Chapters 1 - 4

• Kayla finds out she is unlikely to get a scholarship to an art school because her computer grades are too low.

• Kayla's parents have accepted the bar code. Every student is supposed to get a bar code tattoo when they turn seventeen.

• At school, Kayla tells Amber about not getting a scholarship because of a low grade in computer.

• Kayla skips the rest of school that day and goes to the mall to buy Amber's birthday present.

• When Kayla arrives home,there is a crowd of people around her house. Gene, a neighbor stops her and says there is something wrong with her father.

• The paramedics put her father in the ambulance, barely alive. Her mother tells her the bar code did it to him.

• Her father dies, and the authorities call it suicide.

• Kayla tries to remove the bloodstains from the bathtub and slips into a vision.

• Her mother tells her there is something evil about the bar code but does not tell her what it is.

• Kayla sees Gene outside.

• Gene is a tattoo artist who is being trained to do the bar codes. He says many people have tried to have the bar codes removed.

• Gene says the bar code tattoos are evil, and he intends to break into a secure network to find out why.

• Amber gives Kayla an application for the code but Kayla refuses it saying she is not going to get one.

• They see Mfumbe and a group of his friends, and Amber says they are opposed to the tattoos.

• Mfumbe asks Kayla and Amber to sign a petition in support of a measure to restrict what information can be attached to the codes.

• The group is called DeCode. The members argue that the code is an infringement of the right to privacy and other civil liberties.

• As Mfumbe and others hand out flyers, a group of football players begin to harass them. They say the group is unpatriotic.

• A fight breaks out, and the principal tells them to quit handing out flyers as it interrupts the flow of students.

• The article says that the President of the United States also owns a company called Global-1, which has basically gained control of the world's food supply.

• Global-1 has done this by producing super-strains of seeds that will not reproduce.

• The farmers are, therefore, dependent on Global-1 for seeds; and the company can decide to sell or withhold seeds.

• One article says that the bar codes could be the mark of the beast predicted in the Bible.

• The article urges support of the measure proposed by Senator David Young making the bar code tattoo optional.