Mara Vale
Reluctant investigator and daughter of the missing broadcasterObservant, guarded, stubbornly compassionate.
Wants: To learn whether her father abandoned her, died, or is still reachable through the signal.Speculative mystery · Atmospheric, intimate, tense
Echo Harbor
Every midnight, a public radio frequency in the coastal town of Echo Harbor broadcasts one real memory belonging to someone in town. The signal chooses its witnesses, exposing fragments that pressure the community toward a reckoning over a buried crime. When it carries the voice of Mara's father—missing for eleven years—his transmission is a deliberate invitation, or a warning, from inside the force that curates the broadcasts.
Atmosphere
Salt-fog noir; sodium harbor lights; analog dials, tide-stained archives, and voices breaking through static.
Places that matter
- WHEL 88.3, the shuttered public-radio station beneath the old seawall
- The decommissioned Seawall Tower, whose antenna still points over the harbor
- Echo Harbor Municipal Archives, where storm-damaged records from eleven years ago are restricted
- Saint Orla's Slip, a tidal inlet built over the town's demolished original waterfront
- The Breakwater Diner, where residents gather after each broadcast to decide what it meant
01
Cast
People carrying the tension
Elias Vale
Missing radio engineer; voice within the signalPatient, principled, evasive when protecting others.
Wants: To make Echo Harbor acknowledge what it did without allowing the signal to destroy innocent people.Tomas Rey
WHEL's overnight technician and Mara's uneasy allyFunny under pressure, methodical, conflict-avoidant.
Wants: To preserve the station long enough to understand the signal rather than let officials destroy it.Celia Voss
Harbormaster and public face of civic orderControlled, persuasive, fiercely local.
Wants: To keep panic from ruining Echo Harbor and to prevent the past from swallowing its present residents.Joan Rey
Former WHEL producer and Tomas's motherBlunt, loyal, burdened by restraint.
Wants: To keep Mara from repeating Elias's mistake.02
Connections
Pressure moves between people
Father and daughter, separated by eleven years of silence and an unfinished warning.
Tomas gives Mara access to WHEL; each suspects the other is withholding evidence.
Mother and son; Joan's silence has made Tomas determined to uncover the station's history.
Joan kept Elias's promise to contain the signal, even after his disappearance.
Celia presents herself as Mara's protector while concealing records tied to Elias's disappearance.
Celia knows why Elias investigated the redevelopment files; Elias knew what her father ordered.
03
What stays true
Every remix inherits this
- world rule
At midnight, WHEL 88.3 broadcasts one authentic memory in a voice recognizable to someone in Echo Harbor; no recording captures the transmission exactly as live listeners heard it.
true - world rule
The signal selects memories whose disclosure forces a specific listener to become a witness, though its criteria and ultimate identity remain unresolved.
true - secret
Elias did not simply vanish in the storm: he entered the Seawall Tower to stop the signal and became entangled with the system or force behind it.
true - history
Eleven years ago, a storm coincided with the waterfront redevelopment; official records omit a cluster of displaced residents and one unexplained death.
true - tension
Each broadcast makes the town more divided: some demand truth, some demand silence, and Celia seeks to close WHEL before another transmission can air.
true - character knowledge
Mara heard Elias say, 'Do not come to the tower alone. It knows who is listening,' but Tomas's recording contains only static at that moment.
true
The creator imagines
Elias's first broadcast gives Mara a tide time and the name of a person erased from municipal records. Before she can investigate, the next midnight memory implicates a beloved local resident in the old waterfront clearance. Mara, Tomas, and Joan must decide whether to follow Elias's warning to the Seawall Tower or keep broadcasting until the signal forces Echo Harbor to name what it buried.
Community remixes