she at one point was simultaenously reading Trick Mirror, The Art of War and the third Barry Trotterc novel. I assumed at the time that her account was on private as a default setting or out of distaste for social media, but later concluded it may have been out of paranoia. The specific book I've included an excerpt of here was apparently one of her favorites, with over six repeated logs. Asking her gently about this later, it seemed the fascination was born out of a need to correct and rectify: Michele had spent so many years being convinced her birth was asexual and unnatural that she was fascinated with every step of the process. I can only infer from this that she must have been completely anesthetized for the birth of her own children, as it seems the anachronisms of the book weren't immediately obvious to her. ii Two great jobs! a And still is. I cannot emphasise enough that Michele is still alive. b Private to the public but not to her followers, such as myself. c Not a typo, Michele loved1 satire. 38 1 And still loves to this day. Michele would often from the scan selected pages, then highlight excerpts that she found particularly fascinating. She told me that she vastly preferred to markup real books instead of these flimsier scans, but that she'd had too many awkward incidents where she'd highlighted something, realised she'd accidentally defaced a library book instead of one of her own, then had to go out-of pocket to pay for a replacement. Michele is born in Her mother i uses the reclining position: despite a rocky start, the birth is successful and uncontroversial. i I felt impolite asking Michele about her parents, since the topic clearly made her uncomfortable. But I really felt I might accomplish important and potentially award-worthy if I wrote about her relationship with her mother and father. I would try to bring it up with her organically, and when that didn't lead to anything productive, I then claimed that she would be protected from potential retribution by "interviewer-subject confidentiality".a After a more gentle dialogue, I came to understand the following; Michele hated both her parents intensely. However, she did concede that her mother possessed an instinctive knack for cooking what she called a 'big dinner'.b It was the most affectionate thing I ever heard her say about her parents. a This is not real. b Seperate from the interviewing process, Michele repeatedly using this adjective to describe dinner became a huge source of conflict between us as roommates. Whenever we shared an UberEats delivery or a GrubHub1 shipment she would ask me to check the menu to see if they offered a "big dinner". She'd usually select something to order then ask immediately as a follow-up, "Make sure you check the sizes." Challenging her about this weird belief felt extremely frustrating and unproductive. 1 I can obviously comprehend how Michele learned this word from cultural osmosis, and from reading and seeing it in entertainment. But she'd moved out of the U.S. less than three years after the founding of GrubHub, so I have no idea how the word entered her personal lexicon. I think this was just one of her eccentric approximations, like referring to the supermarket as Weingarten's or our shared home as the "big house".*

• Michele would borrow my iPad occasionally to write up shopping lists or browse the web, and multiple times a day she'd use it to play this Russian song called "The Big House" insanely loud. Although, of course, with my busted Smart Keyboard all of these YouTube Music searches came up as "big hous song". Apart from the poetic symmetry this folk track had with Michele's own life journey and current circumstances, I have no idea why it resonated with her so intensely. I asked her about that once, and she said that even though lyrically it was a bit tepid - she adored the key change. I, personally, don't like the song, although I came to have an affinity for how much it reminds me of living with Michele. The singing is undeniably off-key to me, though. 40 Although Michele censored this form, I still had enough info to try and chase this lead. I spent weeks trying to track the surgeon down to see if he knew anything helpful about Michele's parents. I eventually figured out through a non-Google search provider that there was a man with this name living in Louisiana in the 90s, but when I tried calling his illegally obtained cellphone number I got no response. Then I realized I was in the wrong timezone, but when I called again within daylight hours I still got no response. As best I can tell, this man is dead. August 12, 1968 slowly realizes she is raising what she privately refers to as a 'problem child'.i From both her parents' perspective, Michele is stubborn, incommunicative and treats them with disdain and condescension. Struggling and frustrated, decides to get her daughter evaluated by a mental health professional. i It's difficult to write about this part of Michele's life because, by her own admission, the events she's recalling are being filtered through the fog of memory. Some of the details in this book required her to recall events that occured to her more than 40 years ago.a For example, one of her childhood anecdotes regarded being told to "sit on it"b and watch how many cars passed by the house over the span of an hour for "safety" reasons. She had to do this every day for years. Similarly, Michele was told as a six year old that she had to cut one of her closest friends out of her life because they had been expressing confusion about and were therefore . Some of these details match my research, some seem completely unique to her. But one thing is for certain: all of these traumas are extremely visually compelling and cinematic in nature, and would be excellent material for a pre-vis house or visual effects studioc to begin converting into shot lists and treatments for a future film adaptationd to be shot and released worldwide, post-pandemic. a 52 is more than 40. b Chair. c With the aid of a storyboard artist. d Here's a hypothetical budget breakdown, for film funding bodies to consider: 42 By Michele's own account, her parents withheld this report from her because they were worried it would affect her self-perception and make her rebellious. She found this much later in life, at age 14 while searching for what she believed had actually been glowing IQ test results that she could use to win a fight she was having with her fellow in 1974 Michele's parents, busy with their dayjob and their housework respectivelyi, leave Michele in the care of the during the week. There, she is chosen by random lottery to act as an avatar for taking direct orders. The shifts are brutal. She spends 12 hours at a time passing messages on for to avoid causing both It's here, one fateful day in that Michele first meets i Just for the record, I personally don't like this framing of the relationship, as I feel it perpetuates a negative and sexist stereotype. However, I have decided to present it like this regardless, as it accurately matches the perspectives and specific phrasing in use by the people involved at the time. To censor or revise this history would be contemptible, as it essentially pretends these negative attitudes and regressive gender roles have never existed.a a I was motivated to use this phrasing and language by the disclaimers that Warner Bros. used to put on Looney Tunes Collection DVDs before the Speedy Gonzales episodes. If you think my execution of the disclaimer worked, please email me with these exact details; To: ryanmarkdell@gmail.com Subject: I liked it! Body: Good stuff! If you do not think the disclaimer was effective, email me with these details1 instead; To: ryoukusho.guy@hotmail.com Subject: No way! Body: Get outta here! I'll tally up the results and use them to evaluate whether I continue using disclaimers for content like this. Thank you for your time!* 1 This additional option is sincere and not a joke, I have access to this alternate account and will actually check for these negative results as well as the positive ones. * Only exact entries will be counted. Closure of poll is 23/06/21. 46 Michele had kept dozens of the letters and postcards from 's initial courtship while he was . I initially thought this a sweet sentimental gesture, although I later discovered that this was actually a conventional , taught to all is considered an extremely valuable resource during The entirety of 1977 The romance between and Michele blossoms. However, keep him physically apart from Michele for months at a time. But every night, before sunset, writes her a brief yet romantic letter. For years, Michele and maintain a profound commitment to each other as long-distance lovers.i i I was curious about why it took Michele years to initiate and consumate this relationship considering both parties were equally interested. Was it a personal space issue? A religious belief? However, her actual explanation was far more esoteric. She claimed it was because her parents had raised her to believe that most things in life, including romance, were to abide by "vampire rules": one only goes where they are explicitly invited. was equally timid, so she never took the leap until he initiated. I understood the miscommunication and awkwardnessa, but what I definitely didn't understand was how two conservative were so passionately immersing their child in vampire lore considering everything else they were failing to teach her. At what point would they have possibly seen a Gothic piece of fiction like Nosferatu? Was there some kind of shared cultural osmosis where they had learned about this eccentric rule? Sadly, this is one piece of Michele's personal history that will have to remain a mystery.b a Honestly, I wasn't much more adept than this in my own romances.1 b Actually, no it won't, I solve this mystery on page 80.2 1 Helloto and 2 I tricked you!
• I sent the following text to close friends, in the midst of personally considering whether listing all my ex's names in this self-published e-book was ethical; I'm considering listing all my ex's names within my self-published e-book. Is that ethical? It was a really interesting dialogue to open up, and I heard a lot of fantastic points on both sides. I've decided to request that Michele scribble all their names out on her next pass. 48 * I'm not sure why Michele did this, but for years she apparently "preserved" her most treasured love letters by enclosing them inside plastic sheeting - then stacking them to the brim inside the otherwise unused vegetable drawer of our apartments' communal fridge. To her credit, she conceded this looked weird upon inquiry, but her internal logic for doing it made complete sense: in , heat was an associated with being By keeping select affects cold, she was was It was a grim
• in the slim chance that reminder that she still had not forgotten that I'm choosing to write about it in this extremely critical and baffled tone of voice even though she'll eventually see what I've written when she does her next editorial pass.

