Andrew Raymond

Andrew Raymond is a character in ECKVA, and the main protagonist of the ARKlistener book. He was a network technician that was brought onto the archive team to help with ECKVA Network's relocation.

History
Andrew Raymond was originally hired to the company as a network technician. While working at ECKVA, he began to have sleep paralysis and nightmares; the first example was him having a nightmare where he was lying flat on his back as he either rose to the ceiling or had the ceiling descend down on him, resulting in him feeling as if he was being crushed, causing him to wake up with a start.

A year after ECKVA Network bought out Clear Lakes Communications, he was enlisted by the company to be a part of their archive team. Danielle Scott, the archive manager, sent an email to the archive team explaining the project. The company was about to begin relocating to a new location, and they wanted all of their archive logged and digitize to aid with the relocation. Later, during an orientation, she explained to Andrew and the rest of the archive team that the company was pursuing a paperless initiative, along with explaining Mezzanine Messenger to them.

Andrew was specifically employed as the head archivist, and proved himself to be a hard worker. At some point, he archived 304 items in just one 10 hour shift. Because of his hard work, Danielle informed him of a new opportunity: three older workstations had been recovered, and although two were broken, one still worked. The people who developed it were gone, and it was likely to contain the only copy of all the data that it had in it, so she offered him the opportunity to archive it with a $5/hour pay increase. He accepted, and got to work on the special project.

After accepting the job offer, he booted up the old test machine, and found a computer program: ARKlistener. As his account didn't work on it, he created a new account for the system, and began to look through it. While searching through it, he found a file called BLOT.xml, which hard crashed both the test machine and the virtual machine; he asked Danielle what it was, but she didn't know. She told him to send it to her, which he did.

He had another bout of sleep paralysis the following night, and saw a figure with a head that was made up of dozens of blocks. As he watched the figure, blocks began to fall out of their face, slowly crushing him until he couldn't breathe, at which point he woke up.

Some time after he was brought onto the project, he noticed that his efficacy ratings were going down overall, and sent an email to Danielle asking if there was room for another hire for the archive team. He offered a suggestion if there was, attaching the CV of Shelby Hawkins to the email. Around the same time, he encountered a bug in Mezzanine, and sent an email to Chris Galloway about it; he responded soon after to share that the bug had been fixed, while saying that he was excited for Andrew to meet the team at Galloway Games. After this, he attempted to figure out who the developer of ARKlistener was; however, he was unable to access the developer credits, despite his his best efforts and increasing frustration.

Later, he received an email from Danielle letting him know that Shelby had been interviewed; she was impressed with them, and HR hoped to have them at work by the next Monday. Andrew made a note to himself later of the schedule split between him and Shelby, with him working on the standard project from 8:00-12:00, while working on the special project from 1:00-6:00, with Shelby taking over when he was downstairs. He also scribbled down some thoughts on what the ARKlistener symbol seen upon startup was, wondering if it was meant to be a face, candle, mountain, or something else.

While accessing ARKlistener some time after that, it brought up a broadcast ready prompt, which he attempted to start. However, it then displayed an error, saying that 0/1 sources were setup. Accessing the setup menu, he did a source scan, revealing a rudimentary map of the workstation he was in; however, it was incomplete, unable to see the entire room. He had another nightmare after this; in it, he was typing at a computer, with there being holes in and no nails on his fingers. As he typed, black liquid poured out until it covered the room; he then stood atop a block of concrete in a beige room, with his skin being shriveled, before he woke up.

Analyzing the source scan, he realized that ARKlistener showed a scan of the workstation he accessed it from; however, it also showed that there was something behind the test machine it ran on, which confused him. Later, Danielle was forced to take sick leave for two days due to an unspecified illness, and put Andrew in charge in her absence. While she was absent, he did another source scan through ARKlistener; when he did, the system detected motion, and prompted him to display it, which he did. Doing so revealed a scan of him sitting down at the workstation.

Once Danielle returned, she expressed frustration at Andrew for accessing ARKlistener in her absence, claiming to not have given him permission to do so, while also claiming that she made it very clear in their initial meeting to only access files assigned by her. She also passive aggressively warned him against using ARKlistener again by pointing out that a log was produced every time he used it. Andrew responded by pointing out that she never said such a thing and never assigned him anything, instead telling him to continue at his own pace; he also pointed out that he knew a log was created, and asked her to check her send box to see if she had actually sent any assignments to him.

Later, as he was doing unrelated work, he saw an ink cartridge in the printer explode for no reason. He sent an email to Shelby, with Danielle CC'd, informing them not to use the printer until IT either fixed or replaced it. Danielle attempted to follow up on this through Mezzanine Messenger, asking what he was trying to print when it exploded; he said he wasn't printing anything, as his email mentioned. She then asked him if he could see the face. Andrew expressed confusion, so she clarified that she meant if he saw the face on the paper in the printer tray, and asked if he recognized it. He said that the only paper he saw was the one the ink cartridge exploded on, and asked if there was another paper; however, he got no response.

Following this, he was sent an email by Shelby, who told him that they had almost completed the final batch that was queued for them, and said that Danielle wasn't responding, so they needed to know what to do. Andrew, in response, created a new batch for her. In a conversation with her after, she asked if anything other than footage was stored in the archive; he said there shouldn't be, and asked why. She replied by saying that a computer program named ARKlistener was stored in it, and asked if that sounded familiar. He lied and told her that it didn't, suggesting she tell Danielle about it.

Danielle immediately sent an angry email to Andrew, asking him why he assigned Shelby a batch instead of referring them to her. She also expressed anger at the fact that they mentioned ARKlistner. She then immediately got on Mezzanine Messenger and messaged him directly; asking why he gave Shelby access to the ARKlistener program; he explained that he just assigned a batch. When she demanded to know why he included ARKlistener in it, he explained that the batches are generated automatically, and pointed out that he didn't tell them anything about it. Danielle then demanded that he come upstairs to her office; he asked for ten minutes, but she demanded he do so immediately, saying that she's not asking, she's telling.

At some point after this, Shelby messaged Andrew to ask if he's had any luck with ARKlistener. When he didn't respond, they asked if he was there; he then responded in an uncharacteristic typing style, saying that there was something crawling in his brain, while asking if they could help him find the brightest light.

After an unknown amount of time, Andrew Raymond was declared dead. ECKVA Network sent out a newsletter mourning his loss, saying that he was an integral part to their award winning technology team, while also asking employees to respect his family in this time of grief by refraining from talking to any non ECKVA media affiliates.

As of right now, Andrew Raymond is presumably dead.

Theories
When talking to Shelby in ECKVA16, he said that they felt something crawling through their brain. This response was shared by SHawkins after they were blotted, and turned into a source. As such, it is possible that Andrew is not actually dead, but instead one of the five sources currently registered in ARKlistener. If this is the case, then it is possible that Andrew is specifically the Interference, as it appears in ECKVA16, which is the episode that revealed Andrew's apparent blotting.

After ECKVA17 was released, an internal memo was sent out that showed patch notes for ARKlistener v0.1.1. At the end of the patch notes, a note was made that the encryption for the version archive in the database was upgraded after the previous unauthorized access of someone only identified as "A," which would presumably stop it from happening again. If "A" is meant to refer to Andrew, then it was possible that he was blotted because of this unauthorized access, presumably reported by Danielle.