Delivery System

By action or inaction most things in his world were trying to kill him.

No. Through his action or inaction upon most things in his world he was trying to kill himself: but this was hard to remember and impossible to believe and that was what made the virus so invariably effective. This he did remember — precisely and meaninglessly — from his research before the virus had made them close the lab. Self-destruction took many forms, and the virus harnessed their own intelligence to figure out the subtler ones.

On his phone the unbelievable warnings formed a desperate, unfollowed thread through a putrid labyrinth he had made his home.

By choice, like every other point in the slow fractal of their self-destruction

(But the virus was making them, he knew without knowing.)

(But they had made the virus themselves and released it to the world. He did not remember why and didn't or couldn't want to know what was keeping him from trying.)