Ch.20Ch.3 – Intro (Video Replay)

# Chapter 3

‘My Miskatonic Comrades’

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1929. 4. 14. AM 2:44

Massachusetts, ■■■■■ Naval Base Room 33

The agents of Room 33 often joke, “If there’s a fire, no one will escape.”

This is because Room 33 is located in the deepest part of the base and can only be reached by passing through double or triple security checkpoints.

There are more than ten wiretapping devices installed, and soldiers and officers take turns monitoring all radio waves within reception range 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. On top of that, there’s a soundproof room for confidential meetings.

A facility thoroughly monitored and monitored again. It’s truly a boring place for those on duty.

Major Peterson, the night duty intelligence officer, was desperately trying to fight off sleep.

His task today is to stare at the backs of the heads of agents wearing headphones and monitoring radio signals. It was the same during his last shift. It will be the same for his next shift.

He can’t chat with anyone, is deprived of the fun of teasing officers and soldiers, and can’t even go outside for a run.

No one even visits.

Superiors find it extremely bothersome to stop by here, whether day or night. Opening ceremony. Closing ceremony. Except when first assigned, they don’t even set foot in the corridor.

So Major Peterson pondered again about the similarities between fishing and signal monitoring. He came up with four in ten seconds, but nothing more has come to mind for over 100 minutes.

First, you have to sit for a long time, most of what you catch is garbage, and very occasionally you hit the jackpot. The shape of radio wave frequencies is quite similar to waves.

‘What else is there?’

Since nothing else came to mind no matter how much he thought, the Major stood up. He lit the solid fuel and placed a coffee pot on it.

The agents of Room 33 call that pot “the oil well,” because it produces a liquid as sticky as crude oil from brewing coffee so many times.

It tastes terrible, but there’s no better drink for driving away sleep.

Without any warning, the door to Room 33 opened.

Only Peterson and Master Sergeant Toby can open and close that door at will—a door that even the highest-ranking officers cannot freely open. The Master Sergeant had sealed documents tucked under his arm.

“Haven’t you had too much to drink, sir?”

The Master Sergeant pointed at the pile of mugs on Peterson’s desk. There were more than seven.

“I ate biscuits with it, so I won’t upset my stomach.”

“It’s not about your stomach, it’s about the cups. You’re not married, right? If you did this after getting married, your wife would scold you.”

The Master Sergeant chuckled. Peterson rubbed his forehead with his finger. Working with a sergeant who was old enough to be his uncle, if not his father, was this exhausting.

Should he consider himself fortunate to at least have someone to talk to?

The sergeant gently placed the sealed documents on the desk and poured a thick cup of coffee.

“Did you know? People who drink coffee every day suffer from headaches if they suddenly quit.”

“That’s the first I’ve heard of it.”

“It’s called caffeine addiction. It was in yesterday’s Massachusetts Express newspaper.”

The Master Sergeant elegantly took a sip with a slurping sound. Then he pretended to grab his throat and collapse. The soldiers watching him snickered.

Thanks to the brief commotion, Peterson regained his focus and examined the cover of the confidential document. Naturally, there were no words written on it, but from the seal, Peterson could tell it had come directly from the highest command.

Of course, he had no intention of opening the sealed document now.

Peterson was tired, bored, and extremely sleepy. In such a state, reading confidential documents would require reading them two or three times.

Not wanting to do that dreadful task, the Major approached the shelf where newspapers were kept.

Massachusetts Express… Arkham Times… his choice is the ‘Boston Central.’

It includes brief science-related news every day, and today it happens to be astronomical news.

“Sergeant. It says Mars has come quite close?”

“Mars? Is that information we need to know?”

The Master Sergeant’s implied question was whether this information affects radio monitoring. The only thing that significantly affects radio monitoring is solar flare eruptions.

If he were a fisherman or a sailor, he would have paid close attention to the moon, which affects sea levels.

But Mars?

“We should know. People are afraid of it.”

The Master Sergeant gave a hollow laugh. The sergeant is an extreme realist. The Major knows he’s a man who can let unnecessary knowledge go in one ear and out the other.

Still, Peterson began his lecture. Keeping himself awake was the priority.

“Mars’ approach has been considered an omen of war. Funny, isn’t it? The sun, Earth, and Mars come close together almost every two years. Every 15 to 17 years, it comes extremely close. This is called a ‘great approach,’ and the last one was in 1924.”

The Master Sergeant put a sugar cube in his mouth and chewed it.

“Well. I’ve been married for over 20 years, and do you know what I’ve learned? People don’t need much reason to fight. Even today, as I was leaving home, my wife tried to kill me.”

“What happened today?”

