Universal Science Institute

The **Universal Science Institute** (USI) is non-profit think-tank and government contractor founded from the ashes of the former Horizon Enterprises from the 1940s. It has locations and offices in multiple cities across the United States with its main office variously said to be near Boston, Massachusetts, Cleveland, Ohio, Denver, Colorado, Nashville, Tennessee or Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The enterprise develops and tests various technologies for the American government and military, but much of its fortune comes from the public sector, companies mostly relating to computer, mechanical, robotic, medical and chemical creations, creating devices for BioMart Medical Company, Allegius Medical and Hedison Pharmaceuticals. It has also helped and co-operated with law enforcement agencies at local and Federal levels in crime prevention technology and techniques and as such, it's properties and building are heavily monitored and guarded by military-level security personnel. In fact, much of its employees are former military agents. Non-stop security checks on employees are prevalent through the company. Employing over 3,500,000 in the United States and abroad, it also owns or has taken custody of several smaller businesses varying from restaurants, specialty shops and theaters through the Lightoller-Crosby Company which it owns. Some of his public ventures even include realty companies, a cruise line, hotels in sixty-seven cities and zoos in nine states among others.

USI also makes money through several private patents in medical, computer, refrigeration, automobile and the entertainment industry. Through the Lightoller-Crosby Company, it has its own motion picture company, Just Us Productions. Many of its facilities have boarding structures for their employees or own residences for visiting professors, investors or dignitaries. With the vast fortune and resources of the institute, it is considered among the wealthiest enterprises in the United States.

Over the years, USI has also developed a reputation for several urban legends or far-fetched rumors about its activities, many of which are unfounded. The most recurring rumors concern having alleged time travel technology, reverse-engineering UFO technology, weather control devices and even allegedly having cloned modern living dinosaurs. It is known the Nashville facility has departments devoted to paranormal research, cryptozoological investigations and UFO inquiries. One rumor claims that it has "special agents" living in public view and paid through its legitimate businesses, saving struggling businesses or making anonymous contributions to victims of extreme misfortune. Many of these figures seem to be individuals with modest lives but with access to vast wealth and usually having one specific talent that can be used to the greater good. Race car driver Danny Featherstone, TV news reporter Quentin Baldwin and writer William Collins are reportedly three of these such agents. Maria Hill, a Hedison Pharmaceutical stock-holder and Ashford Falls town council member Heidi Shumaker, also reportedly have USI ties.

Trusted and respected by the general public for its integrity, one of the organization's main aims during the 1970s and 1980s into the early 1990s was the expansion and furthering of new technologies within the United States, such as computer applications and systems, applied biosciences and other socially responsible uses of technology. Expanded far beyond Horizon Industries' original military purposes, the institute has moved beyond military applications into amassing a thinktank comprised of the largest concentration of scientists, professors, doctors and intellectuals. Founded by a group of scientists rescued from Germany through Allied agents, one of whom was Walter Logue, the father of debutante Rebecca Logue while another was German chemist Claus von Weber, the father of Katherine Webbar, the company was founded to build missiles, cannons and tanks for the Armed Forces during World War Two and later radar and surveillance technology during the Cold War. It was during this time that Robert E. Hogan, a retired Air Force colonel, was called in to supervise the direction of the scientists. By the 1960s, he had become chief stock holder and owner of the company that developed into the Universal Science Institute. His son, Robert J. Hogan, took over ownership around 1975.

In 2008, newspaper reporter Melissa Strickland following her encounter with Barclay Woods was approached by an unidentified informant that revealed that USI through Hogan's son was behind the efforts to deter her research into paranormal activity. His information also claimed that USI was actually a cover for a secret agency that masked certain activities, both political, paranormal and supernatural, from reaching the American public, even going as far as adding that the rumors about the institute having time travel technology and cloned dinosaurs were actually true. The informant also made a reference that Hogan Sr. and Hogan Jr, were actually one and the same person, an individual with a remarkable long life span.

Just how many of these claims are true is unrevealed.