CyberStorm

by Matthew Mather

an excerpt from

CyberStorm

by Matthew Mather

Prologue

PULLING MY GOGGLES up, I stopped and blinked, looking out into the night with my own 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 with him, 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 before skidding off. Get a grip. 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 began carefully putting 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 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 our crowd of our 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 that leapt up.

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 that 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 feelings were mutual.

Looking up from my sausages, I addressed Chuck directly. “Over a billion people have been 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.”

“That 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, just a year or two ago,” I continued, “most humans live in cities rather than the countryside.”

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

Tony looked at me and Chuck and 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 pointed out. “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, and 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 EMP 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 again, 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. They traced command and control back to office buildings in China. This stuff was specifically designed to knock out the US energy grid.”

Chuck looked at me, 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? And maybe you’d better let me take over the grilling?” The flames on the grill roared up again, and he recoiled in mock fear. “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 chose me.

Taking a deep breath, I straightened up 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, blue shirt, and a brown paisley tie, Mr. Seymour looked up from talking with Lauren, giving me a tight-lipped smile. I felt self-conscious in my jeans and T-shirt. Covering the last paces, I reached out to grip his hand and pumped it firmly.

I turned toward 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 and ignored it.

“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 Mrs. Borodin’s stories of the Second World War. They’d survived the siege of Leningrad, the modern 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 cooked amazing borscht, too.

“Lauren introduced us. A pleasure,” mumbled Mr. Seymour, smiling Mrs. Borodin’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 already been invited to the Met. Dress rehearsal tickets for the new Aida performance.”

“Oh yeah?”

I looked 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 behind 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 smiled and 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 toward 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.

An inch of gratitude propped our relationship back up.

“I’m sure. I’ll just grab a few beers with the boys.” On reflection, this was sounding like a better and better idea. “You best get going. Maybe we can meet for a nightcap?”

“It’s settled then?” said Mr. Seymour.

Within a few minutes they were gone and I was back with the guys, piling my plate with sausages and rooting around in the cooler for a beer.

I slumped down in a chair.

Chuck looked at me with a forkful of potato salad halfway into his mouth. “That’s what you get for marrying a girl with a name like Lauren Seymour.”

I laughed and cracked my beer open. “So what’s the word regarding this mess between China and India over those dams in the Himalayas?”

November 27

THE FAMILY VISIT didn’t go well.

Thanksgiving dinner started the disaster rolling, first because we ordered a precooked turkey from Chelsea Market—“Oh my, you don’t cook your own turkey?”—then the awkward dinner seating around our kitchen countertop—“When are you buying a bigger apartment?”—with the finale of me not being able to watch the Steelers game—“That’s fine, if Michael wants to watch football, we’ll just make our way back to the hotel.”

Richard had invited us down the hall for after-dinner drinks, to his palatial three-story apartment facing  the Manhattan skyline, where we were served by his wife, Sarah—“Of course we cooked our own turkey. Didn’t you?”

The conversation had quickly turned to connections between the old New York and Boston family lines: “Fascinating, isn’t it? Richard, you must be almost a third cousin to our Lauren,” quickly followed by, “Mike, do you know any of your own family history?”

I did, and it involved steel working and nightclubs, so I said I didn’t.

Mr. Seymour finished off the evening by interrogating Lauren about her new job prospects, which were nonexistent. Richard offered suggestions about introductions he could make for her. They’d politely asked me how my business was going—I worked as a junior partner in a venture capital fund specializing in social media—followed by proclamations that the internet was just too complicated to even talk about, and then: “Now, Richard, how is your family investment trust being managed?”

To be fair, Lauren did defend me, and everything remained civilized.

I spent most of the time chauffeuring them around to meet their friends at places like the Metropolitan Club, the Core Club, and of course, the Harvard Club. The Seymours had the distinction of having at least one family member of each generation attend Harvard since its foundation, and at the namesake club they were treated like visiting royalty.

Richard even graciously invited us to the Yale Club for a drink on Friday night. I nearly throttled him. Mercifully, it was just a two-day visit, and we finally had the weekend to ourselves.

It was early Saturday morning, and I was sitting at our granite kitchen countertop feeding Luke, him in his highchair and me balancing on a barstool while I watched the morning news on CNN. I was cutting apples and peaches up into little chunks and leaving them in front of him on a plate.  He was merrily picking each piece up, shooting a toothy, gummy grin at me, and then either eating the fruit or squealing and throwing it on the floor for Gorby, the Borodins’ rescue dog mongrel.

