He leaps out of his pod-chair
"Which means I gotta get out of here."
The door of his loft apartment crashes open. Surge dashes to a table with an assortment of guns. He's grabbed and forcibly thrown across the room and smashes into the wall. He slowly sits up trembling, tears streaming from his eyes.
"Nice to meet you, Surge the Purge. I'm Goli, the tek-lord," the giant says. "Reality hurts, doesn't it?" He grabs the boy again, swings him back, and then body slams him to the floor. "You got friends of mine jailed and tortured by the government. I'm going to stomp your ribs in and then I'm going to ask you a series of questions...once."
Another man appears behind him—NIS, smiling. "The list of top tek-lords in the world is getting smaller." His glasses sparkle with electric charges. "Surge, have you ever been electrocuted before. I have quite a long list of requests from my colleagues." A blue electric charge flies from his glasses and shocks the boy. "That's for the Christians." Another shock. "That's for the Jews." Another shock. "That's for the Catholics." Another shock. "That's for the Mormons." The boy tries to scramble away across the floor, but is shocked again with larger charges.
"Please! I will tell you anything you want. Let me live! Please!"
Goli grabs him by the waist of his pants. "NIS is so nice. This is how I talk to people I hate. He flings him across the room. Surge smashes into data towers, breaking them to pieces, and the power cuts off in a quarter of the room.
"Let me live! Please!" Surge pleads, his body convulsing from shock and his mouth bleeding.
Ad-Hoc Situation Room, Non-Public Off-Site Offices, Washington, DC
7:02 p.m., 19 October 2096
The director has his entire Homeland Cyber-Division leadership assembled.
"Aren't these VR worlds just sex? How can sex addicts cripple the nation's Grid?" the director asks.
"Yes, sir. Sex, drugs, but also criminal activities and Anarchist terrorist plotting. But there is also a significant population who just 'live' there."
"Live?" the director asks.
"Holo-communities of their choosing. In the past, the future, Mars, other planets."
"How many people are connected now?"
"About two hundred and fifty million, sir."
The director looks at him with astonishment, almost not knowing what to say. "A third of America's population is in there now? That can't be accurate."
"Not everyone is fully plugged in or fully engaged. They could be running it on a console or device in the background while they're doing something else."
"Why can't we cut the connection? I don't accept what I was told earlier."
"Think of it as hundreds of millions of individuals each signing on from hundreds of millions of different points, sir. The only way to sever the link is to shut off the entire nation Grid, which is impossible to do."
"How are they using this much power? It's a VR world. How could sex shows, playing vid-games, and running around in simulated holo-communities be using that much power?"
"Interface, sir. The VR doesn't use much at all, but people interfacing with their devices and systems do. Their holo-identities could be connected to all their vid and data lines so they can still make and receive calls and texts. They might interface with their house so it can make their food and feed them while they're in, they could be in while they're driving..."
"Okay, I understand. I need solutions people. The power drain must be stopped—now. I'm new so a promotion goes to the first person who gives me that solution."
The staffers look at each other.
"Sir, I'm sorry, but there's no other way to solve it."
"I'm supposed to tell the president, Congress, Homeland, and the Supreme Senate that the only solution to this cyber threat is to literally send the United States of America into darkness?"
"It wouldn't be a long period of time, sir."
"That's what you want me to tell them."
"Yes. It's either that or the power consumption will grow and the Grid's fail-safes will do it anyway."
He pounds the desk. "There has to be another way! Is this the best we can do?"
"Sir, we could send out teams to each of the Grid hubs and manually disconnect them, then re-connect them."
"Won't that shut the entire thing down too?"
"No, sir, it would be a managed and regional shutdown, not total. I believe every disconnected hub would simply reinitialize. While it did that, we'd have the A.I. go in, re-create and re-establish new firewalls instantaneously. Firewalls they won't have bypass or back-door codes for."
"It won't work," another deputy says.
The director ignores him and looks at the other deputy again. "How sure are you that this will work?"
"It's never been done before, but I am ninety percent sure it will work."
"Do it then."
Midwest Deserts, Oklahoma
8:41 p.m., 19 October 2096
The shadow-jet slows to a near stop fifteen feet in the air and a squad of black-clad men jump from the side cargo door. The jet is long gone when the men's feet touch the desert ground and their base-jump parachutes retract back into their backpacks. One of them kneels and types on his wrist console and a section of the open desert begins to descend.
8:45 p.m.
Ten of the men stand, pointing their tek-rifles out, in a circle. Three other men are at the console tower typing in commands to the moving keyboard on a dark screen.
"I'm in," one of the black-clad teks says to his other squad members.
Another touches his ear-set. "We're in...yes...we'll do the hard reset now." He nods to the tek.
The tek hits a button on the side of the machine.
There is an explosion.
Power in the nearest tek-cities shut down. People in the streets are panicking, but then the power returns.