: so grim, in fact, The big parti of 1980 Michele is still in the , but early this year she successfully convinces to transfer her to so she can be with . Although they claim publiclyii that this is out of passion and affection, they privately spend years in intense couples therapy and .iii The prestige of 's title makes him an extremely prominent and controversial figure . Amongst their colleagues, Michele and 's relationship is the subject of endless speculation. i March to November. ii When she first used this word in conversation, I asked Michele to explain what she meant by "publicly", since it seemed like unnecessarily grandiose language.a She explained that although she wasn't a celebrity by any means, she was constantly hounded for exclusive interviews by 's internal : a When I said this, Michele made her face scrunch up and she furrowed her brow. iii Initially, I felt pretty bad for Michele as I started to go through these documents and put together a basic timeline of her relationship with . I was horrified she'd spent years of her life being defined by this loveless relationship. Then I got bored of thinking of this way, and I decided to stop feeling bad about it. It was a very simple thing for me to do, and it made my life a lot easier. 50 While I was sorting through all these, the thought occured to me; how had Michele collected all of these complaint forms? She initially dismissed me and waved it off. I wasn't satisfied, so I kept asking; Michele had from so her wouldn't or her for regarding and affairs. That was her explanation, anyway. I choose to believe she kept these as trophies, a reminder of a time where she was an undisputed alpha. December 9, 1982 Michele and officially tie the knot and get married in a lavish ceremony in Much like their courtship, their marriage has a rocky start. The wedding takes six months to plan and execute, mostly due to a significant disagreement regarding the wedding cake.i Her happy-go-lucky spirit pushed to its limit, Michele remembers this period as being the most frustrating and unrewarding of her entire life. i While interviewing Michele about this cake, I was reminded of my own recipe for scrambled eggs. For the curious, I was able to find this mockup I made for an failed pre-COVID book proposal; 52 At this point, is fairly high-profile, working as one of most powerful . Although Michele didn't know it at the time, was being privately prepared for a privately councils that he will need to begin building a positive reputation outside of the . Michele, in her own word, 'balked' at the idea of having to performatively exaggerate the quality of their marriage to placate the press. Her discomfort resulted in a lot of awkward profiles like this one; a first-person op-ed from in the -wide cooking magazine . Michele only conceded to this photoshoot under the condition that she was able to "co-write" exactly half of the article. December 14, 1982 Less than a week after their wedding, Michele and are coming home from their honeymoon to initiate a legal dispute over their pre-nupital agreement. claims that the document is too vague and inconclusive, and has no internal logic.i Michele tries to argue out of the lawsuit for the sake of the marriage,ii but he cannot be convinced. Michele remembers this period as being the most unrewarding and frustrating of her entire life.iii i One of the cool things I've found about working on a book, as opposed to a film or graphic piece, is that I can refer to other texts and incorporate them into this one without having to actually clear a licensing agreement. So, while reading this spread, please open a music streaming service and play the following track as background accompaniment; The Logical Song Supertramp ii My biggest question for Michele after reviewing all of these legal documents and ephemera is; why on earth did she stay married to ? Barely a week into their marriage, they'd already cancelled their honeymoon, had a feud in the media, and initiated a legal dispute. Anyone looking at the relationship objectively would have to consider these red flags. But Michele explained it to me in a way that made total sense; by , were considered if there was ever any kind of or . If Michele was even briefly and not would've lost her entire community and everything she'd worked for. So I still disagree with her choice. But I get it. , she iii Just for the record; I'm aware this factually contradicts what she said on page 52. She argued to me that the two statements can both be equally true and that they demonstrate a poetic evocation of how she truly felt on both occasions. I disagree with her premise and think the two contradictory passages are confusing, but I've included them both to try and accurately reflect her perspective. 54 I found it difficult to relate to , or comprehend his motivations. Michele mentioned in passing that her lawyer James had the same problem, so I requested this transcript of his prosecution from the state. I also reached out to James for an interview, but found him elusive as he had blocked my number. The entire trial reads to me as extremely frustrating and unproductive. It truly seems like I can only assume that came to the same conclusion; all of his future marriage litigations were January 18, 1983 At this point, and Michele's legal dispute has been in-progress for more than sixi months. Without her consent or knowledge, informs that Michele To confirm her allegiance to both marriage, Michele undergoes a brutal series of seven , designed as an After two days, one night of intense , the official declaration is made; Michele is to spend .ii i Seven. ii At this point in the narrative, I've requested that the reader consider a dark and unpleasant time in Michele's life. This is probably the grimmest thing depicted in the entire book. Additionally, as far as I understand it, reaching this point reflects that the reader is almost exactly halfway through the overall content of the book. Given all these factors, I think the reader now has enough contextual information to give an informed - and, I hope, positive - review of the book on a social media platform or cataloging website. If you aren't sure exactly what to say, here's an example of the type of thing you could write up; SINCERITY POST WARNIGN i read exactly one (1) book/s per year but I HAVE FOUND THE CAUSE OF THE CORONAVIRUS was it. it was so insane, was absolutely hooked. ok back 2 my job at the Newtown oporto where I spit in the food 1:38am Just to be clear: I only want you to post something like this if you genuinely believe it will reflect your own experiences. But, if your views happen to match what I've written above, having this to copy and repost will hopefully save you some time. 56 Michele had to explain this one to me. I was glad she did, and thanked her accordingly. Essentially, those They had no legal obligation to Over time, this slowly led to the above innovation; extremely physically overbearing cages, installed in homes and , that were intimidating but lacked the function of actually trapping the occupant. , allegedlyi I need to be upfront with you here, if you've even been able to dig out this text from underneath the illustrations that Michele has designed and placed on top of it. Michele told me in a very matter-of-fact and upfront way that she fully intended to obscure every single word of the original paragraph that I wrote for this page. True to her word: on a couple of print mockups that I produced, she completely blacked out the entire A4 pasteboard. Destroying the entire page seemed like a waste of space - and, if this ever gets professionally printed, ink - so we both decided that instead of just completely blanking out this entire page, we'd do something visual for the reader. I think this probably works for the best, incidentally. This is slightly beyond the halfway point in the narrative, so it might informally work as a good act break to disrupt the conventional format of the book's spreads and do something to kind of jolt anyone who is just scrolling through this casually or mousing over the thumbnails in Scribd. While we're enjoying this unique and slightly less neurotic digression than the footnotes, I'd like to directly address anyone who is currently enjoying the book, or even just this textual element of it: thank you so much for your time and attention. I worked on this project for almost an entire year, not knowing if anyone would actually read the stupid thing - or if the format was even technically feasible. At several points, I felt like working on this was driving me completely insane. But I was compelled, both by ego and years of fantasizing about specific formatting jokes or structural devices that only a book affords. I've given this project so much of my time and mental energy that I honestly don't think I'll ever be able to do anything else like this ever again. I'd also like to take this opportunity to address anyone who did not enjoy the book: fair opinion, I totally understand, but I really would appreciate it if you could keep that to yourself. I'd rather not know the details, honestly. Please don't message me - or any high-profile journalists - about why you didn't like the book. i Michele's claim for when this photo was taken. I tried to extract EXIF data from the photograph, but was unable to find any kind of time, date, or location information within the print. 