by Jason Keizer
“I will make a press conference in two hours. Make sure your people are prepared for anything. We will keep each other informed of any issues and of all decisions when they are found and made. If there are any concerns or if anyone gathers more information, I am to know immediately.”
Five voices come from the phone saying their agreements with what Inara has said. “Good luck everyone and goodbye.” She hangs up the phone.
“My appointment went well,” Mercy says.
“Good. We should have the report from communications soon.” Mercy nods her head in agreement. Ding. Inara looks at her computer.
“Well, speak of the devil. The report from the sat tests is in.” She clicks on the email as Mercy's cell phone starts to ring. It is Bob from communications. She looks at Inara as she answers it.
“Hello, Mercy… This is, Bob, from communications. I was just wondering if you would like to have a drink later, you know, over at Flynn's?” Bob asks.
Mercy opens her eyes wide at Inara as she says, “Ummm, sure. How about we meet up at Flynn's around eight-ish.”
“Ok good. I guess I will see you then. Bye,” Click.
Inara reads the email and looks over at Mercy. “Looks like the sat feeds are normal. Some minor interference here and there. They think that is the cause of the issues. The report cites it as magnetic interference from eruptions on the sun.”
“Wanna get drinks at Flynn's later on?” Mercy asks.
Inara leans back in her chair, “Yeah, a drink is just what I will need after today.”
Mercy stands from her chair and says, “I will call the reporters and let them know to prepare for an emergency conference. You said two hours, so five?”
Inara nods her head in agreement. As Mercy walks out of the room, she says, “I will set it up then.” Mercy sits at her desk outside the office and places a couple of calls to reporters.
Once she finishes up with the calls to the reporters, she opens the door to Inara's office and just puts her head in. “I have to run out and get a few things before the conference. You want anything while I am out?”
Inara looks up from the computer she is typing on and says, “Yeah, I am having an issue with contacting the Director of Bangar. If you can get ahold of him before me can you inform him and get his feedback on today's events, please.”
Mercy replies with a quick, “Sure thing,” as she closes the door.
She goes into the garage and gets in her car. She drives a few miles south, out of the walls, and onto the freeway. Once she breaks out from the walls, the sides of the road fill with large white tents with a few solar panels to the side. They are the newer farms. Completely self-sustainable, aquaponics farms that provide fish and can yield much more in a year than planting in the ground.
Around them, small herds of cows and goats graze on fresh grass to her right. After she passes the aquaponics farms, she drives past another, this one has crops planted in the dirt and is surrounded by fence and razor wire. Men and women are tending to the fields, all dressed in prisoner uniforms, as a few guards watch over them.
Mercy gets off of the freeway and stops at an old tourist shop. When she walks in, the place is almost empty of people. The cashier is sitting behind his counter, and a small family of four is looking around at some snacks on a shelf. When the clerk sees Mercy, he stands up and says, “Good afternoon. Is there anything I can help you with?”
She makes her way towards him. Instead of stopping at the counter, she passes it, and walks over to the back of the store and replies, “No thanks, just came to get something from a locker in the back.”
The young pimpled faced cashier quickly says, “You can't go back there. That's for employees only.”
She turns around and walks backward as she holds up a key. “No worries, I have a key. Just call your boss and tell him that Mercy stopped by for locker four. He will understand.” The cashier leaves the back of the counter and follows Mercy.
Just as Mercy gets in front of the locker, the cashier catches up with her. He says, “Hey, I told you that you can't be back...” Mercy grabs him by his shirt, turns, and pushes him against the lockers.
She presses her forearm into his neck and puts her other hand over his mouth. “You must be new since you don't seem to understand how things work around here. I am in a bit of a rush here. I told you to call your boss. If you listened to me and did that, we wouldn't have this problem. Now, one word from you and I will push your adams apple out the back of your neck,” Says Mercy.
She removes her hand from over his mouth and pulls out a cell phone. She dials a number and puts it on speakerphone. Someone on the other end answers, “Mercy, what's up? Is everything ok?”
“I have to get something from locker four but your new employee has an issue with it.”
On the other end, the man replies, “Dan, let this woman do as she wants. Get back to work and forget you ever saw her. Understand?”
Mercy lets go of Dan. He coughs a little and shakenly responds, “Yeah. Sure thing boss. Never happened,” before he runs out of the back room.
Mercy waits until Dan is out of the back room before she says, “Thanks, Dad.”
“Locker four though? I almost found a buyer for that. It better be for something important. But anyways, I'm on the road. I'll be in town tomorrow maybe. If so, I will stop by and say hi. Love you, sweetheart. Bye”
Click
Mercy opens up the locker and pulls out a large purse. She tosses it on her shoulder, closes the locker, and leaves the room. As she walks out of the store, she looks over to Dan and says, “Thanks Dan. I hope it was as fun for you as it was for me.”
Dan turns his head and tries to ignore her as she walks out the door. Mercy gets in her car and heads back to the city.
On her way back, the rain slowly starts to fall on her car. She pulls out her phone and tries to call the Director of Bangar. The line is busy. As she gets closer to the city, the rain picks up. She pulls into the tower garage and heads back up to the office. As she walks to her desk, she sees Inara sitting behind it.
