«Where Did Marf Come From?»

I first came up with the name Marf back in 7th grade. I had a project in math class to lay out a search pattern for a search and rescue team, and I had named each member. Marf was the most original name out of all of them, and I started to use it for an online alias after this. The picture to the left is the logo for the Sad Little Man Search and Rescue team. Here's the story... It's a little modified from its original, I just couldn't bring myself to post the poor grammar version from 7th grade.

The Sad Little Man Search and Rescue Team

Pilot Gina Roberts crashed her plane only 1½ hours into her 440-mile flight from Laverton to Nullagine when the Laverton airport receives a distress call. Gina was having engine trouble. She gave her location as 185 mi. from Laverton and at a heading of 334°. Then communication was lost.

A search plane was sent out from Wiluna, the closest town to the crash. The plane went in spirals around the heading. The search plane found the crash site, but Gina was not there.

A new team new team had just been hired, but we didn’t have time to put them through training. We decided to give them the mission anyway. There are 8 people in the team, and they all say they have a super-natural way to find people, so we knew they were the right men for the job.

Bob Mattelli: He is very lazy, and a bit overweight. He was a computer hacker under the alias VIRUS_500.

Joe Manken: He is an alcoholic bum that the we took off the street and gave him a job.

Ed Med. People say that he is “special” (in the head). He has worked for the FBI, but we didn't get much information about that.

Fred Med: He has worked for the Air Force as a fighter pilot. He said they wouldn’t let him fly anything after the first day of training. He did any way, that's why he's no longer in the Air Force.

Ned Med: He worked for NASA, but made an incorrect calculation and got fired.

Ted Med: He was an atomic bomb maker for Russia for 10 years. He has amazingly survived many nuclear accidents.

Zed Med: He was a weapons specialist, an assassin of sorts. He knows where to shoot people so they die instantaneously. Even with a cheap B-B gun.

Marf Spudel: He was an undertaker. He is more than a little weird (not used to the living).

We put them at the crash site to find Gina. They ran around like sad little men (mostly down hill). They will have 4 hours to find Gina before a storm hits. All of them went in different directions. Most of them were going in circles.

Marf ran north in a strait line and got lost. He ended up going east and was thought to have been eaten alive by coyotes. The rest of the team wasn't really thinking about Gina at all; they were wondering what the IQ of an octopus is. Ed found an empty juice box 2 miles southeast of the crash site and radioed the other people on the team to come over to him. Marf was out of range of the radio by this point.

They all searched that area until Fred found some footprints in the mud. There is now only 1 hour before the storm hits by this time. Bob was too lazy to search any more so he sat down and stopped searching. Joe had some booze hidden and got drunk, he ended up wandering off in a random direction.

Ed, Fred, Ned, Ted, and Zed all found Gina at the same exact time from different angles and rescued her. They picked up Bob, but they couldn't find Joe or Marf so they left without them.

Joe died from exposure when the storm hit, and his half-eaten body was found after the storm passed, with coyotes dragging it away. Marf never was seen again, although it was assumed he was eaten alive by coyotes.

- Cody Durkin