58 In an exact quote from the interview I conducted with her on April 26, 2020, Michele told me that she "was cast out onto the of the for a full 96 hours whilst with child. I sweat, starved, and shook with fury. When I reflect back on this period, I feel sick." [sic] May 25, 1983i The brand-new science fiction film Episode VI: is released to record-breaking box office and an enthusiastic critical reception. The films' co-screenwriter and executive producer, Mr. , cements his legacy in cinema history as not just a commercial success but also one of its most iconic auteurs. i Sourced this exact date from Wikipedia.a There wasn't a solid reference cited for it, but it still sounds right to me. a This reminded me: I'd love to see this book receive a Wikipedia page. I'd never make it myself, though - I firmly believe entries like that in resources like wikis, or Goodreads, should only be made if there's genuine public interest. Who am I to judge if this book deserves it? However, even just pragmatically, I think it'd be reasonable to assume an entry would look something like this; I Have Found The Cause of the Corona Virus (book) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This article may meet Wikipedia's criteria for speedy deletion. I Have Found The Cause of the Corona Virus (stylized as I HAVE FOUND THE CAUSE OF THE CORONA VIRUS) is a 2021 Australian[1] e-book, self-published by Ryan Dell. Presented as a collaboration between Dell and his roommate Michele, the book purports to be guerilla journalism documenting the original cause of the COVID-19 pandemic through a memoir-style retelling of Michele's life story. However, a substantial portion of the book - including Michele's last name - is completely censored.[2] The book is mostly notable for its role as evidence in several high-profile lawsuits, both in Australia[3][4][5] and internationally.[6][7] I Have Found The Cause of the Corona Virus Authors Cover Artist Pages ISBN Ryan Dell Michele[a] Ryan Dell Michele[a] 128 pp[b] TBD Cover (1st edition, 2020) Contents [hide] 1 Synopsis 2 Reception 3 Controversies 3.1 Authorship dispute 3.2 Plagiarism accusation 3.3 Wikipedia astroturfing 4 Reference 60 I begged Michele for something different to scan and include on this page. I already knew from the experience I'd had laying out page 52 that incorporating a full spread from another book into a single page is really difficult and awkward. She insisted on including this, though. I tried my best to make it work, but I'm really not happy with this compromise. December 22, 1983 Michele is invited to the wedding of a couple she barely knows. To keep up appearances, she agrees to temporarily leave her voluntary and attend with Although she cherishes the brief excursion and elegant catering, the wedding is otherwise uneventful - with one exception. While waiting for a valeti to fetch 's car, Michele strikes up a brief chat with fellow guest Mr. . Michele will remember the conversation for the rest of her life. i I looked them up in the Michelin Guide, and found this review: After going through two versions of revisions on this page with Michele, I suddenly felt I had to ask a critical question of her that I hadn't had the courage to ask before: why was she censoring so much of this book? I couldn't see why including this location or phone number were dealbreakers. But she levelled with me: she said, "I'm paranoid, Ryan. Having all this shit in some PDF freaks me out. I don't want someone tracking me down." It was a really compelling and earnest plea, which is what made it so hard for me to pretend multiple times in a row that I couldn't hear what she said. 62 Although the main courses were light, Michele informed me that the "party favors" were generously shared, including; quaaludes, crack cocaine, multiple classes of amyl in varities from "room odoriser" to "engine oxidizer", cigaweed, "smack", ecstasy, "big" LSD, edibles, and nitrous oxide chargers (all distributed in bags), in addition to alcohol (distributed in bottles). August 5, 1987 FRAMING DEVICE! Theses events have been reconstructed thanks to off-the-record interviews from a limited number of sources. To protect their identities, it is presented with an objective point-of-view in the style of “deep background” journalism. Michele takes in the room. The heart monitor she’s hooked up to occasionally gives off muted beeps. There's a view out the window of faded autumn leaves and an unused train line. There’s also a third poignant detail that adds extra atmosphere and helps make the situation feel more relatable and grounded. It takes a moment for her to realize, but she feels the most relaxed she's felt in years. Since... She closes her eyes and remembers that wedding afterparty from all those years ago. The smell of the chairs, the comfortable food. Finally having the big dinner that she'd been craving for so long. Swelling with pride from being in the same room - breathing the same oxygen - as so many SAG-accredited thespians. And, of course, the five minutes she spent talking to Mr. . Over the years, she'd forgotten certain details, or emphasised certain minituae from having the grooves in her brain that remembered this anecdote calcify and strengthen. She must have revisited this night thousands of times. The personal inquiries, the eye contact, the brief silence while both parties tried to gauge the others' explicit stance regarding the Viet Cong in a way that would give them a graceful out if need be. As Michele remembered the two of them laughing about something which in retrospect was indispituably racist, a pang in her gut jolted her back into reality. Michele noticed a three-inch long bandage on her stomach was bleeding out. Huh?, said Michele. Exactly fourteen seconds later, the door to the room opened. Then it shut. Then it opened again. Then it shut a second time. Then it opened again. Several nurses and a single doctor rushed in. They grab a blanket from her, never to be returned. One thing was clear in Michele's mind. She never communicated it to anyone at the time or made some kind of factual record of what it was, so logically there's no possible way it can be included in the omniscient narration of this scene, but whatever this thing was: the fact that it was located in her mind was indisputable. 64 True to form, Michele did not "journal" her life in the conventional sense. I don’t think I should comment on this one, beyond factually acknowledging that it’s a page from Michele’s diary. It’s no indictment of the content, I just personally associate journaling with mental illness and having a lack of control over the id. If anyone would like a brief but vaguely academic pull quote from me on this subject, I’ve included one below; May-June, 1991 Michelle, alternating between a and the , has spent most of the previous eight yearsi in some form of voluntary . As a personal project, and to erase a lifelong shame, Michele requests a series of educational resources to help her finally learn how to read and write.ii i With multiple and oft-repeated exceptions, including; ten "free" days per year, all public holidays to an average of eight per year, birthdays, and 12 weeks' worth of sick/carer's leave. ii I just wanted to address this reveal a little more directly than some of the other plot points in Michele's story, as it took me a while to make sense of it myself. Yes, for the first 3 years of her life, Michele was completely illiterate. Instinctively, it felt impossible - a ludicrous logistical impossibility. However, the more I asked Michele about her life, and crossreferenced it against everything I'd documented so far, I realized that only did this reveal make complete sense, but that it'd been delicately foreshadowed the entire time; Page Incongruity 16 How did she sign her initial on her driver's license? 43 The letter from her therapist says that Michele's "handwriting needs improvement". 44-45 Not so much a question as a statement, but I just want to check Michele didn't fill out these forms. 46-49 Ohh, wait, ignore these ones. I guess it's never explicitly stated Michele sent any responses. 53 How did Michele "co-write" this article? 59 Michele wrote "shop" onto this photograph in marker. Did she do that on the original print? Misc. I think I noticed a different logical impossibility. Explanation Michele's first answer within the interview excerpted on page 50 explicitly states she has no idea what her own initial is. It's implied by the phrasing that her parents taught her how to sign documents, but didn't explain that "part". Although the phrasing is disingenuous and extremely misleading, this was a factually accurate observation. Yep, that's right. Her therapist marked them up on her behalf, and added his own notes, in what I've color-corrected to be pink pen. That's all good, I'd rather double check and be thorough. Nice try. The reference to "shouting" in the copy and the general premise only make logical sense if the content is being constructed through dual dictation. Yep, but the faint timecode stamp on the bottom right clearly indicates that it was taken in 2008 and is therefore one of the books' non-linear digressions. Email it to me at either of my addresses with subject line Gotcha! 