“If you use a cup, you should wash it and put it back in its place, or at least leave it in the sink, why do you keep abandoning it on the desk? It would have been fine if it stopped there, but then it was ‘why hasn’t it changed after a month of nagging, am I such a joke to you’… Good grief. Those damn cups.”

It was more astonishing that Toby hadn’t changed at all despite a month of nagging, but Peterson decided to just accept it.

“So that’s why I switched shifts today. My wife and kids are going to her parents’ house in two days. I’ll be on duty, then have a day off, and when I open my eyes, no one will be home.”

“That’s wise.”

“It’s survival instinct.”

Even while making idle jokes, Peterson’s eyes scanned the science article. It said astronomers worldwide were claiming this was unprecedented.

Especially the doctors from Miskatonic University, which is among America’s finest in astronomy, were raising a fuss.

While Mars approaches Earth every two years, the article stated that a ‘great approach’ occurring at such short intervals had never happened before.

“Speaking of which, I think the Communists are truly great.”

The Master Sergeant pointed at the monitoring equipment.

“Why?”

“Don’t you know, Major? The Soviet bastards share everything. So they must share wives too, right? My goodness, as if one nagging woman isn’t enough, they bring in the neighbor’s nagger too. I can’t even imagine it. Comrade wives, stop your nagging!”

“You shouldn’t say such things carelessly these days, Master Sergeant. You’ll be dragged away somewhere.”

Peterson folded the newspaper, tossed it aside, and walked back to his desk.

“Ha! Who dares drag away a U.S. Navy Master Sergeant? The Air Force? The Army? Or those neither-here-nor-there Marine bastards?”

Master Sergeant Toby’s face was full of pride.

“The Federal Security Bureau.”

Peterson answered while carefully opening the confidential document envelope. The sergeant sank into his chair.

“What exactly are those guys? Not police. Not military. Their authority crosses state boundaries, and they exercise authority over both military and civilians. Isn’t that an extralegal organization? I just don’t understand. I guarantee, if any of them spent even one day on a ship, they’d all be jumping overboard, those worthless fellows.”

Peterson paused from opening the document and stared blankly at the Master Sergeant.

“Didn’t you see the recent recruitment notice from the Federal Security Bureau? They’re recruiting military personnel too.”

“Really? Who are they looking for?”

“They prefer those with security-related work experience. You should look into it. Someone of your caliber as Master Sergeant would surely qualify. Who knows? You might go to Washington.”

It wasn’t intentional, but Peterson frowned slightly. The damn envelope wasn’t opening cleanly.

“Major. I want to be buried in my family cemetery in Massachusetts. Not Arlington National Cemetery.”

“The national cemetery is across the Potomac River. I hear it’s quite visible from Washington DC.”

“If it’s visible to the eye, it’s all close.”

“Then Mars, visible to our eyes, must be closer than Washington?”

At this somewhat abrupt question, the Master Sergeant fell silent. Major Peterson examined the confidential document carefully. He really hated having to read it twice.

“Sergeant. Just a moment.”

The Major called the sergeant into the soundproof room located in the corner of Room 33. The Master Sergeant lifted his heavy backside.

“What is it?”

The Major spread out the documents.

“Here. Here. We’re told to carefully monitor this frequency range. ‘Rasputin’ has resumed broadcasting. The transmission location is presumed to be Arkham city, and they’ve searched all other radio broadcasting facilities but found nothing significant. There’s only one place left.”

“Where?”

“Miskatonic University.”

The Master Sergeant nodded. Once, and then once more. The Major pulled out the document from the back.

“And?”

The sergeant had no more intention of reading the document than the Major did. Major Peterson let out a quiet sigh.

“They want us to check for radio noise and report back. This comes from the U.S. Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA. In 1924, radio waves presumed to originate from Mars were widely detected, and now those waves are being picked up again.”

The Master Sergeant’s mouth fell open.

“Mars is sending something?”

“Seems like they have a giant radio station there.”

Peterson chuckled and pulled out a trash can from under the desk. It was a metal container with flame-retardant treatment for incinerating confidential documents. After lighting a fire and neatly incinerating them, Peterson replaced the lid. He didn’t forget to check two, three times.

“Alright, you voyeurs! Two on the left continue what you’re doing, the rest come in groups of four! I’ll assign frequencies, so from now on, just listen carefully to those. Record all noise!”

Peterson closed the soundproof room door and reclined in the office chair.

‘Rasputin’ is a mystery. No one knows if it’s an individual or a group. Despite not broadcasting often, whenever it starts, it plays nothing but discordant music.

But it wasn’t just simple music. It was letters. A one-to-one mapping of musical notes to alphabet letters, a method used by the beautiful spy ‘Mata Hari.’

