Larnik Transmission #111989

Larnik Transmission #111989

Eluminario Spann met Grant Modell in a hallway of the Bureau.  As the hour was approximately 0400, both men were carrying cups of coffee.  Modell had his usual white styrofoam filled with straight black from the break room, while Director Spann daintily sipped at his treasured venti cinnamon mocha latte that his assistant had delivered at the expected interval.  Both men had long given up trying to convert the other to his way of thinking but they still occasionally traded friendly barbs over their differing beverage preferences.

"Still drinking those frou-frou girly milkshakes?"

"Mmm-hhmmm.  I'd no sooner touch that acidic swill than i would nibble on roadside carrion."

The men chuckled almost silently, thankful as they always were to be in the company of the one other Bureau member that they could trust without reservation.  There were too many newbies around them these days, too many climbers and career politicians, too many silly women with degrees looking to break the glass ceiling.  The professionals like themselves, the Cold Warriors, were becoming fewer with each year.

Modell and Spann entered the laboratory which was deserted at this hour.  The room in which they stood was three stories underground and lit by harsh fluorescents.  Modell took a plastic bin from a shelf and opened the lid carefully.  Inside were two objects; a deflated and rather moldy basketball, and a sheaf of decayed paper.  Spann walked around them gingerly, as if they might carry some insidious sickness.  He prodded them with a metal probe, trying to read the fading and smudged writing on the paper, although the printout of the technician's transcript was close at hand.  Giving up on the artifact he turned to the neatly printed computer pages and read...

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Transcription # 111989
Loc: 239-09A
Date of Int: 8.5.2012
Tech: Mitchell Wharton


I really hope that someone is reading this.  If you are, please read the whole thing!  Seriously, read every fucking word here, and if this crap doesn't interest you then please give it to someone else who might give a shit.  I need HELP and RESCUE from this place.  Please, i beg you, read this and send someone to HELP me.  That being said, i'm going to use the rest of the space here to jot down some particulars of this situation, because reading three pages of me screaming for HELP would get really boring.  I get that.  You ready?

I came to Larnik County about five years ago.  I'm not sure of the exact date.  I can tell you that it was the worst mistake i've ever made in my life.  As far as i can tell there is no getting out of here.  I've tried.  Brother, i've tried.  But this place will not LET ME LEAVE.  This entire place is fu [unintelligible] ing sure of that.   I had no idea at the time.  I spent my first night at Stampede's Bar and Grille where i met some cute redneck chick named Marisha.  Nice ass, great boobs, lots of freckles.  We got wasted and fucked in my car.  No big deal, right?  But we kept drinking and smoked a few joints, and i finally passed out somewhere.  When i woke up i was at her family's home in the middle of fucking nowhere.  She was asleep, and i looked out the window and noticed my car wasn't there.  I started to freak a bit because i wanted to be gone from this shithole already.  Oh, if i only knew.

I had to suffer through breakfast with her freakish inbred family, which was pretty uncomfortable.  Big Daddy, Big Momma, old granny in the corner, and like twenty brothers and sisters and cousins all scuttling around and asking questions about "Marisha's new man."  I played along, and even ate some of their greasy-ass hick food, confident that i'd be gone in an hour.  But these Munsters, they would... not... let... me... leave.  I knew that i really had a problem when Old Granny stood up and rubbed her hands over Marisha's belly and cackled.  She looked at me and said "Well done, my boy.  She is with child!  Ripe as you please!"  Her family hooted and hollered and for a moment i  [unintelligible]  est of my days wearing a diaper and shoving berries up my nose with a stick.  You can imagine where it went from there.  When ya'all getting hitched?  What ya gonna name the little corn nugget?  Where's yer people from?  You got any money?"

I played along and played along.  I'd been in a similar situation before with that Korean girl up at NYC.  But this was different.  These people were dangerous.  All of a sudden her three brothers, these wirey brown-toothed fucks who have Bowie knives stuck in their belts and coon-huntin' rifles slung over their backs are treating me like their new little buddy.  Dear god, i wish they had killed me instead.  It would have been better.

