Jay Lipper

Jay Mark Lipper is a New York-based computer effects consultant. He was hired by the New York Museum of Natural History to coordinate the digital effects for the Tomb of Senef exhibition during the events of The Book of the Dead.

Lipper was a fan of the massively multiplayer online role playing game Land of Darkmord, where he had spent countless hours creating and developing a half-elf sorcerer and had been eagerly anticipating a coordinated attack on Castle Gloaming with his guildmates. He had also become fascinated by Egyptian mythology while doing background research for the museum project.

The Tomb of Senef
With the help of Teddy DiMeo from the museum's own tech staff, Lipper worked with chief curator Nora Kelly and Egyptologist Adrian Wicherly to develop the effects for the walkthrough exhibit. Working from a masterful script developed by Wicherly, Lipper worked tirelessly for weeks to weave together a brilliant immersive multimedia experience. Meant to recreate the robbing of the tomb, the twenty-minute exhibition show followed the robbers as they moved through the chambers of the tomb, seamlessly blending entertainment and education as guests proceeded through the exhibit. The conceptualization, programming and installation was completed in just four weeks.

During the final installation, Lipper unwittingly became the first test subject of Diogenes Pendergast's own sound-and-light show, which was particularly tuned to cause sudden, violent psychosis and brain damage, and had been secretly embedded in the exhibition's multimedia show. Lipper, who had sent DiMeo on an errand in order to run the first test run alone, was lured deep into the exhibition and exposed to Diogenes's experiment. The result was horrifying: when DiMeo returned to the tomb, Lipper attacked and killed him and stuffed his mutilated body into a sarcophagus in the middle of the exhibit before fleeing to the museum's attic spaces. He later attacked a museum security guard before being subdued by police detectives.

Lipper was taken to the psychiatric ward at Bellevue Hospital, where an MRI revealed a series of small lesions to the frontal cortex of his brain, in the area that controls behavior, emotions, and planning. Though sedated, Lipper responded to a visit from his parents with a brief moment of lucidity, saying only "This isn't me," before suddenly becoming violent and threatening to rip out their guts.