CyberStorm final Mar 13 2013
Page 35
The world had changed, and in big and small ways, I’d changed as well.
I’d started to read stories in the newspapers differently, to not just gloss over them, but to try and really understand what was happening, if there was any way I could help. I’d also started taking enjoyment in things that I’d always taken for granted—the feeling of a full stomach when going to bed, not worrying about what the children would eat tomorrow, having a safe place to sleep.
Walking into Columbus Circle, I saw Lauren standing next to Vince, and I waved. Lauren was holding a leash, attached to our new rescue dog, Buddy. The shelters had overflowed with animals after the disaster, and it was one more small way we could reduce the suffering.
“Look, there’s Mommy!”
I couldn’t believe I’d been so blind, so shortsighted to believe that she’d been unfaithful when all she’d been trying to do was better her life, and mine. It was the same prejudice that had almost cost our lives when I’d only been able to understand what was happening as a Chinese attack.
“Hey, baby!” I called out. “Antonia and I had a great walk!”
Lauren ran up to us and kissed me. Vince followed, pushing Luke in a stroller, and Patricia Killiam was here again. We’d been talking about her project she needed funding for, some amazing research into synthetic reality.
It was a beautiful day, with perfect blue skies. American flags draped the entrance to Central Park. We were here to watch the Independence Day celebrations and see Vince be awarded the key to New York City by the mayor.
I said hello to Vince and Patricia and then leaned down to kiss Luke. We all began walking into Central Park. At the edge of the crowd around the stage set for Vince’s ceremony, we met up with Chuck and Susie.
“Go on then,” I urged Vince as we greeted each other. “Time to be famous.”
He laughed. “Time is definitely the operative word.”
Still a strange kid.
I smiled and shook my head as he ran off toward the back of the stage. The crowd began to gather, and I pulled Antonia out of the baby sling to hold her in my arms.
“Look,” I said, lifting her up and pointing to the stage. Vince had just appeared, looking awkward in front of the crowd. “That’s your Uncle Vince.”
Antonia yawned, not understanding, and dribbled on me. I laughed and held her up against the sky, marvelling at how something so tiny could be so beautiful.
Seventy thousand people had died, but at least one life had been saved. If none of this had happened, Lauren would have probably gotten an abortion, and I would have never known about it. I would have never had Antonia in my life, never known she had ever existed, and I would have probably lost Lauren as well, off to Boston.
Looking into Antonia’s little eyes, I realized it wasn’t just her life that had been saved.
It had also been mine.
Epilogue – September 28
A CHANDELIER GLITTERED overhead while the sounds of Mozart played through the crowd. Lauren was sitting beside me, wearing a little black evening dress, and I had on a tuxedo. We were sitting at the head table in the Grand Ballroom of the Plaza Hotel, and the room was packed. It was a reception to celebrate the launch of Synthetic Sensory Incorporated, the company I’d started with Dr. Patricia Killiam.
After Dr. Killiam had pitched me on the concept, I couldn’t get it out of my head. The idea was revolutionary, an embedded biological-electronic interface that could perfectly simulate sensory stimulation. The technology was in its infancy, but she didn’t simply want to make games.
Her research showed that people were just as happy with simulated, virtual objects as they were with real, physical ones. How happy they were with the simulations depended on how real they appeared. If we could make people happy with virtual goods, she reasoned, then maybe we could cut down on our use of physical resources to satisfy everyone’s material desires.
Maybe we could use this to help save the planet.
I’d heard crazier ideas.
It was a lofty goal—too lofty for investors—so I’d played it down, instead making a pitch for the amazing video games we’d be able to create and ways we could boost work productivity.
Even if it was mostly Vince’s idea, I’d become a minor celebrity when the story had surfaced of how I’d used augmented reality to survive CyberStorm. I think it was the reason Dr. Killiam had asked me to work with her.
The music stopped, and Dr. Killiam nodded to me, getting up from our table to begin her speech. Irena and Aleksandr were here as well, dressed up for the evening, sitting directly across from us. I raised my glass, and Aleksandr raised his, winking at me.
“Did you see the news about Nepal?” whispered Chuck, sitting beside me. Susie was chatting with one of our venture investors on the other side of him.
“I saw.”
After CyberStorm, the world had given itself one summer off before diving back into the pool of entrenched interests and global conflict.
In the immediate aftermath of CyberStorm, the world had seemed ready to change and normalize laws, find ways to solve the problems, but this had only lasted a few months, and already it seemed that most of it would never materialize. Fighting had broken out in Nepal, and it looked like the whole world might be dragged into it.
India and China had been quietly squaring off over the water contained in the Himalayas, the glaciers there containing over three thousand cubic miles of fresh water, nearly as much as the combined Great Lakes. These glaciers fed five of the great rivers in Asia, collectively supplying fresh water to nearly half the world’s population.
