Tag Archives: Science Fiction

The Head of Eli Broad

Informant Information – AL

  • Nationality: American
  • Age: 20
  • Occupation: Student
  • Residence: Los Angeles, California
  • Date of Performance/Collection: April 20, 2022
  • Primary Language: English

The informant has experience working in a lab at USC’s medical school that was next door to the Broad Center for Regenerative Medicine. 

Informant: 

So if you don’t know Eli Broad he was like a billionaire real estate developer and insurance magnate in California, moneymoneymoneymoney, very very rich. Also, the namesake of the Broad museum downtown, which now of course houses his art collection. 

Now I, and a few of my coworkers at the lab, are of the very firm belief that– well you can take this escalator up from the bottom to the top floor of the Broad, and you get a little window where you can see into the big middle floor, which is where they store the art is stored under very, very careful temperature and humidity control I might add. 

So you’re telling me that Eli Broad, that when Eli Broad signed that check to establish that lab– in his name– to conduct stem cell research at USC, you’re telling me that that grant didn’t have any strings attached? Absolutely not. I’m sure that, in the Center for Regenerative Medicine, there’s a little room with a live feed that’s playing video footage from an abandoned corner of the art museum art storage room, where the cryogenically frozen head of Eli Broad is being monitored by USC physicians and just waiting for the moment when the Regenerative Medicine Center advances to the point where they can bring that motherfucker back! It’s sitting there! I mean it’s like– The Broad is a pyramid, a literal pyramid! 

I mean, come on. I don’t think it’s a huge piece of logic. I kind of, 5%, think it’s true. 

Analysis:

This piece of folklore is particularly interesting as a developing legend that speaks to many prominent themes of today’s society. Mortality– and the potential of immortality– have always been popular themes of folklore but are now especially relevant due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Similarly, cryogenic treatments have recently become a popular offering at wellness clinics and spas for those able to afford these treatments. This legend also captures the current disparities in quality and access to healthcare. Given that the costs associated with medical care are prohibitive for a large portion of our society, it is reasonable that legends would speculate on the treatments available to the ultra-wealthy. 

I really enjoyed learning about this legend, and it will be interesting to find out whether or not it will continue to gain popularity. 

Hollow Earth

Nationality: American
Age: 22
Occupation: Student

Description: The concept that there is another world underneath our own at the center of the earth. The main concept being that the earth is hollow and there is a second sun in the center and people living upside down from us.

Background: The informant received this information during High School and heard about it during a creative writing world building workshop.

Transcript:

KS: I don’t know a whole ton about it other than it’s a concept that underneath the ground, the earth is actually just filled with water all the way through like a giant round underground ocean. There’s a whole sci-fi community around it, I don’t know if it’s a conspiracy theory in the strict sense like I don’t know if anyone actually believes in it, but it’s a concept people like to explore in sci-fi writing and art and stuff. Most things about it view it as having huge sea creatures the closer you go to the center, possibly like water dinosaurs and stuff, kind of like “journey to the center of the earth” except you have to take a submarine. There’s also a different version of it that I think is still called hollow earth that is like, it’s filled with air inside and possibly like a mini-sun in the middle and people live on the inside of the crust directly upside down from us .Almost always there are huge fantastical creatures though, no matter what you think fills the middle.

My thoughts:

While I do not think anyone actually believes this as a reality, it is a very interesting concept to think about. This a concept that makes for very interesting fiction so I think this is why it has garnered so much of a following in the sci-fi community. Sci-fi has always been a genre that centered around outlandish and impossible concepts so the idea of a hollow earth sounds like something that fits in a sci-fi setting. The many different variations are also especially fun to think about. The feeling of there being another world so near our own is something that is very exciting to think about.

Bermuda Triangle

Nationality: Caucasian
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Florida
Performance Date: April 16, 2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Basic French

So when I was a kid, uh, when I was like 4 or 5 probably, I first heard about this whole thing with the Bermuda Triangle? My brother told me about it, probably. And he told me that basically it’s this place in the Atlantic Ocean where if you fly over it you, like any of the planes that would fly over it would crash, they’d all crash, and like everyone would die. That’s like the 7 year old kid version, I guess. But . . . and then over the years I heard that it was more like there were mysterious disappearances and stuff, um. Wait, who was the famous pilot? There was a famous pilot, uh, uh, uh . . . um, Amelia Earheart, maybe? . . . There was a famous pilot who went down in the Bermuda Triangle. And there were a bunch of maybe World war 2 related things as well, where planes went down mysteriously, like, without any weather or anything, they would just go off radar, and then they would, the plane would disappear. Um, so a lot of people would dispute that it was like aliens or something. Some sort of mysterious energy, like magnetic energy over this triangular area of the ocean that made planes crash, and then the pilots were like abducted or something, or taken by, by the squid people of the Bermuda, I don—something like that.
It was kinda scary, cause we traveled a lot when I was younger. And we would fly over the Bermuda Triangle sometimes, and I would be like, “Uh, oh! We’re going to die! We’re gonna get captured by the squid people!”

The unexplained disappearances and technological failures of the Bermuda Triangle remain fascinating, because in a world where all seems explainable, all of us still feel helpless and ignorant in the face of the ocean, or when in an airplane flying across the globe. American explanations for the Bermuda Triangle tend to be exclusively scientific, or science fiction oriented. American is obsessed with science and the future, but when we were pushing the limits of technology during the time when circumnavigating the globe by airplane was becoming possible, planes, such as Amelia Earhart’s, would at times disappear without a trace. That mankind still did not possess the technology to fully explore the globe by air fascinated the nation. Even now the legend of the Bermuda Triangle is prevalent. My friend is particularly fascinated by it because he traveled as a child and was very frightened of their plane getting lost.
In this case his older brother, who did not believe the story, told him the story to scare him. When my friend grew older, however, he no longer believed the story either. Growing out of believing in stories like the Bermuda Triangle or the Loch Ness monster are signs one is maturing and entering adulthood.