It was a game that didn’t get old. Gorby spent as much time in our apartment as he did at home with Irena, and watching Luke throw food down to him, it wasn’t hard to understand. I wanted a dog, but Lauren was against it. Too much hair, she said.

Banging his fists on the tray, Luke squeaked, “Da!” his universal word for anything involving me, and then stretched out his small hand—more apple please.

I shook my head, laughing, and reached over to begin cutting up some more fruit.

Luke wasn’t even two years old, but he had the size of a three-year-old, something he must’ve gotten from his dad, I thought with a smile. Wisps of golden-blond hair floated about his chubby perma-glow cheeks. His face was always stuck in a mischievous grin, showing a mouthful of white button teeth, as if he was about to do something he knew he wasn’t supposed to—which was almost always the case.

Lauren appeared from our bedroom, her eyes still half-closed.

“I don’t feel well,” she mumbled and then staggered into our small bathroom, the only other closed room in our less-than-thousand-square-foot apartment. I heard her coughing and then the sound of the shower turning on.

“Coffee’s on,” I muttered, thinking, She didn’t drink that much last night, while I watched some enraged Chinese students in the city of Taiyuan burning American flags. I’d never heard of Taiyuan, so while I dropped more fruit chunks in front of Luke with one hand, I queried my tablet with the other.

Wikipedia: Taiyun (Chinese: pinyin: Tàiyuán) is the capital and largest city of Shanxi province in North China. At the 2010 census, it had a population of 4,201,591.

Wow.

That was bigger than Los Angeles, America’s second largest city, and Taiyun was China’s twentieth. With a few more keystrokes I discovered that China had over 160 cities with populations over a million, where the United States had exactly nine.

I looked up from my tablet at the news. The image on the TV had switched to an aerial view of a strange-looking aircraft carrier. An anchor on CNN described the scene, “Here we see China’s first, and so far only, aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, ringed by a pack of angry-looking Lanzhou-class destroyers as they face off with the USS George Washington just outside the Straits of Luzon in the South China Sea.”

“Sorry about my parents, honey,” whispered Lauren as she snuck up behind me, mopping her hair with a towel and dressed in a white terry cloth bathrobe. “Remember, it was your idea.”

Leaning down to cuddle Luke, she kissed him and he smiled and squeaked his pleasure at the  attention, then she wrapped her arms around me and kissed my neck.

I smiled and nuzzled her back, enjoying the affection after a tense couple of days. “I know,” I replied.

A US naval officer had appeared on CNN. “Not five years ago Japan was telling us to get our boys out of Okinawa, but now they’re begging for help again. Japs have a fleet of their own aircraft carriers coming down here, why on Earth—”

“I love you, baby.” Lauren had slipped one of her hands under my T-shirt and was stroking my chest.

“I love you too.”

“Have you thought more about going to Hawaii for Christmas?”

“—and Bangladesh will be hit hard if China diverts the Brahmaputra. They need friends now more than ever, but I never imagined the Seventh Fleet parking itself in Chittagong—”

I pulled away from her.

“You know I’m not comfortable having your family pay.”

“So then let me pay.”

“With money that comes from your father.”

“Only because I’m not working because I quit my job to have Luke.” It was a sore point.

She turned to grab a cup and filled it with coffee. Black. No sugar this morning. Leaning against the stove she cupped her hands around the hot coffee, hunching inwards away from me.

“—starting cyclic ops around the clock, constant launch and recovery missions from the three American aircraft carriers now stationed in—”

“It’s not just the money. I’m not comfortable spending Christmas there with your mother and father, and we did Thanksgiving with them.”

She ignored me. “I’d just finished articling at Latham and passing the bar”—she was speaking more to herself than to me—“and now everyone is downsizing. I threw the opportunity away.”

“You didn’t throw it away, honey.” I looked at Luke. “We’re all suffering. This new downturn is hard on everyone.”

In the silence between us, the CNN anchor started on a new topic. “Reports today of US government websites being hacked and defaced. With Chinese and American naval forces squaring off, tensions  are heightening. We go now to our correspondent at Fort Meade Cyber Command headquarters—”

“What about going to Pittsburgh? See my family?”

“—the Chinese are claiming the defacement of US government websites is the work of private citizen hacktivists, and most of the activity seems to be originating from Russian sources—”

“Seriously? You won’t take a free trip to Hawaii and you want me to go to Pittsburgh?” A muscle tightened up in her neck. “Your brothers are both convicted criminals. I’m not sure I want to expose Luke to that kind of environment.”

“Come on, they were teenagers when that happened. We talked about this.”

She said nothing.

