Category: Undead Celebrities

December 18, 2027
LOS ANGELES–Documents released Monday by the Walt Disney Company in the course of its defense against a wrongful death suit brought by the estate of its late Chairman and CEO reveal gruesome details of the executive’s “accidental” death and confirm longtime rumors that the company has, for decades, maintained the frozen head of its founder in hopes that developments in medical science will enable his eventual resurrection. “This was a real double whammy,” exclaims court journalist and veteran Disney-watcher Juan Yell. “I mean, to have all the ‘frozen head’ stuff turn out to be true after all these years, and then to have it so closely linked to Eisner’s mysterious death, all I can say is ‘wow!'”

According to memos produced by the company in response to legal requests by Eisner’s estate, the company had sought to conceal details of the accident both “to maintain sensitivity to [Eisner’s] family” and to “protect valuable trade secrecy RE proprietary attraction applications of certain quantum engineering developments and RE Project Bread.” Transcripts of internal Disney debriefings further reveal that ‘Project Bread’ was code for the company’s efforts to maintain, repair and eventually revive the cryogenically preserved head of Walter E. Disney, while the head itself was known to insiders simply as ‘the Bread.’

AV files released by the company, including footage of the accident itself captured by laboratory security cameras, document a day-long visit by Eisner to the company’s top secret research facility. “There’s some powerful footage in there,” notes a source close to the plaintiff. “From what I’ve seen, Eisner was alone in this room where they keep the head, locked in there really because the security is so tight. He seemed to be looking at the head inside this case when BAM, the head comes shooting out like a rocket and hits him square in the face, knocking him over. Then the head just went ricocheting around the room like some crazy kind of bullet or something. He kept trying to get up and make it to the door, but the head just kept bouncing off the walls and hitting him, again and again and again. It was really brutal.”

Central among the documents are files reportedly covering internal investigations of the accident and linking Eisner’s death to the company’s experimental development of technologies exploiting the bizarre phenomenon of quantum entanglement.

“In these files the company has as much as admitted its culpability,” claims Eisner estate attorney Phineas Bustamente. “The company’s Imagineers apparently developed a technology that permits two objects separated by significant distance to become ‘entangled’ with each other. There were a couple of projects based on this technology. One was an update of Space Mountain where riders in an open field would be ‘entangled’ with a remote coaster and sort of fly around on an invisible ride. The other had something to do with thawing the frozen head by applying heat to a pumpkin with which it was entangled. It appears that negligence by company employees lead the head to become entangled with a prototype roller coaster, transforming it into a deadly projectile.”

While refusing to comment on particular documents, a spokesman for Disney called the suit “irresponsibly speculative” and denied that Eisner’s death was anything but an “unfortunate and tragic accident.”

Contacted about the possibility that his former patient’s death was caused by repeated, high-speed blows by a frozen, quantum-entangled head, Eisner’s personal physician deferred conclusory comment, but remarked that a head, if frozen, could produce injury like that of a “cannonball” and that Eisner’s “multiple, fatal traumas were consistent with such an instrument.”

August 8, 2021
REDMOND–A recently leaked internal company memorandum has confirmed that Microsoft Chairman Emeritus Bill Gates’ collapse last Thursday was related to his participation in testing of the company’s beta-stage development of an operating system for the human genome. Marked CONFIDENTIAL and addressed to members of Microsoft’s Board of Directors, the memorandum admitted frankly that Gates’ mysterious condition was “a result of Chairman Gates’ direct participation in the development of W[indows for the] G[enome],” and sought to reassure Board members that the incident “does not represent a threat either to the established launch schedule or to the integrity of Bill’s leadership.”

Witnesses to Gates’ collapse during last week’s annual shareholders’ meeting describe a lucid, vital Gates speaking to the assembled crowd for nearly an hour before beginning to show signs of trouble. “He was really on a roll,” recalls one shareholder present at the meeting. “He was going on about physics being an open-source OS for the universe and being the number one threat to Microsoft when, all of the sudden, he stopped talking mid-sentence. He just froze. Then somebody up on the stage tapped him on the shoulder and he seemed to come out of it for a couple minutes until he just fell over, stiff as a board, muttering something over and over.”

