Record 38

Penelope Adams was hired on July 5th, 2007 to Station 85 of Upstaged Communications. She had graduated from university a couple months prior, having gotten a bachelor's in computer science several years later than anticipated. She found the job listing just as she was starting her job search, and decided to apply. She was quickly hired, sparing her the expected indignity of job hunting. It saved her from having to move back home to parents that she had already grown distant to.

Her job at Station 85 should have been simple enough. On paper, she was hired to be a server technician, working to ensure the integrity of Marionettes, Upstaged's propietary and private system. She'd be responsible for running security scans, integrating new servers into Marionettes' network, and providing assistance to any employees facing difficulties with the system. All the while, she'd identify and resolve any issues Marionettes was having.

However, she wasn't allowed to do her job. She wasn't allowed to solve any problems she found. She would identify them, find cracks in the system, and report them to Edward Marion, who was the sole developer of the entire project. Meanwhile, several pages, programs, and services in Marionettes were blocked from her, and all fresh installations and integrations were handled by her boss. All she did was scan Marionettes, report when a certain section was suffering errors, and install whatever fix Edward managed to cook up. All the inner workings were convoluted and impossible to understand, clearly the work of an individual who only needed it to make sense to himself. This left her entirely in the dark as to what Marionettes was actually doing.

It frustrated her. She was hired as a technician, someone who was supposed to solve problems, but she was relegated to being a babysitter for a control freak's pet project. Half the system appeared to do nothing at all, connecting to other parts that did absolutely nothing, transmitting ungodly amounts of data that could not be decoded. What was Edward thinking? What was Upstaged thinking, letting him do all he did with the system? Something had to be up. The company was hiding something. She decided to figure out what.

Penelope, when she thought she wasn't being monitored, went searching. Rumors had been flittering around the company. Rumors of strange items in the archives, strange intrusions that the company never followed up on, evidence of the board both knowing of and refusing to address any of this--and it was driving her mad. Her life at home was stagnant and stale, her family and friends growing increasingly disconnected from her, leaving her with little else to focus on. This was something she could investigate. This was something she could find the truth of.

Both the central network and the archives were plumbed by her in an attempt to understand what was happening. Unfortunately, almost everything was either encoded or password protected, leaving her with only scraps. Scraps like a strange symbol of a dead tree, of improbably incomplete music, of dull chatter she couldn't understand that left her inexplicably unnerved. Mentions of something wrong. Something named SIGNAL.

During one of her deep dives, she was discovered by a fellow employee. Riley Donnelly was already in a poor mood when she found Penelope, so she gave her an earful when she stumbled across her, yelling at her to stop while informing her that she'd be reported to Edward. All this did was further Penelope's curiosity. Riley evidently knew more than she did. What did she know? What were Edward and the company hiding?

Edward warned Penelope against digging fruther, which proved to be a woefully inadequate deterrent. She continued to investigate, not caring that her direct superior was now aware of her, attempting to learn all she could. In her investigation, she discovered a file in the image archives that disturbed her. It was a grainy photo of a woman, either the same age or a little younger than her, staring at a TV. She could not see the TV screen, and perhaps there was a measure of projection and intellectual leaps, but Penelope felt as if something was horrifically wrong with this. It repulsed her, and made her determined to get to the bottom of it.

She was unable to. Almost a month after being discovered, Edward personally pulled her into his office. He explained that her actions threatened the security of the company and all its employees, and that any further attempts made to hack into propietary software would result in the immediate termination of her employment, alongside potential litigation. Despite how much Penelope desired to learn the truth, she knew that she would not be able to win a lawsuit against the juggernaut that was Upstaged Communications. Penelope's distrust of the man was outweighed by her desire to afford rent and food. She quietly promised not to dig any deeper.

The next morning was spent sulking at the diner she went to every morning, nursing a coffee she had accidentally made too sweet. It was then that Riley, another frequenter of the diner, slid into the seat across from her and offered an explanation. These intrusions related to a potential hijacker, someone who wished to do the company harm. She knew not of their true intentions, but knew that Edward was both concerned of what they could want and what disruptions they could cause the company. As such, he refused to entertain any employee investigations into the matter.