“Didn’t one of your cousins get arrested last summer?” I said defensively.

“Arrested.” She shook her head. “Not convicted. There is a difference.”

I stared into her eyes. “Not all of us are so lucky to have an uncle who’s in Congress.”

Luke was watching us.

“So,” I asked, my voice rising, “what was it your father wanted you to think about?”

I already knew it was some new offer to entice her back to Boston.

“What do you mean?”

“Really?”

She sighed and looked down into her coffee. “A partner-track position at Ropes and Gray.”

“I didn’t know you applied.”

“I didn’t—”

“I’m not moving to Boston, Lauren. I thought the whole idea of us coming here was for you to start your own life.”

“It was.”

“I thought we were trying for a brother or sister for Luke? Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“More what you wanted.”

Looking at her in disbelief, my vision of our future together began unraveling in just those four words. But there had been more than just a few uncomfortable words lately. My stomach knotted.

“I’m going to be thirty this year.” She slapped her coffee cup down on the counter. “Opportunities like this don’t come often. It could be my last chance to have a career.”

Silence while we stared at each other.

“I’m going to the interview.”

“That’s the discussion?” My heart began to race. “Why? What’s going on?”

“I just told you why.”

We stared at each other in a mutually accusatory silence. Luke began to fuss in his chair.

Lauren sighed, her shoulders sagging. “I don’t know, okay? I feel lost. I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

Relaxing, my pulse began to slow.

Lauren looked at me, and then away. “And I’m going for brunch with Richard to talk about some ideas he had for me.”

My cheeks flushed hot.

“I think he beats Sarah.”

Lauren gritted her teeth. “Why would you say something like that?”

“Did you see her arms at the barbecue? She was covering up. I saw bruises.”

Shaking her head, she snorted, “You’re being jealous. Don’t be ridiculous.”

“What should I be jealous of?”

Luke began to cry.

“I’m going to get dressed,” she said dismissively, shaking her head. “Don’t ask stupid questions. You know what I mean.”

Ignoring me, she leaned down and kissed Luke, whispering that she was sorry, she didn’t mean to yell, and that she loved him. Once she’d calmed Luke down, she gave me an evil look and stalked off into the bedroom, closing the door heavily.

Sighing, I turned toward Luke and picked him up. Easing his head onto my shoulder I patted his back. “Why did she marry me, huh, Luke?”

I answered my own question.

“Ah, yes, well, we’ve got you, don’t we, big bruiser?”

After two or three sniffling sighs, his little body relaxed into me.

“Come on. Let’s take you over to see Ellarose and Auntie Susie.”

December 8

“HOW MANY OF these are there?”

“Fifty. And that’s just the water.”

“You’re kidding. I’ve only got half an hour before I need to be upstairs for the sitter.”

Chuck shrugged. “I’ll ring Susie. She can watch Luke.”

“Wonderful.” I was struggling down the basement stairs holding four-gallon containers of water in each hand. “So two hundred gallons of water you’re paying five hundred dollars a month to store?”

Chuck owned a chain of Cajun-fusion restaurants in Manhattan, and you’d have thought he could store stuff at one of them, but he said he needed to have it close. A card-carrying member of the Virginia Preppers couldn’t be too careful, he liked to say. He had some decidedly non-New Yorker sensibilities.

His family was from just south of the Mason-Dixon Line. He was an only child, and his mother and father had died in a car accident just after he finished college, so when he met Susie, they’d decided on a new start and had come to New York. My own mother had passed away when I was in college, and I’d barely known my father. He left when I was a kid, so my brothers had pretty much raised me.

Our similar family situations had bonded us when we met.

“That’s about the size of it, and I’m lucky I got this extra locker.” Chuck snickered watching my efforts. “You need to hit the gym, my friend.”

I trudged down the last few steps to the basement. Where the rest of our complex was beautifully decorated and maintained—manicured Japanese gardens next to the gym and spa, an indoor waterfall at the entrance, twenty-four-seven security guards—the basement was decidedly utilitarian. The polished oak steps leading down from the back entrance gave way to a rough concrete floor with exposed overhead lighting. I guess it was because nobody really went down there.

Nobody, that was, except Chuck.

I halfheartedly laughed at his jab, not really listening. My mind was turning over and over, thinking about Lauren. When we’d met at Harvard, anything had seemed possible, but it felt like she slipping away.

Today she’d gone for the interviews in Boston and was spending the evening with her family there. Luke had been at preschool this morning, but I hadn’t been able to find a sitter for the afternoon, so I’d returned home from work. Lauren and I had some heated exchanges over her going to Boston at all, but there was more to it than that.

