Record 36

The first four years of Wyatt's life were as idyllic as one could hope for. Kellen was a corporate attorney, giving Cassidy the opportunity to stay at home with Wyatt. He was raised exactly as his parents wanted, and showed promising signs of being quite a bright kid. He was talking and walking earlier than most, and had a natural curiosity for the world around him. However, in February of 1985, disaster struck.

Kellen got in a car accident. It was nobody's fault; it was late at night, and black ice coated the road. Someone's car slid at an intersection as he was driving past, crashing into the driver's side. He died instantaneously. Cassidy was in shambles. She had just lost the love of her life, and wasn't able to take care of her son and work a job at the same time. His life insurance policy was generous enough to help his family for a time, but she needed someone to help take care of her baby boy.

She had always been close with her brother. The two supported each other at their lowest moments, and he visited frequently. He already helped watch over his nephew whenever he could. He loved spending time with baby Wyatt. Although she didn't want to burden him, he was more than willing to help. He didn't make nearly as much money as Kellen, but he could act as Wyatt's father figure as he grew up, offering him support while taking care of him when Cassidy wasn't able to. Kellen was buried in March, and Edward Marion began to take care of his nephew.

The two grew close over the next decade. Wyatt grew to see Edward as a father, and Edward loved Wyatt as he would a son. Cassidy did her best to be in his life, but she was often busy with work, having been hired back as a nurse at a large hospital. Edward had more free time. He worked at a local news station during the day, when Wyatt was at school, so by night he was able to cook him food, play games with him, read him books, and make sure he wasn't alone. He even took a day to give his nephew a tour of the station he worked at, showing him the ins and outs of the broadcasting world. Edward's coworkers were less than thrilled, but Wyatt was ecstatic. He was enthralled by the chaotic, loose nature of the writing team, finding it incredible that people could figure out how to fairly and accurately represent all that was happening in the world on such short notice.

Despite the hardship and difficulty inherent to the family's situation, the household was staying afloat until August 5th, 1993. It was a Thursday. Wyatt was almost 12 years old. He was sent off to school by Edward in the morning, as Cassidy had to work a double shift at the hospital; he promised that he'd take the three of them out to dinner that night, despite the fact that it was a school night. Wyatt was excited.

When he returned home from school, Edward wasn't there. Figuring that he was kept late at the station, Wyatt killed time by watching some television. As he turned it on, however, he noticed an issue. All he saw was a colorful noise, with broken, uncomfortable music slithering through the speakers. As he watched, he could've sworn he saw a symbol in the noise. A strange dead tree that he could not look away from. It almost felt as if the television was talking; or, rather, like something in it was reaching out to him, desperately trying to apologize. He only looked up when the broadcast was cut, leaving nothing but static. It had been several hours, and his mom had finally come downstairs from the nap she was taking.

A day passed. Then a week. Then months. Edward was nowhere to be found. His house had been sold a few weeks after his disappearance in a private sale, his car had been traded in as scrap, and his coworkers all said that he never showed up for work that Thursday. However, someone had broken into the station and trashed it, destroying thousands of dollars of valuable equipment, along with stealing a television and the central database server. Whoever it was could never be properly identified, as the entire security apparatus had been thoroughly destroyed. They suspected that he snapped from the stress, went on a vengeful rampage, and ran. He was gone.

Cassidy mourned and fell into a deep depression, believing that her brother had abandoned her and her son. Wyatt, however, refused to believe it. He knew his uncle. He wouldn't leave unless it was for a reason. If it really was true that he fled, then something must have happened. It was a strange coincidence that, on the same day, Wyatt saw that discomforting broadcast on the television. He couldn't shake the feeling that the two were somehow connected.

Believing Edward to still be out there, he went searching. He looked at all nearby businesses for any recent hires, tried to track down who he sold his house to, and when he had access to the internet, attempted to search for any mention of Edward Marion in the news. It was no use. It was as if he vanished.

Until September 17th, 2005. Wyatt had graduated from university that past spring, having gotten a bachelor's degree in broadcast journalism so that he could work as a writer at a news station. As he looked for places that would hire him, he found that a station for a larger company was searching for freshly minted graduates: Station 48 of Upstaged Communications.

