[ WP ] November , 1965 : Moscow has lost radio contact with a secret research facility in Siberia , and the last broadcast from the facility was `` It ... is awake . ''

For the longest time the rumours coming out of Siberia had been of the apocalyptic variety. Secret bases doing this, quarantines hiding that, civilians disappearing because they had seen those. Misinformation had been circulating ever since the end if the war. 
 
 Most of them - because there was one notable exception - were lies. Vadim knew this, but he did n't know which were lies. The higher ups trusted him with enough information to do his job but not enough to ever fully know what he was doing. He liked it this way because it made his job a lot easier. 
 
 Ostensibly it was in case he ever defected or the bureau was ever infiltrated. They could get some information but not a lot - the foreigners thought of communism as'sharing.' Vadim knew how wrong they were. At least here, in his grey office with his grey computer screen and his regulation black pen. 
 
 Ten minutes to the hour 
 
 Vadim took a notebook from his top drawer and flicked to the lost recent page. Every one prior to today's had been seen by his superior at the end of working hours and redacted accordingly. All of the lines had once contained Vadim's precise handwriting - now they just held intriguing black bars. 
 
 He turned the radio dial to the preset channel. Someone else was in charge of the frequency, he just had thirty six dial positions, and thirty five of then broadcast nothing but static. 
 
 With five minutes to go Vadim adjusted his headset and waited. 
 
 The first few hundred times Vadim had felt tension at this point. What would the message be? Who was the person broadcasting everything? What was he a part of anyway? 
 
 `` Situation normal.'' 
 
 And then static again. Vadim took his pen and recorded the message for the sixth time today. Six messages and three to go. Tomorrow there would be nine new black bars in his notebook. 
 
 He clicked the dial to a dead frequency, removed the headset and replaced his notebook. There was paperwork to do. 
 
 A large filing cabinet took up an entire wall of his office. In it you would find the entire history of post war Siberia in newspaper articles, photographs and departmental memos. It was Vadim's second job. 
 
 He reached over and took the first newspaper and began to read. It was mostly small town stuff but here and there he found mentions of foreign affairs. How the capitalists were n't doing so good. How Russia would prevail. A KV tank had been found in ruins. Those things were still turning up almost thirty years later. 
 
 Vadim dove further through the papers, highlighting things and recording his findings in his official ledger. That ledger was the only thing that he truly loved about his job. It was the only thing they did n't censor. When he left this job - *died* - it would be the only thing besides the black bars that proved he was here. 
 
 And that was when he saw it. It was nothing - just a small piece about a town in the wilderness. But it was the name that mattered. That was *the* name. The only one that mattered. 
 
 With trembling hands Vadim held the paper up to his eyes, reading it again to make completely sure, wanting so badly to be correct. 
 
 He was. 
 
 Vadim stood and almost ran - no one was watching but you could never be sure - to drawer thirty seven. Every other drawer was filled with paper and card, but this one slid open as light as a feather. In it there was a tiny note with *the* name on it and a phone number. He checked it again. 
 
 Vadim's job was to sit in a room for nine and a half hours a day, taking down radio messages and searching for this town's name. 
 
 Five minutes. 
 
 If he ever found anything he was to make no scene, to call no attention to himself, but to file the report at the end of his shift with a blue tag on his notebook. 
 
 Two minutes. 
 
 Vadim almost missed it for the first time in years. He jammed the headset on, fumbled for the notebook and dropped his pen. 
 
 The radio spurted into life as he was reaching for it. 
 
 `` Situation normal.'' 
 
 Disappointed that the message was the same, Vadim made his note and recapped the pen. The disappointment was fleeting, soon drowned in the tide of wonder. The article... 
 
 He grabbed it and read it again hungrily, committing every strange word to memory. He read and reread until he knew the three paragraphs backwards and forwards. He mouthed along with it. 
 
 When the reporter wrote it she had no idea that the town she had been visiting - a standard, Siberian wasteland town with thirty people living there - simply did not exist. As Vadim read the piece days later in Moscow he shared her ignorance. To him that name could have been anything until he saw the familiar collection of letters. Before that day he thought it was a person, perhaps a spy, or a politician... Maybe even a traitor. 
 
 But no. It was a town. 
 
 Three minutes. 
 
 Calmer now, but still feeling the buzz that can only come from breaking routine so dramatically, Vadim turned the dial, out on his headset, opened the notebook and uncapped his pen. 
 
 One minute. 
 
 When the burst of static signified the line was open Vadim's mind was still with the residents of a town he knew nothing about. He heard the message but the first word - the word *Help* - slipped by him. 
 
 The voice, once emotionless, was a melting pot of pain and fear. A siren could be heard in the background but it was thin and strangled. Days of use had pushed it beyond every limit the factory had intended. 
 
 `` It... Is awake.'' 
 
 The radio clicked off - broken transmission, it had only been programmed for two words - and Vadim sat in stunned silence. 
 
 He never heard the rest of the message. If he had he would of recorded it in his notebook and the next day it would have been redacted, the blue tag removed, and he would have gone back to work before being redacted himself. 
 
 The full message would have lived under those black bars in a notebook forgotten to all but Vadim. 
 
 *Help. It... Is awake. It has us prisoner. *
