PALO ALTO — Two Stanford graduate students were found “dead” in their loft-style apartment yesterday. Police believe the cause of “death” to be an overdose of a new and lethal drug, known on the street as “drug-drug,” or meta-amphetamines.

Sergeant Dale Paulson was the first officer to arrive on the scene. “When we arrived, there were two bodies, both with Xs drawn over their eyes, clearly indicating that the victims were ‘dead,’” said Paulson. “Next to the bodies, we found a piece of paper that said ‘suicide note.’”

Police believe that the two may have taken their own lives.

The incident is the third meta-amphetamine-related death in 2048. In nearby Berkeley, California, a woman wrote and directed a short play in which a character bearing her name died after taking the drug. And in Massachusetts, Cambridge police found a leaflet featuring a photo of a drawing of a dead body, captioned, ‘Above: meta-amphetamine overdose.’”

By all accounts, meta-amphetamine was invented in the late 2030s by John Millanowski, a professor emeritus of philosophy and sometime drug peddler at Cornell University. Millanowski had the idea of creating something that would both illustrate the notion of reflexivity for his students and hook more of them on crack, a 20th century drug which was at the time undergoing a revival of sorts.

What he hit upon was the meta-amphetamine molecule, which is made up of three methane molecules covalently bonded with a neo-futurist manifesto. The drug does not directly influence the mental state of the user, but rather works on other drugs that are in the user’s system.

“The other drugs are themselves mentally altered,” explains Cornell chemist ‘John Millanowski,’ whose new biography of Dr. Millanowski, entitled “Millanowski,” is being published by Cornell University Press next month. “The drugs’ inhibitions are loosened, causing them to act like the drugs that deep down they wish they were. Aspirin, for example, has always said that it could have been heroin had it been given the right opportunities as a youth. On meta-amphetamines, that tends to come out.”

Now that meta-amphetamine use is skyrocketing, community leaders in university towns nationwide are afraid that their young adults are falling prey to a new epidemic.

“I see so many cases every day, and it breaks my heart,” said Dr. James Dobson of Austin General Hospital, located near the University of Texas. “These kids crave the desire to use the drug so badly, you’ve often got to restrain them physically to keep them from wanting it. They act out the withdrawal symptoms that drug-addicted people are supposed to have. Sometimes they get extremely violent, or at least bring in sculptures whose jarring lines mimic the violence of contemporary society.”

“Thankfully I haven’t had any deaths yet,” he added, “although I’ve had to pump a few stomach pumps.”

Most of all, officials fear that meta-amphetamines are only the first of a rash of new conceptual drugs. Already rumors are spreading about a new drug called “dialecstasy,” the effects of which seem to be even more theoretically severe.

“It’s even more horrible than I could have imagined,” said Austin parent Joanne Thiebauldt, whose son Harris has become hooked on dialecstasy. “At first, he simply was not himself, but now he’s someone else entirely.”

WARNING SIGNS that a friend or family member may be addicted to meta-amphetamines:

•  Does he seem to have become despondent and disinterested in life?

•  Has he drawn a picture of a gun and tried to “kill” himself?

•  Does he often talk about conversations he overheard where the participants had just seen a violent movie or television show?

•  Does he ever hold a thought bubble above his head that contains the word “death?”

•  When asked how he is feeling, does he say, “I don’t feel very good, I’m hooked on meta-amphetamines?”