Monday, November 16th—4:04 AM
About three minutes ago, I got a text from Matt with a link to an online news site. The Novites have sent out another mandate and I think that this one basically annihilates the gravity of the previous two.
We’re being chipped.
Like micro-chipped. Like with pets. So we can’t get “lost”. So we can always “have access to our bank account, health information, and other necessary records”.
They’re going to put an actual tracking chip inside of us.
This is crazy.
What is going on?!
I had to read the article about six or seven times before the news really sunk in. I feel as if we just crossed a threshold from “a little bizarre” to “Big Brother is coming!” It’s the first time any of this has felt real to me.
The Novites are out of control and no one—I repeat—NO ONE—has tried to stop them. Where are the police? Where is the army? Are they all under Novite control? Why is no one resisting?
I know some people are also really freaked out about this order. An online blog has already sprung up and written that the chips are like the Mark of the Beast, from the Bible.
I don’t go to church, but ‘the mark of the beast’ doesn’t sound like something I want implanted.
We had 121 listeners on Friday night, and we seem to be growing exponentially every week. I’m afraid—afraid that we are attracting too much attention. With these chips, we’d be on the grid. Traceable.
We can’t get chipped.
That’s the ultimatum. I don’t know how we can avoid it, but we have to.
Someday, this radio crew may have to make a run for it. We can’t be tracked.
Tuesday, November 17th—10:28 AM
Matt and I are in study hall right now. We are making a list of questions that we have about everything that is going on with the Novites. I feel as if so much has changed in the past few weeks. Here was our list:
I feel as if none of these questions have a solid answer. I want answers that we can grasp and hold onto. Matt looked over our list and then said “Okay, well let’s start with the first question. I know how we can solve that.”
A multitude of solutions ran through my head, and I answered apprehensively. “How?”
“Simple,” responded Matt. “The neighbor that went missing, we used to watch her house when she went on vacation. I know where she hides the key.”
“You want to break into her house?”
“It’s not breaking in—we have the key.”
“Try explaining that to the police.”
Matt sighed and pulled out a sheet of unfinished math homework. “I’m going in. I’ll just poke around and see if she left any clues. I bet the rest of the team will come when I ask them.”
I rolled my eyes, but I knew Matt was right. Gavin would follow Matt, Lauren was into all those crime and detective shows, so she would definitely be in, and Kaylah was usually down for anything, no matter how crazy the plan.
Alicia and Raymond were wild cards, although they would probably go on the mission too.
I have a crew full of crazy people.
Wednesday, November 18th—4:30 PM
I can’t believe I was talked into the investigation. You wouldn’t believe what happened.
We met up at four ‘o’clock and started the two-minute walk to Ms. Whitson’s house. It was overcast and chilly, one of those days where everything seems to stay still and quiet.
“Can we hurry this up, guys?” asked Kaylah. “I have, like, hours of chemistry homework.”
“It’ll be five minutes,” said Matt. “Five minutes in-and-out.”
We arrived at Ms. Whitson’s house, a two-story ranch, painted a now-faded shade of blue. The grass stayed remarkably short in Ms. Whitson’s absence; I guess the cold November we’ve had probably helped. Matt led us around the back and we stationed Raymond on the porch as a lookout. Matt grinned as he pulled a tarnished key out from the flowerpot placed on her back deck. “Bingo!”
He popped the door open and we advanced cautiously in. “Okay, everyone,” I whispered as we entered, “fan out and look for clues. Don’t overlook anything.”
“Got it,” everyone responded, except for Kaylah, who pointed out, “why are we whispering?”
We laughed, which seemed to diffuse the tension a bit. We were just checking in on the house, after all. It’s not like we were breaking into Area 51 or anything.
I sifted through the bills on Ms. Whitson’s counter and checked the trash for anything that may have been thrown away. Nothing.
“Well this was dumb,” said Alicia, as she looked through various items on the coffee table (an asthma inhaler, a dated copy of Reader’s Digest, several layers of newspapers). “The house is fine. No sign of a struggle or anything.”
“Who wants to check the bedroom,” said Gavin, smirking cheekily.
Alicia sighed and went up the stairs. “Gavin it’s a bedroom, not a—”
She stopped talking suddenly and I called up. “Alicia?”