Other witnesses, including insiders at the Pacific Technology Executives’ Medical Center where Gates received initial treatment, confirm that he has fallen into a fugue state characterized by “deep, universal muscle rigidity” and “compulsive glossolalia.” “He was blue!” exclaims one hospital insider. “I mean really blue. Not just hypoxic, but this really weird, deep blue. I’ve never seen anything else like it. And he just kept repeating the same thing over and over again, something about a general protection fault in gene 23Xw something. The whole thing gave me the creeps.”

Gates’ collapse and the leaked response memo appear to confirm rumors that Microsoft’s ultra-secret ‘Bangkok’ project aims to extend the company’s franchise into the realm of gene therapy and genetic trait manipulation. “For a long time Gates has been talking about the need for a way to standardize and coordinate gene manipulation functions across phenotypes,” notes industry analyst Juliet Joliet. “Bangkok almost certainly involves the development of a Windows-brand platform for standardizing and controlling the interface between manipulation products and the underlying genetic hardware.”

Describing Gates’ condition as “significant but trivial,” the internal memo provides hints about the company’s plans for Windows for the Genome, including mention of government review of terms in developer agreements qualifying disclosure of the product’s “TPI” or “Trait Programming Interface:” “We have reason to believe that confidential FTC approval is at a sensitive stage,” notes the memo. “We cannot stress enough the need for the Board to present a confident, united response to the Chairman’s incapacitation.”

Information concerning Gates’ prognosis has been scarce since his transfer to his private Mercer Island medical facility, but sources close to the Board hope for a rapid and full recovery. Discussing treatment measures planned by the company’s engineers, the confidential internal memo notes that “absent a more elegant solution, the reported afunctionality can be resolved by reformatting the Chairman and doing a clean reinstall of the product.”

April 12, 2045
NEW YORK–Speaking on Wednesday from the company’s Manhattan headquarters, Martha Stewart Omnimedia VP of Operations Victoria Waiste reassured shareholders and employees that a recent household mishap involving Stewart, the company’s chair and CEO, would not adversely affect the company or its prospects. “Martha had an allergic reaction to an unidentified household cleaning product,” explained Waiste. “She is receiving the care that she needs and I have every confidence that she’ll be back at work within the month.”

Sources inside the company indicate that the “unidentified household cleaning product” was 3M’s soon-to-be-released Dust Bunnies, an intelligent, distributed nano-scale soil and dust aggregation product that Stewart had been testing as part of a joint-marketing scheme between her company and the household products manufacturer.

The Bunnies, distributed in a sealed, foil pouch, start as a fine, graphite-like powder meant to be shaken liberally throughout a room, office, or entire house. The powder consists of small, RF networked nano-scale devices that seek out both dust particles and each other. Over time, the individual devices and the dust they collect self-assemble into tiny, rabbit-shaped dust creatures capable of hopping, and wiggling their noses and ears. The Bunnies continue to clean horizontal surfaces throughout their habitat by absorbing any dust they encounter and growing to the size of conventional rabbits. Reproducing through a process of Bunny-division, the creatures can be compressed and thrown away with conventional trash.

Stewart had reportedly been testing the Bunnies for several weeks and was in the process of shooting a special segment of her program introducing the Bunnies and demonstrating home-made Bunny accessories including colorful bows and gingham bonnets when dozens of the dust-creatures swarmed her, nipping at her face and hands. “It was really more frightening and terrible than it might sound,” explains an unnamed source present at the shooting. “I mean Martha was choking and coughing, really having a hard time breathing. People were running around trying to smash all those dust things, but they just kept coming out of the woodwork. It was like something out of ‘The Birds.'”

Responding to questions about the incident, 3M officials indicated that “an investigation is ongoing” and that researchers were focusing on the possibility of an unanticipated interaction between the Bunnies and Stewart’s company’s own “Face Au Fondant” home nanomechanical face-lift treatment. “The Stewart Omnipharmaceutical ‘Fondant’ product includes some nanomechanical processes and signals that our Bunnies might have misunderstood,” explains 3M Chief Media Officer Burt Bert. “We understand that both products make use of some components from the same outsource and that there may have been an unintended compatibility between them.”