It wasn't until much later that night that i finally made my first serious escape attempt.  I would tell you all about the egregious bullshit concerning my car, but i don't have the space.  Let's just say i never saw it again.  I had finally decided to hitch my way out of there, and when everyone else was asleep, i made tracks for the highway.  I was maybe ten miles away when the Sheriff -- a friend of her father -- rolled up on me and took me back.  Pretty much at gunpoint.  Not literally but it was definitely implied.  Surely, son, yer not the type of boy who'd leave yer woman and child in the lurch?  I guess i am, but it's hard to come out and say it, bubba.  That old biatch was just talking shit about frecklebutt being knocked up, anyway.  Goddamned yokels.  

The second night, i didn't even get five miles.  Two of her brothers got me that time.  I began to realize how truly fucked i was and tried to play it cool.  There were twenty of these shitheads and one of me.  In the meantime, the one side effect was that Marisha and i were fucking every night, and there's nothing better than sticking it to a really dumb but really hot and horny chick.  That was the only bright spot.  It lasted about a year before she had the kid and got really fat.  I have no idea if Granny has the hoodoo touch or if i just got her preggers later.  Don't matter much anymore.  

Okay, i'm not going to bore you with the details of my other escape attempts.  I would lay low for weeks or months, and then try to light out for the territories again.  Every time, something happened and i was caught.  It was like every single toothless  [unintelligible]  otting together like the fucking Borg.  There's just no way to beat them.  Did i mention that by this time, i was working in her uncle's sawmill and getting wasted at Stampede's every night before crawling back home to the homestead?  All the time wondering what my family and my friends and my job were doing?

Okay, here's where you ask me why i didn't call them or send an email, and here's where shit gets real.  I CAN'T.  I tried for months.  Why do you think i'm writing this on paper wadded inside a basketball?  I haven't seen a single computer since i've been here, and the phones are only local.  And they're like Mayberry phones.  You don't dial the number, you actually pick up the phone and talk to an old lady operator who asks who ya wanna reach, and if you ask for anything outside of the border, she just says "sorry, Larnik only."  

Here's where you're going to think i've gone crazy.  Mayhaps i have, son, mayhaps i have.  There's something wrong with this entire place.  There's a reason why i couldn't find it on my map.  It's another world.  A twilight zone.  It took me years to realize this, but slowly and surely i got it.  I think that was the one thing that's kept me going, the realization that i've stumbled into something that completely defies my agnostic upbringing and my concept of  [unintelligible]  can feel its presence sometimes, like some kind of angry god that sleeps behind the mountains.  And i hate to admit it, but i have had some insane adventures and i've had to fight for my life on more than one occasion.  My balls feel way bigger than when i came here.  But nevermind my massive swinging sack, here are are some of the conclusions of my "research."

This place is bigger once you're inside it.  Back in the real world, it must seem tiny, but once you're inside... well, let me put it this way.  Everyone here is afraid of some rich guy named Old Man Scutwauld and his sons, and everyone knows that their land is "five days drive due south."  And that should be impossible, because if you drove south for five days you'd reach the tip of Florida and fall into the ocean.  But it's true here.  I've driven a pick-up truck for hundreds of miles doing errands for the family, and this place just doesn't seem to end.  There's always more.  I was in Alaska for a year, and this place is easily as big,  Bigger, maybe.  I've seen hand-drawn maps hanging on the walls at Captain Turpin's house that make this place out to be the size of fucking Russia.

Nothing gets out, and not much get in, either, except the random wandering fool like me.  No phone calls, no letters, no nothing.  Everything here is homegrown.  Turn on the television and it's all just the Larnik Daily News, the Larnik Crop Report, the Larnik Variety Show and Music Hour w. Clott Wilder.  The only cartoon that comes on is this thing called Gooby and Dolan, and it's just this retarded duck and this retarded hamster thing that go different places and yell and beat the shit out of each other.  All the kids love it.  Heck, most of the adults love it.  But there are exactly 12 episodes and i've seen every one about a hundred times.  I gave up asking if they'd ever seen Spongebob or Last Airbender or Bugs Bunny, because of course they haven't.  And when i try to tell anyone that the president is black, they laugh at me like i'm joking.  Their grasp of current events seems to stop somewhere around 1992 and the first Gulf War, because all they know is "we kicked them Arabs' asses and sent 'em back to the desert."  I finally dug deep enough to find out that the only reason they know this is because someone "heard it from that new Zeke boy."  I theorize that new Zeke must have been the last person before me to wander in here.  I tried to track him down, but turns out he hung himself in a shack in the back a few years ago.  I wonder why.

