Second Test

Okay, this isn't as much a single test as it is a series of mini-tests. I'm going to try to ascertain how far the Choir will let me communicate, and how much room I have to maneuver with them

Test 1: Recorded self reading the pages on the Choir on various informational blogs.

Result: Inconclusive. The end product was a monotone chant of "Perhaps their language leads you," one of the mantras the Choir likes to repeat when it's not trying to drive me to murder. Not sure if this is because what I said was altered or if what I heard was altered. Notes on how to improve future tests rendered unreadable.

Test 2: Attempted to transcribe notes for future tests

Result: Failure. The notes immediately degenerated into unreadable gibberish.

Test 3: Attempted to write my own name, along with a few normal questions and statements.

Result: Success.

Test 4: Brought Chelsea in and showed her the card with my name on it. Gave her a sheet of paper and gestured at her to do the same.

Result: Success. The Choir apparently does not interfere with inane acts.

Test 5: Showed Chelsea a card that read “Nod your head if you can read this.”

Result: Success. 

Test 6: Showed Chelsea two cards that read "They are the Choir" and "Please repeat out loud the other card"

Result: Failure. She said "The Choir leads us." I really need to find a way to isolate vocal manipulations from auditory manipulations.

Test 7: I cut up several cards to form a sentence that read "The Choir changes what we say and what we hear." Observed response from Chelsea.

Result: Inconclusive. Not sure what I was thinking there, since whimpering could be a legitimate successful or failed response.

Test 8: I put my fingers to my lips.

Result: Successful. Chelsea calmed down significantly.

Test 9: I showed Chelsea a post on my blog, specifically one early on with possible Choir activity. 

Result: After a minute or so of reading, Chelsea showed surprise and mild shock. I must assume she discovered the long span of the Choir's activity.

Test 0: Failure. Failure. Failure. Their language leads us. Their hand conducts us. We sing only to their tune. There is no hope and no confidence.

First Test

Okay, so I finished my first test. Not really keen on spitting out details, but I can say with complete certainty that my blood is still red. That's a check for normalcy, and I guess it means I'm not a Camper or a Greyskin.

Currently preparing the other tests. This is actually a bit harder than I thought it would be...

Hello again

So I've been trying to keep to a normal sleep schedule. It's not at all perfect, but I'm not flying off the handle anymore, at least. It doesn't help that my affliction has decided that it no longer wants me to sleep. It was fine when I was trying to research 24/7, but apparently now sleep is no longer going to be easy...

So, yeah, long story short, this IS me, and not some alternate personality bullshit. The me that's been posting all this time was also me, kind of, but that's a REALLY long story, and not one I want up here yet. All you get to know is that the researching, prying, slightly insomniac person is really me, while the angry guy really isn't. For the sake of simplicity, let's just assume I've magically worked through my anger issues. It's not quite what happened, but fuck me if I'm putting all that shit up here when I'm trying to keep positive.

So yeah, Advisor. I know who he is, he used to be a good friend of mine back in college. Not the community college I thought I went to, but the university where that creek was. He and I were in similar fields, I was biology, I think. I just sort of took classes and had a major that fit them. Advisor was a biochemistry major, and we had some of the same classes throughout our undergrad studies. Anyway, I was having problems, Advisor pointed me in the direction of an experiment that he promised would help me. Truth be told, it did help the issue I wanted it to help, but it also wiped a lot more out of my memory than I wanted it to, and it had me under DECRESCENDO's followers' watch for what must have been a year and a half or so. And now I'm here, the amnesiac is worn off, or degraded, or something, and I'm having a pretty shitty time trying to consolidate everything.

I think Chelsea thinks I've gone off the deep end. Not really sure what to think about that. On the one hand, she was the girlfriend of a me that wasn't really me... Yeah, no, I'm not going to bother with this now. She can think what she wants for now, I need to figure out how to get rid of the Choir.

So that brings me to my real update. I think I'm going to start testing on myself. Research has hit a dead end, and Advisor's documents won't really help me here, so I'll take the initiative and mess around until I find something that works.
Or something that kills me. Can't really be too picky here.

YOU MOTHERFUCKER

YOU FUCKING SOLD ME OUT! YOU BASTARD!

What did you get out of it, huh? What did you get for SELLING YOUR BEST FUCKING FRIEND TO THOSE DEVILS?

Did they give you that “dream job” you were looking for? The one that you wanted so badly you’d commit a sin this grave just for a chance at it? Obviously not, since you talk a lot about your “former colleagues.”

