You may remember my 10(ish)-year-old story “The Bug,” which I posted here a few weeks ago. In it, the protagonist — home at work with a fever, some kind of bug anyhow — stumbles upon a very strange cable-TV channel. Its name is The Dead Channel; all its programming has to do, somehow, with death. While some of its schedule is devoted to features (talk shows, old movies like The Loved One, and so on), the bulk consists of what our hero thinks of as “deadcasts.”
You’ll be familiar with the format of a deadcast if you’ve ever seen the regular programming of The Weather Channel. A suited announcer, perhaps armed with a pointer, stands before an electronic wall-sized radar or satellite map of the US. The person waves his/her hands over the map, as the map itself is painted over with glowing-green, -yellow, and -red swatches of color representing storms and other conditions.
On The Dead Channel, the maps don’t show stationary fronts, temperature bands, and the like. They show, oh, well… Take the deadcaster named Jack Llongo, for example. He’s obviously new at his job, a little nervous, and keeps muffing his lines, ad-libbing inappropriately, and so on. At one point he’s got a map behind him labeled MORBIDITY INDEX:
The map was drawn and re-drawn like one of those time-lapse computer-enhanced satellite radar views of storm fronts, with luminous green and yellow waves of disease washing over the nation from left to right. Llongo rapped the Great Lakes with the knuckle of his right index finger. “Chicago, see, and Detroit. Here’s Cleveland. All the way over here to Buffalo, which is… here, no here. That old morbidity index is climbing, flu and colds, those diseases are really coming at you, heh heh, tough suckers–” He winced again. “Anyhow, let’s check out one of the biggest trouble spots right now.”
[…]“Up here,” Llongo was saying, “like the map shows, up here you’re getting clobbered. My advice to you folks is stay indoors, get bed rest, drink plenty of fluids, and heh heh, yeah, watch where you sneeze and keep your hands off the doorknobs–”
Llongo and his Morbidity Index map disappeared, abruptly replaced by a solid green screen with black-lettered data; a piano sonata provided the soundtrack. REGIONAL CONDITIONS, said the title: mortality totals; mortality subtotals by age group; causes of death today, month-to-date totals, percentage of various causes of death compared to a year ago today. DISPOSITION OF THE DECEASED, one set of statistics was labeled, a table illustrating raw numbers and percentages of inground interments, mausoleum interments, cremations, burials at sea (currently zero), and “Other.”
I could not help thinking of The Dead Channel when I recently received a bit of junk mail at work. It’s an offer to subscribe to something called Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, or MMWR as they abbreviate it. Together with certain other benefits which come with a subscription, subscribers (says the mailing) have at their disposal “a valuable library [with which] you can consult on a wide range of topics.” Among the topics listed:
- Controlling Tuberculosis in the United States
- Indicators for Chronic Disease Surveillance
- Cancer Mortality Surveillance
- Summary of Notifiable Diseases
- Cigarette Smoking Among Adults
- Heat-Related Mortality
- Progress in Reducing Measles Mortality
and, of course, many others.
The text goes on to say that MMWR “employs charts, maps, statistical tables, summaries, photographs, and graphics — whatever best communicates clearly, quickly, and precisely.” Indeed, the brochure includes an image taken from a back issue (the Feb. 16, 2007 issue):
My day job has nothing to do with medicine or, well, death (any more than anyone else’s job does). So I’d guess the reason I received this has more to do with a random electronic mailing list hiccup.
Still, can a real Dead Channel be far off?
marta says
Is it unfortunate to admit that if there is a dead channel, I would have to tune in–just once in a while you understand. Not forever.
John says
@marta – Not sure that “unfortunate” is the right word. Lord knows my own curiosity would get the better of me. I’d probably have to at least visit the channel’s Web site every now and then — just for the 10-day forecast, you know.