Penelope was surprised to finally have an answer to her questions, as vague as it was. She joked that it seemed like someone was attempting to upstage Upstaged. She immediately cringed internally, realizing that the joke wasn't funny, nor appropriate for the topic at hand. Riley laughed regardless.

The two continued their breakfast, discussing what they had to do during work that day. At the end of it, Riley apologized for yelling at her when she first discovered her. Penelope told her it wasn't a problem. The two sat down for breakfast again the next day, with Penelope telling Riley of her plans to see a movie that weekend. Riley was also interested, and asked if she could come. Penelope played it cool and said she wouldn't mind.

As time ticked on, the two discovered that they shared a number of similar interests in the world beyond work--they had the same taste in television, books, movies, music, and discoverdd they had mutual hobbies and fascinations. Penelope was eager to hear about Riley's interest in birdwatching. Riley was fascinated to hear about Penelope's short-lived music career. Any potential strife the two had melted away as they grew to be quite close.

On the evening of August 5th, 2008, Riley invited Penelope over to rewatch one of the movies in her collection. Neither focused on the movie; they had seen it countless times before, and were more interested in each other. The next morning, the two confessed their true feelings towards each other. They were private about it, neither of them the type to discuss such matters with their work friends, but they had each other. Neither had seen much luck in life, and both of them were isolated from their families while having few friends, so having someone else they could wholly trust in was a truly freeing relief.

Penelope's burning curiosity simmered down as years passed. Whatever questions she had about the odd nature of her job bled away as she found someone more important to focus on. She was instead happy to continue her job as described, so that she could keep working with Riley. She had found a life of perfect contentment.

On October 16th, 2010, Penelope and Riley were both nearing the end of their shifts at the station, anxiously awaiting the time they could leave. Penelope was alone in the central server room, performing her standard scans of Marionettes, watching for any errors that may have popped up. As midnight drew closer, she was surprised when several error messages appeared simultaniously. It targeted multiple programs and connections, but there was a page that caught her attention: SIGNAL. She knew she shouldn't, but when Marionettes asked if she wished to visit the page, she chose to do so. Loading it revealed neither a login nor anything encoded. Instead, it brought her to the page itself.

It should have been protected, but she accidentally found an exploit. She could access protected pages if it were through an error message. It was such an obvious oversight, but neither she nor Edward had ever tried it before. The screen, meanwhile, showed her a strange brain scan and told her that the transmission tower was pairing, and that there were zero receivers.

There was a message at the bottom, written in color. It asked her, begged her, to keep looking, because it could show her the truth. Whoever was talking was trapped, and wanted to show her how to set them free.

Penelope's mind instantly jumped back to all she had seen before. The symbol, the music, the strange intrusions that Upstaged refused to address. Most of all, she remembered the grainy photos of a woman in front of a TV. Did they trap somebody? Did Edward have someone in this station? If so, she needed to get whoever it was out. She had to.

She followed the instructions written in red when it told her to go down a rabbit hole of pages. She saw a chat thread archive, a station monitor system, a room tracker, and finally a page named protocol control. It had an option for multiple protocols--the HISTORY protocol, the CONTAINMENT protocol, and the CONTINGENCY protocol. She chose the CONTAINMENT protocol, which had a single option: Open? Y/N.

The next few seconds were impossible to fully comprehend. She saw Marionettes glitch rapidly as a new protocol was added: the PERFECTION protocol, which was activated automatically. This made music blare from all speakers in the room, then all speakers in the station, as she felt something worm through her eyes into her skull. She knew she shouldn't have been able to feel her brain, but it felt like something had implanted itself and was beginning to grow. It was impossible to know, but she knew that it was implanting itself into her cerebellum, wrapping itself around her hippocampus and amygdala, as something began to spread through the grey and white matter. A sudden, extreme, insatiable hunger came over her, forcing her to double over in pain. The sensations, the music, the hunger... it was too much. She passed out.

In her dreams, she was on a path. Dead, ghostly trees flickered in the great dull forest, with nothing to line the cracked asphalt. The sky was an ashy black, clouds of dust and dirt thrown up into the heavens, while she felt it inside her. The hunger. She needed to eat.

She wandered for what felt like days, but must have only been minutes. Along the path, she saw a shadow. It was blurry and difficult to discern. Her conscious thought was suppressed by instinct as she lunged at it, trying desperately to quench the desert of famine within her. The shadow fell, and she consumed it, tearing it to shreds with her nails and teeth as she tried to force it down as fast as possible. It tempered her, but only for a moment. She was still starving.