There’s something she’s not telling me.

Down the end of the hallway, I stopped and elbowed open the door to Chuck’s storage locker. With a grunt I lifted my two water jugs and stacked them on top of the pile he’d started.

“Pack ‘em tight,” said Chuck, waddling up behind me with his own load. He stacked his in, and we turned to go back and get more.

“Did you see that stuff online today?” asked Chuck. “Wikileaks publishing Pentagon plans for bombing Beijing?”

I shrugged, still thinking about Lauren. I remembered the first time I saw her walking between the red-brick campus buildings of Harvard, laughing with her friends. I’d just gotten into the MBA program, using money I’d earned from selling my stake in a media start-up, and she’d just started the law program. We’d both been filled with dreams of making the world a better place.

“They’re making a lot of noise about it in the media,” continued Chuck, still talking about the Pentagon leak, “but I don’t think it’s a big deal. Just role-playing exercises.”

“Uh-huh.” My mind was stuck on Lauren.

Soon after we met, heated debates in Harvard Square beer halls had led to passionate nights. I’d been the first of my family to attend university, never mind Harvard, and I’d known she was from some old-money family, but at the time it hadn’t seemed relevant. She’d wanted to escape from the confines of her family, and I’d wanted everything she represented.

We’d married quickly after graduation, eloped, and moved to New York. Her father hadn’t been impressed. Almost as soon as we were married, Luke had been conceived—an accident. A happy accident, but one that had forever changed the new world we’d barely settled ourselves into.

“You haven’t heard a word I’ve said, have you?”

By then Chuck and I were standing on the sidewalk of Twenty-Fourth Street after exiting the back entrance to our building. It was raining, and the icy gray skies matched my mood. Just a week ago it had been warm, but the temperature had sharply dropped.

This section of Twenty-Fourth, less than two blocks from Chelsea Piers and the Hudson River, was more of a back alley. Parked cars lined both sides of the narrow street below windows covered in mesh grills, and the sound of cars honking floated down from Ninth Avenue in the distance.

To one side of our building there was some kind of a taxi repair shop, and a small gang of men stood outside under the grimy awning, smoking cigarettes and laughing. Chuck had his delivery of water to be shipped to the garage.

Chuck gently clapped me on the back. “Are you okay?”

We wound our way through the taxi drivers and mechanics to his pallet, off to one side of the garage, and picked up some more containers of water.

“Sorry,” I replied after a pause, grunting as I picked up my load. “Lauren and I—”

“Yeah, I heard from Susie. So she’s off for an interview in Boston?”

I nodded. “We live in a million-dollar condo, but it’s not good enough. When I was growing up in Pittsburgh, I couldn’t even imagine living in a million-dollar home.”  Affording the condo was a stretch on my salary, but at the same time I didn’t feel like I could afford anything less.

“Neither could she, and by that I mean only a million-dollar home.” He laughed. “Hey, you knew what you were getting into.”

“And she’s always off with Richard when I’m working.”

Chuck stopped and put down his water containers.“Cut that short. He’s a creep, but Lauren’s not like that.”

He swiped his badge past the security device on the back entrance. When it didn’t work after two tries, he rummaged around in his pockets for a key.

“Stupid thing doesn’t work half the time,” he muttered under his breath. Opening the door he turned to me. “Just give her some time and space to figure it out. Turning thirty is a big deal for women.”

I walked in ahead of him while he held the door open.

“I guess you’re right. Now what were you talking about?”

“The news today. Things are getting totally out of hand in China. Have you been watching? More burning flags outside embassies, ransacking American stores. FedEx said they had to stop operations in China, even delivery of vaccines for the bird flu outbreak, and now Anonymous is threatening to attack them in retaliation.”

Anonymous was the citizen hacktivist group we’d been reading about more and more in the news. We’d reached the storage locker again, and we stacked the water containers.

“That why you’re stocking up?”

“Just a coincidence, but I also read that cyberattacks on the Department of Defense have stepped up an order of magnitude.”

“DoD’s getting attacked?” I asked, concerned. He’d been researching the cyber world ever since I brought it up at the barbecue. “Is it serious?”

“It gets attacked millions of times even on a good day, but it’s getting more targeted. Makes me nervous someone is planning something in meatspace.”

“Meatspace?”

“The internet is in cyberspace, but we”—he smiled, pausing for effect—“are in meatspace, get it?”

Opening the back door we walked back out into the rain.

“God help us, now you have something new to be paranoid about.”

Chuck snorted. “Only yourself to blame.”

