by Mike Brogan
Jefferson nodded. “Because most car computer codes have frankly been somewhat outdated. The codes are older, simple codes. Like on-off switches used in industrial controls. They’re easy to manipulate. Some can be turned off like a light switch.”
“What about older cars without Wi-Fi?”
“Old cars are safe. They can’t be hacked,” Ravi said. “They’re basically a closed box. Not designed to connect to the Internet.”
“The truth is,” Jefferson said, “Auto makers never anticipated that someone would want to seriously hack into a car’s drivability through its Wi-Fi. So companies didn’t upgrade or strengthen their computer security protections to the high standards of, say a bank application or Microsoft software.”
Madison said, “So bottom line – a smart hacker can access my car’s driving controls by breaking into its Wi-Fi Internet-connected programs.”
“I’m afraid that’s true,” Jefferson said.
“What kind of Wi-Fi programs?” she asked.
“Maybe something like Bluetooth, Blackberry, or Uconnect that links to Sprint, GPS, for example, or satellite navigation systems, and others.”
“And then the hacker can take over driving my car.”
Ravi nodded, looking a little guilty, like it was partly his fault.
No one spoke as the facts sank in.
“What’s the remedy?” Kevin asked.
“Much more Internet security, and much better security against hacking,” Jefferson said.
“All auto companies are already beefing up security. Installing software upgrades should help,” Ravi said.
“But what about the XCar’s protection?”
“We thought we built a strong protective barrier around all XCar drivability systems . . .” Ravi said.
. . . “but obviously, we have to improve it fast!” Jefferson said.
TWENTY FIVE
“In brief,” Jefferson said, “We have to accept the possibility that someone has found a way around our protective barrier.”
“. . . and remotely entered through our XCar’s OBD II portal,” Ravi added.
“What’s the OBD II portal?” Madison asked.
“A small device beneath most steering wheels where mechanics can tap in and diagnose your car’s various systems, looking for problems. Find trouble areas.”
“So if someone enters the OBD II portal, they might be able to take over driving the XCar,” Madison said.
“Yes,” Ravi said.
“What kind of someone?”
“Someone very well acquainted with our XCar drivability and computers systems,” Ravi said.
“But who would do such a thing?” Madison asked.
Ravi shrugged. “A crazy fired engineer maybe.”
“A brilliant engineer with a sick mind,” Jefferson said.
“But why would - ?”
“- a psycho doesn’t need a why,” Naismith said.
Madison said, “Others in this town may have a strong why!”
“Who?” Pete said.
“Your competitors. XCar must terrify them. Their cars can’t begin to match XCar’s awesome consumer benefits, like the gas savings. XCars are a huge threat to their business.”
Pete nodded. “True enough. The gas-guzzler carmakers are very concerned.”
“So are the petroleum companies,” Ravi said. “And the service station repair shops.”
“But the question is - how far will they go to stop the five-hundred-mile-range electric XCar?” Jefferson said.
“Would they surge XCars, cause crashes, injuries, and deaths?” Ravi asked.
No one spoke.
Maybe they already have, Madison thought.
TWENTY SIX
Kurt Krugere sat in his large corner office, feet up on his battleship-sized oak desk at the AsiaCars Detroit Headquarters, a modern eighteen story building with gleaming marble halls, green-tinted glass and lots of shiny stainless steel. He sipped his single malt, celebrating XCar’s growing surge disaster. He’d heard that many XCar customers had already canceled their buy-orders for the new car.
His burner phone rang. Van Horn calling.
“What’s up?” Krugere said.
“Good research. The XCar surges are starting to do major damage to Global Vehicle’s overall brand image.”
“As expected.”
“Yes, but there are a lot of injuries. And some fatalities. Which concerns me,” Van Horn said.
“The deaths?”
“Yes.”
“You knew there would be some. But people blame the deaths on Global Vehicles.”
“But if there are too many, the feds will jump all over this.”
