Signal Noise

Abstract

Signal Noise is a collection of linked short stories that examine how misinformation, disinformation, and institutional narrative control private lives and public memory across contemporary American settings. Spanning religious institutions, domestic spaces, local journalism, civic infrastructure, and the legal system, the collection traces the human costs of manipulated truth, especially for those with limited social or economic power.

The stories center on characters who confront coercive uses of language and authority: a nun pressured by church hierarchy, brothers raised under media-fueled ideological violence, newsroom workers navigating corporate editorial interference during a hurricane, a library employee resisting a bureaucratic “clarification” regime, and a federal prosecutor challenging a courtroom memory-reconstruction device marketed as objective evidence. Across these narratives, Signal Noise explores how facts are distorted not only through direct falsehoods but through omission, repetition, technological mediation, and institutional self-protection.