Here is my story, written as I said in 2008:
‘Hello Is This Thing Working?’
People all over the U.S. had become comfortable with Internet banking, satellite communication service and cell phone networks. It was all so smooth transitioning from antiquated dollar bills to debit cards, landlines to microwave towers and business transactions all over the Internet. It was so fashionable that only the old folks were hesitant to plunge into the new age of Internet and satellite. There had been a decade now of ever increasing reliance on Internet and satellites and reliability was proudly proclaimed at 99.9% uptime. The world had gone digital and people loved it! There were no more checks lost in the mail, long distance telephone service was cheaper than it had ever been, so people called everyone they knew all the time just to chat. Health records were digitized so any doctor anywhere had access to patient records. People had left the industrial age and plunged headlong into the information age.
Wednesday night:
John wanted to see whether a payment transfer to his loan company had cleared using his Internet banking service. He tried to get through, but the bank’s site kept failing, giving him a 404-error message on his web browser. No problem he thought, check it tomorrow at work. He tried to check his mail but he couldn’t log on to the server. He tried to follow a couple of Internet links, but found the net seemed very slow that night, so he just signed off and sat reading a book until bedtime.
John wasn’t the only one having a bit of trouble on Wednesday; operators at NORAD the North American Air Defense Command were experiencing dropouts on their radar tracking links from distant stations. The satellites weren’t responding properly. The Air Force operators weren’t concerned, this had happened in years earlier when the satellite network frequently had slowdowns.
The main computers for Office Mart, a major office supply retailer located in Cincinnati, were unable to communicate with the supplier’s stores across the country to adjust prices and set triggers for the upcoming sale starting on Sunday. Data entry operators went ahead and keyed in the prices, hoping that when the server problem was repaired that their changes would be uploaded to the companies’ stores across the nation.
Voyager, an Internet/satellite phone company, was receiving calls from irate customers complaining that their calls were being dropped. Customer service reps assured callers that the problem was being chased down as they spoke and the system would be back at 100% in just a few minutes, but customers were enraged when later calls to Voyager were cut off in the middle of the conversation.
Thursday:
Thursday morning, just an hour before the New York Stock Exchange opened, representatives at Easy Trade, an Internet brokerage, noticed there were no buy or sell orders waiting for execution at the opening bell. The on-floor supervisor was notified that something wasn’t right.
Retailers across the country opened and with the first credit card purchases of the day the terminals would not receive authorizations. Newspaper reporters found themselves unable to upload stories to the major newswires. Office workers, on their way to work were unable to receive their favorite satellite radio stations, or any at all for that matter. They pulled out their cell phones but were unable to connect to anyone.
Staffers in the West Wing of the Whitehouse found themselves unable to receive any situation reports or correspondence. The NSA computers were receiving no data at all. Army networks set up to relay battlefront information from Iraq and Afghanistan to Central Command in Florida were not sending or receiving anything.
The nation’s communication networks had ground to a halt. Direct landlines to and from the Whitehouse were working, but none of the others worked at all. Navy ships at sea went to General Quarters as a precaution. Planes in the air had no communication with controllers along longer destination routes, local line of sight radio communication worked, but the more distant controllers to whom they would be handed off via satellite communication could not be reached. Long wire communication to submarines at sea was possible, but the satellite telephone lines connecting submarine command centers to the fleet radio centers were not working. U.S. missile officers sat at their consoles wondering if today was the day they had trained for all those years.
Stock markets around the world went crazy! No one knew what had happened in the U.S., but with no communication, it started a worldwide panic. Markets crashed in countries around the globe. Armies were mobilized in every major military power of the world. Nothing like this had ever happened, anywhere. The major stock market in the world and the world’s last superpower had seemingly vanished from worldwide communication in a matter of a few hours. That was enough to concern Britton, France, Germany and Spain, and enough to terrify the not-so-friendly nations of the world. Perhaps their worst fears were about to come true? Who knew what to expect with the administration in the Whitehouse? Was this a prelude to an attack? Who was going to be the recipient of this attack?
North Korea’s president sat nervously sipping his tea and wishing he had finished perfecting the long-range missiles for delivery of nuclear weapons to the U.S. but he hadn’t had the time or the money. Iran shuddered, wondering if the skies would soon darken with U.S. planes loaded with nuclear weapons. All eyes searched the skies hoping their greatest fear didn’t come true. Russian officers hurriedly checked their intercontinental ballistic missile co-ordinates for targeted U.S. cities, verified current day codes for firing, and ran self checks on trigger circuits, each man wondering if this was the day hell would break loose from its confines in the bowels of the earth and begin to ravage the surface of the planet. The Russian president smoked his cigarette, gazing on the rising smoke and wondering if he had pushed the U.S. too far?
