The Great Plague Confessed

The usual thing to do
In a lab back in those days
Was to fiddle with toxins

And viruses to rig up
Something newly poisonous
Or wickedly infectious.

That’s why everyone worried
What was going on in labs
And where the secret labs were—

Why countries spied on other
Countries’ lab research programs.
What plagues might escape a lab!

That’s why no one suspected
An actually engineered
Behavioral transformer

Of having come from a lab.
Who would design a virus
That made everyone content,

Everyone perpetually
Inclined to be kind and glad
And unwilling to be cruel

For even the most tempting
Of righteous indignations,
The most justified paybacks?

Such an indiscriminate
Plague of decency couldn’t
Even be safely deployed

To pounce on one’s enemies
Caught in their infected bliss,
Unless all one’s fierce soldiers

Had first been vaccinated.
As no group appeared immune,
Niceness raced around the world,

In any case, so no one
Was in any mood to blame
Some evil laboratory.

Thus, we got away with it,
And everyone’s pleasant now,
Especially in our lab.