Chipped—Fiction Friday

I wrote this a little earlier in the week for the blog Write Anything's Fiction Friday Challenge. Some editing may have been done (punctuation, capitalization, and taking out some words I had written hastily without bothering to use the backspace key), but I'd say it's still in first draft form though. There's still no style to it. Maybe I'll come back to it some day.



Dani woke up abruptly. Something felt off. Something was different. Something, out of place. She shook it off. No, it was just a normal morning. But what did she do yesterday? She couldn't remember. Oh well, she just shook her head again.

She went to the kitchen and grabbed a bowl, filled it with corn flakes, and poured in a little milk. She took her breakfast with her to the computer. She turned it on and logged into Facebook. She saw she had a dozen or so new statuses.

Dani Tamberli: I just started testing Facebook Beta! Everyone should give it a try!

Dani Tamberli: Going to sleep. Catch you later.

Dani Tamberli: Just woke up. What a night. Feel a little hungover. Don't remember yesterday.

Dani Tamberli: Feel like having some breakfast.

Dani Tamberli: Logging it into Facebook.

Dani tamberli: Checking status.

Dani Tamberli: What the heck is going on?

Dnai Tamberli: It's posting what I'm thinking.

Dani Tamberli: What's happened to me?

Dani started to panic. What was going on? At the same moment it was posted to Facebook. She logged off and walked away. Minutes later, a knock sounded at the door. Dani went to answer it. Two men stood on the other side, both wearing jackets with large FB's on them.

"Are you guys from the FBI? Good, something's happened. Everything I think is being o posted up to Facebook. I don't even have to be around the computer. Something's wrong. It shouldn't be like this. Help me! You have to help me."

"Miss Tamberli," started the first, "everything's going to be ok. I promise. Just take a large deep breath."

The other jumped in, "So, what seems to be the problem here?"

"Every thing I think is being thrown up to Facebook. Can't you see? I don't want that. I want my privacy. What if I think that someone's cute or that I'm jealous of this girl or something you know? Just my own personal thoughts that I want to keep to myself."

"Well, you should have thought of that e before you signed up for Facebook in beta."

"What? Why?"

"Didn't you read the fine print?"

"Of course not, I just went and pushed the I agree button, like everyone else does."

"You should have read the fine print."

"What does it say.?

"It's too late now. You're now a Facebook test subject."

"Aw! What? Why? No! This can't be! I won't allow it. I demand to have it the old way again. Things need to get back to normal! Please fix this for me!"

"I'm sorry, but we're not allowed to do that. You see, we work for Facebook…"

"What? What's going on? Why are you here?"

"We've been o monitoring you. You see, you're one of the first test subjects. And we like to keep an eye on on all our test subjects. You know, just to make sure everything is going alright and they aren't getting too panicky. Like you are right now. We're here to calm you down."

"I don't want to calm down. I want to be angry. I won't settle until things are back to normal. What to I have to do for that?"

"There's nothing you can do for that. You're stuck like this. We're sorry. We wish we could do more, but at the present time, there is not such opportunity."

She began to strike at the men, lashing out with all of her anger.

"Miss Tamberli, we're going to have to ask for you to come with us."

"No, I don't want to go with you guys. Not unless you promise to fix me"

"That's not an option. We are going to take you with us, though, and hold you for a couple of days, at least until you settle down a little."

"No!"

"If you don't, you'll fry the chip."

"What?! There's a chip?"

"Yeah, that's what happened yesterday."

"Yesterday?"

"Yes, we took you and put a chip in your brain. It's a wireless device that sends messages to our satellites and relays them to the servers. Everything. We know everything about you. Where you are, your favorite food, your favorite movies, books, everything. We know you like Natasha's boyfriend, and even flirted with him a couple of times behind her back. We won't tell her. We promise, but there's a funny way of that stuff leaking out on to Facebook sometimes and if you fry that chip, I don't know what will happen. So you just need to take it easy and listen to us. Just let us bring you back. We can look at that chip and figure out what to do. "

"Can't you take a it out?"

"No, that's not the option. It's in there pretty tight. We're scared if we take it out, it might do some serious brain damage. It's best just to leave it in there."

"You put experimental equipment into my brain?"

"That's what you signed up for. If you would have read the fine print you would have known that. It's not our fault you didn't read this little clause, but it's there."

Dani began to cry. She gave into the two men, and let them carry her away. She stopped caring. Her life was over and he couldn't see a way out of it.