Should i even mention the animals?  There are turtles here the size of Volkswagen Beetles.  I've seen them.  I've eaten them.  And the weed here is beyond insane and apparently completely legal.  These goobers smoke it by the bushel.  And then eat giant barbecued turtles.  No lie, son.

So that's the basics.  There's more.  So much more, but i've already said too much.  You think this is a joke or a fake, and i don't blame you.  I just had to tell someone.

Okay, i'm running out of space.  You still reading?  Good.  Please help me.  Give this to the police or the FBI or anyone else.  My name is Travis Allen Fitzhugh.  Please contact my mother, Myrna Elizabeth Fitzhugh, at 459 Pine Creek Bluff, Charlotte, North Carolina, and tell her that her son is alive and trapped in a land of nightmares.  Oh, you can tell her that she has a four-year old grandson named Optimus Prime Fitzhugh.  I am not kidding.  When the little rugmuncher was about to burst out, i told the kinfolk that i wanted to name him Optimus Prime, and the entire clan took a weird liking to the "fancypants name."  Marisha didn't argue, because if there's one good thing about this place, it's that women pretty much do what men say at all times.  I never thought about it before but that's pretty fucking sweet.  

Okay.  This is it.  I'm going to cram these pages into this here basketball and chuck it into the river.  My theory is that Larnik only cares for living things and that an inanimate object has a chance of escape.  Let's see if i'm right.  After that, i'm going home to drink until i pass out.  Maybe climb on top of my blubberbutt wife and smash that shit as hard as i can.  Who knows.

SEND HELP.  GET ME OUT.

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Director Spann put the pages back on the table and sat in thought, his latte growing cool.

"What do you think?" Modell asked.

Spann considered for a moment before saying "it's fake."

"Are you sure?"

"Without a doubt, Grant.  I got a tip from Lasky a few weeks ago warning me about false leads like this.  Probably something cooked up by the NDAE, or maybe some joker with connections to Langley.  Surely you don't believe a word of this nonsense?"

"Well... if it is a hoax, why?"

"They're trying to get us to delay the operation.  Timespace differential warping?  An Einstein-Rosenbridge field that somehow inexplicably exists in rural Georgia?  That would set us back months, if not years.  We'd have to revise the budget and get people from NASA and the MOA on board.  Not to mention the fallout when the truth is revealed.  Oh, it's cleverly done, and clearly created by someone with classified knowledge, given how they drop little hints and clues about what we already know.  But it's beyond all question a fake."

"I see.  I'd still like to do a follow-up on persons mentioned, though."

"Mmm?  Yes, go right ahead.  I have no doubt that you'll find a Myrna Fitzhugh living at that address, and that she's still shedding tears for her missing son, Travis... but the real Travis is dead at the bottom of a canyon, or else holed up with some other druggies in Mexico or Thailand, and not anywhere near the Zone of Interest."

"Yes, i suppose so.  Still, best to check."

"Oh, always."

Modell and Spann left the laboratory and went their separate ways.  A frown crossed Modell's face as he returned to his office, because this was, to his knowledge, the first time that Spann had dared lie to him.  Spann's face bore a similar look, because he never dreamed that he would encounter a situation that would force him to keep Modell in the dark.  Their relationship had lasted twenty-five years and he was incredibly reluctant to endanger the trust they shared.  But then, the Larnik problem had forced him to do many things that he'd never imagined.

Larnik, he thought, as he licked the last bit of cinnamon foam from the rim of his cup, you shall be mine.  You can wriggle and writhe all you want, my precious, but in the end... your power shall be mine. 

There was a peal of thunder from outside that rose from a low growl to a thundering crescendo.  Spann flinched and looked out the window in sudden fear.  He felt the roving eye of the same slumbering god that Fitzhugh had glimpsed.  Could it hear him?  Even at this distance, was it aware?

Yes.  

Larnik was aware.