We all bolted up the stairs and found Alicia standing in the doorway of the bedroom. There was a shiny pool of blood, glistening in the fading afternoon light. “I just found this,” whispered Alicia, as if not believing what we were seeing.
“It’s wet,” noted Kaylah. “That’s recent. Like, really recent.”
A loud hacking noise suddenly cut through the quiet. We all jumped and Gavin started back down the stairs. “This is freaky, I’m out!”
A figure suddenly emerged from the bathroom on the other side of the hall. I recognized her immediately. Ms. Whitson.
Her face was all weird, like it had been melted and reformed. Her mouth seemed to be frozen open in a look of hysteria. Her eyes bugged out and seemed too big for her face. She uttered a single statement. “Help me.” She coughed again and more blood splattered on the beige walls.
We all snapped. Gavin jumped over the last few stairs and sprinted for the door, and the rest of us followed, clambering down the stairs, all pushing to be the first ones outside. “Raymond, run!” I yelled as we leaped off the deck. The seven of us cut through backyards and gardens, too afraid to stop and look back. “Zombie,” Lauren panted as we ran, “Completely zombie!”
We didn’t stop until we reached the RV and we had locked the door behind us. “What… the… hell?” said Alicia as she flopped into one of the booth chairs. “What the hell was that?!”
Lauren retied a loose bun as she responded. “Total nightmare fuel.”
The dark had settled in for the night and we all couldn’t get the image of Ms. Whitson’s distorted face out of our heads. Kaylah’s hands shook as she pulled out her phone. “Siri, my neighbor is a zombie.”
Raymond laughed, but the rest of us sat in stony silence as Siri asked “Would you like me to search the web?”
Gavin pulled off his hat and ran a hand through his hair. “She was completely wacked-out.”
“So the missing people turn into bleeding zombie things?” I asked. “Seems legit.”
“Ten bucks that it was the Novites who did that,” said Matt. “Who else?”
“Remember Wilson? He went missing too. Do you think…?” Kaylah trailed off.
“We should call the police,” said Alicia. “I mean, she needs serious help. We should’ve stayed to help her.”
“No way would I have stayed,” responded Gavin. “What if it’s contagious?”
Alicia picked up her cell phone and dialed 911, requesting that a neighbor be “checked in on”. Several minutes later, we watched as police pulled up, accompanied by an ambulance. Ms. Whitson was brought out on a stretcher. After, we all parted ways, no one wanting to offer a final comment on our encounter.
Thursday, November 19th— 2:25 AM
I can’t sleep; I’m having a hard time getting the image of the estranged Ms. Whitson out of my head.
I’ve had a lot of sleepless nights recently.
Gee, I wonder why…
7:25 AM
You know those days when you wake up and you just know it’s going to be a bad day?
Yep.
I didn’t sleep a wink last night.
My eyes are so tired and bleary that I can’t see straight.
4:08 PM
Gavin just called to tell me he’s created a platform to organize our listeners on. He calls it the DAMCOM (there’s an acronym there, but I’m blanking on what it was). Basically, listeners can register a “cell”, which is a group that sends us any Novite information they happen to find. We plan to announce the launch of the DAMCOM tomorrow night in our broadcast. Gavin says the DAMCOM is “as secure as you can get”. “It can’t be traced!” he told me excitedly.
“What about Novites logging in and giving us false information?”
Gavin snorted on the other end. “Seriously? That’s your biggest concern? I’ll work on some ways to block them.”
I just realized that the DAMCOM means that we are actually an organized group now. We are actively seeking out information to crack the Novite mystery. What are we doing? I feel like we’re on a one-way train careening towards Destruction and Ruin and Bad Life Choices.
Friday, November 20th—3:05 PM
All the girls are broadcasting here and sleeping over; Matt and Gavin will be sending me a recording shortly. I’m currently trying to clean up the RV; we’ve really trashed it in the past few weeks. On top of that, without an electrical plug-in, the camper battery is bound to run out soon. So I also have that to contend with. No battery means no electricity, which means no broadcast.
Once again, we’re going to have a bunch to talk about. Missing people (now that we may have a new lead), the chips (which I kind of forgot about in the past few days), and just all around Novite news. And the DAMCOM.
9:22 PM
Everyone’s here and ready to go. We’re Skyping the guys while we wait for ten ’o’clock to arrive.
“We should assign jobs,” Alicia says. “To help run this show better.”