“I finally got ahold of Bangar. Everything is set for the conference. Just like the others, they don't have any information on other satellite issues,” says Inara.
Mercy sets her purse down and responds, “I guess that explains why the line was busy when I called. We should be getting you ready for the press. It's raining pretty hard so we will move the conference inside.”
Inara stands up from the desk and grabs the purse. She hands it to Mercy and says, “No. I need to get ready. I will take care of everything. You need to go home and relax a little bit. We have busy times ahead and one of us needs to be at full strength.” She gazes down at the purse. “Also, I like the purse. It's a bit big, but it looks nice on you.”
Mercy gives Inara a worried smile and says, “Fine, but if you need anything just give me a call. We gonna work out before we head to Flynn's?”
“Not tonight, we will come in early tomorrow and get a good sparring session.”
“Sounds good to me.” Mercy turns and starts to walk back down the hallway she just came from.
When Mercy gets to her apartment, she sets her purse with the item down and heads to her bedroom. As she unbuttons her white lab coat, thunder sounds off, making her jump a little. She puts her coat on her dresser, kicks off her shoes, and lays down on her bed. She stares out of her window for a little bit and sees some people putting up solar panels on the building across the street from her. The sound of raindrops hitting the window slowly fade as she falls asleep.
About an hour later, Mercy wakes up. She stretches her arms out and walks over to her kitchen. She opens the fridge and grabs a plastic container with chicken and broccoli in it. She grabs a fork and goes to sit on a couch in her living room. As Mercy is eating dinner, she turns on the tv to the news. After flipping through a couple channels, the press conference cuts in.
Inara is standing at a podium with a pair of microphones in front of her. Be
hind her is a large Serra emblem in red sitting on the black wall. People can be heard rustling around and talking behind the camera. They all quiet down as Inara speaks into the microphones.
“People of Serra, I am sorry to interrupt your scheduled programming, but would like to inform you of precautions we are putting in place. Police and military patrols, wall guards, and men at outposts will be doubled until further notice. This is due to new information on the areas to the west, controlled by those we know as the Skullniks.
“Though nothing has shown that they are any threat at the moment, we think they have gotten the ability to disrupt our satellite feeds. This morning some images and video were interrupted just after another city of theirs returned to the power grid. Our intel and communications staff will be working at all hours to try and resolve this issue.
“Please, do not worry and expect more updates as we learn them. Once again, I am sorry for interrupting, and there are people on call if you would like more information. We are also sending out any and all information we know to all news outlets. We cannot answer all questions because we do not know much at this moment. Anything we do know, as always, will be shared. Remember, this is just a precaution. It is always better to be safe than sorry. Activities, school, work, and all daily schedules should be kept as normal. Thank you.”
Inara steps away from the podium and out of view of the camera. Voices start to get loud just before the camera cuts off and the tv goes to a commercial. Mercy turns over to a different news station. The news anchor is talking about the conference. She finishes up her dinner and puts the dirty dishes in the sink.
As she walks over towards the bathroom, she takes off her shirt, pants, and bra. She walks into the bathroom and turns on a small radio sitting on top of the medicine cabinet. She turns the water on, waits a few seconds, takes off her panties, and steps in the shower.
FOURTEEN
Mercy and Inara sit at a small table inside of Flynn's with a beer in front of each of them. The table sits in the far corner, next to a cork dartboard dangling off a nail. People are playing on arcades on the other side of the bar. Two men sit at the center of the bar, each with a dark beer in their hand.
Behind the bar sits a cash register and a few bottles of liquor. A glass door fridge sits at the end closest to the door, filled with beer made by some locals. A long mirror sits above the bottles and register. Above that, there are a bunch of beer and video game signs that people from outside the wall bring in at times.
As Inara and Mercy talk about the conference, Bob walks in. He sees the ladies at the table and waves his hand. When he gets to the table, he pulls out an envelope from inside his jacket and puts it on the table. “Hello Dr. Stone, Ms. Mercy. I think this is something ya should see,” he says as he turns to leave.
Inara grabs the envelope and says, “Sit down Bob. We don't want people thinking you just came here to give us this. How do you think that would look on any of us? You asked Mercy out for a beer, so go get one and join us for a little bit.” Bob sits down and Mercy waves for the bartender. Inara orders a round for the three of them when the bartender comes over.
Inara opens up the envelope and pulls out a couple of pages with writing on them. As she reads through them she asks, “So, there have been couple random reboots and signal disruptions?”
Bob replies, “Oh ya, Dr. Stone. The sats are only supposed to reboot after an update or if there is a software issue. Now, that don't happen very often. These reboots were not part of an update because we haven’t had to send any out lately. Well, at least to my knowledge. It seems the satellites are getting signals from more than just us, and boy, is it a kerfuffle. Enough to confuse and overload them to restart.
“It could be something as simple as them getting signals from other satellites, but I doubt it. But that's what keeps coming in as interference, ya know. If it is coming from someone, I can't tell where they are. The Skullniks must have someone very good at this type of stuff, eh. If it is them, it is possible they have already gotten into them and can control them and view their images just as we can.”