66 I wanted to try and use this interactive CD for myself, so I could better understand how Michele taught herself to read. Unfortunately, I don't own a PC with a disc drive. November 5, 1996 Michele, still in the hospital and recovering from another routine operationi, requests and is granted supervised leave to perform a critical task she's been anticipating for weeks: voting for a Democratii in the U.S. Presidential election. i Which, in my opinion, is a weird way to describe a pregnancy. Feels too glib. ii I interviewed her about this, and she claimed at the timea that 1992 was her first vote in a Presidential election. But when I investigated further with the Texas voting registry, it quickly became apparent this wasn't strictlyb true. She was on record as having submitted a vote for almostc every single preceding Presidential election during which she was eligible; 68 a And still claims to this very day. b Or leniently, either. c And, indeed, all of them. It took me a couple weeks to realize that including this ballot to help illustrate Michele's voting record made it somewhat self-evidently redundant. December 31, 1999, and also January 1, 2000 Due to a frenzied collective paranoia regarding security, Michele is temporarily removed from her open and ushered onto a spare , so that she can be supervised without disrupting any of the ' New Year's celebrations. The party feels constricted at first, but eventually everyone realizes there's no-one on board invested in enforcing protocol. The congenial vibe and general feeling of euphoria put Michele in a peaceful state of mind - and remind her, more than anything, of Mr. As the other and dance - and the former try to eat as much as possible - Michele stands off in the corner, finding that every detail around her reminds her of that cold December nighti from almostii fifteen years ago. It’s at this moment Michele finally decides that she wants to leave

• and i If, for some reason, you're reading this book backwardsa and haven't seen this part yet: this event is chronicled in more detail on page 62. ii She was about two off. a Which, personally, I think would be a weird thing to do. 70 I found all of these inside of Michele's wallet, kept carefully as mementos of her travels. She also had about AUS$22 in there, a low amount of cash-on-hand I chose not to judge her for. December 21, 2005 At this point, Michele has returned from spending several years overseas. She's found the time liberatingi - and, desperately, embarassinglyii lonely. She informed me that, as soon as she returned to the States, she was harassed endlessly - by former friends, by colleagues, and most significantly: by 's lawyers. After several months of being bothered by police reports and unrequested food deliveries, Michele finally concedes to their main request: a public meeting with . He apologises and professes that he actually wants to help her finalise the divorce, but convinces her it would be a bad look to continue a fifth year of travel as the trip could make her appear to be an unfaithful spinster and neglectful mother. Unseen amongst the crowd at , he hands her an envelope. Michele is coerced into signing up for the 's " " program to keep up appearances. It's on this specific date in 2005 that, to keep up the "illusion", she volunatarily returns into inside her a full two years. i Now able to read independently, she told me she found The Manipulated Man a critical text. ii 72 Michele was extrodinarily proud of this one. Well, proud is actually the wrong word, she was exceptionally shy about it and didn't want to discuss it at all. As a harassment technique, several of 's lawyers would repeatedly file complaints against her for disorderly public conduct. She was given this police report almost immediately after a lengthy and voluntarily offered series of statements regarding why she was "being weird" and "doing weird stuff". January 18, 2007 Michele, hungry, makes the same request of that she's made a couple times a week for most of the previous 24 years: please, let me put on a coati and go to the CVS to get a big bag of M&M's. After some ridicule, they once again let her wash her face and give her a couple dollars in petty cash. As she pays the extremely polite clerks, one of them accidentally drops some of Michele's coins. One rolls out the front door.ii Something clicks in her mind. Michele realizes there would be no consequence for just doubling back, grabbing some Birthday Cake Oreos, and adding them to her purchase. A couple minutes later, she has a more profound realization. i For anyone reading this who doesn't know what a coat isa, a coat is this big piece of clothing that kind of feels like a really thick shirt. They usually cover up most of your arms and back. You can wear them anytime you want, practically speaking, but they're most well suited for cold weather. ii I couldn't figure out how to communicate this in a literary format, but if you're imagining this visually in your inner monologue, try to interpret it somehow as occuring in slow-motion.b a A group I'm more than happy to accomodate. b Luckily, if this book is ever adapted for the silver screen, the Arri Alexa cameras I requested in line item 26-00 within the budget proposal on page 42 are capable of shooting high framerate footage, so shooting this scene will definitely be possible. I can also bring some coins if that helps out the prop department for this project, who will probably be really busy and will need all the help they can get! 74 Michele kept these cards as a memento of this extremely critical moment in her life: the first activity that she embarked on after making the decision to truly forever from the I think she also kept them for practical reasons, because the extensive list of medications and dosages detailed on these cards would have been extremely difficult for a normal person to memorise instantaneously. I assume it would have been a lot easier for her to just read them over and over than to try and remember all of this information after only having seeing it once. August 14, 2009 Michele attends a rather amusingi yard sale. She approaches the host running the event at approximately 2:40pm, has a brief conversation where she tries to haggle down the price of a hilarious novelty capii, then returns to her hotel.iii i I asked her why it was so amusing, and she told me some anecdote that I don't remember. ii Although footnote iii provides further detail, Michele assured me recently over email that this part is true and that she completely "fild" to strike a bargain. iii Michele mentioned this yard sale three times over the course of my extensive one-on-one interviews with her; once in March, once in August, and once more in March.a It made me curious,b so I decided to push this line of questioning further.c She informed me that the main reason she remembered this is because she ran into someone from her past here, someone she used to know from the she was posted on during the events of page 51. They invited her out for coffee. She agreed. Over two disgusting iced mochasd, they asked her if she was happy and she demurred. They gave her a business card and told her that there would always be a home for her I couldn't help but think, when Michele told me this story, that I saw a spark in her eyes that I hadn't seen in a while - a sad realization, as I personally have this spark in my eyes every single day. a The proofreader I hired over Fiverr told me to rephrase this sentence, here was my reply: To: noreply@e.fiverr.com Subject: Re: requesting clarification No b One of my favorite emotions. c Actually, sorry, this is a lie.1 She just kind of brought it up of her own accord during the chat in August. I didn't really ask her about it at all. d Sorry again, but this is just me editorialising. The ice waters down the coffee. 1 Which, I'll remind you, I warned you was a distinct possibility on page 6. 76 Although I sadly wasn't able to use any of the contact information on this flyer, I have to be honest: I wish I could have gone to this. It looked there would have been some great deals there and, possibly, an opportunity to make some very special memories. April 4, 2012 A famousi bookstore in , allows ten random poets to take a raffle ticket and be randomly selected to do a reading of their work. Michele, who has found about this event from Facebook targeted advertising, is attending this event for the thirty-sixth time. As the other poets perform their work to an enthusiastic yet polite reception, a new reality catalyzes in Michele's mind: the game is rigged. They will never, ever allow her to perform her workii. i I mean, relativelya speaking. ii It's hard for me to objectively or retroactively evaluate whether or not this is a good thing. Michele was pretty adept at performing her poetry to me in-person, which I asked her to do a couple times so I could understand the works' personal significance to her.b But, frankly, her poems don't really translate well into being reproduced in print: a Don't want to go off on a tangent regarding this topic, but you probably get what I mean. b Which, in theory, was a research task meant to give greater weight and purpose to the copywriting in this book, but in practice I think I found her performances to be pretty forgettable. 