Babble On

The trouble started when it turned out to be contagious. It was one thing (a novelty, really) when one man died from a mysterious babbling disorder, but another thing altogether when this started happening to people, willy-nilly, all over the planet. The CDC's authoritative Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, or MMWR, named this The Babbling Syndrome, or TBS.

That (1) the disease seemed to be invariably fatal, and (2) no one could figure out how it was transmitted, soon triggered (3) mass public panic. People speculated wildly that it might be a terrorist plot, for example; that an evil group has planted something in the water or a nerve agent in the clouds above.

This spawned new industries. Everyone wore gas masks, and only the Estonians continued to drink unbottled water. The Calistoga Company quickly rose to the top of the Fortune 500, followed by the European-based Perrier/San Pellegrino conglomerate. Interestingly, the third largest global corporation, as measured both in sales and market cap, was a startup venture from Bangalore called Stop Babbling.

Industry analysts determined that the company's overnight success was due to its choice of a no-nonsense brand that spoke directly to consumer fears. Of course, the stock markets proved fickle, as they often do. So, when the MMWR came out with a provocative new study that Estonians seemed to be experiencing the lowest rate of growth in new cases of TBS, the botttled water craze ended as suddenly as it had appeared.

The gas mask fad didn't last either, mainly because people couldn't easily enjoy their morning coffee with the damned thing on. You would often overhear a stranger mumble, "I'd rather die that skip my daily latte!" Of course, this could well be an indicator of Stage Three Babbling Syndrome -- just before they'd be falling silent -- so it did give you pause before you, too, said to yourself (or maybe out loud) -- "What the hell, we're not going to getting out of this alive anyway..."

Sex between strangers became commonplace. People took to early retirement, usually by age 12 or so, and spent their life savings on month-long video game flings, or exotic travel vacations. (Estonia emerged as a top tourist destination.)

Stimulated by so much consumer spending, the global economy blazed skyward. Despite their sense of impending doom, people generally were quite happy, because everyone was doing pretty much what she wanted to do, living in each moment as if it might well be her last.

Violent crime disappeared. Why bother killing someone when you would both be dead in weeks or months anyway? New relationships formed instantly almost anywhere. Starbucks offered marriage services while you were standing in line for cappuccinos. (As a side note, Las Vegas's economy immediately took a direct hit.)

Most companies had a hard time locating their own employees, as no one kept to any kind of schedule any longer. One HR guy coined the phrase "Dayworker Economy," on Monday; a book with the same title became a bestseller on Tuesday; by Wednesday it was reported that the HR guy had fallen in love with Mexican day laborer he had picked up for $10/hour, and that they were probably headed to Estonia.

The turning point in the whole thing was when a group of French doctors announced they had discovered evidence of the cause of The Babbling Syndrome (though this was instantly disputed by a group of Canadian scientists, who claimed they had already made the same discovery, but had been remaining quiet until they could finish a more scrupulous checking process than the French would ever think of employing.)

Meanwhile, the Koreans announced the most exciting breakthrough -- a genetically engineered herb that delayed the onset of symptoms considerably, and the MMWR officially reclassified TBS as a treatable condition instead of a terminal disease.

Sadly, by the time the French and the Canadians had sorted out their dispute over which team had identified the way TBS was transmitted, it was way too late to do anything about it. The cause, they finally agreed, was too much silence brought about by too much isolation from one another, or, as the French termed it le bruit du silence.

Roughly translated into non-layman's terms, this suggested that by falling into an alienated state of disconnectedness from one another, modern human beings had lowered our collective immunity against hyper-talkativeness -- the medical term for Stage One Babbling Syndrome.

All's well that ends well, as they used to say, but in this case, the maintenance medication could only delay but not prevent full-blown TBS, though you no longer would die from it.

And that, of course, is how we became a world of babblers.