All day long I've been smelling melon -- faint and untraceable wafts of sickly sweet musk emanating from somewhere around my desk. I think my computer has contracted a virus that actually causes its siliceous flesh to putrefy. I spend so much time interacting with software that I'm growing concerned that the disease will find a way to jump from one host to another and infect me as well. I don't even like melons.

It could be much worse. Imagine a disease that makes you ravenously hungry and causes your sweat glands to exude the scents of delicious meals. You would be tormented by thoughts of auto-cannibalism, perpetually tempted to satiate your feverish hunger by consuming yourself. I call this disease Tantalosis. It can be transmitted from computers to people through popular "disk-defragmentation" software, which causes spinning hard disks to set up an electro-magnatic field strong enough to warp human DNA.

In a strange twist, Tantalosis causes individuals to develop extremely characteristic scents, which do not smell like food to others. Those who are not infected often describe victims' odors as metalic and burning, like the scent of a curling iron left on too long. Only in the victim's own mind does the odor produce overwhleming pangs of hunger. Oddly, victims usually find the scents of others with the disease to be so unpalatable that being near them can cause intense nausea. When the sensation passes, the hunger returns with such immediacy that the victim can think of little else. Consuming normal food produces no effect, and the victim quickly abandons hope of assuaging the symptoms by eating. Only one's own flesh suggests relief.

In later stages of the disease (the progression of which is possibly linked to the number of exposures of disk-defragmentation programs) patients often hallucinate, and may eventually begin consuming themselves if not restrained. Reactions to auto-cannibalism vary among late-stage patients. A few seem to derive tremendous pleasure and relief from the act; planning and savoring their acts of self-consumption in a way that is startling like the behavior of individuals who are profoundly addicted to narcotics. These patients will eventually consume themselves in a grotesque manner if no medical intervention is performed.

The majority of patients have nearly the opposite response: they find the act of self-consumption horrific and are sickened by their own flesh. These patients will typically cycle through auto-cannibalistic acts followed by severe depression, in which a mounting hunger eventually compells them again to a destructive act.

While there is no cure, promising research has focused on an unusual side-effect seen among patients whos symptoms remain minimal. These patients, frequently hard-core computer programmers with extensive familiarity with data-storage devices, appear to develop the ability to "read" data in the active memory of a computer when their head is positioned within approximately three feet of the CPU. It is believed that this ability arises from a hypersensitivity to the electro-magnatic field generated by the device. While some patients with the ability can only perceive the nature of the data (for example, what kind of file or application is in memory), almost half can provide some description of the content, in some cases even reading words out of a document and describing a graphic image.

Taking a cue from this peculiar effect, scientists are now testing whether manipulating this data might cure the disease by retructuring patients' DNA to reverse genetic damage. Early findings suggest that the actual content of the data used may have some effect on the progress of the disease. Tantalosis may be slowed, or even halted, by repeated exposure to many pornographic images mixed with "chain letter" emails, particularly the popular "Tweety Bird" document. Why these particular data sets are effective is not understood. Scientists believe it may be related to the large numbers of other individuals who viewed these documents before the test subject was exposed to them.

Since Tantalosis is related to the Sin of Gluttony, I may be setting up a support group for it on this page. If you or a loved one is living with Tantalosis, or you suspect you may have the disease, your input is welcome. Together we will discover a way to live with -- and defeat -- this affliction.