CyberStorm final Mar 13 2013

by Matthew Mather

  My new administrative assistant had forgotten to deliver a dozen of the personalized gifts that we’d created for our clients.

  She’d omitted the ones in Manhattan because they weren’t on the long-distance mailing list. When we’d discovered the error, she’d been in a rush to get off to her family for the holidays, and with FedEx and UPS down, I’d stupidly offered to my partners that I’d deliver them myself.

  Of course, now it was the last minute. Yesterday Luke and I had delivered half of them, running all around Little Italy and Chinatown to some of our smaller start-up partners, but I still had a few left for our bigger clients. Luke had really enjoyed the outing. He was a social butterfly and would step right up and start jabbering to everyone we met.

  “Is delivering a couple of engraved pen holders really going to make or break your business?”

  “That’s not the point.”

  She took a deep breath, and her expression softened. “I forgot. I’m sorry. But this is really important to me.”

  Obviously more important than we are, I thought, but I held my tongue and tried to strike the thought from my head. Negative thoughts had a way of festering.

  Lauren looked toward the ceiling. “Can’t you get Susie—”

  “They’re out all day.”

  “Then what about the Borodins?”

  She wasn’t going to give in. A pause while I inspected the tiny plastic Christmas tree we’d stuck on a side table next to the couch. I rolled my eyes.

  “Fine. I’ll figure it out.” I shook my head but managed a smile. “Go on, get going.”

  “Thanks.” She began collecting her coat and purse. “And if you do go out, don’t forget to bundle up Luke. I’ll just go and calm him down before I leave.”

  I nodded and returned my attention to surfing through some websites on new social media outlets. The web was incredibly slow. It was taking forever for new pages to load.

  Lauren went into our room, and I heard her talking to Luke. She picked him up and began pacing back and forth with him, and quickly the crying stopped. Lauren appeared a moment later with her coat on, coming around to my side of the counter to give me a little hug and peck on the cheek. I shrugged her off. She swatted at me playfully and I smiled, and then she was off and out the door.

  As soon as she left, I went to check on Luke in his crib in the bedroom. He was still whimpering, but had calmed down and was cuddled up with his blanket. Returning to my laptop, I tried doing some more research work, but the slow web connection persisted. I couldn’t be bothered to check the router or if something else was wrong, so I gave up and decided to get on with my day.

  Opening the front entrance to our apartment, I walked next door to the Borodins. With our door left slightly open, I could still hear Luke.

  Our apartment was the last one at the end of a narrow carpeted hallway, lit along its length by recessed lighting. Susie and Chuck lived right next door, on the left coming out of our place, with the Borodins to our right.

  The next door down from Chuck’s was Pam and Rory’s place, directly across from another hallway that led off at right angles to the elevators. The emergency exit was right next to Rory’s, with the stairwell leading down six floors from there. Five more apartments lined the rest of the hallway, ending in the entrance to Richard’s three-story condo on the opposite side of the building from ours.

  Irena opened the door on my first quiet knock. They were always home, and she must have been standing just beside the door, cooking as usual. The smell of roasting potatoes and meats and yeasty bread wafted out as the door slid open.

  “Mi-kay-yal, pryvet,” greeted Irena, her warm smile creasing the deep wrinkles in her face.

  At nearly ninety years of age, she was stooped and shuffled when she walked, but always had a bright twinkle in her eye. As old as she was, I’d still think twice before messing with her—she’d been a part of the Red Army that had defeated the Nazis in the frozen wastelands of northern Russia. As she liked to tell me, “Troy fell, Rome fell, but Leningrad did not fall.”

  She was wearing a green-checked apron, slightly stained, and held a tea towel bunched up in one hand. With the other she motioned for me to enter.

  “Come, come.”

  I glanced at their doorframe and the mezuzah affixed there, a tiny but beautifully carved, ornate mahogany box. At one time I thought these were like Jewish “good luck” charms, but I’d come to understand this wasn’t their purpose. They were more about keeping evil away.