The starting salary was enough to intrigue Wyatt. He decided to look into it, trying to understand why they would pay so much for a green hire. As days passed, he made several peculiar discoveries. For one, there were whispers in online forums of intrusions, potentially hostile actors attempting to display their own bizarre message. The company was founded on October 17th, 1993--hardly two months after he saw the broadcast. Most importantly, the founder was Edward Marion. He immediately applied, and was accepted as a script writer at Station 48.

While working there, he tried to find a way to reach Edward. Unfortunately, he couldn't. Edward had stationed himself in Station 85, keeping himself busy day and night with his own job. Wyatt knew that Edward must have records of all individuals employed by the company, but he didn't know if Edward had intentionally ignored his nephew's hiring, or if he had simply forgotten. He wasn't sure what he hoped for.

In the meantime, Wyatt set himself apart as a hard worker, diligently investigating stories for the station. His work was most frequently used during the evening programming, with Joshua O'Dell and him working in the skeleton crew that ran the station at night. Whenever he had the extra time, he went diving through the Marionettes archives in an attempt to find any mentions of Edward, or of the strange broadcast he saw the day his uncle disappeared.

All files mentioning Edward by name were locked, leaving him unable to access them. He was, however, able to learn more of the broadcast he saw. He saw a recording of the same symbol on a distorted rainbow background. The file name, when unscrambled, read SIGNAL. It was then that he knew this search wasn't in vain, and that he was going to learn why Edward did what he did. Learn why Edward abandoned him, and his mother.

During his tenure at Upstaged, Cassidy began to grow ill. Her mind was slipping, falling into the throes of dementia as her body began to wither away. He did his best to care for her, setting her up with an on-call nurse that could help her during an emergency. In this difficult time, he chose not to tell her about discovering Edward. He didn't want to upset her. Instead, he left her in the dark as he continued his personal investigation.

Several years passed. On September 19th, 2010, he was able to convince both his station manager and Nashiko Morita to transfer him to Station 85. He recognized her from the station Edward worked at when Wyatt was just a child, but he wasn't sure if she recognized him. It was impossible to tell.

His first day at Station 85 officially began October 13th. He made himself acquainted with his coworkers, but when it came to closing time, he declined the offer to spend time at a local bar. Instead, he immediately went to the office of Edward Marion.

He was not in the office that day. Nor the 14th, nor the 15th. He was only able to reach Edward on the 16th. The clock was ticking to midnight, hours later than Wyatt's clock-out time.

Wyatt wasn't sure to expect. Edward would have aged, certainly, and might take a moment to recognize his nephew. However, when he saw his uncle for the first time in 17 years, he recoiled, shocked at his decayed body. It looked as if he were a walking corpse, barely held together by the last vestiges of life trudging through him. Edward saw Wyatt, with little more than an empty smile on his face, and motioned for him to enter. The two had much to discuss.

Edward apologized for abandoning his family, saying that he knew how badly they were hurt by what he did, and that it hurt him more than Wyatt could ever imagine. However, there was something more important to tend to. Wyatt screamed at him, demanding to know what could possibly be more important than family. Edward's answer was given by a knock at the door. It was midnight of the 17th.

Riley Donnelly entered, panicking, saying that something happened. The three of them rushed out to see that everything had begun to collapse. Edward looked at the two of them, and told them that the Signal had escaped, and was starting to spread from person to person. He told them that he would explain more later, but he needed their utmost cooperation and trust, no matter what, lest they risk every single person within these stations dying. Despite Wyatt's feelings towards his uncle, he knew he had to agree. There was no alternative. It was then that the stations began to fluctuate, melding together in structural instability, and Wyatt fell through the floor. All exits melted away, leaving him trapped.

He went searching for Edward again, avoiding all receivers that had been created. He knew better than to approach them, as he remembered the day his uncle disappeared, where he was entranced by the television. He suspected that it could do worse now. Joshua eventually found him, and the two 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 that survived the calamity that began 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 the monstrous acts he committed at Edward's command had grown hazy, but he remembered what the Signal was able to do.

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, Joshua, Lillian, and Nashiko.

How do you justify a man like this? Yes, containing the Signal was a priority, but I find it hard to believe that abandoning his family was the only way forward. I don't know. I can't judge on that front, I guess.

There's been recurring dates, numbers, and seemingly entire events. Although there are differences, history seems to repeat. I don't know what happened on August 5th, 2021, but I remember why the day was originally important to me.

Project Story Conclusion 5 - Wyatt Reed