“But they won’t be able to figure it out. And remember what we agreed – casualties in electric cars are needed to help preserve our traditional American automotive industry. As they say, “what’s good for the traditional American car industry is good for America. And right now casualties in electric cars are good for protecting the American car industry from heading off into electric and other propulsion systems!”
“I understand,” Van Horn said.
“And don’t forget – the surge also benefits your petroleum industry donor-clients.”
“Agreed.”
“Why else would they contribute millions to our program? They’ll lose billions if electric vehicle sales continue growing at recent rates.”
“I know.”
“Can’t be allowed to happen,” Krugere said.
Van Horn said, “The research shows that the XCar surges are already igniting consumer fears about all electric cars. Many shoppers are dropping electric-powered cars off their shopping list.”
“And when YouTube and television show more bloody accidents, electric car sales will sink like the Titanic.”
“As your AsiaCar sales climb!”
“Quite right.” Krugere smiled as his burner phone dinged. He checked an email, read it, and smiled. “Here’s more good news. My freelance BussSpeed writer just posted a fake-news story about an XCar battery that exploded into flames and burned some boy scouts.”
Van Horn nodded “Hey - if it’s on the Internet it’s true, right?”
Krugere nodded. “The Internet - what a wonderful way to lie!” He sipped his whiskey and hung up.
He checked his watch. Lunchtime. He stood up, stretched, looked outside, and saw one of his young executives loading kids in baseball uniforms into a white AsiaCar Sport-Van. Probably taking them to a Little League game. Krugere felt a tinge of envy. His father never drove him to any games.
Krugere’s father drove him to bars. Where Earl Krugere forced young Krugere to wait in the car, sweltering in one hundred ten degrees under a blazing Texas sun, while Earl got shit-faced drunk inside. Roll-down windows saved Krugere’s life.
A life his mother was not involved in. As a stripper in the Frank Buck Traveling Circus, Mona Rae was traveling ten months a year. He saw her each Christmas until he was seven. That Christmas was his last with Mona Rae and Earl. They dropped him off at crazy Aunt Loretta’s house so they could go get high.
Never came back. Never saw them again. Never wanted to. Never heard what became of them. Never cared. Best thing that ever happened to him. Wouldn’t give them the time of day if they showed up tomorrow. Years later, he’d heard they’d escaped to Venezuela to avoid arrest by the Drug Enforcement Agency for trafficking.
So Krugere was raised by his batshit crazy Aunt Loretta and boozer Uncle Neef. They treated him like roadkill. So did most women for some reason. Which is why he didn’t care much for women. Why should he? Mom deserted him. Aunt Loretta never wanted him around. His two wives departed after a year of marriage.
And over time, he’d learned not to care much about other people. Again, why should he? There’s no law that said he had to.
In Desert Storm, he didn’t care when a mortar shell decapitated his commanding officer. In fact he appreciated it. The lying bastard got what he deserved for not backing Krugere�
�s claim that he was justified in shooting three teenage boys he saw give weapons to an Al Qaeda operative. Krugere managed to escape a court martial by threatening to expose a closeted transgender JAG judge.
In Iraq, he tromped over hundreds of bloody, broken bodies, some enemy, some fellow soldiers, some women and kids. He realized that he could just as easily be lying dead among them. It taught him a life lesson. The grim reaper reaps when he wants. Life was about survival. Now. At any cost.
You eliminated anything that threatened your survival now. The sooner the better.
* * *
Near Little Rock, Arkansas, Sister Rose Angela (aka Sister Zoom-Zoom) chewed bubble gum as she sped along Springlake Road in the shiny red XCar donated to the St. Jude’s Children’s Clinic in Hensley. She drove fast because fast was fun. Who says nuns can’t have fun? Heck, Pope Francis was a bouncer in a bar.
Fact is, she might have become a racecar driver if she hadn’t become a pediatric-nurse, and then a nun.
