Inspirations Behind My New Novel, “The Good Club:” The Microchip Rumor
During COVID, I watched intelligent friends embrace very different explanations of the same events. I wasn’t interested in who was right. I was, however, becoming fascinated with rumors becoming different realities.
My favorite conspiracy rumor was microchips in the COVID vaccines.
When a COVID Microchip Rumor Sparked a Novel
When my sister, Libby, was getting her COVID vaccine, she asked the nurse, “This is the one with the chips, right?” and the nurse responded, “And I’m giving you the extra strong dose of chips!” Libby and I both laughed.
For me, an idea was starting to germinate.
The fun of writing this fictional story was: What If. What if it was possible? What if someone wanted us chipped? Why would someone want us chipped? In the book’s dedication, I relate the story of my wife and me walking along the Pacific Ocean, and I asked, “What if these rumors are true?”
Thus began the journey.
As I imagined the story, I received surprising assistance from Bill Gates. No, he did not collaborate, and I doubt he’s even read the book. But because he was pursuing “digital certificates” to document immunity and vaccination distribution in developing countries(opens in new tab), he caught the attention of a few people, particularly Roger Stone, Trump’s political advisor.
How Bill Gates and Roger Stone Fed the Microchip Story
In an interview, Stone, referring to Gates’ digital certificates(opens in new tab), said: “(Gates) and other globalists are definitely using it in a drive for mandatory vaccinations and microchipping people.”
Later, The New York Post fed the rumor mill(opens in new tab) by running the headline, “Roger Stone: Bill Gates may have created coronavirus to microchip people.”
Bingo! Two ideas for the book. First, microchips in the vaccines. Second, someone evil created the coronavirus.
Could I build a believable story around this conspiracy rumor? I started to imagine a world where evil people were injecting microchips for some nefarious reason. For me, to make the story impactful, it had to be believable.
This was not going to be a science fiction novel where I make up weapons that could only exist in a fantasy writer’s mind. The book had to pass the plausibility factor test.
No technology exists as I describe in my book. And to the best of my knowledge, no one was working on my imagined technology. I knew I had to create a technology that the reader would not automatically dismiss. What I did then was adapt (meaning I made it up) what I found in my research to fit my storyline.
(opens in new tab)Could the Microchip Technology Be Plausible?
I already knew RFID or NFC chips were being inserted in our pets. Not really the same thing and certainly not enough to validate my book’s premise. I got lucky; science gave me permission to imagine the novel. In the story, I imagined chips being delivered with a syringe.
I didn’t think that this was too far out there when I found this example from New Atlas(opens in new tab): “Scientists at Columbia University have demonstrated an extreme version…developing the smallest single-chip system ever created, which could be implanted with a hypodermic needle.”
I know, this is a long way from the “trillions” of chips I describe being delivered in the book. (What, you never heard of “artistic license?”)
Next, the chips must deliver a message to the brain, forcing it to release endorphins. Again, I took “artistic license” from a Sprint Medical article(opens in new tab) that stated: “Implantable microchips can be used as a transdermal drug delivery system in which we can alter the rate at which the drug gets delivered to the patient.”
Ok, not quite what I describe in the book…but damn, it sure helped me develop the concept.
Let me be clear: the technology I describe in the book does not exist…today. Tomorrow? It wouldn’t surprise me.
Remember, The Good Club(opens in new tab) is set forty years from today. I am confident that the premise stated in The Good Club(opens in new tab) is possible, and thus the story is plausible.
***
🌎 Dive into the gripping pages of the #1 Amazon bestselling 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙂𝙤𝙤𝙙 𝘾𝙡𝙪𝙗: 𝙁𝙞𝙫𝙚 𝙈𝙚𝙣. 𝙊𝙣𝙚 𝙒𝙤𝙧𝙡𝙙. 𝙏𝙤𝙩𝙖𝙡 𝘾𝙤𝙣𝙩𝙧𝙤𝙡(opens in new tab) today!
“Kuendig knows how to turn contemporary fear into propulsion, and even when the book overspeaks, it keeps asking the kind of lurid, anxious what-if questions that make pages disappear.”
~ Scott Olsen, Manhattan Book Review