The bartender brings their beers over, sets them down, and turns to walk back to the bar. Inara looks at her and says, “Thank you.”
“No problem, Doctor. If you need anything else, just give me a wave,” the bartender replies.
Inara looks over to Bob and says, “Bob, you can call me Inara. We aren't at work, and there is no real need for formalities for what we are doing.”
Mercy cuts in, “Do you know when this first started?”
Bob takes a drink from his beer, “No. Won't be able to tell either. From our end, we can only see the overloads as they come in now. It is quite possible that they just used small packets to infiltrate the systems. With the amount of data being processed, that would be impossible to detect. But now that we know it is happening maybe we can try to cut the signals as they come in. Problem is, if I do that, they would know aboat it. And I'm guessing you don't want anyone else really knowing. But with how the signal is being pushed, you'd think it's someone on our end.”
Mercy nods her head a little bit, “Why do you think that?”
Bob takes another drink, “Well, even if somewhere else, someone had the tech to communicate with the satellites, it would be incredibly difficult to actually do it, ya know. The amount of time it would take to get the correct type of signal frequency, then passing encryptions and firewalls, could be months or years in the limited resources we have today. The easiest way would simply be to get someone who already has access to get ah back door in, eh. Now, we just gotta find out who.”
Inara folds the papers and puts them back in the envelope. She asks Bob, “Why is it that the official report said something different than what you are telling us now? Was anyone actually given this report?”
Bob takes another sip of his beer before replying, “I’m not sure. The reason why I called Mercy right away when the report was sent out is that my computer wasn’t even done with its testing and checks. How would a report get sent out without a key piece of knowledge? Since Mercy seemed to think something like this could happen, I thought it best to keep quiet and see why.
“So, I waited a couple minutes for my checks to finish, went home and wrote my report there so no one would see it. But, with an official report being sent out like that, it would surely explain my theory of someone on the inside doing this.”
Mercy asks, “Who else was doing the checks? Would they also know that something was wrong? Do you know of anyone doing anything suspicious or being ordered to do something wrong?”
Bob shakes his head, “No. Everyone that was doing checks was doing them on different satellites or on certain components. I’m not sure that I lucked out or that you knew I would be the one to check the network cards and throughput of the systems. The amount of data being sent and received at times was way too high for normal day to day operations.”
Inara says, “Well, now that we know something is wrong, we need to figure out who, how, and why.” She looks to Mercy and asks, “You really think your friend can help us out with this?”
Mercy nods, “Of course. Sam can take care of anything that has to do with computers. Shit, he helped create half the programs we used to use back in the day for network security. Great job though Bob.”
She puts her arm around him and slides her hand to the top of his right shoulder. With a small shake, she adds, “No one can know about this. If someone were to find out, you could be in danger. We do need your help though. Someone out there is trying to hurt us, all of us. Either by working with, or for the Skullniks, we think. We need to find out who. If you don't feel safe, finish your beer and leave. If you want to help, then feel free to stay.”
Bob quickly drinks the rest of his beer. He looks back and forth between the two ladies for a few seconds, gets up, and walks away towards the exit. Before walking out the door, he stops over at the bar.
He orders another round, grabs the beers, and returns to
the table. “Ah fuck it. If someone is trying to hurt our new government and people, we gotta stop them, ya know. We have worked way too hard to try and get a world going again. Plus, working up there is as boring as watching sap come out a maple tree.”
Bob looks around again and says, “So, who's this fellow Sam supposed to be? You really think he can get into the system without anyone knowing, eh?”
Mercy gives out a small chuckle, “Yeah he should be here soon.” She pauses for a second and adds, “I’m sorry, but your accent is so great. It reminds me of watching Fargo when I was younger. I know you are Canadian, and the movie was about a town bordering North Dakota and Minnesota, but it’s pretty close.”
Bob smiles, “Well, let’s just hope no one makes it into a wood chipper through all of this.”
The three of them chuckle a little, releasing some of the tension in the air. After a few seconds, Bob says to Mercy, “Ya, but I don’t think I’m much a Canadian anymore. Isn’t much left of the place from what I can tell.”
He takes a small sip of his beer. “So, I guess I would be a Serran now. I take it we all are, ya know.” He raises up his glass and with a bright smile says, “To Serra.” The two ladies raise their glasses, cheers, and take a drink with him.
As they put their glasses down, Sam enters the bar. Mercy quickly stands up from her chair. As Sam walks over to them with a laptop in his hand, Mercy waves for a beer from the bartender for him. She gives Sam a small nod of her head and says, “Thank you for making it,” as she grabs the purse by her feet and places it in her lap as she sits back down.
Sam gives a short bow as he says, “Dr. Stone.” He turns to Mercy and again bows, saying, “Mercy.” He turns to Bob, holds out his hand and says, “This guy.”
Bob shakes Sam’s hand and replies, “I am Bob, and you would be Sam I take it.”
Sam moves around the table across from Bob. As he sits, he places the laptop on the table and says, “That I am.” He looks over to Mercy. “Can’t get enough of talking about me huh?”