The problem was that while the majority of these rivers flowed into India, Pakistan, and Indochina, the glacial watersheds were located entirely within Tibet, a part of China. China had begun a program of damming these rivers far upstream over a decade ago, but now the two nascent superpowers, India and China, were coming to blows, and tiny Nepal was caught in the middle.
The US was sending in troops as peacekeepers, but nobody had any idea how long the “peace” part would last. There was a lot of anti-Chinese sentiment, even after they’d helped rebuild our electrical grid. Many chose to see only one side to the coin, that the Chinese hackers had attacked us, ignoring the bigger picture of our own part in it.
Perhaps more accurately, they didn’t ignore it, but chose to use it as a political weapon.
Lauren’s parents were sitting across from us with a middle-aged man I recognized but couldn’t quite place. Patricia finished her speech, and while we were all clapping, Vince appeared, dressed in a white tuxedo. He was hard to miss—he had the last Miss America as his date for the evening.
“Did you hear I got my own financing?” asked Vince, dropping to one knee between Lauren and me. His date stood behind him, and Lauren rolled her eyes as she looked at me.
“Congratulations!” I replied enthusiastically.
Vince had been serious about wanting to build a technology for predicting the future. With all his fame, he’d been able to attract a nice pile of money to his cause.
“I’m going to call it the Phuture News Network,” he said proudly. “Like CNN, the Cable News Network, but for the future. And I’ll spell it with a ‘p-h’ to make it more cyber. What do you think?”
“Phuture News?” I laughed. “I like it.”
“Excellent!”
Someone tapped me on the shoulder. It was Chuck, and he was pointing up at Lauren’s father, who was standing to my other side with the middle-aged man I’d seen him sitting with.
“We’ll talk later,” said Vince. He kissed Lauren on the cheek and retreated with his date. I watched him wind his way towards Patricia, and heard them start talking about the wikiworld project they were collaborating on.
“Mike,” said Mr. Seymour, drawing my attention back to our group, “I’d like to introduce you to Herman Kesselring, the founder of Cognix Corporation.”
I stood to shake Mr. Kesselring’s hand.
That’s right,
Cognix Corporation. They were the ones whose artificial intelligence engines had cut through the clutter and found the Russian hackers.
“A great pleasure,” I said to Mr. Kesselring.
“The pleasure is mine, I assure you,” he replied.
Patricia had returned by that point, after finishing talking with Vince. She was followed by several reporters, who she quietly but firmly pushed away.
“Dr. Killiam,” said Mr. Seymour loudly, “I was hoping that I might be able to have a short chat together with you and Mike.”
“Why don’t you take my chair,” suggested Lauren, getting up. “I was just going to get some fruit juice at the bar anyway.”
Mr. Seymour nodded. “Thank you, sweetheart. We’ll just be a moment.”
Lauren leaned in to give me a small kiss and got up to head for the bar, while Mr. Seymour and Mr. Kesselring sat themselves down in a circle with me and Patricia.
“I think you already know Mr. Kesselring?” said Mr. Seymour to Patricia.
She nodded, smiling briefly at Kesselring. “Yes, I did the original research on many of Cognix’s artificial intelligence engines.”
“We have a proposal we’d like to put to the two of you,” continued Mr. Seymour.
“Okay,” I replied, shrugging to Patricia. I had no idea what he was going to say.
“All this mess the world is in,” said Kesselring, “it just isn’t going to end soon. Do you agree?”
Patricia and I nodded. The Nepal conflict looked like it would take years to sort out.
“Events like CyberStorm are just the start, I’m afraid, and there are going to be very few safe places left on Earth.”
“I don’t disagree with you,” I said, “but what are you getting at?”
Mr. Seymour leaned in toward us. “I know this may sound fantastical, but Mr. Kesselring and I and a group of leading businessmen have been discussing the idea of building floating cities, entire nation-states on the open seas.”
I laughed out loud. “You can’t be serious.”
Nobody else laughed.
The smile on my face vanished. “You’re serious.”
“After this CyberStorm mess, many wealthy and powerful people have lost faith that the government can protect them,” said Kesselring. “Already they are talking about launching a new war in Asia—for what? Have the governments even figured out what made CyberStorm possible?”
It was a big topic of conversation.
“Mr. Kesselring’s organization found the name of the Russian gangster they think coordinated the first attack, Sergei Mikhailov,” said Mr. Seymour.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Irena look toward us when she heard Sergei Mikhailov’s name, and she leaned over to whisper something to Aleksandr.
“That is still highly confidential,” added Kesselring. “But even if Mikhailov did initiate CyberStorm, and we know how, it doesn’t address the question of why he was able to do it.”
Kesseling had a good point. Despite all the new laws and the momentum to fix the problems, it seemed most of the weaknesses in critical infrastructure would remain. It was close to impossible to plug security holes in systems designed thirty or forty years ago.
