Category: Undead Celebrities

Oct. 11, 2108
WASHINGTON DC–U.S. Federal Reserve Chairwoman Ellen Greenzpan was rushed to a gated Bethesda hospital this morning after collapsing in the wake of a week of bizarre turbulence in world financial markets. The interest-rate sensitive Chair had been under close medical supervision since suffering a series of unexplained spasms and bouts of glossalalia unofficially linked to recent market turmoil. “She had been relatively stable for the past couple of days,” notes Dr. Peter One, director of Greenzpan’s medical team. “At about 10 this morning she seized, said something in Middle French, and collapsed. We immediately determined that we needed equipment available at her hospital and she was airlifted directly to Bethesda.”

Sources inside the hospital report that Greenzpan suffered from a severe “diverse, punctuated vasoconstrictive fluid extrusion” during which blood vessels throughout her body constricted simultaneously, causing a spike in blood pressure severe enough to rupture capillaries, squeezing hemofluids out through the pores. Engorged epidermal tissues wrung fluids from sweat and oil glands throughout her skin, causing “omni-dermal tissue flaccidity occasioned by hyper-acute dehydration.” “She looked like she’d been squeezed dry by a giant hand,” exclaimed an anonymous member of the hospital staff. “I mean, just all squeezed out like a tube of toothpaste. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Greenzpan experts link her collapse to the recent appearance and growth of “M8,” a controversial measure of the money supply designed to include the hypothetical “anti-capital” touted by research and financial services multinational Futurefeedforward. “Greenzpan was designed to be physically sensitive to the markets,” explains market analyst Gig Watson. “Her whole body is pretty much a wireless data hub. When markets move, she feels it. She can adjust interest rates literally by flexing her muscles. I watch her cheeks just before an FOMC meeting. If she looks a little flushed, it’s a good bet that the Fed will be changing policy. We watch her for symptoms that indicate the health of the economy. This collapse has got everybody spooked about what’s going on.”

Built on a transgendered clone chassis sired by legendary Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, Greenzpan’s body receives realtime economic data through a sophisticated network of distributed, nanoscale wireless nodes tied to her nervous system through customized synapses. Economic data of different types is linked to different areas of the body, enabling Greenzpan to feel and respond to economic fluctuations through an “intuitive somatic interface.” Durable goods inventories and sales data affect the bowels and lower intestines, precipitous drops in unemployment cause constricted breathing, and interest rate and money supply data interact with her circulatory system. “Ellen was born to lead the Fed,” notes Watson. “Her pulse is the pulse of this new economy.”

Informally dubbed “deflation sickness” by pundits, Greenzpan’s symptoms over the past week are believed to be related to a phenomenon known as “time-money value inversion” discoverd by FeedBank, the banking subsidiary of Futurefeedforward. Futurefeedforward CFO Emily Efou explains: “Traditionally, present-day dollars are thought to be more valuable than future-side dollars. That’s why conventional banks pay interest. Our research shows that that is starting to change. Certain institutions, like FeedBank, are starting to operate on the principle that present-dollars should be discounted in relation to future-dollars, thus creating eddies controlled by negative interest rates. Greenzpan’s system wasn’t designed to cope with this sort of development. The spike in negative-rate trading this morning must have crushed her.”

Greenzpan’s condition is reportedly critical. Longtime friend and Objectivist Party running-mate Wayn Rand arrived in Bethesda this afternoon to join members of the Greenspan family at her bedside. The family asks that concerned members of the public keep prayers and charitable donations to themselves.

Nov. 3, 2045
HOLLYWOOD–Anonymous, inside sources at the Los Angeles County Medical Center confirmed this morning that celebrity clone Julia Robertz has been admitted and is receiving treatment for a “severe, septic bowel obstruction due to excess and/or abusive ingestion of reusable food products.” Spokespeople for Ms. Robertz’ studio, Buena Vista Pictures, have reported since Monday that Robertz was suffering from dehydration and acute exhaustion after long hours on the set of her new film “My Bezt Friend’z Wedding.” “Julia has been working very hard for a break like ‘Bezt Friend,'” explained her agent, Freddie Lore. “She’s been living in the shadow of her dam, and this was going to be her chance to show the public what she can do on her own. She’s been giving it all she’s got and she just overdid it a bit.”