What happened, suddenly all that left a bad fucking taste in your mouth? So you just QUIT? You knew then, like I know now, there is no quitting. Not when these fuckers are involved. You ran away? To where? You sold your soul and my mind for a shot at something and when you found that it wasn’t what you had expected, you just left?

Did they let you leave quietly, or did they chase you? I’ll bet it was neither. You were never one to leave behind loose ends, you’d have all of your research end perfectly, nothing left unsupported. When you broke up with a friend, you broke off completely. So, if you suddenly didn’t want to be associated with a group like that, what would you do? Would you just kill your bosses, or would you kill anyone who had ever laid eyes on you in that organization?

I wonder why you wanted to come here and see me. Am I a loose end too? I know your name, and even if you’ve destroyed all records of you, someone’s bound to find something useful to do with your name. Or perhaps I’m still a subject. You took the research they were doing, whatever it was, and I’ll bet I’m a plethora of information to add on to those notes.

No, I don’t think I care anymore why you wanted to see me. The important thing is that you didn’t. I’m still alive, and you’re nowhere near me at the moment. Still hung up on that job they gave you in March? Still bummed out that you could only “drop by the town and do a few chores”? Now there’s another question, why haven’t I seen those doctors around recently? They just seemed to vanish off of the face of the earth. I doubt you had anything to do with that, huh?

Come to think of it, what DO you do now? Hell, what DID you do? What was that “dream job” you were so hyped up about all those years ago? Something so good you would trick your best friend into that horrible experience just for your foot in the door?

You better have a good explanation for yourself, Advisor, or I’ll compromise you so badly you won’t know where to start burning.

A Request

That’s it. I’m done with reading. There’s only so much you can read over and over hoping it sticks. And those goddamn microsleeps slowly stealing bits and pieces away from me. I have no idea what’s wrong with me. My research indicates that the Choir is not to blame for all of my symptoms, but that’s only because there haven’t been any cases like me ever. Everybody else gets found by the Choir, goes paranoid, and dies, or becomes a Greyskin. So I don’t know what’s the deal with all my weird symptoms.

My memory problems are getting worse, too. Or maybe I’m just now noticing them. In any case, what I was apparently able to remember five months ago is now fuzzy at best, and missing at worst. In addition, I’m starting to recall things that I know cannot have happened. Not clear pictures or scenes, but rather little instances of something. Places and people I’ve had no prior interactions with are just randomly popping into my head. It always feels like something is just at the tip of my tongue, but I just cant grasp it.

Another passing observation I’ve gotten while trying to work out my memory issues is that the quality of my posts have changed. My early posts were fraught with rage, as I guess I was fighting some form of anger management issues. Although why I had issues is something I can, surprisingly, no longer remember. I said at one point that I assaulted my brother at a family reunion, and while that’s one of the few things I clearly remember, it does nothing to explain why I had those issues or why I attacked my brother out of the blue. But in any case, the anger seems to have lifted somehow recently. I don’t feel as constantly enraged by the world as I did. I really just feel kind of detached. The only thing keeping me going are these studies, something I’m sure I would have found boring two or three months ago. I don’t know, I just feel a compulsion to learn. As if knowing everything will help me get out of this bind.

And The Advisor claims to know something I don’t, something that I won’t be able to find just by searching the internet. So since all my other leads have gone dry, I must ask you once again, Advisor, to impart whatever knowledge you have. You seem to be interested in keeping me alive, and this is my only hope now…

Easter and More Studying

Okay. Update time. Still haven't really left the house. No surprises there.

Chelsea slipped sleeping pills into my food Saturday morning. That, I must admit, was a bit of a surprise.

Yeah, so I've been a bit lax on my sleeping pill regiment. In that I've been forgoing taking the pills so I can get more reading done. So Chelsea forced me to sleep for the majority of Saturday and a good bit of Sunday morning. Apparently last Sunday was Easter, so Chelsea drugged me so I would be able to enjoy the holiday with her. She got a lot of candy, some movies, and a nice dinner, and we had an okay time, I guess. I didn't really notice the trouble with this until the next morning, when I realized that my long nap had made me forget a sizable amount of information. I didn't think much of it at the time, no idea why, but now I realize all the time I had lost in getting fooled like this.