“We can build cities on the ocean and be free to start again from the ground up,” continued Kesselring. “Or in this case, from the water up.”
“You’re really serious.”
“We are,” said Mr. Seymour, “and we have several billion dollars in advance funding already secured.”
“And it doesn’t hurt that we have some congressmen in the family,” added Mr. Seymour.
“So then what do you need us for?” asked Patricia, speaking for the first time since Kesselring had shared his idea.
I could sense apprehension. She knew Kesselring, and I wondered what their history was.
“We’re looking for complementary technology start-ups to get involved, to locate their headquarters on our first floating city-state,” said Kesselring, “and we would like Synthetic Sensory to be one of the first to make this commitment.”
“And why would we do that?” asked Patricia.
One problem we had was that we needed to have access to stem cell lines for Patricia’s research, and the government had recently reversed course on stem cell legislation. We were going to have a hard time doing the work in America.
“You know why, and we’d very much like you to get involved in the next stage of our synthetic intelligence program as well.”
It sounded like I was getting caught in the middle of something. I felt uneasy.
“And we’re ready to provide the next series of financing for your start-up, immediately.”
I almost fell backwards out of my chair. We’d only just secured the first round, and securing the next round would mean financial security for years. Security for my family.
Patricia sighed, sensing my reaction. “That’s a very generous offer.”
“Do you have some paperwork you could send us to have a look at?” I asked.
“I’ll send it right now,” said Kesselring, tapping his smartphone.
Patricia looked toward the ceiling. “And this floating island, what were you thinking of calling it?”
“We want it to be a world without borders,” said Mr. Seymour. “We were thinking of naming it Atlantis.”
“Atlantis?” said Patricia. “If you want to build a world without borders, why don’t you just call it by its definition?”
“And what would that be?” asked Kesselring.
Patricia looked around at all of us.
“Atopia.”
***
THANKS FOR READING!
If you enjoyed CyberStorm and want more, you can read my novel Atopia Chronicles where you will meet Patricia and Vince again, in the far-future world of Atopia.
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THANK YOU to all my beta readers (and sorry I don’t have surnames for all of you) John Jarrett, Amber, Ashvin, Bill Parker, Brian Lomax, Chrissie, Daryl Clark, Colby Zoeller, Ed Grbacz, Erik Montcalm, Hector, Jon, Josh Brandoff, Joy Lu, Julie Schmidt, Kimmerie, Max Zaoui, Mike, Niels Pedersenn, Niki, Or Shoham, Philip Graves, Samantha, Shabnam Penry, Tom Giebel, Warrick Burgess, William McClusky, Adam, Adi, Alison Hodge, Amit, Barry Sax, Bill Mather, Charles, Craig Haseler, David King, Edwina, Em (EndQuestionMark), Harold Kelsey, Haydn Virtue, Jim Duchek, Julie Parsons, Junko, Justin, Lance Barnett, Leonard, Leonardo, Lowell, Luke, Marjolein, Matt, Michelle, Mircea, Mog, Mrs. Dayfield, Naveen, Peter, Rob Linxweiller, Robin, Sam Romero, Sohna Ravindran, Stefano, Tara, Tim McGregorus, and William.
And of course, I’d like to thank my mother and father, Julie and David Mather, and last but most definitely not least, Julie Ruthven, for putting up with all the late nights and missed walks with the dogs.
-- Matthew Mather
About Matthew Mather
Matthew Mather is the #1 best-selling author of CyberStorm and the six-part series Atopia Chronicles. He started his career at the McGill Center for Intelligent Machines. He founded one of the world's first tactile feedback companies, and won the $2M award for �
��Best New Videogame” from Telefilm in 2007. He's worked professionally in computational nanotechnology, weather prediction systems, and cybersecurity. He spends his time between his work in Montreal and his family home in Charlotte, North Carolina.
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Table of Contents
Prologue
November 25
November 27
December 8
December 17
Day 1 - December 23
Day 2 - Christmas Eve – December 24
Day 3 – Christmas Day – December 25
Day 4 –December 26
Day 5 – December 27
Day 6 – December 28
Day 7 – December 29
Day 8 - December 30
Day 9 – New Year’s Eve - December 31
Day 10 – New Year’s Day – January 1
Day 11 – January 2
Day 12 – January 3
Day 13 – January 4
Day 14 – January 5
Day 15 – January 6
Day 16 – January 7
Day 17 – January 8
Day 18 – January 9
Day 19 – January 10
Day 20 – January 11
Day 21 – January 12
Day 22 – January 13
Day 23 – January 14
Day 24 – January 15
Day 25 – January 16
Day 26 – January 17
Day 27 – January 18
Day 28 – January 19
Day 29 – January 20
Day 30 – January 21
Day 31 – January 22
Day 32 – January 23
Day 33 – January 24