by K J Kalis
“You bet I do. What are those families supposed to do? I mean, we are talking about shutting off the power to UC Berkeley. What are those kids going to do? Forty-eight hours with no power means spoiled food, issues with medical equipment...”
Ken didn’t give Roger a chance to finish. “I know. You are preaching to the choir. There’s one fact they didn’t share in the meeting that might change your mind.”
Roger sat down in one of the tan upholstered chairs in front of Ken’s desk, resting his hands on the wooden armrests. “What’s that?”
“You can’t tell anyone you know. The only reason I’m gonna loop you in is because I know you. If you don’t know why, you won’t shut it down the way they want you to.”
“Darn right.”
Ken nodded. “Here’s the situation. CPUC, you know, the utilities commission, they think that the last two major wildfires were caused by shorts in our equipment.”
The last two major wildfires to hit the triangle between Modesto, San Jose and San Francisco had killed sixty-seven people, burned three hundred thousand acres and destroyed thirteen thousand homes. More than three hundred people were left unaccounted for. No one knew if those people moved on or were burned up in the chaos. That didn’t even begin to account for the destruction of Palm Coast Power & Electric’s substations and the expense and danger to all the local and state law enforcement and fire agencies. Roger had heard that there were still five people in the burn unit at the local hospital with no end in sight to their treatment.
“Wait. You are saying that our equipment set off a spark and started those fires?”
“That’s what the utility commission said.”
“Where did they get that information? They’ve got to be wrong.” Roger leaned back in
the chair, furrowing his brow.
“They got it from a report put out by Cal Fire.”
Roger knew that after every wildfire was put out, the investigators at the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection did a full examination of how and why the fires started. Figuring out how fires started had helped them to determine new ways to predict them and to prevent them. Nothing was perfect, though. “So now Cal Fire is all up in our business. There’s no way.”
Ken tilted his head to the side, “I wouldn’t be so sure, Roger. I’d like to agree with you, but when you see the information, it’s pretty convincing.”
“I don’t believe it for a second.”
“Listen, some of the substations and transformers have been in use since the 1950s. They are a mess.”
“We maintain all of that.”
“Apparently not enough. Think about how many thousands of transformers there are, how many miles of wire. A single spark is enough to start a fire. That’s why we need to shut down the sectors. Make sense?”
Roger knew by Ken’s tone that it was time to go. Though Ken had read him in on what was going on behind the scenes and they were friends off-duty, they were still at work. “Gotcha. I’ll make it happen.”
“I knew you would. Close the door on your way out.”
* * *
Roger’s attention focused back on Candace. “Good. Let’s do the switchover. Shut down before start up so we don’t overwhelm the system. Staggered start, okay?”
“Yup. That’s already programmed. Ready to go on your instruction.”
“Do it.”
Roger focused on the monitors as Candace went through the steps of shutting down an entire sector of power to the area. Streets started to turn red on his monitor, letting him know that there was no power to the neighborhoods.
Roger saw Candace glance his way. “Shut down complete.”
“Confirmed,” Roger said. “Go ahead with power up.”
Within seconds, another grid section across the valley began to shine in green, letting Roger know that power had been restored. Roger leaned back in his chair. “Those people are happy.”
“I’ll bet. I wouldn’t like to be without power for two days. You’d lose all of your food.”
Roger nodded. “I’ve heard working in customer service is a real pain right now.”
“Honestly, I can’t imagine.”
5
Connor Lewis put on a hardhat and a work vest as he got out of his truck. He had parked in the back of the lot at Palm Coast Power & Energy’s San Jose facility. An hour before, he had seen a dusky sunset over the mountains, but now it was dark, an inky blackness that was only broken by the lights in the parking lot. For an energy company, there weren’t many lights around the building, just enough to keep people from running into pedestrians as they made their way in and out.
As he closed the door to his truck, he slung a bag over his shoulder. It had everything he needed for the trip to the facility: his laptop, several cables, a keypad decoder and his cell phone. Around his neck, he had a set of ID badges that he had made at home, using some technology he pieced together. Surprisingly, after a little research, he discovered that the measures the company used to check people in were quite barbaric. Nothing to scan, no retina or fingerprint technology. Maybe they had that at their main headquarters in San Francisco, but nothing of the sort was at the San Jose facility.
Connor had been staking out Palm Coast Power & Energy for months. He started by getting a temp job as a night janitor. He spent two weeks emptying trash cans and learning his way around, including where the main offices were, who the main players were — other than those he already knew about — and where certain features of the building were, everything from entrances and exits to power control and the server rooms. He took pictures and looked carefully at their technology and security. It was nothing. Surprising, given the ongoing threat that every politician talked about to the energy grid.
After two weeks, John Baker, the alias he had taken the job under, magically disappeared and was never to be found again. The same John Baker never returned his credentials either. The temp company stopped calling after two weeks of threats to withhold his pay. Connor, or John as he was known, didn’t care. They could come calling but would only find a PO Box fifteen miles away, rented by the same John Baker they couldn’t find in the first place.