“Well, Gavin’s definitely on tech,” I say. “Kaylah’s pretty good with research so maybe she could be our researcher?”
“I’m down for that.” Kaylah leans back and yawns, her hands clutching a stack of history vocabulary flash cards. I wish I had Kaylah’s work ethic. It’s a Friday night, she’s hanging out, and she still manages to cram in some study time. Jeez.
“I can do some PR,” offers Lauren. “My blog may help.”
Matt speaks up. “Is Olivia going to be hosting this show from now on? It’s a bit hard for me to do so, with the curfew and all. I mean, we can all still talk on the show, she’ll just be the main host.”
“You sure, Matt?” I say. “I don’t want to take your job away.”
Matt waves his hand. “Nah, its fine. I don’t like the way my voice sounds on air anyway. I can do our finances or something. Whatever we need. Jack of all trades.”
Alicia offers to do the same as Matt. Whatever is needed.
The only person left is Raymond, who’s preoccupied with a small, toy skateboard that he steers around the radio equipment, flipping it with his fingers so that it does minuscule ollies. “Raymond?”
He looks up, confused. “What?”
“What do you want your job to be?”
Raymond shrugs and turns back to his skateboard. “Something fun.”
Matt rolls his eyes. “Someone remind me why we let a middle-school kid in this gang.”
I ignore Matt and check the time. “Guys, we broadcast in fifteen minutes!”
Kaylah jumps up and carries the laptop over to the equipment. Over the Skype call, Gavin instructs her on how to prepare the tech for the broadcast. Alicia scribbles something on a piece of paper and hands it to me. “Intro music,” she says.
I look at it. It’s a Soundcloud link.
I crinkle my nose and ask “Who wrote it?”
“Matt did.”
I glance over at the laptop, where Gavin is still talking. I can’t see Matt.
“Matt wrote it? Matt writes music?”
“Synthesizes it, mostly.”
“And this is the link to… his mixtape? I didn’t know Matt did this stuff.”
Alicia shakes her head and scribbles out another list, a list of topics for our broadcast. I’ve known Matt for years, and he never once mentioned writing music. He’s in the school band, I know that much. But never once has he—
“Olivia!” Lauren calls. “Can we discuss this article I found? It’s about the chipping.”
“Go ahead,” I say, my head spinning.
11:02 PM
Our broadcast ran almost an hour tonight. We closed out with the song “Never Gonna Give You Up”, by Rick Astley. It was Raymond’s idea; I could hear him cackling when we played it. “We’re gonna troll the listeners so hard.”
Everyone else has gone inside and it’s just me in the RV right now. I have a killer headache and I can’t think straight. My mind is shooting in a million different directions and I can’t focus on a single thought. As soon as I start worrying about the chips, I remember Ms. Whitson, and as soon as I recall that incident, my train of thought jumps to Toz Vedyo, and then to this radio station, and on and on and on.
I got my report card last week and all of my grades have spiraled downward in the past month. I feel like everything is just crashing down. Everything is a wild card these days. I don’t know what’s happening with my grades, or with the Novites, or with anything else that’s being thrown at me.
But this all will pass, right?
I ended this week’s broadcast, before I played the music, with a catchy little saying, “This is Singularity signing off. Be smart, keep faith. Good luck.”
The “good luck” seemed to give an air of importance to the broadcast. It is pretty important.
We had 314 listeners tonight.
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A/N
What’s up, everyone? Thank you so much to everyone who has left reviews on the previous chapters! I’m glad you guys are enjoying this story! Big things are in store for Singularity and the Lone Voice crew, I’m afraid ;)
If you enjoyed this chapter, leave a like, comment, or recommend this story to a friend! If you didn’t enjoy it, drop a comment and let me know what I should work on!
As always, here’s another code! Decode it for the working title of next week’s chapter:
20-15-15 12-15-21-4 20-15-15 3-12-15-19-5
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140,098 Literary Works • 672,998 Reviews
Hello again!
I think this was your strongest chapter so far. Really hoping things keep improving at this rate, this is turning into something pretty cool. For me, this is where I've gone from being intrigued to invested, and about now's exactly the right place for that to be happening.
I love the last entry. I think it's the most development of Olivia that I've seen so far, and it really makes her feel human and believable. I think that part was done really effectively, you showed her doubts and how she felt, and I really connected with Olivia at that point. It's also very well-written.