People in the U.S. began to stop by their local churches after their cell phones had stopped responding. At least at church they could gather with friends and find out what others might know. But news and information was as slow as it was in horse and buggy days. People were getting nervous, and preachers who had been barking out words of fear and deprivation just days before were now consoling their flocks and trying to allay fears that beset the community. As evening approached, people went home and turned on their television sets only to find snowy screens with nothing but static for sound.
The world had stopped, and was standing at the precipice of total nuclear destruction. The nuclear nations had one hand on the button, but now that the time was at hand, none wanted to be the first to send the missiles on their way to Armageddon.
Thursday Night
John sat on the couch in his tiny apartment wondering what he had done with the old CD-key number to his fantasy football game. These days he was so tied up with satellite activity he hadn’t had time to play the game in months, since he had taken the job at NSA. His stomach was crying out “Pizza!” But his cell phone had nothing to say at all, none of the satellite links or the towers were responding. He stood up and walked over to the refrigerator, opened the door and looked in at two Budweiser beers and something green wrapped in plastic.
John heard a rap, rap; rap, from the door, “FBI agents, open the door!”
“What? Who the hell is that?” John mumbled. He looked through the peephole in the door but saw no one there. Some weirdo he thought as he turned to walk away.
Rap, rap, rap, “FBI agents, open up!” Came the call from the door.
John grabbed his Louisville Slugger as he reached for the door handle. Some bunghole is going to get his skull cracked John mused. He unlatched the door bolt and started to twist the handle when the door flew open, pushing him back and bringing in three FBI agents drawing pistols as they came into view. “What’s going on?” John asked.
“Put down the weapon sir!” The agent commanded.
“Huh? Oh I thought there might be a…”
“Put down the weapon sir!”
“Yeah, sorry, what’s going on?”
“We need you to come with us.”
“To where?”
“You’ll find out when we get there.”
“This is a joke, right?”
“This is, I assure you, no joke sir. ”
“I don’t think I’m going anywhere with you.”
“Don’t make this difficult sir. You have no choice,” the agent responded as he waved his pistol.
“Okay,” John replied, “let’s go.” They walked out of the door and down the steps to the street where a black, four-door sedan sat double-parked. John was ushered into the back seat with one of the agents. The second agent got behind the wheel and drove away. The third agent stayed in John’s apartment, searching for anything unusual. John sat there in the quiet of the back seat and tried to guess what was going on? This had to be one of the greatest practical jokes in history or he was in deep trouble. They drove just a short distance when they pulled up to the back of the building where John worked. There were dozens of the same four-door, black sedans parked in the lot. Another pulled in as John and his escorting agents were walking toward the building. John recognized the woman who got out of the back of the sedan as one who worked on the floor he worked, but he didn’t know her name.
They walked inside the building and up the elevator to the third floor and when the doors opened, John was directed to the large cafeteria where every one who worked on his floor was gathering. The FBI agents were everywhere on the floor, searching whatever they could get into, looking for something. John walked over to sit by Al, one of the few guys he felt he knew well. “What’s going on Al?”
“I don’t know buddy; this is new to me,” Al replied.
“Do you think this is some kind of security check or something?”
“Don’t know, but sooner or later they’ll tell us.”
An hour passed and the room filled with NSA workers from the third floor. The last was brought in and the lead agent called out for quiet and began his speech.
“I’m FBI agent Bell and the reason we have gathered you here tonight is because we have a situation on our hands that has never happened before. You know that today your Internet links were all either jammed or not connecting, well the World Wide Web has ground to a halt. All U.S. satellite communications are down, all cell towers are non-functional, and the world is waiting to see what happens next. We have no idea what has happened, whether this is a prelude to a terrorist attack, a Russian missile attack or sabotage. We don’t know, but we are investigating and we are in a rush here because if this is an attack, we’re looking at something between 9/11 and World War III; we just don’t know. You people are our first line of defense. Once we clear each of you, your e-mails, your computers, your files, we go on to the next step if that’s necessary. This is the real deal, it’s urgent and your complete co-operation is needed until we find out what is going on. Each of you will be called by name and an agent will go with you to view your personal files, computer files and anything locked up in your office area. Agents are already searching your homes. As soon as the agent clears you, you need to change any passwords the agent may have seen and go to work trying to figure out what may have happened to shut down the net. Technicians have already verified hardware at NSA ground servers and they are not the problem. We need you to start clicking and looking at error messages to isolate what seems to be a software problem, or a cyber attack. We understand many of you aren’t programmers but you can feed error messages to the tech guys to help them sort this out. Any questions?” No hands were raised. “Let’s go to work. As soon as an agent calls your name you can go with him to your work area. You will be here until we figure out what this thing is that we’re up against. Food and cots will be brought in for you. Ladies and gentlemen, good luck.”