78 Just like the medical certificate on page 41 and the CD on page 67, this flyer was a frustrating dead end. The design is really not my taste, and the thought of having to look at more of this type of stuff really upset me. January 18, 2014 Michele buys a pet bird.i i She didn't really want to talk to me about this part of her life very much.a a Which, to me, seemed somewhat dissonant. For the first year we spent living together, she was a completely open book. She would endlessly tell me about her life, usually unprompted. She'd go on and on about and , about her family lineage including German grandfather1, and - by far her favorite topic of conversation, a subject I've been able to almost completely excise from this book except for this single mention of it - why she preferred certain brands of sunscreen to others. Night after night, I'd return home from watching some comedy show or doing exactly one nang at a house party and find Michele, eager to chat, giving me the impression that I was the first person she'd talked to all day.2 I found it annoying at the time. I wasn't seeing the situation for what it really was. Seeing you retreat into yourself, and knowing you were just hiding in your bedroom silently plugging away this stupid thing, made me feel like I'd done something wrong. It was a terrible feeling, and if you'd like to apologise for putting me through it, I would really appreciate that. If you would like to apologise, the quickest way to reach me would be to send AUS$13 to me on Beemit with the info field filled out to say something apologetic. In the app, it'd look like this: Let's pay $1 to for Being sorry slide to request 1 In my opinion, learning Michele's family was part-German completely resolves the mystery on page 48. 2 Which was theoretically possible, as both of our sleeping schedules were so completely deranged and unhealthy while living together that I would leave the house most mornings without having seen her at all. 80 3 The minimum allowable spend in the app, I'm assuming. Would make sense. big_attachment.pdf At one point during quarantine, Michele tentatively took me aside. I didn't really understand why she chose to initiate the conversation that way, since we were the only two people in the apartment and there was no-one else to be on the side of. Anyway, she been involved in a big legal dispute a couple years previously and asked if I could take a look through a document she'd held onto for a while. I initially assumed based on context clues that this would be something related to the custody of her children. I was pretty close: it was an in-depth tentative discussion doc regarding her attempt to legally repurchase a pet bird that she had regretted selling to an unnamed of the Unfortunately, this PDF document was written in completely inpenetrable gobbledygook. Out of respect for the readers' time, I've chosen to omit most of its 350 pages from this book. March 17, 2016 Michele's heart skips a beat.i While vacationingii, she reads a news story about Mr. in a local newspaper. It feels like it can't just be a coincidence. Michele reads on the Courier Mail website that he's recently been researching an undisclosed project, being produced in Sydney. Michele finds an extremely compelling and believable justification for why she'd need to stay in Australia, and notifies 's lawyers she won't be coming to America for at least two years. They ask her to keep a low profile. i If you'd like more information about why I believe March 17 of 2017 is notable for Michele, don't worry! I've prepared that for you. Just stop reading this footnote and return to the main copy of this page, formatted above, and the story will continue there. ii Out of curiosity,a I asked Michele what caused her to consider Australia as a vacation destination in the first place. I had a lot of contempt for living here,b so I didn't understand why she had a different opinion to mine. Her explanation was, in my opinion, pretty weak. She said that octopus was her favorite "big" dish and that only Australian chefs knew how to properly cook it in the Sri Lankan style.c I can't reiterate enough - this was a pretty confusing explanation to me, and it felt self-evidently contradictory, but as a journalistd it's my job to report the facts as I discover them. a Which, to reiterate what I wrote on page 76, is one of my favorite emotions. b For a disclaimer to explain why I used past tense, please refer to footnote iv on page 22. c In 2020, whilst in isolation with Michele, I got this alert on my iPad: UBEREATS now Message from Courier octopus. Maximum size we can do. Bigger portion not avail. Stop d Ostensibly. 82 I've never seen any of Mr. ' movies, so I didn't really know what to make of the references or allusions to his work included in this article. I get the impression that if I did, though, my Letterboxd log would look something like this; Ryan Dell PRO 12 Rewatched 21 November 2020 This movie is weird! LIKE? 2 likes June 15, 2016 After weeks of misery, Michele finally completes her first major assessment for her new degree: a script for a stage play. It's a surreal piece of work about two limousine drivers who, over the course of one epic night, find themselves pushed to the limit.i Over the next five years, Michele intermittently sends this manuscriptii to as many Sydney producers and directors as she can, to try and get it professionally staged.iii i Over the course of the entire play, Bret refuses to let Ernest touch his tape recorder. I don't want to spoil anything, but at the end of the play, after Bret has been shot and is lying in the gutter, Ernest finally hits play on the recorder and it's revealed that Bret is the author of the play you're now watching. It's a psychotic reveal: it doesn't make sense even within the play's own structure because there's no jusifiable reason Ernest would try to pass that information on to anyone else, and the reveal doesn't help illuminate anything psychologically authentic - but I always admire a big swing. ii I spent a long time reading through Michele's entire screenplay and had mixed feelings. As someone who's spent years making what could be accurately described as "outsider art" or " fanfiction", here was something extremely emotionally compelling about her work here. For someone who was so articulate and eloquent in real life, seeing her produce something so metanarratively intense but semantically clumsy further reinforced why I enjoyed her company so much, if not necessarily her prose. I wish she saw as much value in her work as I did.a iii In an interview,b Michele claimed that she once came extremely close to having it play at a venue in Newtown as part of the Sydney Fringe Festival.c a At this point in the book, I'd like to explicitly repeat that despite some of the misleading phrasing I've used so far in this book: Michele is still alive. By all accounts, she's doing great. b With me. c I wasn't able to substantiate this claim prior to publication. 84 Michele informed me that this document was written mostly in 2015 in Microsoft Word, on a series of computers provided by the uni and with intermittent feedback from her lecturers. November 11, 2018 Michelei's roommateii of almost two years officially vacatesiii the property. She begins searching for a replacement. i At this point in the production of this book, my relationship with Michele was somewhat fractured and the vibe in the house felt somewhat awkward. In my own quarters, with a haphazardly filled-out whiteboard taking up almost all of one of my six wallsa, I tried to piece together a full picture of what had happened during this time in her life without bothering her unnecessarily. At this point; she'd completed her degree, was apparently a regular at several trivia night events in the Newtown area, and was continually reading and collecting scans of an abundance of poorly-chosen literature that, quite frankly, was not to my personal taste. I was able to glean that much, at least, from everything in her collection. Something fairly intruiging I found of my own accord, though, was her track record across social media. She was, to put it frankly, one of the most skilled and efficient Posters that I've ever seen in my life. She possessed a remarkable finesse for pissing people off and generating huge numbers on her interactions, simply through being completely out of sync with the community around her. Her most viral post of all was, coindicentally, on the exact same date that I'd started writing this book. On April 6, 2020, she reshared a post from Honi Soit and just added a single line of completely sincere, uncalculated commentary that seemed to piss off almost every single Friend she had. I asked her what motivated her to share it and she pointed to this line specifically; The Ebola outbreak of 2014-16, which killed more than 11,000 people across West Africa, occured in areas which were deforestation hotspots and likely emerged after fruit-eating bats were driven to human settlements in order to find food. COVID-19, which is similarly thought to have originated in bats, is the just theb latest infectious disease to arise from human interference with nature. ii Whose estate, frustratingly, asked me not to include their name in this book. iii I asked Michele what she did with this empty room for the three months it was uninhabited, and she just told me she used it to keep "big" ingredients for her meal preps. a I know this might seem like something I should have to explain, but if you think about it, I actually don't. b Not my syntax mistake. That's on them. 86 Kevin Doinkler Has anyone else noticed their garbage bin is being used by their neighbours? I keep noticing food packets and post-it notes in my red bin. Not a big deal but I know it definitely isn't me or my daughters since we never buy those 2y Like Reply 1 Michl Nonam Don't. Bliv you. Sounds wird 2y Like Reply Inner West COMMUNITY CLEANUP Group post by Ellen O'Bingie • 7 m • hello everyone ! its that time of year again. lets all put down the papers and pick up some furniture instead in these troubled times (not Irish type) i noticed that we let the street stagnate a bit. theres also been some really poor etiquette with some of my neighbors in which is disheartening considering the comraderie we had in past. so if it's kosher with everyone I'd like to do a nice little VOLUNTEER CALLOUT !!, for anyone free this wed-fri? Your help would especially be appreciated in the area Michl Scond Hmmmm not fair. Why th guilt trip? hard pass 7m Like Reply Ellen O'Bingie not directed at you. id rather you not be there 7m Like Reply View 101 previous replies... peremy jungle 4 89 Frankly, our scene is just anti-intellectual. There's no ideation. When I lived in LA, I got excited every night. 