But now I'm back up to speed, and I've mentally compiled all the information I can on my little eldritch problem. So it seems that The Choir can manifest as either a set of grey shadows on the edge of your vision (or directly behind the person in question, sometimes slightly off to one side, as if they're facing your ear) or as a grey fungus. The fungus seems to be their physical state, and can grow on buildings, people, basically any surface it wants to, I guess. If it grows on a building, it does its little Choir-obfuscation thing to anyone who happens to be in the vicinity. If it grows on a person, it messes with the hearing of said person much like it would during a non-corporeal possession. But it seems that these victims, the Greyskins, are actually in some form of contact with the Choir. They hear different things than the normal victims, and are subject to slightly different symptoms, like vocal modifications.

The non-corporeal possessions all seem to take a similar route. Person catches the attention of the Choir, and the Choir drives the person mad through the alterations of both what they hear and what others say. Mostly it changes what is heard, but it is not unheard of for the Choir to actually change what is said, as opposed to what is merely heard. Anyway, the non-corporeal possession continues like this until the victim's mind is completely unhinged or they commit suicide.

There are no records of any Greyskins being able to rid themselves of their infection and become normal humans again, nor are there any records detailing how or if someone was able to survive a non-corporeal possession with their sanity intact.

But this doesn't completely make sense. My symptoms are similar to the non-corporeal possessions, I have glimpsed the grey shadows once or twice, and nearly everything I hear is changed, but there are no cases where the victims become unable to write certain things correctly, or get selective dyslexia, both of which I've picked up recently. Nor are there any mentions of the Choir affecting memory, and I seem to be having great trouble remembering certain facts and details, along with being unable to recall certain things. Like that creek. I remember it, in that I know where it is and what I called it, but I do not recall how I know that. I've been trying to piece together possible options, and I've discovered that I'm having great difficulties remembering a lot of things from the past decade or so. I remember high school. I remember having the phone job. I remember moving in with Chelsea. But I don't remember how I got that job, or where I lived before moving here. I looked back at the first posts I made, and I said that I graduated from the local community college in 2006, but I do not remember that happening. Specifically, I do not recall the graduation, or what the college looked like, or what classes I took, or anything about that time period in general. Which brings me to Mr. Advisor...

The Advisor said earlier that my writing looked familiar. Since then he's been following this blog and offering to come help me. I can only assume he's a friend from that block of memory I seem to be missing, which doesn't explain why he wouldn't just tell me his name so I can figure out who he is...

Anyway, I've rambled for far too long. This is what I've researched. I still have no idea what's going on. And Advisor is still a mystery to me. I don't have much more to read, so I'll think of something to do soon...

Studying

So I've been kind of really busy these last few days. Decided I wanted to know more about The Choir, and more about everything related to it. Reading and writing, reading and writing, that's all I've been doing for the past few days.
No time for sleep, of course.
Granted I can't read anything I write, so I end up having to reread a lot of things. And for some reason there are some things that just don't stick in my head. Little holes and gaps in the knowledge that I was sure I had filled earlier. I tried making a fact web to connect everything, but it just ended up becoming too disorganized. Then the lines reminded me of the CONDUCTRESS's strings, and I had to burn that paper.

Which was a shame, because that was the only coherent thing I could find in these stacks of paper. Pages and pages of scribbles and nonsense. I don't know why I keep trying anymore, it'll just end up an incoherent mess. All these notes gone to waste.

But that doesn't mean I haven't learned anything, oh no. I've learned that there is very little known about The Choir. Their symptoms and appearance are known, and it's recently been found that they sometimes manifest in a fungus, which can accumulate on a body. But nobody knows what the fungus does, how the Choir acts, why the Choir picks who they pick and how they know who will bend and who will break.
They haven't broken me yet.
I learned that there aren't very many documented sightings of DECRESCENDO, and that he and his followers generally act more subtly than other similar beings. The REQUIEM very rarely acts, or has to act, but his followers go out and actively bring death to others for their master. FERMATA, mainly attacks lone travelers or runners, but banding together doesn't seem to help very much against him. REFRAIN usually causes severe mental anguish, but can only kill when inhabiting a human host.

But I can only keep what I'm able to remember, and that space is limited and slippery. I wish I was able to keep my notes, I spent so much time working on them and they would make this so much easier. But I guess those nights were wasted on these stacks of gibberish.
Now I wonder whose fault THAT is...
But perhaps in a sense they weren't. I almost felt comfortable writing those, in a sort of cathartic, almost nostalgic way. Not sure why that is, but that's not important.
It was just like old times.
What is important is that I'm still here, and that Chelsea's still here, and that I'm not constantly sitting at the TV, trying to decode Choir-nonesnse anymore.
You remember the old times? Because I still do.
Back to the studies.
They didn't take everything from me.