Matthew Mather's Compendium

by Matthew Mather

  Matthew Mather’s

  Compendium

  350-pages of Matthew Mather’s

  award-winning stories

  and novels

  Introduction and Explanation

  From the author, Matthew Mather

  Access the Table of Contents on your reading device to look at the full list of contents of this Compendium, a complete introduction to my works that includes novels, a collection of short stories, and a preview of an upcoming book.

  CyberStorm

  Skip ahead to the next section to start reading CyberStorm, my million-copy bestselling thriller that has been translated into 18 languages, published in over 23 countries and is in development for film by 20th Century Fox—not to mention earning over 3,400 5-star reviews on Amazon. This is the story of a family struggling to survive the near destruction of New York by a mysterious attack in the dead of winter. It starts slow but builds to a fast boil—I hope you enjoy the CyberStorm!

  Darknet

  If you like cloak-and-dagger, noir/tech thrillers, then try my novel Darknet. Of all the books I’ve ever written, this is my personal favorite, and has earned over 1000 5-star reviews on Amazon as well as being translated into several foreign languages. Skip ahead to the section to find the first ten chapters of Darknet (using the Table of Contents of your reading device). I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it!

  Nomad

  If you’d like to get into an epic end-of-the-world saga, then give my four-book Nomad series a try—winner of “Best Science Fiction Book of 2015” from the Authors on Air Global Network (2 million listeners in in 46 countries), over 1000 5-star review on Amazon, and has sold hundreds of thousands of copies around the world. It’s a story detailing the destruction of Earth by a mysterious deep space anomaly, and the new world that arises from the old. Skip ahead to Nomad to begin reading now (use the Table of Contents feature of your reading device to skip ahead). If it keeps you up at night, don’t say I didn’t warn you!

  Atopia Novellas and Short Stories

  In the sections after the introductory novels, there are three novellas and short stories that move deeper in the science fiction realm, Blue Skies, Shimmer and Enlightenment, that are complete, stand-alone works set in my Atopia universe. The short story Blue Skies is the beginning of Atopia. After this there is a complete summary of the first two books of Atopia, for those that might be interested in a summary of these works.

  Thanks for taking the time to give my work a read. I sincerely hope you enjoy the introduction to these books and series, and feel free to contact me directly: author.matthew.mather@gmail.com. I love to hear from readers!

  Matthew Mather

  December 16, 2016

  CYBERSTORM

  Copyright © 2013,14,15 by Matthew Mather

  First Edition March 15, 2013

  ISBN: 978-0-9916771-7-7

  Cover image by Vaseem Baig and Kay Sterling

  All the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  FROM THE AUTHOR

  For helping make CyberStorm a reality, I’d like to thank:

  Major Alex Aquino

  Head of Cyber Operations

  United States Air Force, WADS

  Richard Marshall

  Global Director of Cybersecurity

  US Department of Homeland Security

  Curtis Levinson

  United States Cyber Defense

  Liaison to NATO

  Prologue

  Pulling the goggles up, I stopped and blinked, looking out into the night with my unaided eyes. The night was pitch black and soundless, and my mind felt disconnected. Alone, staring into the void, I became a dot of existence floating alone in the universe. At first the feeling was terrifying, my mind reeling, but it quickly became comforting. Maybe this is what death is like. Alone, peaceful, floating, floating, no fear . . .

  Clipping the night-vision goggles back into place, I could see ghostly green flakes of snow falling gently around me.

  My hunger pangs had been intense that morning, almost driving me outside during the day. Chuck had held me back, talked to me, calmed me down. It wasn’t for me, I’d argued, it was for Luke, for Lauren, for Ellarose—anything that would allow me, like an addict, to get my fix.

  I laughed. I’m addicted to food.

  The falling snowflakes were hypnotic. Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath. What is real? What is reality, anyway? I felt like I was hallucinating, my mind never quite able to take a firm hold of anything before skidding off. Get a grip, Mike. Luke is counting on you. Lauren is counting on you.

  Opening my eyes, I willed myself into the here and now and tapped the phone in my pocket to bring up the augmented-reality display. A field of red dots spread out into the distance, and taking another deep breath, I carefully put one foot in front of the other, continuing on my way across Twenty-Fourth, pushing myself toward a cluster of dots on Sixth Avenue.

  November 25

  Chelsea, New York City

  “We live in amazing times!”

  I studied the piece of charred flesh that I held up in front of me.

  “Amazingly dangerous times,” laughed Chuck, my next-door neighbor and best friend, taking a swig from his beer. “Nice work. That’s probably still frozen on the inside.”

  Shaking my head, I put the burnt sausage down at the edge of the grill.

  It was an unusually warm week for Thanksgiving, so I’d decided to throw a last-minute barbecue party on the rooftop terrace of our converted warehouse complex. Most of our neighbors were still here for the holiday, so my almost-two-year-old son, Luke, and I had spent the morning going door to door, inviting them all up for our grill-out.

  “Don’t insult my cooking, and don’t get started on all that.”

