Von Neumann’s War

by John Ringo

  Bandwidth was his big problem. He knew the long drops would only supply low bandwidth connections. He hoped to mitigate that with a couple of different approaches. The first was to multiplex the eight different connections, thus effectively increasing his bandwidth by sending IP packets out sequentially on dynamic IP addresses. This would help some.

  The other way he planned to increase his bandwidth was by placing a big amplifier at each end of the connections. Under normal circumstances the companies would have eventually found the hacks, but nothing about nowadays was normal. Richard was planning on the companies basically dropping out of customer service and such matters altogether. So looking for hacks would be low on their lists of things to do. And if they did find them all, which he doubted, he would fall back on bursting transmissions through the amateur radio repeater networks. But there was still something nagging him about that.

  Thinking about the repeater networks made him subconsciously look at the rope light to make sure the coaxial cable from the radio transceiver antenna was still running along beside it. It was. As a last ditch effort he could use the amateur radio network to com-municate and connect to the world. But he was not even going to turn that system on if he didn’t have to. Radio… he still wasn’t sure, but there was something about radio that made him nervous. Radio and telecom seemed to be the first thing to go at Mars, the Moon, around the planet. Was there something about radio? Most all telecommunications that were left on the globe now were over the Internet. There were occasional burst transmissions of radio sent from Australia, South America, parts of Africa, and still here in the United States, but they were limited. As soon as he got set up, he was going to do a full analysis on the RF spectrum and see if he could figure that out.

  He continued to talk himself through his things to do and after about eight minutes of walking he finally made it to the entranceway to the shelter. He shined his light up and down the walls of the mine shaft at the doorway he had built. He was quite pleased with his handiwork. He was somewhat displeased with the empty red wagon parked beside the doorway. Richard punched in the code on the cipher lock and pushed the door open. He tapped the battery-operated light by the door and illuminated the front room of his shelter.

  The front room was nothing more than a section of the mine shaft about fifty feet long. There were three other shafts on the right side of the main section and one on the left. Between the shaft entrances on the right were plastic garage storage shelves with every inch of space filled judiciously with plastic storage bins, cardboard boxes with various item titles handwritten on the side in marker, and various other hardware and supplies.

  On the left side of the main tunnel were more shelves and some folding tables. On the folding tables were a coffee maker, a microwave, a hotplate, a blender, and a toaster oven. There were folding chairs placed in front of the tables. Near the entrance to the left-side shaft was also a large plastic shop sink. There was a plastic gallon container with a pump dispenser top marked “antibacterial soap” sitting on a shelf beside the sink. Two one-inch pieces of PVC pipe ran up the mine wall behind the sink and turned down the left-side wall of the entranceway to the shaft on that side of the main room. Alongside where those pipes entered the shaft were several other one-inch PVC pipes that came out of the entranceway and ran across the top of the shaft and over to the other side entrances. A green garden hose ran out of the bottom of the sink, then along the bottom side of the shaft and out the left side. There were several other garden hoses meeting at that left-side entranceway.

  On the other side of the shaft entrance — the one on the left side of the main chamber — were several bundles of Cat-5 cable and several very thick high amperage electrical power cables running along the corner of the wall. Richard tapped another couple of battery powered lights and followed the left shaft.

  About twenty feet down the shaft the sound of running water became overwhelming. Richard continued to tap lights on the wall of the shaft. He had placed them much more densely in this tunnel. Under most of the lights were more folding tables with various pieces of equipment stowed in boxes. There were also a few large plastic bins stacked on top of each other. On the left side of the shaft, about half the way down it, a PVC pipe ran into a sixty-gallon water heater. The inflow pipe to the water heater continued down the hall with the rest of the pipes.

  There was also a five-shelf plastic garage storage rack on the right side of the shaft with router and switching hardware. They were not powered presently. Eight coaxial cables came in to the hardware from further down the shaft. Several Cat-5 cables were connected to a bank of hubs. The Ethernet cables then ran back out toward the way he had come in.

  Finally, he reached the end of the shaft at an old rusty metal pier and ladder. The PVC pipes all connected into a string of tees that were converted to two-inch PVC that was then converted again three different times until it was finally an eight inch pipe that ran upward alongside the ladder. The large pipe was zip-tied to the ladder. The bundle of coaxial cables wound around the pipe and upward.

  He stepped out on the pier and shined his light across the large underground chamber. The chamber had to be at least thirty feet across in any direction and at the bottom, which was another twenty feet below him, was a small freshwater pond that was several feet deep in the middle. He knew because he had surveyed it several times with snorkeling gear. In the light there was a flash of silver as the small trout he’d stocked reacted to his presence. People meant food to the little trout. When they were larger, the reverse would be true.

  The rushing water was very loud in the pond chamber because a small underground stream flowed from thirty or more feet above over a falls into the pond on the left side. The stream flowed from left to right and went out somewhere under the rocks on the far end of the pond. There was very cold spray that misted the area near the ladder and pier. The cool mist and the rushing water sound were quite tranquil and sometimes Richard would just sit in the folding chair on the pier for hours and relax. But today, he had a lot of work to do.