Ad-Hoc Situation Room, Non-Public Off-Site Offices, Washington, DC
12:02 a.m., 20 October 2096
The director reviews the files on his tablet. "What happened?"
"Homeland confirmed it. Our bounty hunters were after two of the top ten cyber-terrorists on the Most Wanted Registry."
"What happened?"
"We don't know. They tracked them into Babylon...or they came across them in Babylon, we're not clear yet. There was a confrontation and then this incident happened—"
"I still don't understand how a VR world on the Net can threaten the nation's Grid when we control the Net and the Grid. Where are they? Have we really lost all three? Three of our best cyber-terrorist trackers?"
"One is confirmed dead. We're investigating if he accidentally walked into traffic or committed suicide or was possibly chased by other unknown assailants."
"Walked into traffic? You can't walk into oncoming traffic. The vehicles would stop automatically. Suicide. The other two?"
"They've disappeared."
"That's it?"
"We have every resource looking for them. If there is any kind of interaction with the system—death, arrest, accident—we'll know. Their true bios went into the system and we're notified of any flags. We never knew their real identities by design. He could have been pushed into traffic, sir."
"He killed himself. We have no leads whatsoever on the other two?"
"They must have been captured or they're hiding off-Grid."
"These were our best hunters?"
"The best, sir. Our own tek-lords, to use common speak."
"Does this cripple the cyber-terrorist bounty hunter program?"
"No, but...it means we'll probably never catch the uber-hackers or top tek-lords out there for the foreseeable future. Until we recruit others, and the good ones will take longer to catch."
"I just start the job and this is what I'm handed. I don't even get my honeymoon period."
"There's another matter. But we can discuss later."
"Discuss what later?"
"I'll bring it to you if we have more."
"You might as well give
me all the bad news all together. I wouldn't be surprised if I get sacked over all this. There always has to be a fall guy for something like this."
"I hope that doesn't happen, sir. This wasn't your fault. We should put the blame with Homeland. It was their op. It actually wasn't anyone's fault."
"We don't want to tell them that. They like to think there is nothing that they can't control. When will the report be on my desk?"
"The field investigations are in process. We can have it to you in forty-eight hours. But if you want to know what really happened, it will take longer."
"I want to know what happened. Do both. The first report for the bosses. The real one for me. Assuming I keep the job."
"Yes, sir."
The Ant-Hill, Unknown Location, America
8:30 p.m., 19 October 2096
Moses, Sek, Niccolo, Mr. Blond, and a very pregnant Shoshana wait. The elevator opens and Goli, NIS, and Zen exit. Goli glances at his wife, Shoshana—she used to be completely bald before marriage, but now the "warrior" leader of the Jew's elite security force, the Wolf-Pack, keeps her hair very short. A large Star of David dangles from her necklace, dressed in black fatigues and combat boots, and "14051948" tattooed on her left forearm—the date the state of Jewish Israel was formed. With the Fall of Jewish Israel, the Solidarity tattoo became a common practice among many younger Jews, signifying a kind of blood oath that Jewish Israel would be rebuilt again by any means necessary. He gives a slight smile as he returns his attention back to the others.
Goli puts the data stick in Moses' hand.
Homeland Cyber-Threat & Terrorism Situation Room, Washington, DC
9:02 a.m., 20 October 2096
The director leans forward in his chair and listens to the briefing of no less than the Senior Presidential Advisor—the man who first greeted him when he arrived in the District. Their deputies are also present, sitting quietly behind him. Normally it would be them briefing him, but everything about this Babylon incident is unusual.
"They were attacked in this Babylon VR world and attacked in the real world too," the Advisor continues.
"Has this ever happened in the history of the Cyber-Terrorist Division?" the director asks. "That operatives were compromised so completely. How were they found? I was told that we couldn't even locate them if we wanted to."
"We don't know how they were found. And we don't where the remaining two are. They were truly our best hunters, but they will be replaced."
"I've been given explicit instructions by the president and Homeland to locate and arrest every illegal hacker, tek-lord, cyber-pirate, cyber-terrorist there is. My job just got ten times harder. The ones they were after were Jew-Christians, correct?"
"Yes, that's what we've been able to determine."
"Are our problems still Jew-Christians?" the director asks.
"Jew-Christians? You're behind the times. No. They left the tek-cities two decades ago or more. They so rarely show up on the reports anymore that it's like they don't exist. No, our number one problem domestically is the Anarchists. The Jew-Christians are far away in the Trog-land territories and are as quiet as mice."
"Mice aren't quiet. What are they doing out there? I don't believe that they are just living."
"To date, we have no reports to the contrary."
"What was this Babylon incident about then? Was it really a random chance encounter? We also have an entire tactical squad in the hospital and I don't believe the explosion was some accident with the Grid station."
"Regardless, the team was not killed and the explosion accomplished the same objective—allowed us to begin the Grid reset," another man says.
"Where does that leave us then?" the director asks.
"That the new Babylon will be operational by the end of the week."
