Luke McCord

Sophomore, Baritone, PR Representative.

The year is 1986. Among the well known events occurring in the world such as the Oprah Winfrey show debuting and Fujifilm inventing the modern disposable camera, a much lower profile event is occurring in the far off Soviet Union: The Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster.

Amidst the rush, panic, and flames of the seething Ukrainian facility, a small and curious moth flew into the depths of the reactor core, attracted to the heat and bright lights being emitted. As the reactor melted down into the basement of the facility, this moth clumsily fell into the churning and boiling pool of the cooling system and was dispersed into the ruins of the reactor atom-by-atom as a thin film of goo. Over the years, this goo formed some form of intelligence from the combination of moth proteins and gamma rays. At the base of the infamous elephant foot, it recombined itself and began doubling its mass every 5.5 years (See Figure 1). After 36 years of gamma ray exposure and growth, the goo held the same mass as an above average male (100 kg) and the intelligence of a slightly immature college boy who likes wearing funny shirts. Understanding its level of intellect, the goo molded itself into a “Mr. Cool Guy” and named itself “Luke McCord”, which actually just means “I DESIRE MOIST CONDITIONS” in the proto-language the goo derived in its solitude. It then burst its way out of the confines of the reactor core, evaded any obstacles preventing it from escaping the seclusion zone, walked East through Asia instead of taking the shorter way through Europe, trudged under the entire Pacific Ocean, emerged at the shores of LA, climbed over the Rocky Mountains, and walked into our audition room to lay down the slimiest baritone melodies this side of the Dnipro river.