1w Like Reply Kevin Doinkler Hey everyone, doinks here again. I'd just like to repeat one of the group rules for everyone's benefit: please DM other members ONLY if you have a pre-existing relationship with them. Harassment will not be tolerated 3m Like Reply 6 Michl Fifthaccount No 3m Like Reply Hey Kevin! I'm a low-pr It was only after moving in with Michele that I realized I had actually seen her online before. On Facebook, in the "Inner West " group, she was a loyal member for a full 13 years - or, if you phrase it obtusely, 26 half-years. I often found comment threads like this up on the iPad. Doesn't really matter what I write here I was originally going to include an interesting little blurb here about Michele's mental state in February 2020i. But as soon as I pitched that to herii she was incredibly upfront and said she was going to just keep overlaying graphics and papers on top of it until I finally approved one of her changes. She told me all this after she'd moved out and unofficially quit the project. I personally think this change actually makes her look worse, because it implies she was going insane from mold infestation, but at this point I'm just trying to include as many of her requested changes as I possibly can without making the book completely incomprehensible. i At this point, the book has become somewhat non-linear. Some of the details on this spread, for example, logistically could only have occured after a critical event which is depicted afterwards at the very "end" of this books' linear narrative in about nine pages' time. The timeline is becoming fairly convuluted, and I'm worried readers will have to spend too much time doing deductive reasoning to piece together a coherent sequence of events. So, for everyone's mutual benefit, I've assembled a quick guide to the books' sequencing; Ehm, I wanna read I HAVE FOUND THE CAUSE OF THE CORONAVIRUS...? Be my guest. OK, wow. There's about 100 pages. Where do I start? Easy there, partner. One step at a time. And the best way to do a step? That's right: repeatedly picking up one foot and placing it in front of the other. So let's just replace some of those metaphorical steps with some real ones: the instructions below, which will instruct you on optimal reading order. At t i o mt c a e o p mi mo p i p n r e o t h s i s n e i n b d l e crehmaSnoogrsmeedeoitrhrcienopgmaispraacbsrsleyido, nwis.ithout 34 HpisoesuriMtcmicoieconsht:shefdeluerlsipasnibtdeorauninruocinsoceknsytrtoshtveaertes,ciatlhiln.einbgirth BrtrheutlartttiiIbidouriInedtfisanoehl'lnltityplbiefmweyaldpit"tiohItnolmtihteaerinvgrayhimsetkthwoiaintenchrgcg-eosMrpumrabiopnjcedldhciustefhclcaeottinhmavfibepd,ro.oeIunIrtwhahianeoelntruitaplcydnla"a.drtaiermApnyoteftstdot,enstbrihtraniacnmtleglsoyhtirhteaeewuwgptaeornwpudtil-ilcdtwehcbodlheriateaphrlrorlyoygritumfgeecaIa,tndweIidecrcaohafltrmeleoyrme,auabtnopocdouotwmnehdnhfeteoerirnastltaabnlde. tdtpheoeisncsfgreoislbIsloedwvdeiabrngnhThSi;eneraMspirbtsdeiencircshacaetntemerilovefseterahroaykeamnhataelabu.dtcoghkuebetofsiotohn1rhuetcerhorcpeveoraikoerpiewfnancirgtnoeswng. tflhpsiarciotntcstbeheesnetssw,ceaMleylel.iencHdhuoaeswl'eabesirvgereopdroe,inmastnhemedrad'l.ytbiedIust.scwiWonnagschtetehdhniesvtmaehdroajtsewtchetaeisffvrhemactrtoeitodhnearnte Uayo"bubecirhgEedcaiktnstnhdeersl"i.zvSesrh.y"e'oCdrhua1asGullIaerclnulagybniHsneogulbebhvcietosrsuhoasimbplyomeuctetohnmtitnhpsgishretewohweoinorduelhbdroetalwhisekMfnmfeaicelsthkteoixlmectrhmlemaecrdkeniltaeyhtdeferltyumhsaietsrnwautoiftnorodlglsofaerwneod-miufuptcn,hup"elMrtyouoadrffakulecrtseuivdre. otlWehsxmreieicoenosgnyiase.,raItaretsnhda'isfnftorkeortmothhuirserewsfaohdauaisrnejdgudisanthngodnmosefeGoeafisrnhugtebhriHetei"ucnbcbie,gnshtotoreiuIrctshaea"aip.nv*pemronexonitmi.dBaetauiothnsohsw,e'ltdihkme wroevoferdrroeinugteotrofedthheeUsrup.pSee.rrslmeosnasartlkheatnas o l H s a c m i e h s w s o e k a t a u n r s e n o c s d o f g e l h i " r e h l f e i e . b i s e v n I r r j i c s , o o n a a a p w u g m b n e r s o w e n r e e u l s e i y u o t t t y h h p n l t o a e h a Ma u n l a w s l d d t y i " e . , c o c b b A h d n u i , g e o c r l a t l e r n h e n h e , ' o . t n d o a u Thu t l n s m i g c k d s e h i u o e r s n , l s c h t * t i g o u h i n e " p f m Me . g l s c A e i a s s o n i o t i c t p u d a g n i h a m n r g t e i r s c s h , t l e e e e a a , u s f s t r l w w n , a t o e h d I o i m d v t e o u h h a e n u l a y n t d i g m h v a s t h e e b b h y h o l n e I p o y b r ' o o u c d u r o e a o g i s ff u t d m h w t i e s - e c e e k d l a m y s e i t r w S y t y o y i m m c h t t i h o a o P y m a a l a p l r v i m y e t t d l e t a e r K i r o y a t e , y c n e s w t t c o y t h h a h a a b n o i ffi s s s i o a u i s a t o a R n g e f r n b h o i d u d t a i l . s y t k w l a s l t i f l y t i a e l o t r p n t h r o a o i c f h d s h k w o t o e h - n w h r r e i g s a t s s h m d e o e c e a u u w Y i a l n p c l o d i t e h t u e s o d h h T n i r t " e o Ms u Thr d e p b e l p i e y m t c e i . h h Mn B i I e e n g i l u k g d e s e s ' s i y c 40 Mt p a h w r e e i k c f n e w h r h e a r i l e r e g d d h w i t l n i o o g c u m h i l d t d a e e r o n x k f t c u t s e e p w r n p r h t e e s a r l t e h b s a o h t o e s k ' h d s e i h n f i o s g u t h e n f l a r i d d o g m h p o a t f e r t t d h t h i e c s e u o s m e l a fl r e l t i y m h f i s a n i s g e c r , i n r s e c a a a t l i n i n s s g e , . d b S u s h t h e e t h ' t d o a t l a d c s s h c m c i e a d e ' n d e t n s h h t e a a a l t d e l l c s y t t h o e d e o d e v f m p a a a s c a t g e n l e d y y s a , library book instead of one of her own, then had to go out-of pocket to pay for a replacement. ME l p l e a h s g c i y s k a c e s e l h i n d c o e t a l b i t e a l l h l i l y h e g l y a a o f , d t u v t i e n o h t r o n c o b t s e e t i e o x o a p n r i l n a o i g f n a c c t a h t g u i e s a s l o , l n y i n e O t s r t t a v o a p e l m r p l e i t e d n i . m g i I n e t w , h h t e a o h s m o i g s c e l c s a s u l d o a p w n s a h d n l y e t . l d e i d d , t o a n t h d e , t t h a h b a a n o t v k w e e d e i n r h e n e o i r n v a t a i c t m c i Tho o i n d r d e ; a y i t e n i x h n g t a g r l y d e b . m n u e o t l y Mqrouoiacmrha,enlnteiongsetra.elwWgiiecnahclrlayedadsipgnegniltnygtwhteihthfirodrusrtagwchonfiulpaenleadfwtaenretkfiisloercefirgaolumolavrhelryertwh"aetrchoiuivnregsse"T,oaVfnodtuohrgaecvtohilnlegrcitDnivNtehMe slivasinsghe fi r g e u l m l l e a e d B g m s o u b u t a e n t a r t d i l t a l l h u e c i s s s e t s r r p t t a e i a t m r i i o n i o e n p d w w o b i i o t n e h r i t k n , m s g s h h e o e e , n e l s t e e t s a a . o v r Wf i t n t e h o g d e r m s k m p i e n e o n g a s d l t o o i p n n n r e g t o h t d m o i u s o fi c b r t n e o i v i o a s e h k n a d o w n c m d h c a a o r t e s r i w e I o n t n a i r o a m d w l l i e y n b l g f i e e s l o l t i t e f e n c v m l e i a n y u w g e s a t n t s r o t o s i s r p e o e a h n s l o o i g b f n s e i c . a 4 , b b o o u f u t t I oBwffoasthoO"EcePnarvnplLelecainaepebgtssluesae,hlada.oelonlTh'fnydc'tIfirelapodnmfuoeitksbcoihnleiridedgsedh,Imdawtmnheitediedswnswebatatoiesdoamtnkwien.ma"kdtwehethatesoremedbylaryoeelo.lfakotk,artltakhmeaslioecmses.eIenxotc.ffiStehrdedsiphtueotsmheearmkfeoedrhk.erdtohwenb,ewstipberdeatkhfeasgtrIit veluelvnaIetrteardbielde otof udsebaantde her ThouetroIetfwietna.csonuoraregdedeeming thIetmpr,oIatponosdpdgeiatrnhtetecdtceaohcnmiasdpcelaesrteefrraewezaeyofnropmublic apibfffeustbahtileS"erirRcsh.jiuytceYaysrogetnuwrac,atsiopebtnlhdibelfealeabdhsycesamo.etvhImdyefeapnthpinloameadtntnefdodtsireos.tmcdelloiylc-stsahecalderklerehea,ixtegteprhdoitensnatevhpt.oioenThlvrpgefr.aem"otcttesenhcotep.ypcoouurrtlufdrnicieotnymdtpso.leYttroeyulyarnrfeaddmgeielnmye. rThhaeterysaedlcfeysecprlievrieotdfually MdraefstSTsehawnfeotgehewrerdelcderhkaoafsnt.ltoaoItfte.mwr,yaMshaicnmhdesl.sesIatfegexelttethdhaemt,ceuontldwbeockhbniiloglwoanfnehnseotrutwnoceMedmdicienhngetslreoinavtge.trhoeutrimenec,rIy'pdtaedlreFaadcyebseoeonk