The director shakes his head. "How can a stupid VR world be so important? Every news feed is saturated with reports on it. You'd think the planet was about to be hit by a moon-sized asteroid with the panic among the public."
"There has been a dramatic spike in suicides," one of the deputies says.
The director shakes his head again. "I had the Surgeon General march into my new office at 6 a.m. today yelling at me that the restoration of this VR world was a matter of national security."
"It would have been operational within a day," the advisor continues, "but Homeland is making sure that this incident can never be repeated. No one will be able to alter the reality of the Babylon environment like they did here. They'll never be able to take over the programming commands for the entire VR world. Other VR worlds will be following our same protocols."
The director leans back in his chair. "What else? Why are you here, really?"
"We may have a problem."
"What problem?"
"We do agree with you. There is a high probability that this whole 'battle' in Babylon was a ruse."
"To do what?"
The advisor looks at one of his deputies, who stands. "They may have changed something."
"Changed something?" the director asks.
"Changed something in the Data Stream."
"We don't know what they changed," the Advisor says, "but we believe that it happened."
"But we avoided any real damage or compromise to critical systems?"
"Yes."
"Was there damage or compromise to auxiliary systems?"
"No."
"Then what do you base your suspicions on?"
"It happened before."
"What? The Net has been hacked before? When?"
"At least once before. Maybe one other time."
"When was the last time?"
"Twenty years ago."
"What happened then?"
"It was the day after Kansas Event."
The director is quiet for a moment.
"I'm sorry. I know you lost family there."
"What do you think they did? These Jew-Christians."
"They changed something."
"What? How do you know?"
"We don't know. It's a complicated process of monitoring data volumes, etcetera. Something is different...we think."
"You think? What?"
"There's literally no way to know," the advisor's deputy answers. "With trillions, quadrillions, quintillions of data flowing through the Net, there is no way to know, and we will never know. We only monitor the Grid, but that is only four percent of the total DataStream."
"What could they have done? And to go through all this."
"It would have taken years to set up for," the advisor says. "Absolutely mind-boggling all the steps they would have had to go through, much of it seemingly impossible."
"The first time you said it happened was after—"
"The Kansas Event."
"Coincidence?"
"We don't think so."
"Then you believe it was the Jew-Christians. Not some foreign power?"
"The Anarchists don't have the tek-skills and don't have the patience for such a long play. Foreign powers? Maybe, but they'd have other things on their mind than altering the general Net."
"Why would the Jew-Christians hack the Net and make changes then? They hate everything about the Grid and tek society."
The advisor shrugs his shoulders. "We don't know."
"Do you suspect something dangerous?"
"Maybe. But let's say they changed a history file. The Allies lost WW II and Nazi Germany won. Clearly that's too well-known, but let's say that. It would affect the culture and ripple out from there. And we would never know the truth because we weren't there and...no one keeps ancient analog files or physical paper files or physical books anymore."
"Except Jew-Christians." The director thinks for a moment. "So the belief is that they changed something that could change our very culture?"
"Our future," the advisor says.
One of the deputies adds, "Sirs, we reviewed every possible Net file we could think of, but we found nothing. It's not historical, political, or religi
ous. We simply don't know. We looked at all the obvious things such as the president's biographical data, etcetera—even though it's accessible, it's protected. We have firewalls on all core files. Then we checked all elected officials, past and present, their staff, world leaders, corporations, NGOs, organizations, every possible thing we could think of, but sirs, that's just it. We looked at everything we could think of, not what they'd think of. Our minds don't work like theirs. We could look for a million years and never figure out the data they targeted, and again, if they successfully changed it, we'd never know."
"And you can't back up the Net's Data Stream," another deputy says. "The sum total of all the data flowing back and forth through the Net—text, vids, audio, code. That would be a data bank the size of the planet."
"The Net is an ocean and you can't bottle the ocean."
"Exactly."
"So we'll never know what they did."
The advisor corrects him. "We will know, but unfortunately we'll never know that we know. It's like those time travel movies about changing something in time and it changes reality. When that reality is changed, you will never know there was another reality that existed before the change."
"Talk about a conspiracy," the director says, shaking his head.
Chapter Five: The Finger of God
The White House
9:26 a.m., 23 October 2096
"Chess Master is moving," the Secret Service agent says into his ear-set, standing at his hallway post.
Four-term President T. Wilson appears, followed by two agents to his office. His re-election to a fifth term next month is a certainty, surpassing the record of Franklin Delano Roosevelt set 151 years ago.
Zhongnanhai Presidential Palace, Beijing, China
9:45 a.m., 23 October 2096
President Ri Wen, the premier of China and the leader of the Chinese-Indian Alliance (CHIN). It was the previous reign of his father which created the union with India to form the Alliance and ushered in the decline of the Russian Bloc, and the cessation of Caliphate incursions into CHIN territories.
Pure Conspiracy (The After Eden Series): The Genesis of World War III Page 13