After his last shift, Connor had taken the credentials home with him to the small apartment that he had rented six months prior. He had carefully delaminated them and changed the name to his own… Connor Lewis. By the time he went back to Palm Coast Electric & Power, he wouldn’t care if they knew who he was.
Tonight was the night. Connor had been monitoring the weather for weeks, knowing that at some time during the fall, the Santa Ana winds would start to blow. They came every year and usually started in October, lasting through March. Blowing north, northeast, the winds brought crisp, dry air to California and the Baja region, banishing whatever moisture was in the air from over the summer, which usually wasn’t much to start with. There had been no rain in weeks. It was time.
* * *
Connor walked right in the front door of the San Jose facility, dressed as one of the electrical engineers that came in and out of the building on a regular basis. Palm Coast Electric & Power employed rent-a-cops to watch the front doors. Most of the time, Connor, as John Baker, had caught them watching clips of recent football games as they relaxed behind the desk. Tonight was no different. Two uniformed guys sat behind a desk at the front entrance, barely looking at IDs. One of them was big enough that he looked like he used to play for the NFL. The other looked like he barely made it out of high school. He had shaggy brown hair, a scruffy beard and a uniform that barely fit. Connor showed them his badge as he checked in.
“Haven’t seen you here before,” the big guy commented.
“Usually work up in San Fran.”
“Welcome to San Jose. Have a good shift.”
Connor nodded and kept moving, “Thanks.” He shook his head as he walked away. Security was so lax it was barely existent. He would use that to his advantage.
Walking the halls seemed natural for Connor af
ter the time he’d spent in the building as John Baker. Janitors knew nearly everything about a building, even the security protocols, positions of video cameras and which rooms were secured. Though his job would be easiest if he went to the power control room, he knew from his time surveilling the building that it would be manned twenty-four seven. There would be no way for him to accomplish his plan if he had to go there. Connor walked down a long hall that was flanked by rooms with offices and departments in them, billing, new accounts, human resources, technical operations, accounts receivable. He passed all of them and went to the end of the hallway and made a left. On the right, as he passed, he saw the power control center. Through the window in the door, two people sat at the console staring at screens, a man and a woman. He knew what they were watching. Connor had made a personal visit in that room, emptying the trash several times. A long bank of monitors showed who had power and who didn’t. It gave data on power flows, power availability and how the substations were behaving, or if they weren’t. The system was fairly up-to-date technically, with checks and balances to make sure that power flowed evenly throughout the Palm Coast Electric & Power service region.
Connor kept moving past the power control room and headed through the door that was at the end of the hall to the stairwell. He went down a flight of stairs and through a fire door. There were two things in the basement: the maintenance division for the building and the server room.
Connor stopped at the server room door. It was metal and painted royal blue with a sign affixed to the outside, “Authorized Personnel Only.” Connor quickly entered the code on the keypad that he had memorized from John Baker’s few weeks in the building. A quiet beep and a green light let him know the door could be opened.
Inside, he didn’t remove his hardhat. He doubted that the security guys upstairs would even be concerned that anyone was in the server room. They were probably so focused on their phones that he could run through the building naked and no one would notice. Connor chuckled out loud at the thought. That would be a way to make a statement, that was for sure.
It was time to get to work. Inside the room, there were five long rows of servers reaching from the floor to nearly the ceiling, lights glimmering on and off depending on what data was being used or stored at the time. Connor walked to the second row and turned left. He had chosen the port that was on the second server tower from the back, not only for the access that it had, but for the fact that the security cameras couldn’t see him from there.
He found the access port he was looking for and folded down the workstation desk attached to the server. Within a minute, Connor had pulled his laptop out of his bag, connected it to the server and began typing. The upload would take four minutes. It was a lot of code. There was no way to make it go any faster. Connor had tried, but he couldn’t make it work. Though the security guys weren’t really a concern, he was slightly worried that the engineers in the control center would see something awry on their screens and walk down to check. It was a risk that he was willing to take.
The upload was just approaching three minutes and Connor heard the main door to the server room click open and close. The hair on the back of his neck stood up. He turned away so that whoever had come in would only see him from the back.
“Hey!” A slight man wearing glasses and a sweater vest surprised Connor when he came out from around the back of the server towers. “Do you know where tower A5 is? I’m new here. My boss told me to come down and check to see if the server is online, but I can’t find it.”
“Sure, no problem. It’s in the first row, closer to the door, about halfway down.”
“Great, man. Thanks!”
Just as quickly as the man had emerged, he left. Connor felt his pulse racing as he waited for the upload to finish. If he couldn’t get the upload onto the server, all the work he had put into his “project” as he called it, would be for nothing. Nothing at all. The next thirty seconds were the longest of his life. He watched the upload taskbar crawl across the screen, waiting. Connor glanced around the room. No one else had come in other than the lost new person who couldn’t find the right tower.