  Hanging back, I resisted entering.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t want to, but going in there always ended with a plate of sausages and recriminations that I was too thin. That being said, I loved her food, and I enjoyed even more the simple pleasure of being doted on. It made me feel like a kid, protected and indulged, and no self-respecting Russian grandmother would have it any other way.

  “Sorry, I’m in a bit of a hurry.”

  Whatever she was cooking smelled amazing, and I realized that dropping off Luke would give me the perfect opportunity to come back later and be spoiled.

  “I don’t mean to impose, but would you be able to watch Luke for a few hours?”

  She shrugged and nodded. “Of course, Mi-kay-yal, you know you don’t need to ask, da?”

  “Thanks. I need to go out and make some deliveries,” I replied without needing to explain. Glancing inside, I could see her husband, Aleksandr, asleep in his La-Z-Boy recliner in front of a Russian soap opera playing on the TV. Gorbachev was curled up asleep beside him.

  Mrs. Borodin nodded again. “You bring Luke?”

  I nodded back.

  “And you wrap yourself up. It is much below zero today.”

  I laughed. Two women had already told me to wrap up and I hadn’t even been outside yet. Maybe I am still a kid. “We use Fahrenheit here, Irena—it’s cold but not below zero yet. Still about ten degrees, I think.”

  “Ack, you know what I mean.” Flicking her chin to tell me to get going, she turned to get back to her cooking, leaving the door ajar.

  Going back to my apartment, I rummaged around in the closet, looking for winter coats and gloves and scarves. With space at such a premium, we’d rented a storage locker across town to hold all nonessential seasonal household stuff like skis and mitts and such.

  The weather had been so warm that I’d only just gone to get out one of my winter jackets, and I remembered that Lauren had dropped it off at the dry cleaner yesterday. Sighing, I pulled a thin, black jacket off a hanger, picked up my backpack with the gifts in it, and went into the bedroom to put a sweater on.

  Luke was wide awake, and he watched me enter. His cheeks were a bright, ruddy red.

  “Not feeling well, buddy?” I said, reaching down to pick him up. His forehead was definitely hot, and the little guy was sweating. He’d also wet his diaper, so I quickly changed him, switching him into some dungarees and thick socks with a cotton shirt, and then took him next door.

  Even if he wasn’t feeling well, Luke managed a toothy grin upon seeing Irena.

  “Ah, dorogaya!” she gushed, taking the still-sleepy Luke from my arms. “He not feeling well, nyet?”

  I brushed Luke’s head, feeling the sweat in his matted-down hair.

  “Yeah, I don’t think so.”

  She pulled Luke into her bosom. “No worry, I take care. You go.”

  “Thanks. I’ll be back about lunch.” I smiled and raised my eyebrows, and by the way she smiled back, I just knew there would be a feast awaiting my return.

  She laughed and closed the door.

  A child was such an amazing thing. I’d gone through life before we had Luke, wondering what it was all about, trying to sort out my hopes and dreams and fears. Then all of a sudden, there was a little version of me staring back at me, and everything had become clear. The meaning of my life was to protect and raise this new life, to love and teach him everything that I knew.

  “Forget something?”

  “Huh?”


  Pam was standing in the hallway, outside her door, staring at me. She was a nurse, and she was dressed in scrubs, on her way to work. We’d become quite good friends with her and her husband, Rory, but we hadn’t quite developed the kind of bond and easy relationship we had with Susie and Chuck.

  The thing was, Pam and Rory were strict vegans, and while I didn’t have a problem with it, somehow it created a gap. It made me feel guilty when I ate meat around them, or even just the fact that I ate meat seemed to make things a bit weird, no matter how many times they made it clear it didn’t bother them and it was a personal choice.

  I liked Pam a lot. She was a very attractive blonde, and hard not to like. Where Lauren was what you might call a classic beauty, Pam was of the more voluptuous sort.

  “No, I was just dropping Luke off.”

  “I saw that,” she laughed. “Deep thoughts, huh?”

