ARKlistener (book)

ARKlistener is an e-book found on the ECKVA website, and acts as half of part 1.5 of ECKVA. It presents a collection of information retrieved from ECKVA Network employee Andrew Raymond's desk during an investigation into his death. The investigation centered around the ARKlistener system. Pages of the book are unlocked through Louse, which acts as the other half of part 1.5. It can be accessed here.

History
ARKlistener presents a collection of information retrieved from Andrew Raymond's hard drive. He had been declared dead, and an investigation was called to investigate his death. During this investigation, a backup drive was found at his workstation, which automatically backed itself up every hour. Relevant documents were pulled from the hard drive and collected for the investigation, with special attention being paid towards the ARKlistener system. It was then sorted chronologically.

ARKlistener was given to the audience through Louse. The game broke when the audience chose to accept the gift of Rot, resulting in the phrase "!document(s) keyword matched" being posted on the twitter, before it returned to the game. This coincided with the release of the first four pages. Every page drop since then has been marked with the same phrase, which typically follows important decisions that are made in the game. The number of pages per update varies from just one to as many as six.

Plot
ARKlistener is a collection of material related to Andrew's death, with special attention paid to the ARKlistener system. The first documents scanned and shared on the website were TAG1, TAG2, and TAG3, which show company issued key cards. They are currently believed to show Andrew, Danielle Scott, and Shelby Hawkins.

After that was the release of JOURNAL1, which detailed a nightmare that Andrew had on the night of January 18th. The nightmare had him waking up with his eyes open, while lying flat on his back. He couldn't move and spent 15-20 minutes waiting before the ceiling began to start moving closer; he couldn't tell if he was floating or if it was coming down on him. After a few minutes, he felt it press up against him, almost suffocating him until he woke up on the same position he was in during the nightmare, feeling short of breath.

Following that was NEWS1 and EMAIL1. NEWS1 which detailed a lawsuit between Jeremy Whalen and his employer, Clear Lakes Communications. The lawsuit was dismissed after Whalen was assessed to have a poor mental state; he sued them on the basis of them maintaining a hostile work environment while he worked as a network technician, which led to multiple instances of physical and mental trauma. Whalen's lawyer Fred Mendez expressed disappointment and the willingness to keep fighting for the case when talking to the news. The document ended with the notice that CLC had been purchased and absorbed the year prior by ECKVA Network for an undisclosed sum.

EMAIL1 was sent by Danielle, the archive manager, to the archive team. In the email, she said that she was excited to work with everyone as a part of the archive team. She explained that the work would help the company with its relocation the following year, saying that the more they log and digitize, the less there will be to drag to the new building. She expressed that this was a great opportunity, noting how rare it was for an entirely new department to be created in a company the size of ECKVA, while also stating that she would be out for the rest of the day due to mandatory training, but would come back in to conduct orientation the next day.

The next release had SLIDE1, SLIDE2, and SLIDE3, which were all slides from Danielle's orientation for the archive project. SLIDE1 featured an about me, mentioning that she was previously the director of programming at Clear Lakes Communication, that she was now the head of the archive department for ECKVA, and that she had two kids and two dogs. There was a picture of her on the slide, but it did not load for the scan. SLIDE2 mentioned that there were 3,000+ hours of video to log, and an unknown amount of documents, with attention being drawn to how much is in the storage rooms. It mentions the paperless initiative. It also mentions Mezzanine Messenger, a digital asset management application developed in-house, with the support email being MMteam@eckva.net. Anyone who sent an email to that address got an automated response, which said that they would respond as soon as possible, with the estimated time being >999 hours. SLIDE3 showed the training schedule, with Tuesday being the training day for head archivists, while Thursday was the training day for assistant archivists. It also showed some information on the archive team; however, the page was torn and the slide wasn't fully scanned, leaving some information cut off. The only information that remained was that Chris Galloway was the Mezzanine team lead.

The release after that had NOTE1 and LOG1. NOTE1 had some information Andrew wrote down for himself, such as the fact that he's the head archivist but doesn't have an assistant one yet, that Mezzanine Messenger and Mezzanine Manager are the same thing, and that his login has the username "ARaymond4848" and the password "!contrast#511", which cannot be changed. LOG1 had a batch report from a day of Andrew's archiving efforts, where he managed to archive 304 items in just over 10 hours; Danielle left a note on it, commenting that he was the first one over 300.