i Pleasedon'tcensorthisone. Pages 34—39. (Ignore footnotes + pinkboxes.) Historical context that takes place before the core events. Pages 40—57. (Keep ignoring them.) Michele's life journey, from the early 60s to early 1983. Pages 60—91. (Still ignoring 'em.) There's a couple of attempts to experiment with chronology, but for the most part this sequence keeps telling Michele's story in the order that it happened. fitr.oMmI niucenhededleetrontoebladethumptehfreionnilatluwvsetirtryhatmyioanutsthet,reh-raoeatf,-Mliffaliycectohuage'nvledeheudavpselfnrdyoebnisetigewnaeaydbtlahenatdtospdhliaegcfeoudulltoytnhintiotseptneodxfetd tTbadsolerwamcuocaiebkdesstethceoduionhotrfhegeursatevptwvtiahiseoncurersyadtel-es:nfiaotondinrgrdeoltae,hfAicewjfuo4rotsuehptrpadaicldseoetemeforv.bftpehoprleaergtrioednltrt.ysigDmpbinlreoaosacntfklerkuopsisypaniirsognantgoharuatlatlhtpyetIhpepritnsrihnoteaitdntreutdIicp,rweaidnrgp,okeatsehgs-efse,ocmrwowtemehd'edpisblldieopkotaehglye. tkohineddIhistaorhlfufipjnwotkaltythahpeniosyciopnnrtoevibenwnathbthiloyeniwnsaalojurfrsokatrstmsifcvoarerot, ltoslhoifnetightbemthsbtirg,ohiountkgci'hisndsfteophnritmesaacladlalysl.yuaThawnldloiysrdkoiosrasmloiamgohguetostliohyndigbnaegocyvtoeonbrdrtehaek tfeohvouetnWmnjobuhtnseitalsei,tlhswI'iidesn'rtleSikxcetrnuitjbaodlyd.einilregemcttehlnyistauodfndirqte:usteshandykosynloieguwhstholyomliesuscshunrferouernroytlotyiucerdntijigomryeinsasginotdnhaetthbtaeonotktioh,neo.r I a s w o t e i e c l r m w a s v t e s s u e o I e t r a c l ' r r d a i a k o u l k l l n e m c y a e p d d t l r p u s t o e m o h o e r i a n a n l i l d e s l l t i e n t s k e d d t h , t e v h e , a i I e v e s l t b r f o i e p o e s c a n t l e r t t g t u o h a e s a p l k j r t e i b i g i e k h n c d y y e a t . t t e h t t f w h h g o i o s i o o a r n n t r o a l a g k y p I l n i m - p n a h d o g o o o b y r r s n o o t e t e i u o a n f a s n r k t n t s t i l h h t a y o e y e ff i f n d s o t f t o f o w o r i a n r d r n a a e ' m s t s t d . y a t a d d I e s h t r r i ' a v i z e i w n r v e i s , n a k s i g n n s g a I i o g v e n ' a t l e v m y b l k n e o o e n e n n v u t o h c e e t t w e o r i s w s c m p b i h n h p e e p n g o r c l a o i i e c i d b fi j t f e a l i e c e c d a l l l t y f n y t o n o s y i r f o o n o e m d t n s a m o a e a e s n n i t u a b w t e j c n i o l . n h o e y y B . u g t o t h A l u h j f d i o t t n e m k I g e y s bcmoeuoslksda: gkfaeiemrpoetph-inaotirotnaon,yIothuoirtgsaehll-lfyp. rIuo'ndfidlreartjshotuearnrndna,olbtisukttsnIo-wraebatohllueytdweohtuayildlyso,auhpopdnriedecsnit'atlytle.ikPiteleitfahsyeobudoonk't. p5h8otiogMraipch,elbeu'st cwlaismunfoarblwehteonfitnhdisapnhyoktionwd aosf taimkeen,.dIatrei,eodrtloceaxtiroanctinEfXorImFadtiaotna fwroitmhitnhtehe print. Index The cover, the insert photo, pages 4-33, re-read the pages you've already read (footnotes + pinkboxes only) then pages 58-59 Now that you've primed yourself with essential context, you can start your second readthrough with full comprehension. 60 AuthorsCover (1st editiRMonyi,acn2h0eD2le0e[al)]l PCISaoBgveNesrArtist 1RMT2yBi8acDnhpepDl[ebe][al]l Itwhniatathnscheeixlad"cw.tIaqsuwcoaetsaetto,furstotamornvteohdet,haientdershvoieowk owIf itcthohenfduuryc.teWdhwenithI rheeflrecotnbaAckproinl 2th6i,s 2fpo0err2ai0ofd,u,MlIl 9ifce6ehlhesloieuckrt.os"lwd[shimicl]set shelly0000001 1/1 Pages 94-97, then the index and the shelly0000001 So sad to be leaving this amazing house. Buong @ryanmarkdell! MThaeybr2Eanp5dis-,ondee1wV9sIc:8ie3ncei fiction film iaThpsnrordedlafiuenlacmeserns,d'tMchtour-s.rsiecacrsoetiercdn-cw,brcrirteietimacekarelianrntegsdcbheeopixsxteicounffit.icve l c m e o g o m a s c t m y i c e i o r n c n i c i a c i l n a s e u u m t c e c a u e h r s s s i . s b t o u r t y a a l s s o n o o n t e j u o s f t i a t s smoyaudsneiedlfisS,fortihuhgorehacurtegThdt'hsotg-mihseiInesr.efiuemirxnmaiencltpydudebdbaetlmieicefevir:neoItme'ednretWlrsoitvei.kesWiltpiokehdseoeitaeah.mtahtThIiisnteobroejuoswdkoaugrserenci'etfsiatvlheiskiosaelbiWwdoiorikekifisepd,reodsnreicarGevpeocasoigtidetdr?.eIHfa'odorswn,itese,hvbeoeurut,mldeitavosektneilyijltubste pragmIFraoHtmicaWavlilkeyi,pFeIdotiauh,intnhdekfThriete'denbcCeycarloeupaesdeoiano. afbtlheetoCaosrsuonmae aVnireuntsry(bwooukld)look something like this; ICbMclniayaHfAueimRcUasshevytSeoaeo-ElrnFfeiy,sOtoD.htucHFheonelomTdCl.wbHThpOPoelEoerVveetkeCeIsCrelDp,ayOnuau-tcRr1sepeu9OdnobsNparfsotastAsrhanaetnedVdoctCe.oIi[bma2Rol]elriUaopcgThbnSoutoa)hriertsaVriisoiatoiliurarnloatugn2iohscj0oflb(e2auste1mthrtmynweAaleaiebyzmuleoimesnodtmerikDera-td-slesiWoaItlinlycnHiaulck[e1nlm]AiuprdeVde-thndiEbenitiolasgiFlon'irsMOnkgocg,orUtisimhcoteNheflmrfeDMo-ilapretTi'ufsgecobHhilrnlaeiEsaslptehle'esedy deletion.I HoafvtheeFCouornodnTha VeiCruasuse Thboteh123bionSRCoAkyeoncunisoestptrmCrotsaioivoslensintartls[ey3i]ne[n4ts][so5]t[ahnbildeeif]notreirtnsartoiolenaslley.v[6i]d[7e] nce in several high-profile lawsuits, 4 R3e.f132ereAWPnlcuaietkghioparesidshmiiapadscticsrupostuautterifiong 7 secAonddsaacgomment... About the Authors "About the Authors" sections. You can finally finish the book properly. As a cooldown, and a little bit of a treat: enjoy these additional sections which have some fun extra information for the readers. ii To Michele's credit, she was great at challenging my pitches. I always had to make sure I'd figured out the base reality of my premise, and outlined clear ways that the journalism could escalate. 88 of tRhiysabnoDokel.l is the co-author Michele is shopping list 22 10 Ric Chs OJ Frangr Cram Bri Brad Blu chs Bottl watr Facmasks Appl Banana Thank you for th last two yars. You hav bn th bst part of this brif window of tim. I will chrish th mmory of our tim togthr for th rst of my lif -- plas know that this choic has nothing to do with you. I cannot say nough this is not rlatd to th rcnt discussions wv had about th book. Howvr thr's no othr way to put this: with a havy hart I must announc that as of DAY THIS NDS UP BING I will b moving out. I'm looking forward to what I am rfring th nxt "chaptr" of my lif hahaha. ADD GNAIL SNTNC HR FOR PACING Our long and winding road has com to a cul-d-sac and its tim for m to hit that road, dspit th immns wight of my hart wighing my down. I hop that dspit things w can rman on good trms and I'm mor than happy to hlp with th mov in any way i can, if you fl lik that would hlp you during ths turblnd tims. CAR OFFR As a last inquiry, I would lik to gt in writing an Official Statmnt from you rgarding th book as wv only talkd about it IRL. If I can b honst, I dont want to continu to contribut to th projct in its currnt form partly du to th prsonal natur of th contnt and partly du to a gnuin concrn on my part that th book could prompt som sort of lgal action. I know from xprinc having bn on both sids of things lik this that having a contuining prosctuion caus short trm practial disturbancs and in th long trm is also not idl Howvr, you'v md your position clr in pst. i lso undrstnd your point bout th drwings. s much s id lik to rls thm indpndtly, i undrstnd tht th collbrotiv nutr of thir dsign nd prs is is tricky to work round. So I'd lik to offr two wys forwrd. On is "cnsord" vrsion of th book whr som of th dtils r blckd out nd dltd. this will low you to mintin th formtting of th book s discussd whil rmoving m from th nrrtiv. i think this will b th bst wy for wrd s it dosnt mn your bing lft with "nothing" s mntiond. im hppy to go through th lst gllys tstprint nd mrkup ny pgs i think will b too much. if this dosnt work for you nothr option is SCOND OPTION. I'm lso not opposd to lblling th book s fiction which my hlp tk th ht out. id lso lik to discuss uthor crdit s my opinion hs chngd on this ovr th pst fw month but w cn do this fc to fc. Sdly I think th covr will nd complt ovrhul s th currnt vrsion for 1st print hs no room for scond nm of ny kind? I hop w cn find som sort of rrngmnt tht plss ll. If not i'll s you in court hhh. Just kidding but i would lik to sy mor sriously tht I m trying to void srious lgl ction if t ll possibl. lso s short trm prcticl concrn w nd to rplc th '' ky lso ^ FB or txt? Ft Big plt Nw ipd kybord shopping list 22 10 Nov 16 2:13 AM Michele, I really want to discuss this spread again. Even though you deleted this version on last revis., I think including it will really help add a lot of context to the ending of the book. Happy to talk about this on Saturday March 7, 2020 Michele attends her last trivia night alone at the . This will be her last outing in public before Tom Hanks' public coronavirus diagnosis. As the MC, does a recurring bit where he takes every movie title he mentions extremely literally. Michele glares around at the other tables. She's envious, as usual. But she can't help but feel a bit manic and giddy. No-one else here has been through anything like her - yet. But they're about to be humbled. And she'll have been prepared for decades. riffs about The 40 Year Old Virgin for a bit. She thinks back to the years she spent on the roof of yelling for help until she lost her voice - and at one point so dehydrated that drinking her own piss gave her alkaline poisoning. Mr. yells out, "The Apartment? Well, it's not an apartment. It's a movie." She thinks about her first week alone in Sydney, contemplating the unthinkable. How she tried therapy and sensed something wasn't clicking for her. The