  “Not really,” I replied, shaking my head and walking toward her. She worked for the Red Cross and was currently stationed at a blood bank just a few blocks away. “Still draining veins, even before Christmas?”

  “It’s the season to give, right? Are you finally going to come down?”

  The elevator pinged our floor, and the doors opened. I was trapped.

  “Ah, you know,” I hemmed and hawed, “I’ve got a lot to do.”

  “Everyone’s always got a lot to do, but the holidays are when we need the most.”

  I let her enter the elevator ahead of me. Now I felt doubly guilty. Before I could stop myself—

  “You know what? I’ll come down right now.” Hey, it’s Christmas, I thought. What the heck.

  “Really?” Her face lit up. “I’ll slide you right in.”

  My face flushed at the imagined innuendo. “That’d be great.”

  Silence while we waited for the elevator to drop to the ground floor.

  “You’re going to need more than that.”

  “Huh?”

  She was looking at my thin jacket.

  “It’s freezing out. Did you see the storm warnings? The coldest Christmas since 1930. So much for global warming,” she laughed.

  “They should have called it global warning,” I laughed back.

  She turned to me.

  “You’re an internet guy, right?”

  I shrugged yes.

  “Did you notice that it was almost impossible to get on the web this morning?”

  That got my attention.

  “I did. Are you on Roadrunner too?” It must be some type of carrier problem in the building.

  “No,” she replied. “On CNN they’re saying it’s a virus or something.”

  The elevator stopped at the ground floor and opened.

  “A virus?”

  11:55 a.m.

  GIVING BLOOD TOOK longer than I’d imagined. Pam moved me first in line, but it was a quarter past ten by the time I finally exited the Red Cross, donut in hand, to catch a cab into Midtown.

  I figured I would do a round of our four clients in the center of town, drop off the gifts—shaking hands if anyone was around—and then run back to do some grocery shopping. I’d swing by home, drop off the food and check on Luke while I grabbed a bite to eat with Irena, and then head down to the Financial District for the final two client gift drop-offs and maybe a holiday drink or two.

  Buoyed by the feel-good sensation of giving blood, or perhaps high from a lack of oxygen and red blood cells, my trip into Midtown took on a cinematic aura. I gawked out of the window of my cab, watching the holiday shoppers bustling by on the streets, caught up in the excitement of New York at Christmas. Everyone was bundled up in hats and scarves against the intense and sudden cold, shopping bags in hand.

  The first stop was next to Rockefeller Center, and after dropping the gift off, I spent at least ten minutes standing and looking at the tree outside. The energy and vitality was amazing, and I even offered to take pictures for a few tourists.

  My route then took me up past the Plaza Hotel, along Central Park, and looping back toward downtown. I was texting with Lauren about what we needed for food, but for the last half hour she’d stopped answering my texts.

  After I finished my rounds in Midtown, I hopped in a taxi and had it drop me back in Chelsea at Whole Foods. After cruising up and down the aisles for half an hour, filling my shopping cart and getting into the Christmas spirit, I finally arrived at the check-out line.

  It was huge.

  I waited ten minutes, checking my e-mail a few times, before asking a frustrated-looking woman in front of me, “What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know,” she replied over her shoulder. “Seems like they’re having some problems with the computers.”

  “Mind watching my stuff while I go and have a look?”

  I left my cart and wandered off toward the cash registers. The crowd of people intensified as I moved forward, ending in a knot of angry shoppers.

  “Why can’t you just take cash?” one of them said.

  “Sir, we can’t let you take anything out of the store unless it’s scanned,” replied a frightened-looking cashier, a young girl who was helplessly waving around a bar scanner.

  I slipped in behind the registers to address the cashier directly.

  “What’s happening?” I asked.

  Turning to me she said, “It’s still not working, sir.”

  She was flustered and must have thought I was a manager.

  “Explain to me again exactly what happened, from the start.”

  “The scanning devices just stopped working. We’ve been waiting for technical support for an hour, but nothing,” she replied. In a hushed voice she added, “My cousin on the Upper East Side texted me and said that their store was out as well.”