Of course, Rasputin was smarter than Mata Hari, who was from a generation ago. He adopted the codebook method introduced in ‘The Valley of Fear’ by the legendary detective Sherlock Holmes.

The method is simple. Both the sender and receiver prepare identical books. Then the sender sends codes like this:

Page 221, first paragraph, third line, second word.

Page 552, fifth paragraph, sixth line, first word.

The receiver then opens those pages and reads the corresponding words. In this way, they can safely exchange codes from “Run away now” to “Operation begins at such and such time.”

Of course, there’s a fatal flaw: if the book being used is revealed, the code is completely exposed.

But with so many books in the world, who would check each one to see which matches the code?

‘There’s no real evidence that this Rasputin is actually a Soviet spy.’

Peterson was highly displeased with the current situation.

There is intelligence suggesting that Soviet communications surge whenever Rasputin plays his strange music. But that alone is too flimsy to conclude that Rasputin is a Soviet spy.

Moreover, this Rasputin is now at Miskatonic University.

Miskatonic University is famous for its humanities department. Especially the folklore department makes remarkable achievements every year. Though overshadowed by the folklore department’s reputation, the astronomy department is also excellent.

But what could a Soviet spy possibly extract from there? The ecology of native American tribes? And why choose a rural city like Arkham, ignoring major cities like Washington, Boston, or Chicago?

Above all, Peterson distrusted the source of the information itself.

The superiors kept their mouths shut, but rumors were rampant among intelligence officers. The rumor was that the Federal Security Bureau was passing information to the Navy.

‘An agency that hasn’t been around long is passing information to the Navy? And the Navy is happily accepting it?’

This was hard to accept for Peterson, who felt pride as a member of the Navy, though not to the extent of Master Sergeant Toby.

Not just Peterson, but all soldiers are conservative. In the military, ‘conservative’ directly correlates with the trust that “I can entrust my life to you in an emergency.”

But could one stake their life on a suspicious organization like the Federal Security Bureau?

“Signal detected.”

The personnel monitoring ‘Rasputin’s’ frequency reported.

Due to Rasputin’s notorious eccentricity, Peterson and Toby had trained their subordinates. They paired them one-on-one with military band members, with leave passes at stake.

Thanks to this, while the personnel of Room 33 couldn’t play instruments, they could recognize musical notes.

“Do. Mi. Fa. Mi. Re. Sol…”

Of course, recognizing notes doesn’t mean they handle sheet music well. So the Room 33 personnel wrote down each note on paper.

“Beep-“

The personnel monitoring the ‘Mars transmission’ frequency range hunched their shoulders. A sharp, high-pitched sound had been detected.

They lowered the volume as much as possible, but there was no way to avoid the piercing tone hitting their eardrums. The personnel recorded the wave patterns in various ways.

“It’s unusually long today.”

Major Peterson muttered to himself. The signal that should have been cut off by now was continuing.

The Mars monitoring personnel raised their hands.

“We can hear music mixed with the static.”

“What?”

Peterson was about to move but hesitated. The Rasputin monitoring personnel had raised their hands.

“We can hear static mixed with the music.”

Peterson and Toby alternately listened to the two personnel’s headphones. No doubt about it. From different frequency bands, the same music—noise—was flowing.

“Connect the speakers. Both of them.”

The Master Sergeant manipulated the panel. There was a slight time lag, but it was clearly the same sound.

However, one had more static than music, while the other had more music than static. The sergeant adjusted the sound.

Somehow, Peterson’s nose began to tingle. He barely suppressed the urge to pick his nose. As he sniffled, his ear canal began to itch.

“If we… do this… good. They’re completely the same now…”

Toby, looking at Peterson, screamed.

“M-Major! Your ear, your ear… what’s that in your ear?”

That’s what Peterson wanted to say. Master Sergeant Toby had something elongated protruding from his nostril.

It was green, looked moist, and had a blunt end.

The next moment, the Master Sergeant and the personnel who had removed their headphones collapsed to the floor.

Peterson saw it.

The heads of Room 33 agents burst open like ripe touch-me-not seed pods. Instead, flowers the size of their heads bloomed. With red petals and green stems, they were clearly flowers.

The two agents still wearing headphones screamed. Peterson tried to call for help toward them, but something was already rising from deep in his throat, preventing him from speaking.

Before the agents could pull the exit door, they collapsed, clutching their heads.

Their heads also burst open.

Flowers bloomed where they had burst.

In the final moment of his life, Peterson saw the flower that had pierced through his throat.

It was beautiful.

As much as it was cruel.

> Video ends

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