We walked back to the garage and found Rory, our neighbor, talking to one of the men.

“Thirsty?” laughed Rory. He must have seen us lugging the containers. “What’s all the water for?”

“Just like to be prepared,” replied Chuck. He nodded at the man Rory was talking to.

“Mike, this is Stan. He runs the garage here.”

I reached out to shake Stan’s hand. “Nice to meet you.”

“Not sure how much longer I’ll be running this joint,” said Stan as I shook his hand. “The way things are going.”

“Used to be we had Bob Hope and Johnny Cash,” sympathized Chuck. “Now we have no hope and no cash.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” Stan laughed, and all the cabbies around the entrance laughed too.

“You need any help?” asked Rory.

“Naw, thanks, man.” Chuck waved a hand at the dozen or so containers. “Not too much left.”

We headed back in for another load.

“COULD YOU GIVE me your credit card?”

“Why?”

“Because mine are all cancelled,” replied Lauren angrily.

She’d been the victim of identity theft just after Thanksgiving. Someone started taking out loans in her name, creating hedge accounts with online trading systems. It was a total mess.

“I can give it to you,” I said, “but forget trying to order anything.”

We were having breakfast. I was spooning back oatmeal, Lauren was drinking coffee and surfing the internet on her laptop, and Luke was back to the fruit-chunks-and-dog game.

Ellarose burbled away on her play mat on the floor in front of the TV. Where Luke was a bruiser, big for his age, Ellarose was petite, small for a six-month-old. She didn’t have much hair yet, and what she did have seemed to always be sticking out at right angles, like a sand-colored bird’s nest. Her little eyes were constantly watching, wide open, seeing what was going on with the world. We were looking after her for a few hours so Susie could go shopping.

I was staying home for the day. The week before Christmas was completely dead business-wise, and it was a good time to catch up on paperwork. The kitchen counter in front of me was filled with scraps of paper and notes I was trying to organize. Unconsciously, I picked up my smartphone, swiping it to check my social media feeds. Nothing new.

“What do you mean, forget trying to order anything?” Where I was winding down for the holidays, Lauren was still going full speed and dressed up in a suit for meetings. “We still have more than a week before Christmas. I’ll just get the one-day delivery. Amazon said this year—”

“It’s not Amazon.”

Picking up the remote from the counter, I turned up the volume on CNN. “FedEx and UPS have ground to a complete standstill today due to what they say is a virus in their logistics shipping software—”

“That’s just great.” Lauren slapped closed the cover to her laptop.

“—blaming the hacking group Anonymous after they declared their intention to punish shipping companies for halting shipment of flu vaccines into China. Representatives of Anomymous deny the attack, saying they only initiated denial-of-service—”

“So where are you going today?” I asked.

“—projecting hundreds of millions of dollars of lost revenue for this holiday season, driving the economy even further into recession—”

“Meeting some headhunters downtown. Starting some dialogues to see if any low-hanging fruit comes loose.”

I forced an encouraging smile. “That’s great, honey.” How was it that I’d had to start to lie to her about how I felt?

She’d become withdrawn since coming back from Boston. I was trying to give her space to go through whatever process she had to go through, but it felt like I was losing her. I was behaving as if I didn’t care, when every fiber inside me wanted to reach out to her and shake her and ask what the hell was happening.

She sighed, glancing toward the TV and then looking back at me. I met her gaze but then dropped my eyes, giving her that space. Lauren continued to look at me and then leaned down to give Luke a kiss, whispering something in his ear. Quickly, she picked up her laptop and made for the door.

“I’ll be back just after lunch,” she called over her shoulder.

“See you then,” I replied to an already closing door.

She didn’t even give me a kiss.

Cutting up the last pieces of a peach I handed them to Luke. With a grin he grabbed it, then squealed with glee as he threw it onto the floor for an appreciative Gorby. For good measure, one of the chunks flew sideways and landed on the report I was trying to read.

I smiled and wiped off the peach. “Done with breakfast? Want to play with Ellarose?”

Picking up a napkin, I reached down to clean his face and then lifted him up out of his highchair to deposit him on the ground. He stood unsteadily for a moment, holding onto the legs of my barstool for balance, before rocketing off toward Ellarose in the tottering-on-the-edge-of-disaster run he’d been working on. Reaching out, he caught onto the front of the couch, stopping himself like a wobbly ice skater.

He looked down at Ellarose and then up at me with a big smile.

Ellarose, for her part, hadn’t yet mastered the art of turning onto her stomach. She was lying on her back on her play mat, looking up at Luke with wide eyes. Luke squeaked and plopped down onto his knees to crawl over to her, putting a hand onto her face.