  It was a spectacular start to an evening, with the setting sun still shining warmly. From our perch seven stories up, late-autumn views of red and gold trees stretched up and down the Hudson, backed by street noise and city skyline. New York still held a vibrancy that excited me, even after two years of living here. I looked around at our crowd of neighbors. We’d gathered a group of thirty people for our party, and I was secretly proud so many had come.

  “So you don’t think it’s possible a solar flare could wreck the world?” said Chuck, raising his eyebrows.

  His Southern twang made even disasters sound like song lyrics, and kicking back on a sun lounger in ripped jeans and a Ramones T-shirt, he looked like a rock star. His hazel eyes twinkled playfully from beneath a mop of unkempt blond hair, and two-day-old stubble completed the look.

  “That’s exactly what I don’t want you to get started on.”

  “I’m just saying—”

  “What you’re saying always points to disaster.” I rolled my eyes. “We’ve just lived through one of the most amazing transitions in human history.” Poking the sausages on the grill, I generated a new round of searing flames.

  Tony, one of our doormen, was standing next to me, still dressed in his work clothes and tie, but at least with his suit jacket off. Heavyset, with dark Italian features, he was as Brooklyn as the Dodgers of old, and his accent never let you forget it. Tony was the kind of guy who started growing on you immediately, always ready to help and never without a smile and a joke to go along with it. Luke loved him too. From the moment he could walk, every time we went downstairs, he’d rocket out of the elevator as soon as it pinged to ground level and run to the front desk to greet Tony with squeals of glee. The feeling was mutual.

  Looking up from my sausages, I addressed Chuck directly. “Over a billion people have b
een born in the past decade—that’s like a new New York City each month for the last ten years—the fastest population growth that has ever been, or ever will be.” I waved my tongs around in the air to make my point. “Sure, there’ve been a few wars here and there, but nothing major. I think that says something about the human race.” I paused for effect. “We’re maturing.”

  “Those billion new people are still mostly sucking baby formula,” Chuck pointed out. “Wait fifteen years until they all want cars and washing machines. Then we’ll see how mature we are.”

  “World poverty in real-dollar, per capita terms is half what it was forty years ago—”

  “And yet one in six Americans goes hungry, and the majority are malnourished,” interrupted Chuck.

  “And for the first time in human history, as of just a year or two ago,” I continued, “more humans live in cities than in the countryside.”

  “You say that like it’s a good thing.”

  Tony shook his head, taking a swig of his beer and smiling. This was a sparring match he’d watched before.

  “It is a good thing,” I said. “Urban environments are much more energy-efficient than rural ones.”

  “Except ‘urban’ is not an environment,” argued Chuck. “The environment is an environment. You talk as if cities were these self-supporting bubbles, but they’re not. They’re entirely dependent on the natural world around them.”

  I pointed my tongs at him. “That same world we’re saving by living together in cities.”

  Returning my attention to the barbecue, I saw that the fat dripping off the sausages had ignited into flames again and was searing my chicken breasts.

  “I’m just saying that when it all comes undone—”

  “When a terrorist launches a nuke over the US? An electromagnetic pulse?” I asked as I rearranged my meats. “Or a weaponized superbug let loose in the wild?”

  Chuck nodded. “Any of those.”

  “You know what you should be worried about?”

  “What?”

  I didn’t need to give him anything new to fixate on, but I couldn’t help it. “Cyberattack.”

  Looking over his shoulder, I could see my wife’s parents had arrived. My stomach knotted. What I wouldn’t have given to have a simple relationship with my in-laws, but then, that was a boat most people were rowing with me.

  “Ever heard of something called Night Dragon?” I asked.

  Chuck and Tony shrugged.

  “A few years back they started finding foreign computer code embedded in power plant control systems all over the country,” I explained. “They traced command and control back to office buildings in China. This stuff was specifically designed to knock out the US energy grid.”

  Chuck was unimpressed. “So? What happened?”

  “Nothing happened, yet, but your attitude is the problem. It’s everyone’s attitude. If Chinese nationals were running around the country attaching packs of C-4 explosives to transmission towers, the public would be crying bloody murder and declaring war.”

  “Used to be that they dropped bombs to knock out factories, but now just click a mouse?”

  “Exactly.”

  “See?” said Chuck, smiling. “There’s a prepper in you after all.”

  I laughed. There was no way I was going to start stocking up for disasters. “Answer me this—who’s in charge of the Internet, this thing that our lives depend on?”

  “I don’t know, the government?”

  “The answer is that nobody is in charge of it. Everyone runs it, but nobody’s in charge.”

  Chuck laughed. “Now that sounds like a recipe for disaster.”

  “You guys are freaking me out,” said Tony, finally finding the space to add something. “Can’t we talk about baseball for once?” The flames on the grill roared up again, and he recoiled in mock fear. “And maybe you’d better let me take over the grilling. You got more important stuff to do, no?”

  “And we’d like to eat some food that’s not burnt to a crisp,” added Chuck with a smile.

  “Yeah, sure.” Without enthusiasm, I handed the tongs over to Tony.

  Lauren was looking my way again. I was attempting to delay the inevitable. She laughed as she talked to someone, brushing back her long, auburn hair with a sweep of one hand.

