The Final 24 Hours of Dr. Leon Brophy

Illustration by Amjad Faur


Since the release of the Lightbulb Detective Agency CD A Useful Potato, We have received HUNDREDS of e-mails with questions about the song, the Final 24 Hours of Dr. Leon Brophy. Questions like “who is this Dr. Leon Brophy? What happened in his final 24 hours? Why the heck is this song 27 minutes long?” The “official” history of the song is available elsewhere on this blog as well as in the liner notes of the CD, but we have to be honest with you, that’s not the real story.

In the summer of 2001, Dr.Leon Brophy vanished. As one of the leading researches in the field of time travel, Dr. Brophy needs little introduction to those who research time travel. Everyone else however, will have no idea who this guy is. Dr. Brophy is considered a loose cannon by the few that know him. Many regard his methods as too unorthodox, and most consider it complete hogwash. His extremely reclusive nature is infamous, or at least it would be if anyone had ever heard of him.

Leon went to great lengths to insure that his research was kept as secret as possible. It is rumored that his entire support staff was made up of trained orangutans’ that only responded to commands in a language of Brophy’s invention. Because of his secrecy and the fact that all of his records seem to have vanished with him, we do not know the exact nature of Dr. Brophys work. We do however know that it in some way relates to memory.

Unlike “traditional” methods of time travel (such as mechanical or through powerful sorcery) Dr. Brophy felt it was possible to pull oneself out of time using nothing other than your own mind. It is unclear exactly how this works but, it apparently involves deep concentration on an event of the past or a somehow acquired “memory” of the future. No Proof exists that he ever perfected this method.

Only one piece of unexplained physical evidence was found in Dr. Brophys laboratory, where it is known he spent the days leading up to his disappearance. It seems that Leon had hooked himself up to a Brainwave scan device for a period of 24 hours. The lengthy print out hard copy of this scan was found spooled onto the floor and still attached to the machine. On a hunch Investigators fed this information into a powerful “ULTRA –BRAIN” computer. It was then discovered that the scan translated into a 27-minute audio waveform.

This waveform is of course, the song The Final 24 Hours of Dr. Leon Brophy as it appears on the A Useful Potato CD. When the CD was released, we at Lightbulb Detective Agency felt that general public wouldn’t accept the bizarre origins of this recording. So, a story about creating the song in a 24 hour time span was fabricated and released as the “official” story. However, we feel that you dear reader deserve to know the truth.

Even though the disappearance of Dr. Leon Brophy remains unexplained, we at Lightbulb Detective Agency vow to not let the mystery fade. We will continue to investigate this and keep you informed as details emerge.