Miskatonic Massacre
From SentryOutpost
The Miskatonic Massacre is the enigmatic event that took place on Halloween, 1999 in the Taylor Run Cave systems. It seems to have a significant relationship to the Scream. Little is known of the event, except from what Howard can tell.
Contents |
[edit] Howard's Explanation
I was trying to think of where I could be useful, and there's one thing you folks have always had questions about that I probably sent the message I didn't want to talk about. I've definitely been defensive about it, but only because once upon a time lots of sleezy tabloids wanted to interview "the survivor". None of them really wanted to hear what I had to say, they just wanted me to play the role of someone who narrowly escaped whatever horrible fate their other experts would speculate about. It made me bitter for a long time, and I need to learn to let that go.
I'm still not sure I believe that what happened in 1999 is related to what we're going through now, but there are enough eerie coincidences that I understand why people are interested.
I guess the best place to start is the picnic the expedition had the Sunday before we left, on October 24th. That's when I got hurt, it really wasn't that bad, just a few bruised ribs. Sometimes even "touch" football can get a little rough. Adrianna made a pretty convincing argument that night (while I was still hopped up on some nice pain pills) that taking a chance of re-injuring it spelunking away from any kind of medical care was stupid.
On Monday morning, I went in to tell Dr. Bhaskaracharaya that they should find a replacement for me on the team. Miles was in the grad student office, prepping for his next 101 lecture, and immediately popped his head in and said he'd be interested. She asked me to bring Miles up to speed, but to be honest, there wasn't much to explain. My role was just barely more advanced than being a Sherpa. Whatever the physics team was doing required alot of very high speed data capture from a variety of sensors -- those went into a rack-mount patch bay with redundant serial outputs that went to both disk arrays (not my responsibility) and to a feed to satelite (which was the real P.I.T.A and also not my responsibility.) I got to teach Miles' 101 classload instead of being the expedition cable monkey.
Adrianna left with the rest of the crew on Friday, the plane tickets where to D.C. and then they were supposed to drive west to some god-foresaken little town to spend the night. The next morning, October 30th, that would have been the day they started their descent into the cave system. That was going to be a 2 day descent, a day of experiments, followed up a 2 day ascent. Five days underground with no real contact to the outside world except when that satelite link was live.
When no data came streaming out of the hole on November 1 as expected, everyone assumed there must have been damaged equipment or something similar. There was still no contact from the expedition on November 3rd, when they should have completed their ascent. That's when the rumors really started flying around campus, rumors that the University had called the local authorities for search and rescue. Those rumors continued to spread for days until the media finally grabbed ahold of it November 8, the morning after volunteer spelunkers had located the team's basecamp in a cave system called Taylor Run. Once the "University Researchers Lost in Cave" headlines started flowing, the Feds moved in and took over the search.
There were still lots of problems with radio communications and with the fact that these caves weren't known too well, even the spelunkers who had been there hadn't mapped much of it yet. Alot of people risked their lives looking for them, though. My real complaints have always been with the media coverage, they just wanted to milk the story for every ounce of attention and speculation they could possibly wring from it.
They gave up the search the week of Thanksgiving, about three weeks after they started. Authorities said they had explored up to a two-day depth from the basecamp, but found no signs of the missing gear or people. The major media pressure had let up anyway (no one wanted a depressing story for Thanksgiving) and the new media quickly focused after that on the fears of Y2K blackouts interrupting Dick Clark or something. But the tragedy had its own more lurid press coverage, dominated by the tasteless tabloid sleeze and all their stupid speculation. Check out isle "journalism" tucked in between miracle diet ads.
I didn't bother to re-enroll for school the next semester, there was just too much pressure and too much loss. I had to get out of Arkham, somewhere that I was reminded of all of that every day. I guess that was the beginning of learning to hide my head in the sand.
Why is any of this even relevant? I guess in part because the Lucky 5 code seems to count down things from October 31, 1999 (which could be completely coincidental), in part because some of those tabloid rumors like to connect cults like Chorazos to what "really happened" (could also be coincidental), and in part because B.A. dreamed their names up from her nightmare (which seems harder to just write off).
I realize this isn't a ton of information, but at least it is all in one place now.
[edit] Regarding the Miskatonic 13
God, I've been staring at that list now for half an hour. It is amazing how you just bury stuff down, but then as soon as you see a name those memories comes screaming back out from nowhere.
Dr. Bhaskaracharaya and Dr. Carroll were on my thesis committee. Dr. Bhaskaracharaya, on top of being a top notch simulation theorist, also made me wish there were more women among CS faculty. I couldn't have imagined a more supportive thesis advisor. I'd had a couple of classes with Dr. Van Doren, but he was an "engineer in geek's clothing" and never cared much for hardware theory (or I'd have been an EE major instead.) Dr. Smith and Dr. August were Physics faculty -- Dr. August was the head of the research project. Even at the "team picnic" the two of them seemed aloof, so totally gone into their own heads they had completely forgotten how to socialize with others.
Miles was the poor bastard that took my place with Hiro. Miles was one of the few real friends I had among the grad students. Before he left, I teased him that he better keep his hands off my girlfriend, and he joked back that if he wanted to make a pass at Adrianna he would do it in an environment where they could both shower that day. I was a pallbearer at his funeral. Pallbearer of an empty fucking coffin that his wailing mother insisted be put in the ground in the family plot in Delaware. All that was in it was his high school baseball letter jacket and a picture taken when he graduated undergrad. The six of us walked slowly, as if we were carrying a huge weight, as if we had to help pretend Miles' body was actually in there. Just so it could be under the earth again so she could stop mourning the loss of her son.
I think I'll put a shot of whisky in my next cup of coffee.
[edit] The Miskatonic 13
The list of the 13 vanished is below. It is unsure who exactly
is faculty and who is student, but it is theorized that the group
was broken up the following way: (italicized names are
confirmed)
[edit] Faculty
Kyle August
Srinivasa Bhaskaracharaya
Erich Carroll
Dee Smith
Haddon Van Doren
[edit] Students
J. Robert Cooper
Hiro Kusekabe
Miles Ross
Nathan Veneziano
David Young
[edit] Guides
George Ghyka
Dan Marco
Adrianna Solovine
[edit] Novelization
Dav Flamerock has written a novelization of the Miskatonic Massacre here: Novelization.