  With her high cheekbones and flashing green eyes, Lauren attracted attention whenever she entered a room. She had the refined, strong features of her family, a sharp nose and chin that accentuated her slim figure. Even after being with her for five years, just looking at her from across a patio could still take my breath away—I still couldn’t believe that she’d chosen me.

  Taking a deep breath, I straightened my shoulders. “I leave the grill in your care,” I said to nobody in particular. They were already back to discussing Cybergeddon.

  Putting my beer on the table next to the grill, I walked over to my wife. She was at the opposite corner of the large deck on top of our building, chatting with her parents and some of our other neighbors. I’d insisted on our hosting her mother and father for Thanksgiving this year, but was already regretting it. Her family was old-money Bostonian, dyed-in-the-tweed Brahmins, and while early on in our marriage I’d done my best to earn their approval, lately I’d given up and settled into a grudging understanding that I’d never be good enough. But it didn’t mean I wasn’t polite.

  “Mr. Seymour,” I called out, extending my hand, “thank you so much for coming.”

  Dressed in a boxy tweed jacket accented with a navy handkerchief, a blue shirt, and a brown paisley tie, Mr. Seymour looked up, giving me a tight-lipped smile. I felt self-conscious in my jeans and T-shirt. Covering the last paces, I gripped his outstretched hand and pumped it firmly.

  I turned to my wife’s mother. “Mrs. Seymour, as lovely as ever.” She was sitting on the edge of wooden bench beside her husband and daughter, dressed in a brown suit with a matching oversized hat and a thick strand of pearls around her neck. Clutching her purse in her lap, she leaned forward as if to get up.

  “No, no, please, don’t.” I leaned down to peck her on the cheek. She smiled and sat back down. “Thank you for coming to spend Thanksgiving with us.”

  “So you’ll think about it?” Mr. Seymour said loudly to Lauren. You could almost make out the layers of ancestry in his voice, thick with both privilege and responsibility, and today, perhaps a little condescension. He was making sure I could hear what he said.

  “Yes, Dad,” Lauren whispered, stealing a glance my way and looking down. “I will.”

  I didn’t take the bait. “Have you been introduced to the Borodins?” I motioned toward the elderly Russian couple at the table beside them. Aleksandr, the husband, was already asleep in a lounger, snoring quietly away beside his wife, Irena, who was busy knitting.

  The Borodins lived right next door to us. Sometimes I’d spend hours listening to Irena’s stories of the Second World War. They’d survived the siege of Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, and I found it fascinating how she could have lived through something so horrific yet be so positive and gentle with the world. She made amazing borscht, too.

  “Lauren introduced us. A pleasure,” mumbled Mr. Seymour, smiling Irena’s way. She looked up and smiled back, then returned to her half-knitted socks.

  “So—” I spread my arms. “Have you guys seen Luke yet?”

  “No, he’s downstairs with Ellarose and the sitter at Chuck and Susie’s place,” replied Lauren. “We haven’t had a chance to go and see him yet.”

  Mrs. Seymour perked up. “But we’ve been invited to the Met—dress rehearsal tickets for the new Aida performance.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  I glanced at Lauren and then turned toward Richard, another of our neighbors, who was definitely not on my favorites list. “Thanks, Dick.”

  Square-jawed and handsome, he’d been some kind of football star in his Yale days. His wife, Sarah, was a tiny thing, and she sat behin
d him like a hand-shy puppy. She pulled the cuffs of her sweater down to cover her bare arms when I glanced at her.

  “I know the Seymours love the opera,” explained Richard, like a Manhattan stock broker describing an investment option. Where the Seymours were Old Boston, Richard’s family was Old New York. “We have the ‘friends and family’ seating at the Met. I only have four tickets, and Sarah didn’t want to go”—his wife shrugged weakly behind him—“and I didn’t mean to presume, but I didn’t think it was your kind of thing, old boy. I thought I could take Lauren and the Seymours, a little Thanksgiving treat.”

  While Mr. Seymour’s accent sounded genuine, Richard’s faux-British-prep-school affectation grated on my ears.

  “I guess.”

  What the hell is he up to?

  Awkward pause.

  “We need to get going if we’re going to make it,” added Richard, raising his eyebrows. “It’s an early rehearsal.”

  “But we were just about to start serving.” I pointed toward the checker-clothed tables set with bowls of potato salad and paper plates. Tony waved at us with the tongs.

  “That’s all right, we’ll stop for something,” said Mr. Seymour, again with that tight-lipped smile. “Richard was just telling us about a wonderful new bistro on the Upper East Side.”

  “It was just an idea,” added Lauren uncomfortably. “We were talking and Richard mentioned it.”

  I took a deep breath, balling my hands into fists, but caught myself and sighed. My hands relaxed. Family was family, and I wanted Lauren to be happy. Maybe this would help. I rubbed one eye and exhaled. “That’s a great idea.” I looked at my wife with a genuine smile and felt her relax. “I’ll take care of Luke, so don’t hurry back. Enjoy yourselves.”

  “Are you sure?” asked Lauren.