Face Au Fondant, a widely-marketed topical cream that Stewart herself is reported to use, employs a combination of chemical and nanomechanical processes to recreate a young, smooth, collagen-rich layer that binds to the user’s conventional skin.

During the attack, a number of the Bunnies reportedly bonded with the Fondant treatment on Stewart’s face and hands. “Martha wasn’t really hurt in the attack,” confides an inside source, “but there’s been a serious, lasting effect that everybody’s afraid to talk about. She now attracts dust like you wouldn’t believe. She hasn’t been in public since because we can’t keep her clean, not because there’s anything medically wrong with her. She’s just like that kid Pigpen in the Peanuts cartoons. It’s horrible. If we can’t find a solution I’m sure 3M will be hearing from our lawyers.”

Stewart, founder and CEO of over a dozen companies that each bear her name, is the author of “Entertaining,” one of the most beautiful and influential books ever published.

June 16, 2082
LOS ANGELES–Confirming weeks of popular speculation, Los Angeles County District Attorney Barry Chupa formally announced that his office had secured multiple indictments against Tom Cruize for the October murder of two of his isotypes, Thomaz Cruize and Thom Cruize. “This case, understandably, has been the subject of a great deal of public attention,” noted Chupa. “People have been anxious for a resolution, but we wanted to be sure that all our ducks were in a row before we went to the Grand Jury. I feel confident, now, that we will be able to bring Mr. Cruize to justice.”

Cruize, a popular stand-in and stuntman for the beloved elder Cruise, is charged with the stabbing death of the two younger Cruizes just outside the Cruise compound in a posh section of the City of Industry. According to internal police reports, Thomaz and Thom had stepped onto the grounds outside the main gate for a private discussion when Cruize surprised them, stabbing each multiple times about the head and chest. Fleeing the scene, Cruize allegedly reentered the compound by scaling an unmonitored wall at the rear of the property, sneaking back to his quarters unnoticed by other members of the household.

The County’s case rests on a combination of DNA and circumstantial witness testimony pointing to Cruize. A knit cap discarded at the scene reportedly contains hairs genetically matching Cruize, and a glove, saturated with Cruize blood, was discovered by detectives behind the pool house at the rear of the property. Police interview records indicate that the elder Cruise, who had taken up residence in the pool house, was awakened on the night of the murder by loud “thumping” behind the house, near the spot at which the glove was later discovered. “I don’t know. It was kind of a noise like somebody stumbling around back there,” explained Cruise. “I was totally baked, though, and fell right back asleep.”

David Boies, speaking for the Cruize defense, dismissed the County’s case, noting that the “DNA evidence is less than useless. The blood on the glove, the hair in the hat, the miniscule spots of blood on Cruize’s car, those could belong to anybody in the household. Including Cruise himself, they’ve got more than a dozen genetically-identical people living there. They’ve also got no motive. These hints of a love triangle are the desperate and ludicrous musings of a prosecution without a clue.”

Cruize has continued to maintain that the slayings are related to the Cruizes’ ongoing copyright dispute with the Church of Scientology. “Thomaz and Thom were very involved in the case,” explains Cruize. “They were the first of the Cruizes to become clears without the help of the Church. They couldn’t allow that. It was too much of a threat. The police department is lousy with Scientologists. They’re planting evidence and looking to frame me up.”

Papers filed last year by the Church of Scientology in Los Angeles Federal District Court allege that the Cruizes conspired together to exploit their genetic similarity by narco-surgically copying “engram-free” neurological structures from the elder Cruise, a member of one of the Church’s highest orders. The Church maintains that the “clear” structures in Cruise’s brain are protected by Federal copyright and trade secret laws.

Asked about Cruize’s accusations, Scientology spokeswoman Jo Listle responded vehemently: “To imply that the Church is at all involved in these tragic killings is slanderous. Cruize is clearly guilty and trying to scapegoat Scientology, and it simply won’t work.”

Though a trial date has yet to be scheduled, County attorneys expect to begin the process of jury selection within the month.