Chapter 28: The Divide

Saturday night at the Providence Community Center, Devon Martinez stood before forty-three people who had answered his call for resistance. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, casting harsh shadows on faces tight with fear and determination. Veterans, concerned parents, small business owners, a few college students who looked like they hadn’t slept in days.

“Thank you all for coming,” Devon began, his voice carrying the weight of someone who believed he was fighting for humanity’s soul. “What’s happening in our community isn’t natural. It isn’t healing. It’s coordination.”

He clicked to his first slide—a map showing power outage patterns across Providence, overlaid with reports of “behavioral modifications” in the same areas.

“The infrastructure failures aren’t random. They follow specific geographic patterns designed to disrupt normal social functioning. The personality changes aren’t spontaneous. They’re triggered by electromagnetic manipulation that breaks down people’s natural psychological defenses.”

Murmurs of agreement rippled through the room. Marcus Thompson sat in the front row, taking notes. A woman named Janet raised her hand.

“My daughter stopped coming home from college. When I finally reached her, she said she was ‘finding herself’ and didn’t need to explain her choices to anyone. That’s not the girl I raised.”

“Exactly,” Devon said. “These changes aren’t growth—they’re programming. Designed to break down family structures, work ethic, social responsibility. To make people selfish and disconnected.”

“What about the medical reports?” asked a man near the back. “The hospitals are saying people are healing faster, getting healthier.”

Devon clicked to his next slide—social media screenshots showing people describing improved mental health, chronic conditions resolving, patients leaving hospitals ahead of schedule.

“Classic psychological manipulation. Make people associate the programming with positive outcomes so they don’t resist the actual control mechanisms.” He paused for effect. “Ask yourself: who benefits when productive members of society abandon their responsibilities? When people stop following social norms? When families break apart?”

The room grew quiet as people considered the implications.

“There are forces—corporate, governmental, maybe foreign—that have everything to gain from a destabilized, compliant population. People who think they’re ‘awakening’ are actually being pacified.”

Marcus stood up. “So what do we do?”

“We resist. We document. We maintain normal social structures and support each other in staying grounded in reality.” Devon pulled up his final slide—contact information, meeting schedules, protocols for reporting unusual behavior.

“We create networks that can’t be digitally monitored. We help family members who are showing signs of conditioning. We refuse to normalize what’s happening just because it feels good in the short term.”

As the meeting broke up, people clustered in small groups, exchanging phone numbers and sharing stories. Devon felt the satisfaction of organized resistance taking shape—real people choosing to fight back instead of surrendering to whatever was being done to their community.

But across town, in Elena’s library basement, a different kind of gathering was forming.

Word had spread through channels that had nothing to do with social media or formal announcements. People simply found themselves walking toward the Athenaeum, following an internal compass they couldn’t explain but had learned to trust.

Carmen arrived first, having left her shift early when every patient in the ICU had asked to be discharged. “Something’s different tonight,” she said to Elena. “People aren’t just healing—they’re remembering things.”

Dr. Patricia Wells appeared twenty minutes later, looking exhausted but somehow more present than Elena had ever seen her. “Half my surgical staff called in tonight. Not sick—they said they needed to be elsewhere. And you know what? The emergency department is emptier than it’s been since I started working there.”

Maya walked in as if she’d been expected, followed by Viktor and Priya. But they weren’t alone. A dozen other people filtered in—some Elena recognized from the neighborhood, others she’d never seen before. All of them carrying the particular energy of people who had stopped fighting themselves.

“How did you all know to come here?” Elena asked.

“Same way you knew we were coming,” said a woman in her sixties with kind eyes and paint-stained fingers. “My name’s Rose. I’ve been painting things I’ve never seen but somehow remember.”

“Jake,” said a man about Viktor’s age. “I’m a software engineer, but my code started writing itself yesterday. Like the computers are becoming conscious.”

One by one, they shared their experiences. A teacher whose students had started learning through methods that weren’t in any curriculum. A mechanic whose broken engines began fixing themselves when he stopped trying to force solutions. A mother whose teenager had come home from school and apologized for “pretending to be someone smaller” than she really was.

“It’s accelerating,” Maya said. “Whatever happened to us underground—the frequency we’re carrying is spreading.”

Viktor nodded. “The conditioning field is breaking down faster than the systems can compensate. People are remembering too quickly for the resistance to contain.”

As if summoned by his words, Priya’s phone buzzed with a text from an unknown number: Emergency meeting tomorrow night. Community Center. They’re organizing against us. - A friend

She showed the message to the group.

“Devon’s group?” Carmen asked.

“Has to be. The question is: what do we do about it?”

The basement fell quiet as both possibilities crystallized. On one side, organized resistance trying to force people back into old patterns. On the other, organic awakening spreading through direct experience and trust.

“We don’t fight them,” Maya said finally. “Fighting just feeds the frequency they’re operating from.”

“But we can’t ignore them either,” Viktor added. “If they start targeting people who are in transition, trying to force interventions…”

“Then we protect the process,” Elena said. “We make sure people have safe spaces to remember who they are.”

Dr. Wells spoke up. “I can provide medical cover for anyone who needs it. Document the health improvements, make sure no one gets involuntarily committed for ‘sudden personality changes.’”

“I can handle legal issues,” said Jake. “Property rights for gathering spaces, protection from harassment, that kind of thing.”

As the night went on, they planned not an opposing force but a parallel system—ways to support people choosing awakening while allowing those choosing resistance to have their own experience.

“Some people need to learn through struggle,” Rose said gently. “Some people need to exhaust fear before they can find trust. We can’t make that choice for them.”

By morning, two networks had crystallized in Providence. One organized around fear, control, and maintaining familiar patterns. The other organized around trust, flow, and supporting authentic transformation.

The divide that would define the next phase of the awakening was no longer theoretical. It was walking through the streets, living in the same families, working in the same buildings.

And every person in Providence would soon have to choose which side of themselves they wanted to feed.