Seven Harvard students, along with their local interpreter and guide, have been lost to marauders in an attempted crossing of the Science Center Plaza. The Plaza, a 500 mile long post-apocalyptic wasteland, created during the most recent nuclear conflict between Harvard University and Tufts, has become home to tribes of wandering nomads, each doing their best to stay alive in the irradiated hellhole. Faced with the harsh realities of the no-man’s-land, many of these groups are resorting to violence to meet their needs. Thomas Ecker, the only member of the initial group to escape the assault, was found collapsed yesterday at the doors of the Science Center, badly sunburned and dehydrated, four weeks after the caravan first started out from the Gate of Meyer.

            “We were just trying to get to our SLS 20 lecture,” said Ecker from his hospital bed. “The locals told us not to go out there, that it wasn’t worth our lives to get back our midterm grades. We didn’t listen.”

            According to Ecker, the attack occurred just after sundown on the third day of the journey. As the group was bedding down for the night, gunmen appeared from behind “those big wooden things, you know, the ones scattered all around the Plaza. What are those for, anyway? They couldn’t be chairs…they’re chairs? I’m supposed to sit on one of those?” As the assailants opened fire, Ecker managed to flee on back of the mutated Yard squirrel that the group had purchased as a pack animal. Running out of supplies, he eventually resorted to eating his bushy companion, Nutterford B. Hayes, and was forced to continue the grueling trek on foot. The fate of the other students was confirmed when a horde of leather clad thugs drove a convoy to the front of the Science Center, with several of the still living undergraduates tied to the hoods of their vehicles. Their apparent leader, a large man wearing a hockey mask, addressed the occupants of the building via loudspeaker, telling them to “just walk away,” leaving behind all oil in their possession.

            SatireV correspondents travelled to Social Space City, the shanty town which has grown up around the southern edge of the Plaza, to follow up on several leads regarding the students’ initial preparations for the trip.

            “Yes, yes, Jazir warned the travelers, yes,” said Jazir Long-Runner, one of the locals we interviewed. “Students were soft, yes, not ready. The Plaza is not kind to soft.” Jazir then turned into a cloud of sand and blew away, leaving behind only a cackle which witnesses described as “echoing with the cries of those souls trapped beneath the stones of the Plaza.”