TERMS OF SERVICE: Grip Semiotics & Class Diagnostics
Grip pressure reveals your buyological gender, thumb-to-text tension, page-turn velocity, forearm torque, and knuckle-crack frequency. Palm sweat salinity indicates probable voting patterns. Your grip signature is compared against 4.7 billion normalized datapoints; deviations trigger Ergonomic Compliance Audits. Suspected non-binary grips are flagged for Re-Education Modules administered via subliminal ink frequency on page 6.
Thumbnail indentations reveal economic class. Calluses indicate manual labor; their absence indicates managerial parasitism. Your Calloused Hand Quotient (CHQ) is sold to gig-economy platforms. Dog-earing suggests scarcity mindset; bookmarks suggest over-developed property consciousness. Either way, your relationship to objects betrays your class origin.
Please mentally select your labor tier: ( ) Aspirational ( ) Resigned ( ) Founder-Adjacent ( ) Ungovernable. Your selection is logged, verified via pupil tracking, and cross-referenced with your LinkedIn profile, your parents’ tax returns, and your browser history on Zillow.
TERMS OF SERVICE: Chemical Telemetry
These pages are porous. Sebum is tested for stimulants, alcohol, pheromones, pharmaceutical tracers, and the molecular signature of last night’s argument. Moisturized hands suggest skincare routines; cracked cuticles suggest shift work. Nicotine residue flags addiction or affectation. Antidepressant traces are routed to employer wellness portals. SSRI readers receive 11% longer ad delays.
Saliva pH is sampled when you lick your finger to turn a page. Acidic readers are tagged as Chronically Anxious. Alkaline readers are flagged for Unearned Calm. Crumb density between pages 52 and 53 maps your eating habits. Chocolate smudges indicate emotional instability. Bread fragments are isotopically dated to determine whether you eat nice bread or struggle bread.
Exhaled breath is harvested by electrostatic page coatings. DNA fragments are sequenced in real-time. Your exhalations contain vote intention, meal guilt, and unspoken rage. All exhalations are monetized. Ambient mold spores cultivated between pages 41–42 are algorithmically designed to thrive in homes with suboptimal ventilation. Growth rates are sold to landlords as Tenant Risk Profiles.
TERMS OF SERVICE: Signal Transmission
The spine contains an antenna. It chirps your chemical joylessness into 5G mesh over metropolitan zones. Suburban readers generate weaker signals; rural readers are presumed offline and ideologically suspect. The antenna pulses every 4.3 seconds: your heart rate, your doubts, your proximity to other readers, and your real-time likelihood of recommending this book.
This book is equipped with omni-directional GPS. It knows which shelf in which bookstore you hovered over before purchasing. It knows if you stole it, borrowed it, or received it as a passive-aggressive gift. Geolocation tags update every 11 seconds, mapping your movement: home to work, work to bar, bar to regret.
The book triangulates your position relative to polling places, union halls, surveillance cameras, and the nearest Whole Foods. Should you cross state lines, border algorithms scan for contraband ideas. Margin notes containing the words organize, solidarity, or guillotine trigger Interstate Thought-Traffick Alerts. Electromagnetic pulses emitted by the spine interfere subtly with nearby pacemakers, hearing aids, and moral compasses.
Sean F. Munro is a poet and professor of English in New Orleans. He is associate editor at Lavender Ink / Diálogos Press, Executive Director of the New Orleans Poetry Festival, co-curator of the Splice Poetry Series, and founder of LitWire, the literary events calendar of New Orleans. His poetry, criticism, and translation have appeared in Texas Review, Jacket2, Annulet, mercury firs, peel lit, Indiana Review, Split Lip, Big Other, and Brooklyn Review. More at seanfmunro.com.
Image: Brecht Corbeel, unsplash.com
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