  He climbed the ladder to the metal pier above him where his waterwheel and generator assembly sat. The main eight-inch PVC water line and the coaxial cable bundle ran up to the edge of the falls to the bottom of a large galvanized metal hundred-gallon animal trough. The Internet cables split off and disappeared into the water. The trough was positioned in such a way that part of the falls fell into it and it was full and overflowing. This is how he ran water through the mine.

  The waterwheel was positioned in the middle of the falls and the axle, slip-ring connectors, and control circuitry wires ran out along the periphery of the axle to the power conversion unit sitting on the pier. Richard tapped the lights on that pier level and set about running the Ethernet wires. In the dim lighting it was tedious work.

  After a few hours Richard had the waterwheel spinning free and the clutch being controlled by a laptop in the main chamber. He activated the system and a rechargeable battery powered gearbox slipped the main drive of the waterwheel into gear. Richard watched the UPS units against the wall of the main chamber eagerly. After a few seconds the little green lights on the front of the boxes kicked on and then the chamber lit up.

  The fluorescent lights hanging from the ceiling of the chamber hummed to life and Richard could hear the refrigerator compressor kick on. The microwave beeped and a video tape ejected itself from the VCR that was set up in the end of the main room where Helena had established a “living room.” There was an inflatable couch and chairs set, a small folding coffee table, and a small entertainment stand. The entertainment stand housed a stereo, a VCR, a DVD player, a Playstation2 and a nineteen-inch color television. All of which came on and were blinking 12:00 AM on their respective displays.

  A few more hours of connecting systems and checking Internet and file-sharing protocols and he was too tired to think straight. Then he looked at his watch and realized it was pushing eleven PM.

  “Oh God,” he said looking at h
is watch. “I better hurry or I’ll miss it.”

  * * *

  “Hurry up, Charlotte or you’re going to miss it!” Tina said loudly in Charlotte’s ear as she looked over her shoulder at the computer monitor.

  “Dingbat, the show lasts four hours. We’re not gonna miss it.” Charlotte giggled and shook her head. “There we go.” The speakers chimed on and the RealPlayer software finished setting itself up.

  “I know that, geek-brain. But I like how it comes on. I hate missing that part.” Tina punched her friend on the shoulder.

  “Okay then, shhhh. Here it is.”

  * * *

  Ret Ball: Welcome friends across the country and those across the world who can still hear us through the wonders of the World Wide Web. I know that we have lost contact with most of Europe and our prayers go out for those folks and for the rest of humanity. Although there are phone lines still working in this country, they’re mostly overwhelmed with emergency services. If you can manage to call in, we will take your calls. Also, now we’re set up for the real-time online audio chatting as well as using instant messaging. So we’re still on live with you and can still hear from you. God bless us all and let’s get to the Truth Nationwide! Caller one is talking to us online from New York City. Go ahead, Mike, you are on the Truth Nationwide…

  Chapter 17

  “Mr. President, this is Dr. Carolyn Mayer from the National Security Agency’s ELINT branch. She has compiled some information that we thought you would want to see,” Vicki Johnson said as she introduced the forty-three year old blonde analyst to the President and the secretary of defense.

  The two men had been in the War Room looking over possible defensive and offensive strategies in the event the probes made it to the U.S. That would happen soon enough as far as anybody could tell, but with no recon on the situation in Europe nobody had a clue how bad the situation was. There were no orbital platforms and it appeared that the aliens were enforcing a no-fly zone over most of the Atlantic and eastern Eurasia. The Americas still had air travel below thirty thousand feet — nobody had tried to go higher. Naval boundaries seemed to be about the same. Anything traveling eastward past about the forty-five degree latitude line was never heard from again.

  The President looked up at the NSA and the pleasingly plump lady she had brought with her. He always found the diversity of individuals who came together in times of crisis to be intriguing. This young lady could have been a model for an oversized-women’s clothing store, not a black-program analyst.

  “Nice to meet you Dr. Mayer. This is Secretary Stensby.” He motioned to the secretary of defense. “What is this all about, Vicki?”

  “Dr. Mayer,” the NSA motioned for the analyst to begin.

  “Uh, right. Here, Mr. President,” Carolyn said. She pulled out her laptop and toggled to a map of Europe. “Here is where the probes have gotten to.”

  The map of Europe was a standard map package with an overlay of red growing on it. The red blotch covered all of Western Europe and even had spread to Iceland. On the eastern side of the region the red covered parts of Russia all the way from Rostov in the south to St. Petersburg in the north. Stockholm and Helsinki were red also. Due south, all of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and parts of Saudi Arabia were red.

  “How do you know this, Dr. Mayer? We’ve been trying to get recon for weeks with no luck. About all we can discern is the no-fly zone.” The SecDef shrugged his shoulders in disbelief.

  “Right. Well, you see, before all of this it was my job to track Al Qaeda operatives using electronic intercepts. Most of that has been using Ferret satellites, but I specialized in Internet communications. I spent the better part of the last four years finding and geolocating every Internet hub and router and every webcam in existence around the world. Oh, I only made a drop in the bucket, but I made a pretty good map of the world and had several known routers and webcams per region.” Dr. Mayer paused for a second and toggled some keys on her laptop.