Robertz, among the first generation of studio-raised stars, overcame a troubled childhood and tumultuous adolescence only to be passed over for parts in favor of her more experienced and still youthful dam. “Unlike Clint or Meryl Ztreep, Julia still had to compete with her Oscar(TM)-winning ‘parent,'” explained Lore. “She did everything the studio said. She worked hard for the ‘younger, wilder, out-of-control’ thing they said would help distinguish her from the other Julia. And it finally was starting to pay off. But now it looks to be picking up a sort of tragic spin.”

According to close friends, “cheesing,” or “krafting,” was among the activities the studio encouraged Robertz to pursue. The controversial practice, popular among actresses and models, restricts practitioners’ diets to nutrient-rechargable, reusable foods, particularly slices of Kraft American Cheese. “We’re noticing an alarming trend with respect to ‘cheesing,'” explains prominent Malibu nutritionist Dr. Kelly Gesamt. “I’ve seen several patients recently who have eaten only Reusable Singles for weeks at a time. And often, in order to completely satisfy their appetites, they are eating them in bulk.”

The Singles, made of an absorbent, nutrient-selective self-assembling smart polymer known as “Mylkar,” are marketed as a nutritionally complete non-caloric “snack supplement.” The Singles come pre-soaked in a bath of key nutrients and flavoring agents and the Mylkar, vapor-deposited in a complex lattice structure, has the appearance, texture, and bite-chew coefficient of traditional cheese food. “Our Reusable Singles are a great appetite satisfier as well as being nutritionally valuable,” notes Kraft spokesman Henri LeGliche. “They simulate fully the experience of traditional ingestion without the caloric complications and are the perfect complement to a healthy, weight-reducing diet.”

Once expelled from the body, the Mylkar lattice quickly reforms the original Single, which can then be washed, recharged with nutrients, and reused. “Reusability was an important design goal for us,” notes LeGliche. “Given the relatively high materials costs involved in the Mylkar manufacturing process, we felt that re-usability was important in order to keep the Singles at an accessible, mass-market price-point.”

Friends indicate that Robertz engaged in ‘deep cheesing,’ both for its cachet and to compete with Ms. Roberts. “Julia thought, and I guess the studio did too, that she could compete with the other Julia in terms of being thinner, having a better body. I guess she wasn’t really thinking about the risks.”

Though medical details about her condition remain unavailable, experts speculate that Robertz consumed dozens of Singles that then prematurely reformed in her digestive tract, causing a life-threatening obstruction. Dr. Gesamt explains: “It’s just like what’s happened lately here with the plumbing in Malibu. People here just flush the Singles because they can afford to. At some point enough of them are around that they start to reassemble into these mega-Single blockages in the system and you have to call out the public works guys to clear out the lines. The same thing could just as easily happen in the human digestive tract when people eat too much of this stuff.”

Sources inside L.A. County Medical Center describe Robertz’ condition as “touch and go.”

Aug. 16, 2020
LOS ANGELES–Fox Studios officials today confirmed that reclusive media tycoon Rupert Murdoch suffered accidental injuries during a Wednesday taping of the popular Iron Surgeon program. “Chairman Murdoch was injured when a laser-equipped remote incision and cauterization pistol accidentally discharged and struck him in the head while he was observing the taping from his dais,” explained Fox Spokeswoman Jessica Wrenkle. “We aren’t at liberty to discuss the incident in any more detail until official inquiries have concluded.”

The show, pitting surgeons from around the world against Murdoch’s own hand-picked ‘Iron Surgeons,’ including ‘Iron Surgeon Cardiovascular’ Dr. Theodore Lime, ‘Iron Surgeon Neurological’ Dr. Jennifer Frame, and ‘Iron Surgeon Orthopedic’ Dr. Laura Nimbu, challenges surgeons to complete death-defying procedures on patients using a surprise ‘theme instrument.’ A challenger, competing head-to-head against the Iron Surgeon of her choice, operates on three or four patients selected from a roster and is judged on “artistry, creativity, morbidity, and use of the theme instrument.” Recent theme instruments have included a spatula, a scalpel-shooting crossbow, and a bungee cord. Murdoch has guaranteed successful challengers “the people’s ovation and fame forever.”

Murdoch, rarely seen in public since dedicating much of his fortune to the building of ‘Surgery Stadium’ and the endowment of the program and its proprietary satellite network, routinely appeared on the show to interview contestants and to moderate the judges’ discussion. “He really loved the show,” notes frequent celebrity guest judge Gary Coleman. “Once the cameras were on he was full of witty quips, all totally unscripted. But I never really saw him off-camera. As soon as shooting would stop he’d call for his assistants and they’d drop this big, black sort of tarp over him and wheel him away.”