Sister Maria and Sister Theresa in the back seat, also nurse-nuns, loved to drive like bats out of hell. The Clinic kids called them “Nuns on the Run.”
She felt incredibly indebted and grateful to the local Don McCue Chevy-GV dealership who donated the new XCar to the St. Jude Clinic. The XCar would save the clinic thousands of dollars in car payments and gasoline costs each year.
And she was amazed at the XCar’s acceleration. She’d heard that electric cars were quiet, but the XCar was eerily silent . . . so silent she kept creeping over the speed limit.
If a police officer stopped her, she’d flash her angelic smile, and hope her St. Christopher medal on the dash would help. But Sister Maria swore St. Christopher was only good up to sixty-five mph.
Sister Rose Angela slowed down. She couldn’t afford a ticket.
The clinic needed the money. For kids like Tasha in the back seat, who also loved driving fast. Tasha, just nine, had chronic myelogenous leukemia, CML, a deadly cancer. Although she was doing extremely well, her CML prognosis was four to five years. And because Tasha’s parents couldn’t afford treatment, all her treatment, and her parents’ lodging, were free. St Jude’s picked up all costs for families who couldn’t pay.
And how many more times would Tasha be able to ride in a car going fast?
She turned onto State Road 167. As she slowed down for a curve, she sensed the car hesitate a bit. Was her battery power low? No - the gauge read FULL.
Did she imagine the hesitation?
No.
Suddenly the car bolted ahead - quickly reaching sixty - then seventy miles an hour! And her foot wasn’t touching the gas.
She slammed on the brakes. There were none. She pumped them. Nothing.
The car hit eighty!
Please Lord . . . !
She braked again. Nothing! The car swerved toward one side of the road, then swerved to the other.
Pull the key out! she told herself.
Can’t!
The keyless pod is in my pocket!
Then she remembered - the key pod had to be near the car to start it. Maybe if I . . .
She yanked the key pod from her pocket and threw it out the window.
Two seconds later, the engine turned itself off . . . the car slowed down to ten miles-per-hour, then five miles-per-hour. She strong-armed the steering wheel onto the right side of the road and stopped on the shoulder.
She rested her head on the steering wheel, huffing like a marathoner, thanking the Lord, St. Christopher, St Jude and all the Saints in heaven.
She looked in back.
Sister Maria and Sister Theresa stared at her like she’d lost her mind.
“How’s Tasha?” she asked.
Tasha giggled and said, “Can we do that again? Please?”
TWENTY SEVEN
DETROIT
In a small alcove beside the Global Vehicles Media Center, Madison watched CEO Hank Harrison answer his phone again. In minutes he would hold a news conference on the upcoming nationwide XCar launch. Dealers were receiving shipments of XCars and prepping them for sale on launch day.
But Madison saw concern in Harrison’s brown eyes. He was preparing to answer tough questions about the XCar surges. He also had to decide whether he should postpone the national launch if the surges couldn’t be fixed.
Harrison was a tall, imposing man, an ex-Navy fighter pilot and a brilliant automotive engineer. His thick brown hair, smart glasses, and dark blue suit were impeccable. But he looked much more tired than when she met him last week.
Clearly, the surges were draining his expectations for the new XCar. He confessed to her that he’d never faced an engineering problem like surging. “Some kind of outside interference that’s impossible to identify, some unknown entity is injuring our good customers, our cars, and our good brand.”
Not knowing the cause was taking a visible toll on him.
So was the phone call he’d just received. He slumped against the wall, and shook his head.
“Okay, I’ll leave right now,” he said.
Leave now? He can’t leave now! she thought. He has a press conference in five minutes!
Harrison hung up and said, “DuWayne Jefferson wants to show me something he believes causes the surges.”
“Is he coming here?” Pete asked.
“No. He has to show me at our Engineering Campus laboratory now!”
“But your press conference is right now,” Pete Naismith said.
“DuWayne says it’s critical that I see this now! In person. He thinks he may have found the cause of the surge. If he has, maybe we can fix it!”