  “I see, so how does this help us now?” The President looked over at the painting on the wall behind his desk in the War Room. He missed the Oval Office. He missed being above ground and he hated all this hiding and waiting.

  “Ah yes, it’s actually kind of simple, Mr. President. This map of red is a map of lost Internet routers, hubs, power grid stations, phone hubs, webcams, etc., all compiled into one graphic. I’ve even got several images from many of the webcams before they failed. Here.” Carolyn turned the laptop back around for them to see.

  “What is that?” the SecDef asked.

  The President nodded.

  “It looks like a battleship aground.”

  “Well, actually it’s one of the aircraft carriers that we’ve been missing from the Mediterranean. And if you look here in the background you’ll notice the Coliseum.” She paused to let that sink in.

  “Rome! These things have picked up an aircraft carrier and set it in Rome!” SecDef Stensby was stunned. “What on Earth for?”

  “I don’t know, sir. I’m a data collector and analyst not an exoroboticist. But this is just one image. Look at this one.” Carolyn tapped the touchpad button.

  “Hundred of ships, airliners, trucks, and cars and God knows what. It looks like a junkyard,” the NSA said. “And from this image the landscape can’t be identified. I’ve tried.”

  “Then where is it, Dr. Mayer?”

  “It’s Cairo, sir. This is a webcam that used to have the Pyramids in view. They’re still there probably, just under a mountain of junk,” Dr. Mayer said.

  “Jesus Christ!” the SecDef and the President chorused.

  “Vicki, has the Neighborhood Watch seen this?”

  “Not yet, Mr. President.”

  “Get her down there. And I want a real-time feed of this map right here in this room. Hell, I want it in a similar room in every redoubt across the world.”

  “Right.”

  * * *

  “They’ve spread too far to nuke now, Mr. President.” Jim Stensby sat back in his chair looking at a printout of the map. Technicians were hard at work putting together a real-time version of the analysis for a display console.

  “You and I know that, Jim. And besides, we don’t know if the people are still alive there or not. Nuking was never, is never an option until we know where all the people are.” President Colby shook his head at the map. “What the hell do we do now? What about the plan developed by the Joint Chiefs to have a firewall of nukes set up on each side of the country?”

  “The contingency is set in place, sir. If the probes cross the sixty-degree lat line moving west we’ll fill the sky with nuclear airburst. If they cross the one-hundred-fifty degree line moving east we’ll do the same.”

  “Do you think that will work?”

  “Perhaps the first time, Mr. President. It might be a good tactic to buy us time. Without destroying the majority of them around the globe though, I’m not sure what good it would do. And like you said, what about all the people there? Like in France, are they still there? Are they still alive? Have all of the survivors resorted to cannibalism like the recon team discovered?”

  “Right. Those poor people…” the President muttered.

  “Well, let’s pray the eggheads come up with something before the Chinese or the Russians or the Indians or whoever decide they’re threatened enough to start setting off nukes willy-nilly,” SecDef Stensby said.

  “I’ve relayed my concerns to the UN Security Council on several occasions but I’m not certain they listened. I’ll resend a message across what is left of the world hot lines again with my concerns here.” The President felt somber and was not sure of the chances that even if the message went through to the remaining world leaders that it would get through to them. “I just wish we knew more about what is going on around the world.”

  * * *

  “Okay, Ronny, this should give us a better idea of what is going on around the world.” Roger Reynolds, wearing a clean suit and late
x gloves, sat what appeared to be a miniature model of a satellite about the size of a coffee can with small solar panels wrapped around it on the clean room table — the culmination of about seven weeks of work.

  “How so, Roger? This looks like it would be any other satellite when it’s built. Why won’t the probes eat it, too?” Ronny adjusted the paper bonnet on his forehead so it would be more comfortable.

  “This is so cool,” Alan said as he rolled the device over and examined it closer.

  “Uh, Ronny, you don’t understand. This is the actual satellite. It’s a picosat. We’ve minimized the metal content and made it mostly of composite and semiconductor materials. What metal it has is in the computer portions and only microns thick. Dr. Pike figured out a way to build a motherboard and bus with minimal amounts of metal. We used fiber optics to relay signals where possible. We’ve also shielded all radio emanations from the CPU so that it’s damned near undetectable from a meter or two away. There are no radio transmitters on it. It’s all optical. And our hope is that there isn’t enough metal in it to interest the probes.” Roger smiled at the little spacecraft.

  “How did you shield it without metal for a Faraday cage?”

  “Oh, that’s the neatest part,” Alan interrupted. “We used RAM.”

  “Yeah, Ronny. We thought on that one a while and came up with making a cage out of radar absorbing material since we couldn’t use metals. It works pretty well, actually; we’re starting to use it in some places where we want shielding but don’t want to put in Faradays.” Roger pointed out some of the RAM materials inside a panel on the little spacecraft. Ronny’s eyebrows went up as he nodded. “We even used inefficient highly resistive carbon wiring on the major wiring harness from the panels to the power supply to reduce the need for metal there.”