LEHIGHTON, Pa. — "Prologue: Year 1 of the organ failure pandemic. Scale - worldwide. Survival rate - 0."
Karla Nappi of Lehighton wrote those words seven years ago, blissfully unaware of what the real world had in store for the future.
In 2013, the writer was working on the TV show "Suits" while looking for a new pilot idea. 3D printing and nanotechnology were all the rage in the scientific community. Nappi decided to write a story about a scientist who creates duplicate organs during a pandemic that causes organ failure.
"You know, when you do sci-fi, the best sci-fi always predicts the future, but this is one of those instances where I was like, this is definitely weird," said Nappi.
Fast forward to January 2020, when Nappi began publicizing her work - a comic book series called Duplicant - on an online crowd-funding platform.
"We were all starting to hear those rumors about the virus in China, but it didn't feel like anything that we needed to necessarily concern ourselves with at the time," Nappi said. "It has been surreal, especially as we've learned more about the virus over the last year to see how closely I predicted this world would be."
Nappi hopes readers are drawn to the series by their curiosity to see what's similar and what's different between her imaginary pandemic and our real one.
But she also hopes a more universal theme piques peoples' interest.
"I'm also hoping that just the general story of a man who's out there seeking to do what's right for the world against all odds is what's really going to bring people to the story and keep them coming back for more."
The Duplicant comic book series will be out on store shelves on April 7.
To contribute to Nappi's crowdfund on Kickstarter, click here.