Landline Lifeline

"No Sir, I wasn't trying to stop them, I was worried about them. I got kind of tired of thinking an opportunity was just going to happen for me and so I got a job there with our local wave guards and that's when I became good friends with Lawrence and Sal. I'm not trying to mess around, I grew up well you know, went to church and everything, I guess I kind of just ended up without a group of anyone really close and just a lot of people who only kind of knew me until I joined the wave guards and met them... Lawrence and Sal, but you know them: It's like they have a purpose and they know what they were doing..."

Avery, the long dark haired woman was parked outside a diner in the next town over from the lake, she was using a payphone outside to contact her head office in the big city. She worked for the wave guards, it was initially a small local group formed to help govern local airways but as it gained traction it quickly turned into something bigger as more and more people had access to see and wanted more control over centrally produced city media since it was by far the most consumed, this meant that places further outside the city were willing to give up or bend their broadcasting rules to fit the wave guards' book of governance in return for having their voice included in the overall effort of shaping the waves. It also meant that people who disagreed with the wave guards ideology and really cared about it needed to move further and further away from the city to remove themselves from their restricting governance.

"...But this time I could tell something was off... I don't think they knew what they were doing... And that wasn't normal for Lawrence and Sal, I didn't come out here with them, I followed them here because I knew it was dangerous. I heard them making plans to come out here because they were doing their own frequency scans without anyone knowing. I saw pictures of this woman in Lawrence's office it was the same woman in the security footage with the motorbike and that guy. I tried to ask Lawrence about them: the photos and the documents, but he told me it was an unofficial case he was working on with Sal. I didn't take it personally, but it was weird, we don't usually do surveillance like the photos in his report, I knew I could trust him and Sal but I was also afraid of what they might try to do to get a job done... and I mean... I was right, they went missing."

The woman paused to listen to the man on the other end of the phone line from inside the old phone booth, and then responded back to him again:

"So yeah I followed them out here, and now they're missing. I know it'll be a few days before anyone else you can send up will get here. But something is going on with all the equipment around the lake, anything... everything... I can't explain it. Not my cell phone and not even my satellite phone will work after getting near the lake, I'm at some weird payphone the next town over. The people in the diner here won't talk about the lake, say they don't go near it and don't know much about it but it's like they were taught that way, they all just don't go there. I knew something was up there though, people have been going missing in those lake mountains for a decade or so now if you look into it."

The woman paused to let the man speak again. And then responded again:

"You're coming down yourself? Look I-... that woman in the photo with the bike I sent over, I know she knows where Lawrence and Sal are... I- I care about them, and I-... you'll have to come here to hear it... I think they're trapped... somehow... somewhere, Sir, and I think we need all the time we can get."