After that was EMAIL2. It was an email from Danielle to Andrew. In it, she thanked him for his impressive logging efforts, and offered him a side project. She explained that three older workstations were uncovered the day prior; two had water damage, but one was still functional. IT said it was a test machine that was used when Mezzanine Manager was being developed; however, since all of the people that worked on it are gone and what's in it cannot be identified, the higher ups want it all archived. She points out that it may have the only copy of whatever information is stored in there. She follows that up by complimenting his logging efforts thus far, while saying that he would be receiving a pay bump of $5 an hour. She then tells him to finish his current batch and then meet her and Chris in basement storage 4.

Following that was the release of LOG2, MESSAGE1, and JOURNAL2. LOG2 showed Andrew's first bootup of the test machine, which is ARKlistener v0.0.9. He attempted to login, but his account was not found, so he enabled admin controls to create an account for himself. MESSAGE1 was a conversation between Danielle and Andrew in Mezzanine Messenger; it started with Andrew reaching out to Danielle about a file he found, called BLOT.xml. He tried it on both the test and virtual machines, and it hard crashed both; Danielle suggested that it might be junk, but Andrew doubted that, as everything else he found was related to ARKlistener in some way. She then told him to send it to her, which he did.

JOURNAL2 took place on the night of March 3rd, and featured another sleep-paralysis induce nightmare from Andrew. He saw a figure at the side of his bed, standing over him; the figure's head was very large, and made up of dozens of blocks arranged in a grid pattern. The blocks then began to fall out of the figure's head and onto Andrew. He saw that they were approximately a foot long each, and as more fell, he began to find it harder to breathe, until he couldn't breathe at all. He then woke up after this.

Next was the release of EMAIL3, EMAIL4, and LOG3. EMAIL3 was sent from Andrew to Danielle. He asked her if there were any job openings in the archive department; as he was having to split his time between the special project and standard archiving, he wasn't able to be as efficient. If a position was open, then he had someone in mind. He attached their CV at the end of the email, revealing that their recommendation was Shelby Hawkins. EMAIL4 was an email sent from Chris to Andrew, where he let Andrew know that the bug he found in Mezzanine Manager was fixed. He also said that he was excited for Andrew to meet the GG people, revealing that Andrew was going to be involved in Galloway Games in some capacity. LOG3 showed Andrew attempting to learn who the developer of ARKlistener was; however, he was unable to access the developer credits, despite his best efforts and increasing frustration.

After that was EMAIL5, EMAIL6, NOTE2, LOG4, and JOURNAL3. EMAIL5 was sent by Danielle to Andrew, letting him know that she interviewed Shelby and was impressed by them, and that HR was planning on starting them next Monday. EMAIL6 was sent by Danielle to the entire archive team, commending them for their great progress while reminding them of their monthly team meeting happening at 9:30 the next day. NOTE2 was a note from Andrew to himself; it included his schedule, where 8:00-12:00 was the time for the standard project, while 1:00-6:00 was the time for the special project. He also noted that Shelby would be in charge when he was downstairs, and that their company username was SHawkins1928. The note also included information about how to get into ARKlistener, with the order of steps being to first power the test machine, then access Mezzanine Alpha, and then open ARKlistener. It also included some info on the logs, with special attention being paid to the symbol; he questioned whether it was a face, a candle, a building, or something else.

LOG4 showed ARKlistener bring up a broadcast ready prompt, asking if it should start. Andrew selected yes, but it caused an error, due to 0/1 sources not being setup. As a result, he went to the source setup. Given the option to either manage the source list, access the source scan, quit, he chose to access the source scan, which gave a current scan of the workstation he was in; however, it was incomplete.

JOURNAL3 was another nightmare from Andrew on the night of March 26th. This one featured him typing on a loud keyboard without a monitor. Taking a look at his hands, he noted that all of his fingertips had holes in them, and that he was missing his fingernails. When he resumed typing, black liquid began to pour out of his fingers, causing him to type faster until it's over his head. He then saw himself standing on a concrete block in a beige room, with all of his skin being dry and shriveled.

The release after that had NOTE3, EMAIL7, EMAIL8, and LOG5. NOTE3 showed Andrew attempting to understand the source scan ARKlistener produced; he figured out that it was the storage room that the workstation was in, while noting that the scan showed something behind the workstation, which he couldn't figure out. EMAIL7 was a forwarded email from Danielle to Andrew, showing the automatic batch report generated by Shelby. Danielle noted that hiring Shelby was a good idea as they logged 407 items in around 10 hours, proving their efficiency.

