April 12, 2045
NEW YORK–Speaking on Wednesday from the company’s Manhattan headquarters, Martha Stewart Omnimedia VP of Operations Victoria Waiste reassured shareholders and employees that a recent household mishap involving Stewart, the company’s chair and CEO, would not adversely affect the company or its prospects. “Martha had an allergic reaction to an unidentified household cleaning product,” explained Waiste. “She is receiving the care that she needs and I have every confidence that she’ll be back at work within the month.”
Sources inside the company indicate that the “unidentified household cleaning product” was 3M’s soon-to-be-released Dust Bunnies, an intelligent, distributed nano-scale soil and dust aggregation product that Stewart had been testing as part of a joint-marketing scheme between her company and the household products manufacturer.
The Bunnies, distributed in a sealed, foil pouch, start as a fine, graphite-like powder meant to be shaken liberally throughout a room, office, or entire house. The powder consists of small, RF networked nano-scale devices that seek out both dust particles and each other. Over time, the individual devices and the dust they collect self-assemble into tiny, rabbit-shaped dust creatures capable of hopping, and wiggling their noses and ears. The Bunnies continue to clean horizontal surfaces throughout their habitat by absorbing any dust they encounter and growing to the size of conventional rabbits. Reproducing through a process of Bunny-division, the creatures can be compressed and thrown away with conventional trash.
Stewart had reportedly been testing the Bunnies for several weeks and was in the process of shooting a special segment of her program introducing the Bunnies and demonstrating home-made Bunny accessories including colorful bows and gingham bonnets when dozens of the dust-creatures swarmed her, nipping at her face and hands. “It was really more frightening and terrible than it might sound,” explains an unnamed source present at the shooting. “I mean Martha was choking and coughing, really having a hard time breathing. People were running around trying to smash all those dust things, but they just kept coming out of the woodwork. It was like something out of ‘The Birds.'”
Responding to questions about the incident, 3M officials indicated that “an investigation is ongoing” and that researchers were focusing on the possibility of an unanticipated interaction between the Bunnies and Stewart’s company’s own “Face Au Fondant” home nanomechanical face-lift treatment. “The Stewart Omnipharmaceutical ‘Fondant’ product includes some nanomechanical processes and signals that our Bunnies might have misunderstood,” explains 3M Chief Media Officer Burt Bert. “We understand that both products make use of some components from the same outsource and that there may have been an unintended compatibility between them.”
Face Au Fondant, a widely-marketed topical cream that Stewart herself is reported to use, employs a combination of chemical and nanomechanical processes to recreate a young, smooth, collagen-rich layer that binds to the user’s conventional skin.
During the attack, a number of the Bunnies reportedly bonded with the Fondant treatment on Stewart’s face and hands. “Martha wasn’t really hurt in the attack,” confides an inside source, “but there’s been a serious, lasting effect that everybody’s afraid to talk about. She now attracts dust like you wouldn’t believe. She hasn’t been in public since because we can’t keep her clean, not because there’s anything medically wrong with her. She’s just like that kid Pigpen in the Peanuts cartoons. It’s horrible. If we can’t find a solution I’m sure 3M will be hearing from our lawyers.”
Stewart, founder and CEO of over a dozen companies that each bear her name, is the author of “Entertaining,” one of the most beautiful and influential books ever published.