Stephen King's New Book, 'Cell' — 'In which cellphones transmit a madness–inducing pulse'

Huh — people have said that's what it's like chatting with me.

But I digress.

Far too often lately — I mean what's with this always about me, me, me stuff anyway?

If I want to carry on like that I should start a blog.

Anyway.

Jim Cheng, in the January 18 issue of USA Today, capsulized King's upcoming novel, which hits stores tomorrow, precisely as quoted in the headline above.

That got me to thinking.

I've always been enchanted by the premise of Robert Graves' famous short story, "The Shout," in which a man has so fine–tuned and calibrated his voice that he can kill a person by shouting at him.

The ability of voodoo practitioners and witch doctors to kill from a distance — over space and time — through non–physical means has been documented over millennia.

I believe it is real, this sort of thing.

Since the rise of computer viruses and their eerie similarity in so many ways to viruses affecting living things — primarily the fact that they are not themselves "alive" in a conventional sense but, rather, pure information able to transmit itself as a self–enclosed vector — I have wondered if and when computer viruses would cross over from silicon–based hosts to carbon–based wetware like you and me.

I think it's going to happen — if it hasn't already taken place.

And a prime means of transmission would be cellphones.

Forget about transmitting a "madness–inducing pulse" — what happens when computer viruses travel from your cellphone directly into your brain and take root there, multiplying quietly until....

If you're willing to entertain that possibility then why not also consider what might happen if such entities could jump from pixels on your computer's screen into your body and find a home?

Makes Ray Kurzweil's approaching singularity

seem almost beside the point.