Colonel Pachinko once again checked his target co-ordinates and firing simulation. The temperature was very cool in the room, but Pachinko’s brow and underarms were sweating. He sat at the console that if engaged would fire enough ordinance to wipe New York City from the map, and he was silently waiting for the order to launch. “I had hoped it would never come to this,” he whispered to his second officer. “In all my life I never dreamed we would be living this moment. I should be at home with… With my Irena and my children… If the order comes, I shall never see them again. They will be roasted in a fireball of heat from an American warhead. It should never have come down to this. What are those crazy Americans doing? They must be up to something to have shut down all communications. God help us.”
Missile Officer Xeng took a drag on his cigarette as he studied the indicators on his fire control console outside Beijing. He too wondered aloud what was happening and who was behind it? His missiles targeted Russia, but he wondered if they shouldn’t be aimed at America instead. If the government had given the Army the money they needed they could have had enough to build sufficient missiles to target both countries at once, but that money was used to build more factories for goods to export. Little good that was now that the Americans were possibly ready to lunch enough nuclear warheads to wipe out those factories and half of the Chinese population. An Army Officer should always head National Security he mused. Sergeant Liu! Get me some green tea please. If this world is about to end we should have a hot cup of tea to soothe our transition to the other side.
Reports came in to the Whitehouse that the governor of Virginia had requested National Guard help in quelling riots and looters who were empting grocery shelves and firearms from retailers. The Whitehouse chief of staff Melton told Harrison, a staff member, “ relay back to the governor that 90 percent of the members of the National Guard from Virginia are somewhere on the way to Iraq at the moment and the governor should seek help elsewhere.”
“Seek help from where?” Harrison asked.
“I don’t know where, just send the message. We’ve got bigger problems than a few looters in suburban Virginia.”
“Yes sir.”
Friday Morning:
Captain Hubbard of the USS Bluefin ordered the submarine’s dive Officer Thomas to: “bring the boat up to periscope depth and let out the long wave antenna to see what traffic might be on the subs frequency.”
“Aye, aye Captain. Chief bring the boat up to 50 feet.”
“Aye sir, 50 feet.”
“Thomas be ready to drop back down to launch depth if we get any bad news.”
“Aye, Aye Captain.”
“Con, radio, no traffic on the long wave at all Captain.”
“Thomas, pass the word, officers will meet in the wardroom at 20:00 hours.”
“Aye sir, 20:00.”
Captain Hubbard left the conning tower heading to his cabin to think over what he wanted to say to his officers.
Fred was fed up with his job as a sanitation engineer on the overnight shift at a downtown Atlanta office building. Rick, his supervisor was in the middle of a never-ending tirade over everything in the building when Fred interrupted him and said: “Rick, I’m sick of your crap; I quit.” Fred left the building and walked over to a Starbucks to sit and sip on a white chocolate mocha supreme until the bank opened. He was going to clear his account and hit the road for parts unknown.
Fred walked into the downtown Atlanta branch of the Bank of America and up to a teller window. He gave the teller the account number and asked her to close the account. She told him the main computers were down and she could only give him what was on the latest printout. He would have to come back later to finalize the account. “Fine,” Fred answered, “I’ll come back next week for the remainder.” She turned and walked to a nearby counter to look at the print. The teller was distracted looking through the window into the administration office at the new junior bank officer, who she had heard was quite a ‘hunk.’ She looked back at the print as he raised his head and looked in her direction. She quickly wrote down a balance showing $90,342.28 and spun away toward the teller window. She explained to Fred that she could give him that amount, but any transactions after Thursday morning weren’t on that print and he would have to come back when the main computers were back up.
Fred looked at her, his lips curled into a smile and said: “that’ll be ok.” She said it would take a few minutes for her to gather that sum from a back office. “I’ll wait,” he replied. Not bad he thought, if I get out of here with this I’m not coming back for them to figure out I only have $1200 and change in my account. The teller came back about five minutes later with stacks of hundred dollar bills and counted out the entire sum. The new junior bank officer was with her and as she counted he asked Fred if he wanted the entire amount in cash? Couldn’t he take a cashier’s check for some or all of it? “No, I need the entire sum in cash,” Fred answered. He signed the ticket and stuffed his pants pockets, (lucky for him he was wearing his cargo pants), and his jacket pockets and took the rest of the bundle and slid it under the jacket, turned and walked out the door. He thought: I may regret this if and when they catch me, but right today I’m going for it and let tomorrow take care of itself.