  The angry customer, a large Hispanic man, grabbed my arm. “I just want to get out of here, bro. Can’t you take cash?”

  I held up my hands. “Not my call to make.”

  He looked straight at me. I expected to see anger, but he looked scared.

  “Screw this. I’ve been waiting an hour.” He threw a few twenties onto the counter in front us. “Just keep the change, man.”

  Grabbing his bags of food, he began pushing his way through the crowd. People around him were watching, and a few of them began to wind forwards to leave money at the counter. Several more just started leaving out the door, taking whatever they were holding without paying.

  “What’s going on?” I muttered aloud. It wasn’t like New Yorkers to start stealing.

  “It’s the news, sir, the Chinese,” replied the cashier.

  “What news?”

  “That aircraft carrier thing,” was all she could add, but by that point I was already pushing my way toward the door, suddenly and irrationally fearful for Luke.

  2:45 p.m.

  “WHY DIDN’T YOU tell me before?”

  I was pacing back and forth in front of the huge flat-panel TV that dominated one wall of Chuck’s apartment.

  “I figured you’d just think it was me being paranoid,” replied Chuck. Blurry images of a smoking aircraft carrier filled the screen behind me.

  I’d returned to the Borodins’ in a rush and knocked loudly on their door. While walking the few blocks up from Whole Foods I’d searched the news on my smartphone. It’d taken forever to respond.

  There’d been an incident in the South China Sea. A Chinese warplane had crashed. The Chinese were claiming it was an attack by the Americans, but the American forces were denying anything to do with it, saying it was an accident. The governor of Shanxi Province, in northern China, was all over the news claiming it was an act of war.

  Luke was fine when I arrived, but his fever had gotten worse. He was sweating profusely, and Irena explained to me that he’d been crying most of time I’d been gone. I’d left him at the Borodins’, letting him rest, and gone over to Chuck’s.

  “You didn’t think that this was maybe something important to share?” I asked incredulously.

  “Not at the time
I didn’t.”

  CNN was on again in the background. “Sources in the Pentagon deny any responsibility for the crashed Chinese warplane, saying that it was the result of the inexperience of Chinese forces in operating at-sea carrier operations—”

  “You haven’t had any food deliveries to your restaurants in a week and you didn’t think I might be interested?”

  “—Poison Trojan has now infected DNS servers worldwide. The Chinese are denying responsibility, but the bigger issue now is the Scramble virus that has infected logistics systems—”

  “I didn’t think it was relevant,” replied Chuck. “We have computer problems all the time.”

  The virus that had shut down FedEx and UPS had shifted gears to infect almost every other commercial shipping software, grinding the world’s supply chain to a halt.

  “I’ve been reading the hacker message boards,” added Chuck helpfully. “They’re saying that UPS and FedEx are proprietary systems, and that the speed of the virus means it must have hundreds of unique ‘zero-days’ in it.”

  “What’s a ‘zero-day’?” asked Susie.

  She was sitting on the couch next to Chuck, holding tightly onto Ellarose, whose head bobbled up and down as she watched me pacing in circles like a caged tiger. Susie was a real Southern Belle, a brunette with long, silky hair, sun-kissed freckles, and a slim figure, but her pretty brown eyes were now filled with concern.

  “It’s a new virus, right?” Chuck ventured, looking toward me.

  I wasn’t a security expert, but I was an electrical engineer and computer networks were my field of expertise. Just the day before I’d been having a conversation with a colleague in the security field about this topic.

  “Sort of,” I explained. “A ‘zero-day’ is a software vulnerability that isn’t yet documented. A ‘zero-day’ attack is one that uses one of these previously unknown weaknesses in a system. It’s an attack that has had zero days to be analyzed yet.”

  Any system had weaknesses. The ones that were “known” usually had patches or fixes, and the list of new “known” vulnerabilities expanded at the rate of hundreds per week for the thousands of commercial software vendors in the world.