I think in the scene where the group investigated Ms Whitson's house needs a little work. The beginnings of a really full on scene are there, I just think it needs to be built on. Build up a little more tension before Alicia discovers Ms W, add some creepy (or perhaps bizarrely normal, it's up to you) atmosphere, use description to make the reader worried, then they'll be hit harder by the discovery. On the whole the scene moved too quickly to be as effective as it could have been, but if you flesh it out a little, make it feel fast paced but not rushed, I suppose is the best explanation, you could have a great scene there.
I'm not sure how much Kaylah and Lauren are contributing to the plot. Or Gavin, for that matter. The others' presence works, but those three kind of feel like they're just there to fill in space at the moment. Big casts of characters can work, but at the moment some of them feel a little superfluous, which I'm hoping you'll be able to fix later. Otherwise, at the moment it feels like you could remove the characters. I'm starting to see a little development of Kaylah, but Lauren's forgettable at the moment and I only remember Gavin because he's the other boy. If you want a book that handles having a large number of important characters, a good example I can think of is Tomorrow, When the War Began by John Marsden. There's also a survival element to the story, which I'm beginning to fear that your characters are going to need soon...
I like the part where you include Matt's music making. Cool character development, and also adds layers to the relationship between him and Olivia, considering that he's hidden it from her.
That's about it for this chapter. Was very impressed, and can't wait to see what happens next!
"“Simple,” responded Matt. “The neighbor that went missing, we used to watch her house when she went on vacation. I know where she hides the key.”" The sentence is sort of awkwardly written. Maybe you could change it to something like "We used to watch the house of the neighbor that went missing."
"We met up at four ‘o’clock and started the two-minute walk to Ms. Whitson’s house." Like I said in my last review, you only need one apostrophe.
"Lauren retied a loose bun as she responded. “Total nightmare fuel.”" That period after "responded" should be a comma.
"Gavin says the DAMCOM is “as secure as you can get”." I think that the comma should be inside the quotation marks, even though it isn't part of the quote, but I think that's how it works.
Keep up the good work!
Forward ho!
The first entry here is fantastic. Very gripping.
She could counter this by saying they'd still be trespassing, which is also illegal.
I don't know if you intended this to be subtle, but there's a big correlation glaring at us in the face right there!
Wow! I didn't expect them to find a person in there, so this took me by surprise. I wonder what they did to her.
These colloquialisms are feeling a little overdone to me. Be careful not to use them as crutches. I'd be more interested if the characters had their own unique mannerisms.
I don't think this is a correct use of estranged.
The tense changed? Did you change your mind about what tense you wanted the story to be in? I wouldn't recommend switching tense in the middle of the story. At least, I think it changed...?
The part where they all get assigned jobs went in one ear and out the other. It's kind of like a list that I can't be bothered to memorise. I'd rather see these people in action, doing their jobs, showing their skills and personalities. Doing it all through dialogue made me want to skim it.
Nicely done.
Things have definitely picked up now and we're cruising right along. So far I felt ch3 was the strongest, and I really liked the bit here about the microchips. The bit with Mrs Whitston wasn't my personal favourite but I thought it was well done. After that things felt a little helter-skelter, and part of that feels due to having so many names and not a lot of investment in individual characters. I wasn't sure why she was so freaked out about Matt writing music, either. One thing you did very well was capture her frantic thoughts. The narrative in that section felt very frantic.
Alrighty, maybe I'll make it to ch5! Cheers.
The story's really picking up. You've either written a few chapters ahead or you have a scary amount of discipline. The rate your updating this story at is making me feel insecure. I don't know whether it's intentional or not but it seems to me that each diary entry is getting longer and a little more in depth, it's like your shifting from found footage horror (which would get tiresome over the length of a novel) to a more traditional narrative. If that is what's happening then your doing it well, most stories that do this can be a bit jarring.
The suspense is great, you're holding your cards to your chest, and the main character is likeable. I can't fault your grammar or spelling either.
The only problem for me is the other characters aren't fleshed out enough. I don't really have a sense of their personalities, their motives or loyalties. If you could find a way to work more dialogue in and show their individual voices I think it would help.
Other than that I think it's great. Until the next chapter, be smart, keep faith and good luck.
Sorry that there are four....it twas an accident...
Not a problem joef
Just got real...
Yes it did
Just got real...
Just got real...
Just got real...