Witnesses to the Wednesday taping have indicated that the laser incision pistol that injured Murdoch was not the current theme instrument. “They were using this big helium tank,” explains one audience member. “The Iron Surgeon was doing a splenectomy. She’d inflated all these surgical gloves and tied them to the spleen. They lifted it up just like a hot air balloon. Just lifted it right up, right out of the patient. I guess it got too close to a stage light or something, but all of the sudden the spleen started shooting around the studio like a rocket. Then it hit a stagehand who was carrying some stuff and I heard Mr. Murdoch scream.”

Though members of Murdoch’s medical team were not available to comment, sources close to the family confirm that the laser caused significant ‘frontal lobe trauma,’ and that prospects of recovery were not strong.

“It really hurts to see him like this,” explains Sam Bill, Murdoch’s personal fingernail wrangler. “I went to see him to keep up the training of his nails and he didn’t even seem to recognize me. He was just sitting there, smiling, watching TV. I’ve known him for nine years and I’ve never seen him smile. It’s just so sad.”

April 23, 2072
MALIBU–Spokespeople for celebrity activists Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston confirmed today that the longtime couple is currently anonymized and that the decryption keys have been lost or damaged. “Brad and Jennifer have always enjoyed mixing with the public,” explains a spokesperson for the couple. “They’re very down to earth that way. They had just turned on their anonymizers for a trip down to Pizza Bell to pick up some dinner. When they went to turn them off, they found that something had gone wrong. They’ve both remained encrypted for the past couple of weeks or so. We’re hopeful that the technical people will be able to recover the keys in due course.”

Pitt and Aniston both use recent versions of PGP-compliant anonymizing hardware sold by Oakley under the GygesTM brand. The Gyges system includes millions of self-replicating nanoMEMS that reside in the epidermis. The small machines each control a nanoscopic mirror. Networked by low-power RF connections, the MEMS form a giant neural net dedicated to anonymizing the wearer through control of the mirrors. Light striking the wearer is re-directed in a seemingly random fashion, disguising the wearer’s true appearance. Recent versions of Gyges have begun using distributed 65K-bit encryption of the “façade” in order to thwart filter-enabled lenses and glasses.

“We’ve gotten quite used to seeing anonymized patrons,” notes Sally Okibuchi, manager of Sony’s New Fish Experience, a popular L.A. celebrity haunt. “It was disconcerting when they started to show up a few years ago, looking all blocky, like some kind of whistleblower or secret government witness or something. And those scrambled voices were a real hoot. But some of the newer anonymizers have a real sense of style, some of them are really beautiful.”

According to sources near the couple, Pitt and Aniston regularly used a beta patch to Gyges that enables “cross-keying,” or the sharing of keys between users and specially enabled HUD glasses through a proprietary PKI. Pitt and Aniston were known to use designer HUD glasses to enable them to see each other while they remained anonymized to the general public. Experts who have examined the couple hypothesize that a bug in the patch is causing their anonymizers to export the dynamically generated keys to the associated HUD glasses while deleting the local copy of the key, preventing the systems from decrypting the couple.

“It’s a real shame from our perspective,” notes AOL Studio Chief Marianne Asse. “Two of our most bankable stars have just plummeted in value. Sure, they can still see each other, but what about their obligations to us and to their public? Their contracts specifically require key escrow. They should have given us a copy of the key to hold in case of emergencies like this. They didn’t, and that has put them in default. According to contract, that grants us a right to use their likenesses digitally on stand-ins, and that’s probably where we’re headed.”

“There’s a good reason Jennifer and Brad didn’t trust the studio with their keys,” explains the couple’s spokesperson. “They’ve had trouble in the past with the studio leaking the keys to contracted paparazzi and poaching extra-contractual public appearances. We’re prepared to talk about exactly who has broken the contracts and when. The default clause specifies that AOL gets the right to digital likenesses only if Brad and Jennifer are substantially unable to perform their duties. Sure, their bodies and faces are anonymized and won’t show up right on camera, but their hair remains perfectly shootable. As long as they can shoot the hair, they’ve got their stars. The studio can digitally add their own likenesses to them. This ‘stand-in’ talk is just the studios trying to get out of paying the stars, and it’s not right.”

Though fans remain hopeful, encryption experts outside the Pitt-Aniston camp doubt that the couple can be decrypted. “This is an example of bad design and inadequate testing in a life-critical application,” notes one expert. “Getting them decrypted would require something like harnessing the quantum computational power of a body the size of the sun. They’re just not going to be cracked for centuries.”