Project Story Conclusion 2 - Joshua O'Dell

I got another download from Marionettes. I still haven't heard back from Edward, or Riley.

Joshua O'Dell was a relatively fresh hire by the time Upstaged Communications closed, having joined Station 48 on June 5th, 2008. He had been an anchor for a local news station for seven years, but was hired when his company was absorbed into Upstaged. It had simply ran out of money, which Upstaged was never in short supply of.

As the anchor, his job was to smile, look relaxed, read the teleprompter, and clearly enunciate what he was being fed. It was an easy job, in his eyes; he didn't have to make any of the more complicated or technical decisions behind the scenes. He simply needed to be a mouthpiece for what others had written. He thought of himself as a charming and good-looking guy, and as such was able to ease into his job, flipping the switch to his conscious thought off with little difficulty as he focused on the teleprompter. His segment was the evening news for several cities in central Indiana, making him the nighttime comfort for thousands of people.

Months passed before it happened. In the middle of a broadcast, he saw something. The people at home saw him squint, forced to bring his mind back to reality with a concerned expression, before he laughed it off. Technical difficulties, he explained to the camera. A glitch in the teleprompter. He'd continue in just a moment. The station received no complaints from any of the viewers over the situation. He handled it well.

Joshua also happened to be a fast reader, and had a good memory. What he saw on the teleprompter didn't leave him after his shift was over. On the screen, he saw a strange symbol of a dead tree, lightly glitching and fragmenting. There was then a message, written over itself countless times, in such a way that it proved to be utterly incomprehensible. The only word he could make out was SIGNAL. There was nothing he could do to decipher whatever else was written, as the glitch wasn't recorded; instead, he was forced to sit on what he saw, trying his best to force it out of his mind. Upstaged was a reputable company, yes? There was no chance that it could have been a hint towards a secret the company had. It was just a strange glitch.

This feeling of wrongness refused to leave him, and it built in his mind. Months later, on the eve of the new year, he visited the Marionettes image archives, attempting to find any traces of this SIGNAL. A large majority of the archives were password protected, leaving him with little to work with, but he was able to find something that slipped through the cracks. It was an image of the same symbol from before. That was it, then--the teleprompter must have simply glitched, and displayed an image from the archives. Despite this convenient excuse, however, Joshua was left deeply unnerved. Something in the back of his mind told him that he was looking at something he wasn't supposed to. It was enough for him. He knew better than to dig further. He had enough information should anything happen.

This left him prepared when everything shattered. He was doing late-night mandatory retraining he had put off. As the Signal began to spread through the stations, he recognized the symbol that was appearing on the computer. He managed to slip past all other employees, riding the fluctuations of Station 48 until they landed him in Station 85, where he found Wyatt Reed. He and Wyatt found Edward, who told them of a plan to save them all from the horrible fate the company wrought upon all its employees. He was one of the eight to survive the calamity that began midnight of October 17th, 2010.

Three days passed. Upstaged Communications was dead, the Signal was contained, and the survivors were freed on October 20th. His memory had been damaged in the preparation of Penelope, leaving only fragments of history to draw from. The memories of what terrible things he did to stop the Signal had grown hazy, but he remembered just how dangerous the Signal was.

It awoke again in 2021. Two years later, he was called back. A package was sent on October 1st, 2023 and received on October 3rd. He received it the same day as Thomas, Lillian, Nashiko, and Wyatt.

He was the second receiver the Signal was able to capture in 2023. There is no longer a Joshua O'Dell.

It seems like the Signal has always been able to find cracks in Marionettes, intruding into it in small ways, but Edward was always able to recontain it. What changed to cause the breakdown of the company?