Now, to make the plot less abstract!
The story starts with a person- lets call them E for short- losing someone important to them (lets call them F) to suicide. E decides its their fault, and they should've been able to stop it, and becomes depressed and consumed by guilt.
Over time this hits a boiling point, and- either thru undiscovered low-level reality bending abilities or unintentional activation of some sort of ritual- replaces their heart with the unactivated skip. Specifically, its a phone because they associate it with F, and F dying because they couldn't help them.
They die, its real sad, Foundation finds the skip, finds stuff relating to F on it, but doesn't have the frame of reference to understand the reason for it.
This skip is E's emotions, pure and undistilled, and without the ability to reason or learn. E wanted to help and save, and this is the purest expression of that desire- literally giving up their life to save others. If used as a replacement heart in someone, it would likely affect them, but they can still, yknow, think, so it wouldn't be debilitating
The article itself would be the result of this backstory, so the plot in it would be more like figuring out what happened at a crime scene than watching said crime happen.
Now on to the second part, which I've given even less detail about, somehow! Despite it being longer!
This part delves deeper into the psychology of depression, so I would like to note that I, myself, am very familiar with the various ways your brain can make chemicals wrong, and this narrative is meant to portray an idea of hope and recovery. It is only partially based on my experience of it, though, so take it with several grains of salt and a hand over the 'hey thats no good' button.
So, the second article would start with the discovery of a spectral being vaguely imitating Christian angels (good ol' catholic guilt reference!), popping up at random locations, possessing someone now and then, wherever its 'needed'. This happens to be in Foundation sites sometimes, because dear god are these people ever not in danger? So, thats cool, its vaguely helpful, but its a skip thats pretty hard to locate and contain, so obviously that's an issue. And it starts to become a much bigger issue when it starts getting violent.
It shows up, helps the people that it decides its helping, avoids or repels the people trying to stop it from doing its thing. But some time after its discovery, its started retaliating, hard.
It's like how ghosts stick around because they have 'unfinished business', except this business will never be finished. It's a being that firmly believed E wasn't allowed the easy out of dying, and that they had to make up for their perceived failures, like, uh, existing! Yeah, 'logic' is in quotes for a reason.
This is the other end of depression. Instead of feeling so much all the time, it's just nothing, only operating on the rules of what you think you're supposed to be doing. And they're getting real sick of doing the same thing over and over. So, they kill the occasional guy to make saving people go faster, as you do.
So, they start figuring out how the skip works, if there's a pattern, so on and so forth. Eventually manage to get it to stick around long enough for minor tests, which are interesting enough to keep the skip distracted from their lack-of-emotions problem, which reduces the violence. They figure out the pattern of the skip appearing in crisis situations, figure out what it defines as such to control where it shows up better, all good progress. This would be around when the article ends.
I told you it was an essay! Also, I'm sorry!
I think after that, it'd be best to have the narrative wrap up with a tale. When I see a lot of interviews and emotional conversations in articles, it tends to feel like theyre getting bogged down with it, or breaking the immersion. This way, I could really dig into the story, bring up things only the skip would know, and take apart their psychology.
In this tale, the skip would be mostly contained, and slowly learn and accept what it is- not a being driven by the hand of some unknown and cold hand of fate, but by itself. We send the ghost to therapy!
Interviews with the skip and research into the heart-phone and its origins eventually leads to connecting the two, and two parts of E are reunited. They don't come back to life, but they're capable of growing and learning again.
I think to end it off I'd either have it be contained at a humanoid containment site, or, if I may, link it tentatively to Sloths Pit. I think end-of-arc E would be a good fit for the tone, and it'd leave it open for future tales. Plus I just love that canon in general!