EMAIL8 was an email from Danielle to the entire archive team. In it, she explained that she would be out of the office due to "illness," and that Andrew would be her point of contact in her absence. However, after this, she relayed a message that appeared entirely disconnected from what was previously said, saying: "Voicemail left for insights into large area hight and standard I told them to leave me alon how did they do this to me". The email ended after that.

LOG5 showed Andrew accessing the source scan again; the current scan was the same as before, but motion was detected by ARKlistener. It then asked if he wanted to display it, which he did; doing so revealed him sitting at the ARKlistener station, having had a somewhat low quality and distorted picture taken of him.

Following that was the release of EMAIL9, EMAIL10, EMAIL11, SCAN1, and MESSAGE2. EMAIL9 was sent by Danielle to Andrew, where she expressed certain frustrations about his actions during her absence. She claimed to not have given him permission to access ARKlistener or the test machine, saying that she made it very clear in the initial meeting for this project that he was to only access the files assigned to him. She then reminded him that logs were automatically generated and sent to her for his every action, while passive aggressively warning him not to repeat the same mistake again.

EMAIL10 was a response to Danielle by Andrew, where he explained that he was aware of the monitoring software all company computers had. He also said that he didn't recall her comments on assigned files; he said that he would think he was misremembering, but there also have been no assignments sent to him by her, and that he remembered being told to complete this project at his own pace. He then said that he didn't receive any emails or messages about these assignments, and asked her to check her sent box to see if she found anything he didn't receive.

EMAIL11 was sent from Andrew to Shelby, with Danielle CC'd in, explaining that the printer in the test station should not be used as the ink cartridge exploded out of nowhere, creating a big mess; he also doubted that IT would be able to fix it. SCAN1 showed a page that had the ink cartridge exploded on it. However, in the large ink blot was a barely visible face, with two eyes, a nose, and a mouth just barely visible due to the ink in those spots being slightly lighter. MESSAGE2 was a conversation between Danielle and Andrew, where she asked him what he was trying to print when the printer malfunctioned; he explained he wasn't trying to print anything, while asking if she received the email. She confirmed she did, and explained that she just wanted clarification. She then asked him if he saw the face; Andrew was confused, so she explained that there was a face on the paper in the printer tray, while asking him if he recognized it. Andrew, still confused, said that he one he found was covered in ink, while asking if there was another sheet. After receiving no response, he attempted to see if she was there, but received no further response.

The next update had the release of EMAIL12, EMAIL13, MESSAGE3, EMAIL14, MESSAGE4, and EMAIL15. EMAIL12 was from Shelby to Andrew, with them having said that they were nearly done with the last batch that was queued for them. They explained that Danielle hadn't assigned anything else and hasn't responded to their emails, and asked him what they should do when they were done. EMAIL13 had Andrew's response, where he said that he created a new batch and assigned it to their queue, while expressing Hope that it would hold them over until Danielle responded.

MESSAGE3 was between Shelby and Andrew, showing the end of a conversation they were having. Shelby said they had a quick question, and asked if anything but footage was stored in the archive; Andrew said he didn't think so, and asked why. They explained that there was an old computer program stored in it called ARKlistener, and asked if he had heard of it before. He lied, saying that he hadn't, while telling them to tell Danielle about it. Shelby said they would.

EMAIL14 was an email from Danielle to Andrew. She demanded to know why he assigned Shelby a new batch instead of referring them to her, while exclaiming that she just received a message from them about ARKlistener. MESSAGE4 showed their follow-up conversation, where Danielle demanded Andrew explain why he gave Shelby access to ARKlistener. Andrew explained that he just assigned a batch; Danielle asked why he included ARKlistener in it, and he explained that the batches were automatically generated by the system, and that he had no control over it. He also pointed out that he didn't tell Shelby anything about the system, and even lied about not knowing it. Danielle then demanded he come upstairs to her office; he asked for 10 minutes, but she insisted he come immediately, saying that she wasn't asking, she was telling.

EMAIL15 was from Danielle to Shelby. She asked them to stop by her office whenever they were free; she explained they weren't in trouble, but that there was a project Andrew had been working on that she thought Shelby might be able to help with. Her email then ended in a similar fashion to EMAIL8, saying erratic and seemingly meaningless words: "note 111? three spheres and sta i.rs you look' for, inconsistency varying throughout new/ growth/ seasons".

ARKlistner is currently incomplete, and still being released.