the signal in the noise

caleb maddox is seventeen, restless, and convinced that real life is happening somewhere else. raised in a quiet suburban mars colony by a widowed mother who prays more than she sleeps, he's about to leave everything familiar for the chaos of the big city and a career pulling people out of the worst moments of their lives. the signal in the noise is his NeuraLog — a neural journal that captures thoughts and emotions with unsettling honesty. across twenty-three years of entries, caleb wrestles with faith he can't shake and desires he can't master, mentors who speak in riddles that take decades to decode, and the slow discovery that the life he was running toward might not be the life worth building. this is not a story about getting it right. it's a story about getting it wrong in every interesting way and finding out that someone was paying attention the whole time.