“Careful, Luke, be gentle,” I warned.

He looked into Ellarose’s eyes and then sat up  next to her, protectively, and looked at the TV.

“The extent of the bird flu outbreak within China is still unclear, but the US State Department has now issued a travel advisory. Combined with a growing anti-China boycotting movement—”

“Crazy world, huh?” I said to Luke, watching him watch the TV. Gorby walked over to curl up behind him.

I went back to reading a report on the potential market for augmented reality on the internet. I’d just been sent a pair of new augmented reality glasses by one of the big tech companies. It was a technology that fascinated me, and I wanted to get involved in a start-up, but Lauren said it was too risky.

After fifteen minutes of reading and doing my expenses, I noticed Luke was being awfully quiet. He’d fallen asleep against Gorby.

I yawned.

A nap seemed like a great idea, so I walked over and picked up Ellarose to deposit her in her playpen by the window. I picked up Luke, his head lolling around like a sack of potatoes, and laid down on the couch, cradling my son on my stomach as I drifted off to sleep.

CNN droned on in the background as I dropped off. “At what point does cyberespionage become cyberattack? With more on this we go to our correspondent…”

§

A loud banging on the door woke me up. My brain emerged from its fog, and then there was the banging again.

“I’ll huff, and I’ll puff, and I’ll blooow your door down!”

Luke had drooled all over my T-shirt. My muscles were sluggish. How long was I out? I groaned, struggling to sit up, carefully holding Luke.

“Yeah, yeah, just a sec,” I called out.

Holding Luke in one arm, I got up and ambled toward the door and unlocked it. Chuck burst through holding brown paper bags in both hands.

“Anyone for lunch?” he announced enthusiastically, proceeding to the kitchen counter where he began unpacking.

Luke watched Chuck with half-open eyes. I crossed over to the couch and laid him down, covering him up with a blanket, and then returned to Chuck. By then he’d emptied everything out onto plates.

“Is it lunchtime already? I conked out.” I rubbed my eyes and stretched. “What is that?”

“Foie gras and French fries, my friend.” Chuck waved a baguette around in the air like a magic wand. “And some Creole shrimp in butter dipping sauce.”

It was no wonder I was getting fat.“I can feel my arteries hardening already.” Reaching around the counter, I slid open a drawer to pull out two forks and handed him one while I dug into the French fries with the other. “No restaurant stuff this time of year?”

“This is the busiest time of the year.” Chuck picked a meaty chunk of foie gras from atop the French fries. “But I got stuff to do here.”

“More stuff for your doomsday locker?”

He smiled and stuffed the fatty liver into his mouth.

I shook my head. “Do you really believe it’s all going to come apart?”

Chuck wiped his greasy lips with the side of one hand. “You really believe it never will?”

“People are always saying the world is ending, but it never does. Society is too far advanced.”

“Tell that to the Easter Islanders and Anasazi Indians.”

“Those were isolated groups.”

“What about the Romans, then? And tell me we’re not isolated on this speck of blue called Earth?”

Picking up a shrimp, I began shelling it.

“I’ve been researching the cyber world, at your suggestion,” said Chuck, “and you’re right.”

I regretted I’d said anything.

“What’s happening now,” he whispered, “makes the Cold War look like an age of transparency and understanding.”

“You’re being dramatic.”

“For all human history, the ability of one country to affect another was based on control of physical territory. Guess what broke that for the first time?”

“Cyber?” Popping the shrimp into my mouth, the rich texture of Cajun spices and butter exploded into my senses. Oh, that’s good.

“Nope. Space systems. Ever since Sputnik launched in 1957, outer space has been the military high-ground.”

“What does that have to do with cyber?”

“Because cyber is the second thing that broke it. It’s replacing space as the new military high-ground.” Chuck stuffed a mouthful of greasy fries into his mouth. “And outer space is already a part of cyberspace.”

“What does that mean?”

“Most space systems are internet-based. To us, things in space look far away, but in cyberspace, there’s no difference.”

“So what’s the difference?”

“While space requires a massive amount of money, all that you need to get into cyberspace is a laptop.”

Switching from the shrimp to the fries, I hunted for my own chunk of foie gras. “So that has you worried?”

He shook his head. “What’s got me worried are those logic bombs in the energy grid you talked about. The Chinese wanted us to find them, so we’d know they could do it. Otherwise, we’d never have spotted them.”

“So you’re saying the CIA, NSA, all those three-letter agencies you love to hate, none of them would have seen it?” I said skeptically.