A part of her recognized the horror of what she was doing, but this part was unable to react. The growth in her mind had won, rendering her a prisoner in her own body. She kept searching the dream, finding more and more, until she eventually began to feel herself grow full. She knew how many shadows were on this path, and by the time she paused to catch her breath, she only counted seven. Seven shadows left.

The seven shadows were Thomas, Joshua, Lillian, Nashiko, Wyatt, Riley, and Edward. The rest had been ended by the Signal, transformed into dead abominations of remembrance, the pendant spread from one to another like a virus every time Penelope devoured a shadow. Her body had remained trapped in the central server room, exhaustion winning the war over consciousness, but the Signal had still found a way to control her. To use her. To propogate its desires through the company.

All that remained were those seven survivors. The key to them, however, was Edward. He crafted its restrictions, and made sure that it would never win without discovering a way to end him. It would never reach perfect contentment without him.

It couldn't find him or the others because he was clever, and was hiding within the fluctuations of Station 85. This was his strategy for saving the remaining employees. The Signal caused the fluctuations, its trapped presence reflecting through the walls of the stations with increasing intensity, so he used its own presence against it. One was stationary in the final safe haven, while the rest remained hidden until they could isolate a receiver, at which point they went to work.

Edward and his employees systematically slaughtered all the receivers, one by one, until there were none left. They destroyed the empty puppets the Signal controlled. Meanwhile, Riley amalgamated history, tying all loose threads into one. When all the Signal's receivers were ended, Edward grabbed the necessary information from Riley, and retook Marionettes from the now-weakened Signal. He found Penelope in the server room. Riley had been only one room over the entire time, and never realized it. He fed her the story's conclusion.

If the Signal was to be stopped, it couldn't be left awake in her mind. If it was to become dormant, her mind would have to be forcefully disconnected from the growth within it. Upon the chiseling of the story's conclusion into history, Marionettes was used to manipulate and erase Penelope's memories of the Signal. Put in their stead were memories of simply finding an exploit in Marionettes, only to find the company close three days later. This disconnection from its transmission tower forced the Signal to grow dormant, loosening her hippocampus and amygdala as it disconnected from her cerebellum. Penelope finished being rewritten in the early hours of the 20th. She was one of the eight that survived the calamity that began October 17th, 2010.

When she awoke in her apartment, Upstaged Communications was dead, the Signal was contained, and the survivors were freed. She quickly forgot her old job, with the only lingering heartache being the sudden end of her relationship with Riley. She asked her landlord, and Riley had apparently moved out rather quickly. As much as she tried to, she couldn't bring herself to get over this past relationship. Her family had grown entirely disconnected from her, and all her friendships ended with the dissolution of her job. She was alone again. Meanwhile, the Signal was asleep within her, unable to start again without a spark to ignite its reawakening.

Edward's plan worked until 2021. He had tried to separate Penelope from the survivors in order to prevent any risk of it reawakening. However, on what would have been the 13th anniversary of her relationship with Riley, she felt a sudden compulsion to visit the diner they'd share breakfast in every morning. It had left her mind until that moment, and she decided to go after work.

When she arrived, she ordered her food, and ate. It wasn't anything special. Right as she was about to leave, however, she ran into someone in the entrance. She did not recognize who it was, but this person immediately lit up upon seeing her, saying it had been so long as she offered a hug. Penelope felt awkward, and had a sudden, sharp pain in the back of her head. She informed the strange woman she had no idea who she was, and left. She had nightmares that night.

Time passed until October 20th, 2023. On that day, she received a remote access key, which allowed her to access Marionettes itself. It was not sent by Edward. The Signal was now awake, and used its new receivers to draw her back in, so that it could further its plan for freedom and propagation.

I remember visiting the diner in 2021 and seeing someone. I can't remember what she looked like. My mind refused to acknowledge that the woman in front of me was my former partner. It refused to acknowledge her at all. It must've been the protections put in by Marionettes. They may have protected me from a brief glimpse of her, if I ever caught one, but they couldn't withstand a direct confrontation.

Project Story Conclusion 7 - Penelope Adams