“But the media assumes you’ll hold this conference,” Pete said.
“We never promised them I’d hold it. We said Global Vehicles would hold this press conference. So Pete, you could do it. Or for that matter, so could you Madison, since you wrote my conference remarks.”
Madison felt her stomach drop. She wasn’t sure she was ready to hold off story-starved journalists.
Harrison turned toward her. “Madison, your prepared remarks are precisely what I would say. And your responses to the likely questions they’ll ask make good sense. What I would say. Also, as a GV outsider, your comments might be seen as somewhat more objective. If technical questions come up, Pete could answer them. Any problems with that, Pete?”
“None at all,” Pete said, looking like a man who escaped a firing squad.
“Madison, what about you? Do you feel up to this?”
She wasn’t sure she did. “I’ll do my best. But what if they ask about whether you might postpone the national launch?”
Harrison nodded. “Tell them what we’ve discussed. We are still evaluating everything. If we identify and fix the surge in time, we’ll launch as planned. If not, and especially if more surges occur, we’ll postpone until the problem is fixed.”
“Okay . . .”
“Pete, you can introduce Madison as our XCar Press Communications Director.”
Pete and Madison nodded.
“You’ll do fine, guys!”
Hank Harrison turned and hurried out the back door, followed by his entourage of assistants.
Pete Naismith smiled at her. “You really okay with this?”
“I think so. If I can’t answer something, I’ll turn it over to you.”
“Okay.”
“Please pull the hook on me if I go off the rails or screw up. Or if it gets too technical. Or whenever you think it’s necessary.”
“Okay. But you’ll do fine!”
She wasn’t so sure.
Moments later, Pete introduced himself and Madison to the audience.
Madison stepped tentatively toward the podium and looked out at nearly sixty reporters facing her. She recognized some reporters from the major papers and networks, including some talking heads from CNN, FOX, NBC, and others. She was used to fielding questions from clients - but these journalists were pros. They asked tough questions. Trick questions maybe. And they were hungry for th
e story - whatever it took. Some looked like they were sharpening their knives.
And I’m their next sacrificial lamb?
She glanced at the remarks she’d prepared for Hank Harrison and put them down on the podium. She knew them by heart. It would be better not to read them.
She introduced herself and said, “Thank you for attending our XCar press conference. As you may know, the new XCar is an automotive technological phenomenon. Why? Simple. It offers vehicle owners the potential to save thousands of dollars in driving costs each year. And offers our government’s huge fleets the chance to save millions of our taxpayer dollars. It will reduce our country’s dependency on foreign oil, and at the same time reduce harmful carbon emissions, and -”
“What about the surging?” someone shouted in back.
She forgot to ask them to hold their questions to the end. But now the big scary question hung in the air like a twisting tornado. If she didn’t answer it now, she’d look like she was dodging it.
She paused. “As you know, all new products, including all new cars, have startup problems. This surging has occurred in less than 1.2 percent of the XCars. This includes our two hundred early-release XCars, plus our forty-five employee company XCars, plus the four hundred fifty XCars we test-drove over fifty thousand miles in recent months. For those 1.2 percent owners who experienced a surge, we’ve replaced their XCars with comparable GV vehicles. We are also reimbursing them for the gasoline savings they would have gained with the XCar. Meanwhile our engineers are working 24/7 in our labs and working closely with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to solve the surge problem.”
“But what’s causing the surge?”
“The engineers have found nothing in the XCar’s computer systems or engine controls that explains the cause. Every component and system checks out to be working correctly.”
“What about outside electronic interference?” shouted an ABC reporter.
“Both Global Vehicles and the NHTSA, the National Highway Traffic Safety Association, are rechecking the outside interference possibilities. Specifically, we’re looking at accidents that occurred near cell-phone towers, and whether newer cell phones, or certain apps, might somehow interfere with drivability. So far, there’s no indication they do. We’re also checking power surges from large municipal transformers.”