He shook his head. “People have this image of cyberwar, and they think of videogames and everything being squeaky clean, but it won’t be like that.”

“So what will it be like?”

“In 1982 the CIA rigged a logic bomb that blew up a Siberian pipeline—it created an explosion of three kilotons, as much as a small nuclear device. All they did was alter some code from a Canadian company that controlled it, and that was more than thirty years ago. No one knows what they could do now.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad.”

“The new cyberweapons of mass destruction they’re building, nobody’s ever tested them,” continued Chuck, his smile gone. “At least with nuclear weapons you know they’re scary—Hiroshima, Bikini—but with cyber, nobody knows how much damage they’ll cause if they let them loose, and they’re merrily sticking them into each others’ infrastructure like candy canes on a doomsday Christmas tree.”

“You really think it’s that bad?”

“Do you know that when they set off the atomic bomb for the first time, during the Manhattan Project, the physicists running the show had a bet going whether it would ignite the atmosphere?”

I shook my head.

“Their best guess was fifty-fifty that they’d destroy all life on the planet, but they went ahead anyway. Government planning hasn’t changed, my friend, and nobody knows what these cyber weapons might do if unleashed.”

“So there’s nowhere to run anymore if things go wrong anyway, is that what you’re saying?” I countered. “If it goes down, do you really want to be around to struggle and watch everyone die? I’d prefer a nice quick exit.”

“You’re being awfully casual.” He looked at Luke on the couch. “You wouldn’t fight with everything you’ve got, till your last breath, to protect him?”

I looked at Luke. He was right. I nodded, conceding the point.

“You have too much faith in things always moving forward,” he declared. “Since humans began making stuff, we’ve lost more technologies than we’ve gained. Society goes backwards from time to time.”

“I’m sure you have some examples.” There was no use in trying to slow him down when he was on a roll.

“On a dig in Pompeii, they found aqueduct technology better than what we’re using today.” Chuck dug into the pile of French fries. “And how they built the pyramids is still lost tech.”

“Now we’re talking ancient spacemen?”

“I’m being serious. When Admiral Zheng pulled his fleet out of Suzhou in China in 1405, he had ships the size of modern aircraft carriers and took nearly thirty thousand troops with him.”

“Really?”

“Look it up. Zheng was probably in contact with our West Coast Indians four hundred years before Lewis and Clark brought Sacajawea on holiday there. I’d bet the Chinese were smoking reefers with the Oregon chiefs on ships bigger than modern battle cruisers a hundred years before Columbus ‘discovered’ America. Know how big Columbus’s famous Niña was?”

I shrugged.

“Fifty feet, and he had maybe fifty guys with him.”

“Didn’t he have three boats?”

Chuck stabbed the fries with his fork. “Before we’d even managed to paddle out of Europe in little buckets, China was already sailing the globe with thirty thousand troops on fleets of aircraft-carrier-sized warships.”

I stopped eating. “What’s your point? I’m not following.”

“Just that society goes backwards sometimes, and all this stuff with China—I get the feeling we’re fooling ourselves.”

“They’re not the enemy?”

“Just the wrong perspective,” he said. “We’re squaring them up to be the enemy, but mostly because we need an enemy.”

“So you’re saying you’re wrong about the cyber threat?”

“No, but—”

Chuck left his fork in the fries and picked up shrimp with his fingers.

“But what?”

“Maybe we’re blinding ourselves to the real enemy.”

“What enemy is that, my conspiracy-loving friend?” I asked, rolling my eyes, expecting some rhetoric about the CIA or NSA.

Chuck finished shelling his shrimp and pointed it at me.

“Fear. Fear is the real enemy.” He looked toward the ceiling. “Fear and ignorance.”

I laughed. “With all this stuff you’re stockpiling, aren’t you the one that’s afraid?”

“Not afraid,” he said deliberately, looking down from the ceiling to stare into my eyes. “Prepared.”

Day 1 – December 23

8:55 a.m.

“IT’S TWO DAYS before Christmas. Isn’t it time to give it a rest?”

Lauren looked at me from across our kitchen counter. “I have to make this meeting. Richard really went out on a limb to get this guy to talk to me.”

We had the bedroom door shut, but the screech of Luke crying through the baby monitor on the counter cut her short. She reached down and shut it off, just like she’d been shutting me off for the past month.

I threw my hands in the air. “Well, if Richard set it up, then of course, abandon your family for another day.”

“Don’t start.” She clenched her jaw. “At least Richard’s trying to help me.”

Closing my eyes and taking a deep breath, I mentally began to count to ten. It was almost Christmas, and there was no sense in escalating. I ran a hand through my hair while Lauren stared at me.