When Connor planned the upload, he assumed that he wouldn’t be nervous. He had been wrong. Getting into the building didn’t bother him at all, but waiting for the upload to finish, he found his hands shaking. This was so much bigger than him. So much bigger.
His laptop, still connected to the server, showed ten seconds left and then it stalled. Connor took a deep breath, pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket — it was one his daughter had given him — and wiped the back of his neck where sweat was rolling down underneath the hardhat. He felt like he was suspended in time. He knew he needed to be patient, but he was ten seconds away from being able to take the next step in his plan.
A minute went by and then another thirty seconds. Finally, just when Connor was about to restart the upload, it finished. “Upload complete,” read the screen. Connor closed the program, shut the lid of his laptop and unplugged it from the server tower. He stowed the equipment in his bag and used a cloth to wipe off the fingerprints that were left on the work desk and slid it back into place. It was time to go.
As he left the server room, a wave of calm washed over him. The same kind of calm that he felt when he and his wife had taken their daughter, Grace, to the ocean. The memory skimmed through his mind as he walked down the hallway toward the back of the building. It was part of his plan not to leave the same way he had come in. There wasn’t any sign out process at Palm Coast Electric & Power, one of the many security shortcomings that Connor, as John Baker, discovered during his stint as a janitor. During his time, he had taken full advantage of figuring out multiple ways of entering and leaving the building. Based on what he saw, there was no reason to alter his plan.
At the end of the hallway that divided the janitorial and server wings of the basement, Connor opened the last door. It was the trash room. Chutes from above dumped trash into carts below that were then put on a lift and wheeled outside. Connor passed the chutes and went up four steps that led to a door outside. Within a few seconds, he was back in the parking lot, making his way to his truck.
Inside the truck, he started the engine and pulled out his laptop, checking the upload. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a security vehicle a row over from where he was parked. His stomach clenched. There wouldn’t be time now. He would have to trust that the software uploaded the way he wanted it to. He didn’t have a backup plan. He closed the laptop and put the truck into gear. As he pulled out, the security guy gave him a wave. It was one of the same guys who had been at the front desk when he came in, the one with the floppy brown hair. Connor waved back and pulled away.
The drive back to his house was uneventful. As he pulled in the driveway to the small home he used to share with his wife and daughter, he pulled straight in the garage closed the door before he ever got out. No need to give the neighbors anything to look at.
When Connor and his wife, Janet, had found the house, she hadn’t been sure about it. An older ranch, build in the mid-1960s, it needed a lot of work. Over the years they had lived there, Connor and Janet had systematically redone the house.
As Connor went into the kitchen from the garage, he swore that he could smell dinner cooking. He knew it was just a memory. Janet hadn’t been there to cook dinner in two years. Neither had Grace. They were both gone.
Though it was late, Connor wasn’t hungry. He had other things to think about. He took his laptop bag with him into the little office off of the kitchen. Janet was never a fan of the small, dark space. He loved it. He still worked in there and there alone. “When you come out,” he could almost hear her say, “you are part of our family. Go play your tech games in the office.”
Connor settled into his chair and opened his laptop. He brought up a DOS screen and typed in a few commands and attempted to connect his computer to the power management system that Palm Coast Electric & Power used. A wave of anxiety shook him. If the c
onnection worked, he was in business. If he didn’t, he’d have to start all over again.
The trip to the site had been necessary. It was the only way to create the connection he needed to add software to their system to create a backdoor that he could use to get access. He waited for a moment, wondering if the Palm Coast servers would respond and let him connect. He could hear the ticking of the clock on the wall that was above his desk. He could feel his heart beating.
A quiet beep and a new line of code told him he was connected. Connor sat for a moment, frozen. All the planning he had done was coming into focus now. He stood up and paced, knowing the steps he took would be the ones that would get him what he wanted if he still wanted it. Did he? Did he still want to make the people at Palm Coast pay? Did he want Bart Walsh to feel the same way that he did?
“It’s time,” he whispered. Connor sat back down and typed a few lines of code into the box in front of him. He stared at the screen, a new feeling rising in his chest. Was it happiness? No, that had been taken from him. It wasn’t likely he’d ever get that back. Was it peace? He looked away from his computer for a moment, wondering. As he turned back to his computer, he realized it wasn’t either of those. He was resigned.
Connor leaned back in his chair, the chair protesting with a squeak. He looked upward, out the window at the back of his office. It was dark. There was no moon, at least not one that he could see at the moment. A tree outside his window swayed in the wind, the branches making a light scraping sound against the house. A good sign. The Santa Ana winds were still pushing through the area, their current relentless when they picked up. He had chosen the timing well.
6
One of the best things about working with Candace is she didn’t feel the need to talk all the time, Roger thought. Some guys he worked with did, and it was annoying. He leaned back in his chair and stretched. These long shifts were brutal. The only upside was that he got a lot of overtime pay and an extra day off each week.
