The most excellent Damon Lindelof has kindly offered to share a serialized story with NextDraft readers to help us, and him, through the quarantine. The first 12 chapters are here.

Chapter 13: He’s Gonna Fire Fauci, Isn’t He?

I promised you Morgenthau and Morgenthau you shall receive.

But first a few pieces of housekeeping whilst we all keep in our houses. Three things, then Morgenthau.

Thing one. All things end. And yes it’s true that some naked blue fellow once said the opposite, that nothing ever ends, but he was pretend and this is real. So it will end. And soon. Unlike our current predicament, which is uncertain at best, you deserve a definitive denouement and you will get it in Chapter 20.

Thing two. Someone will in fact get murdered in Chapter 20. This was foreshadowed in the title and also you people love fucking murder. Murder makes everything better and every great story has it. To illustrate, let us review this past year’s Academy Award nominees for best picture (WARNING: SPOILERS)

Parasite. Delightful satire about wealth and class and also a stabby murderfest.

The Irishman. De Niro murders everyone.

Joker. De Niro gets murdered.

Ford v Ferrari. Ford murders Ferrari (assumption, didn’t see)

Once Upon a Time In Hollywood. Horrific real-life mass murder is averted via Comedic fictionalized mass murder.

Little Women. Scarlet Johansson murders Beth. (skimmed review, may be scarlet fever instead of Johansson, speaking of…)

Jojo Rabbit. Adorable coming-of-age story with abundant murdering.

Marriage Story. More like Murder Story. (allegorical, also has Scarlet Johannson)

1917. One single shot, nine thousand murders.

So yes, folks, you will get your precious murder in seven short chapters and no, it will not be subsequently erased by the deus-ex-machinations of time travel. It will be a murder that is permanent and lasting and as irreversible as a melting polar ice cap or the destruction of our precious institutions. Unlike the fictitious death of young Jon Gilchrist via Pop Rocks and Coke, in Chapter 20, there will be actual blood, lots of it, so put on your ponchos lest ye be spurted upon.

Which brings us finally to Walter Morgenthau, the latter half of the infamous Gilchrist/Morgenthau Effect, so named in that infamous paper published by The University of Michigan in the midst of the coldest winter to befall Ann Arbor in a century. To understand the effect itself, we must first understand the slash (/) that separates Gilchrist and Morgenthau as one that not only divides the two by decades (Gilchrist’s story unfolded in the early 1980s, Morgenthau’s forty years later) but also by the magnetic poles of repulsion and attraction. This is confusing by design as such research papers are not meant to be understood by laypersons and the really good ones are not meant to be understood by Malcolm Gladwell, lest he write a book about it and give it a pithy title like “Blink” or “Outliers” or “Stink” or “Fartholders,” the latter two being how Dr. Julius Starbury referred to the former two, so bitter was he when Gladwell did indeed take his precious research and synthesize it into a bestseller entitled: “Urban Legend, Rural Truth” (Little Brown, 2022) the gist of which was this:

Gilchrist was supposedly killed by Pop Rocks and this created a mass collective effect of repulsion. Aside from the rare thrill-seeker, most children did not want to risk their faces exploding. As a result, the candy became obsolete following the viral spread of the “Mikey Rumor.”

Walter Morgenthau was supposedly saved by Ivermectin and this created a mass collective effect of attraction. Deep in the throes of respiratory failure and on a ventilator, Morgenthau’s symptoms abruptly disappeared and subsequent tests could not detect any trace of COVID-19. Such a miraculous recovery, particularly in the case of a seventy-three year old patient, was unprecedented. Morgenthau happily announced to the Kansas City Star upon his release from the hospital that identity of his savior was none other than his granddaughter, Matilda.

Despite social distancing guidelines, Matilda recently had a playdate with her cousin, Sophia while their parents drank margaritas and chatted about how ridiculous social distancing was. Matilda did not contract the virus from Sophia, but she did contract head lice. After a few days of unbearable itching, Matilda’s pediatrician prescribed an oral medication and through a series of mundane misunderstandings that would not be worthy of a Three’s Company Episode, when Matilda’s mother went to the pharmacy for pickup, she accidentally swapped her father’s blood pressure meds with her daughter’s lice pills and that is how, six hours before he was eventually intubated, Walter Morgenthau unwittingly ingested Matilda’s Ivermectin. One day later, he was cured and crediting it all to the miracle drug that saved his life.

Two weeks after that, Ivermectin would claim more lives than the virus itself.

Walter Morgenthau was a domino. One of many that had tipped with the click-clacking inevitability of spacetime. But he could be untipped. Lives could be saved.

But it would cost Elizabeth Rosenberg the thing she held most dear.

And it would cost Hillary Rodham Clinton her eye.

To be continued…