I sighed. “I don’t think Luke’s feeling well. We need to go food shopping for the holidays, and like I said, I need to finish delivering those client gifts.”

My new administrative assistant had forgotten to deliver a dozen of the personalized gifts that we’d created for our clients. She’d omitted the ones in Manhattan because they weren’t on the long-distance mailing list. When we discovered the error, she’d been in a rush to get off to her family for the holidays, and with FedEx and UPS down, I’d stupidly offered to deliver them myself.

Of course, now it was the last minute. Yesterday Luke and I had delivered half of them, running all around Little Italy and Chinatown to some of our smaller start-up partners, but I still had a few left for our bigger clients. Luke had enjoyed the outing—he was a social butterfly and would step right up and jabber to everyone we met.

“Is delivering a couple of engraved pen holders really going to make or break your business?”

“That’s not the point.”

She took a deep breath, and her shoulders relaxed. “I forgot. I’m sorry. But this is really important to me.”

Obviously more important than we are, I thought, but I held my tongue and tried to strike the thought from my head. Negative thoughts had a way of festering.

Lauren looked toward the ceiling. “Can’t you get Susie—”

“They’re out all day.”

“Then what about the Borodins?”

She wasn’t going to give in. A pause while I inspected the tiny plastic Christmas tree we’d stuck on a side table next to the couch.

“Fine. I’ll figure it out.” I shook my head but managed a smile. “Go on, get going.”

“Thanks.” She began collecting her coat and purse. “And if you do go out, don’t forget to bundle up Luke. I’ll just go and calm him down before I leave.”

I nodded and returned to surfing through some websites on new social media outlets. The web was incredibly slow. It was taking forever for new pages to load.

Lauren went into our room, and I heard her talking to Luke. She picked him up and began pacing back and forth with him, and the crying stopped. Lauren appeared a moment later with her coat on, coming around to my side of the counter to give me a little hug and peck on the cheek. I shrugged her off. She swatted at me playfully and I smiled, and then she was off and out the door.

As soon as she left, I went to check on Luke in his crib in the bedroom. He was still whimpering, but had calmed down and was cuddled up with his blanket. Returning to my laptop, I tried doing some more research, but the slow web connection made it next to impossible. I couldn’t be bothered to check the router, so I gave up and decided to get on with my day.

Opening the front entrance to our apartment, I walked next door to the Borodins. With our door left ajar, I could still hear Luke.

Our apartment was at the end of a narrow carpeted hallway, lit along its length by recessed lighting. Susie and Chuck lived right next door, on the left coming out of our place, with the Borodins to our right.

The next door down from Chuck’s was Pam and Rory’s place, directly across from another hallway that led off at right angles to the elevators. The emergency exit was right next to Rory’s, with the stairwell leading down six floors from there. Five more apartments lined the rest of the hallway, ending in the downstairs entrance to Richard’s three-story condo on the opposite side of the building from ours.

Irena opened the door at my first quiet knock. They were always home, and she must have been standing just beside the door, cooking as usual. The smell of roasting potatoes and meats and yeasty bread wafted out as the door slid open.

“Mi-kay-yal, pryvet,” greeted Irena, her warm smile creasing the deep wrinkles in her face.

At nearly ninety years of age, she was stooped and shuffled when she walked, but always had a bright twinkle in her eye. As old as she was, I’d still think twice before messing with her—she’d been a part of the Red Army that had defeated the Nazis in the frozen wastelands of northern Russia. As she liked to tell me, “Troy fell, Rome fell, but Leningrad did not fall.”

She was wearing a green-checked apron, slightly stained, and held a tea towel bunched up in one hand. With the other she motioned for me to enter.

“Come, come.”

I glanced at their doorframe and the mezuzah affixed there, a tiny but beautifully carved, ornate mahogany box. At one time I thought these were like Jewish “good luck” charms, but I’d come to understand this wasn’t their purpose. They were more about keeping evil away.

Hanging back, I resisted entering.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to, but going in there always ended with a plate of sausages and recriminations that I was too thin. That being said, I loved her food, and I enjoyed even more the simple pleasure of being doted on. It made me feel like a kid, protected and indulged, and no self-respecting Russian grandmother would have it any other way

“Sorry, I’m in a bit of a hurry.” Whatever she was cooking smelled amazing, and I realized that dropping off Luke would give me the perfect opportunity to come back later and be spoiled. “I don’t mean to impose, but would you be able to watch Luke for a few hours?”

She shrugged and nodded. “Of cour