slow attempts at building a new life, where every success was tainted by the shame of deceit and lying-by-omission. How it took her decades to realize who she really was and what she would have to live through. He hands out another round of sheets off the back of an enthused response to an improvised RoboCop 2 riff. No-one else in the room had been lonely like her. She'd had family, colleagues, polite friends. But never the enthused adoration she saw in this crowded bar amongst the rainbow streamers. Different things catch her attention. Friends sharing a drink. A couple on a date, holding hands. A hand under the collar of a shirt, straightening out a bra. An affectionate hug goodbye. suddenly dims down the music. His voice rings out over a six-year- old and never-repaired amp. It takes a second for the table next to her - the "Quiz Cattrall's" - to figure out what's going on and shake Michele out of her stupor. She walks up to the front of the bar, through "Bong Joon Ho Transplant" and "The Question Likers", getting affectionate slaps on the back and high-fives. There's a round of applause. It's ecstatic. Michele begins to cry. She's won a meat tray. 13 Michele grew increasingly withdrawn and antisocial over the course of our collective quarantine. We had spent the first couple weeks regularly watching TV together in the living room, nostalgically digging through file after file from her "archives", and having DNMs as she filled out illustration worksheets. Working on this book occasionally felt claustrophobic, but I remember this period being one of the most productive and rewarding of my entire life. But at a certain point, she started spending more and more time listening to songs about gulags and less time with me, leaving me alone to finish what I now believe was season 4 of Boston Legal. The more I mentioned the book, the less excited she seemed. Eventually I decided it was time to break the ice. I offered to make her the best breakfast I was capable of crafting, and we made small talk as Once she'd finished we sat awkwardly for a moment. She put her fork down, wiped the grit off her lips, and looked me dead in the eye. "Please don't publish this book." I tried to debate her out of it. vulnerable of us and elevated It encouraged i It spent decades It propogated an to direct his career away from There was no redeeming them, and the complete freeze on public affairs created by the pandemic created a perfect opportunity to try and generate a cycle of publicity with a completed tell-all expose. That she could completely redeem herself spiritually if she just confessed and disclosed her involvement. She grabbed my hands. "Ryan, please. If not for my sake, then to protect your friends. Your family. They deserved better. You still have time to do the right thing." She held onto my hands. I felt the cold chill of her wedding ring. Two weeks later, Michele texted me two big announcements over our encrypted Facebook Messenger chat. It was a message that, unbeknownest to Michele at the time, I'd already seen draft after draft of. i Please don't censor this one. In time beyond us Without realizing it when it occurs, you finish your last book. The realization disappears. In time after time, all our lives are eventually crushed into a single microscopic Hubble volume - slowly shrinking, transcending size, and reaching a 53 . point of absolute z ero 96 shelly0000001 shelly0000001 So sad to be leaving this amazing house. Buong @ryanmarkdell! Add a comment... 7 seconds ago 1/1 Hey, guys. It's me, Anon! A NON Index 40 Year Old Virgin, The (2005), 90 2012 (2009), 78 10,000 BC (2008), 36 Apartment, The (1960), 90 Avatar (2009), 46 Before Sunset (2009), 48 Big (1988), 40, 50, 64, 74, 81, 84, 86, 87, 91 Clerks (2009), 74 Coming Home (1978), 54 Coming to America (1988), 82 Conversation, The (1974), 62 Election (1999), 68 Game, The (1997), 78 Green Book (2018), 38 Happy-Go-Lucky (2008), 52 Hospital, The (1971), 68 Host, The (2013), 76 In Time (2011), 34 Interview, The (2014), 59 Misery (1990), 84 Nine (2009), 88 Nosferatu (1922), 48 Nymphomaniac (2013), 21 Party, The (1968), 70 Planet Earth (2006), 36 Prestige, The (2006), 50 Problem Child (1990), 42 Robocop 2 (1990), 90 Rocky (1976), 40, 52 Room, The (2003), 64 Searching (2018), 86 Shame (2011), 66 Sideways (2004), 24 Silence (2016), 36 Social Network, The (2010), 23 (1977), 21 Time After Time (1979), 92 Trip, The (2010), 72 Two Days, One Night (2014), 56 (2005), 83 (1983), 60 Index 101 Acknowledgment I would like to acknowledge that making a book is very difficult. 103 About the Authors Ryan Dell is the co-author Michele is of this book. Press Release Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring. ALEXANDER POPE Drink deep, or taste not the plasma spring. JEFF GOLDBLUM, during rehearsal Drink deep, or taste not the plasma spring. JEFF GOLDBLUM, at table read Drink deep, or taste not the plasma spring! JEFF GOLDBLUM as SETH BRUNDLE, in The Fly (1986) Warning Please, if you can avoid it. Don't read the below warning or following pages. As both a practical and ideological concession, we’ve included a crucial piece of behind-the-scenes information about this book on the next page. On both a legal and ethical level, and after much neurotic prognosticating and internal debate, we've come to the conclusion it's the right thing to do. It’s our preference that you not read what we’ve written there, but we feel obliged to include it as a precaution. However we can’t emphasise enough: unless you absolutely need to know more about this book, please don’t read what’s on the next page. It will improve your experience as a reader not to know. Also, it's worth noting that the text will visually appear to be censored, so to actually read it you’ll have to copy the text out of this PDF and into a different program. (Or you could use the Adobe suite to pull the elements apart. Wouldn't be a good use of your time, but it's an option.) 111 The truth is heavy, therefore few care to carry it. EDIE MURPHY Michelle is, of course, a hoax. I'm not clarifying this because I think inventing her as my "co-author" for this book was some ingenious trick. Honestly, I think based on how her existence is presented and a lot of unavoidable or explicit context clues, it's probably far more obvious than I'd first intended. Inventing her existence was just intended as a cute conceit that would allow me to do some metanarrative storytelling. I don’t want to go into more unnecessary detail if I can avoid doing it - so I won’t! But that’s the disclosure you were most likely looking for when you deconstructed this body copy out of the PDF, so there you go. Explaining this in such a concrete way, in my opinion, is a huge violation of the whole structure of the book. The tension and metanarrative of having this distant person exist in a theoretical state was what excited me about this project. Even if someone isn’t fooled at all, I was hoping to leave the possibility open theoreticially. In my opinion, this whole idea works best if Michele exists in a quantum state, simultaneously real and unreal. But my intention was not to do a “Million Little Pieces” and trick anyone. So I’m essentially including this disclaimer explanation to cover my ass. To anyone who feels like I compromised by not sticking to my guns and leaving the work as-is: you’re right, and I agree with you. But, I’m the one in this situation - and I caved. I sincerely hope that the value of the experience for you justified the risk I took. Thank you for your time, and, if you made it, your emotional investment. As one fun little extra behind the scenes piece of info: the device on this page, where the reader can copy "censored" information to read elsewhere, is originally something that I would've have replicated throughout the entire book. It would essentially create an entire work you can read twice: the second time going through and digging through all the blacked out text. However, I abandoned this, not for economy (it actually would have been easier to layer that way than genuinely making the text rasterized and unreadable) but because I genuinely needed to censor a lot of the copy. Even though I know what the "real" writing says (mostly) [see: Iceberg theory], I felt part of the experience and the cultural reference depends on you not being able to see part of the text. But I didn't want to have some but not all of the censored stuff be readable as I felt that would just annoy people and turn the device into a guessing game, so I went for consistency and kept all the censored stuff unreadable. I think that might be a great device for a different project. 113 Ok now THIS is a book I think ARI FRIEDGUT Ryan's Special Thanks Adjacent to the book, removed from any weird conceits or premises, I'd like to thank the following. My family; especially my parents, sisters, brother-in-law and niece. You've all been there for everything from the mundane chores to some full-on emotional breakdowns. I owe you everything. And to my amazing and supportive friends. You make every day better. Thank you all for your kindness. I'd like to especially thank Sophie-Eugenie Dessertaine- Williams, Jai Hashim, Tim Dunk, and Eamon McArdle for their help, enthusiasm and encouragement. This book is a work of fiction. Any similarity to real persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.