Fred left the Bank of America, walked home and told his wife they were moving to Colorado. He no longer believed in banks, computers or any other of the presently available technologies. His wife Sarah quietly packed bags for the trip.
Friday night
John rubbed his eyes. He had been at his desk 24 hours now and nothing made any sense. He had looked at thousands of lines of code and nothing seemed to be out of place. He and other programmers from the NSA had been checking blocks of code initiated since 5 PM on Wednesday. No one had found anything or they would all be headed home by now. His eyes burned, his back was numb and he needed sleep. There’s got to be something there, something started to shut down the network at just after 5 PM on Wednesday. What happens after 5 PM?
Officers onboard the USS Bluefin sat in the officer’s mess discussing the Captain’s activity from that morning. “Commander Thomas do you think we will launch missiles?”
“I don’t know Nichols, but there’s a chance we might.”
“Sir, what do you think may have happened?”
“There’s no telling. This has never happened before. We’ve always had long-wave radio communication. We would know if nuclear weapons had been expended, sensors would pick that up. Something is happening, but I don’t know what it is.”
John’s head jerked back, of course, preventive maintenance! John started looking at computer entries after 5 PM on Wednesday. There was nothing odd there. He got up from his chair and walked over to a cot and laid down to rest. He was in a deep sleep when he had a dream. He sat straight up and blinked his eyes. “That’s it!” he shouted. “The system has been shut down by a delayed command at some time earlier than Wednesday.” John got up from the cot and went to his desk. He started looking at system commands entered prior to Wednesday. He traced back three weeks and found nothing. He got up and went for a cup of coffee. Sitting there in the cafeteria among his peers and the FBI agents he mulled over what he had looked at and wondered what else the problem could be? He finished his coffee and went back to his desk, thought for a minute and remembered that scheduled maintenance commands could be entered for up to a month ahead of time. He had only looked up to three weeks prior. He started scanning entries up to a month ago and there it was. One of the new techs had entered a scheduled maintenance shutdown 30 days earlier and botched the variables in the command statement. He had entered “all” instead of a specific module in the system, and he failed to enter a time limit for the satellite module to be off line for testing. The system should never have taken the improperly written command, but somehow it did and not knowing what to do next, the satellite system just shut down. When the entiresatellite system went down for more than 5 minutes, another NSA system had automatically shut down servers on the cell phone system and on land lines as part of a Homeland Security directive to cease all computer, telephone and cell links in case of a massive cyber attack on the US. The new tech had apparently seen he had miss-entered the original system command, so he re-entered it correctly and checked the servers on the satellites individually after a 30 minute delay on the day he did his preventive services, but he had no idea that his botched entry would spring up 30 days later and freeze up the entire country’s satellite communications systems.
Colonel Pachinko was awakened for his next watch at the firing console. “Well I guess we aren’t at war yet or you would have awakened me earlier Alexi.”
“Correct sir. We are still at condition one, but no communication has come from the U.S. Do you think this means the threat is over?”
“This is a game of cat and mouse Alexi. The mouse only knows the game is over when the cat seizes him.”
“Intelligence shows a military buildup along the Chinese border sir.”
“Not only do we worry about the Americans, but those Chinese, who can say what they will do? Let me know if the buildup continues.”
Missile Officer Xeng sat at his console reprogramming targets. “This has to be done,” he said to his second Officer. “The real threat has to be the U.S. If Russia were planning invasion we would have some evidence by now. Surely one of our scouts on the border would have seen some Russian activity by now. I’m resetting targets to major U.S. cities. If I don’t do this before they strike, it will be too late for us.”
John reported he had found the reason for the shutdown. His superior acknowledged the find and then sat back in his chair. “I wonder what will happen now if we suddenly throw the entire network back into operation? When communication lines suddenly open up after days of silence, will defense operations around the world think we are lighting up our systems to fire off missiles? How do we do this delicately and without alarming the world? If just one bunker in Russia or China reacts, we’re suddenly in World War Three.”
“I don’t know sir, but isn’t it just as dangerous to keep them down? Won’t the Russians and the Chinese be sitting, waiting to launch?”
“I suppose so John. It’s a crazy world out there. I’ll use the landline to the Whitehouse and find out what they want to do. You get those techs in here and have them ready to bring the system back up if that’s what the Whitehouse wants.”
“Yes sir, I’m on my way.”
The system was brought up as slowly as possible; satellites began to churn out messages as though nothing ever happened. The world’s monitors watched and saw everything return to normal and no one was attacked with nuclear weapons, (this time.) Missile officers Pachinko and Xeng both left their posts and went home with a newfound sense of happiness and joy with their families. They were both glad to be alive. None of the family members even knew what had happened or how close to total annihilation they actually were. Life was good once again on both sides of the big pond.
The End.
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