Black Fall

by Andrew Mayne

  For the entirety of human history, man has resolved violent conflict through destructive physical force. From the first rocks and club weapons to space-age guided missiles, man has waged war using weapons made of matter. But now, an even deadlier weapon is on the horizon. One whose devastation can’t be measured in kilotons or body count. A weapon so powerful, its impact can change the course of history both future and past.

  “My money is on lasers,” Gerald quips as we crash zoom into a photo of the Earth.

  We’ve seen forms of this weapon in use behind the Iron Curtain. Entire citizens wiped clean from the face of the earth. In Red China, towns, villages, and entire ethnic groups have been erased as if they never existed.

  The film illustrates this with names of towns vanishing from maps and people disappearing from photos. The examples are all places in the United States and Europe. Chicago disappears. People on a city street, dressed in late seventies and early eighties clothing, are erased one by one from the still image until the block is empty.

  In flash points around the world, this weapon has been used in targeted measure, resulting in civil unrest and overnight political upheaval.

  Stock footage of nameless rioting mobs in cities around the world. It makes me feel a little uncomfortable, given what’s happening in the world.

  This weapon is now a thousand times more potent in the electronic age. Its impact can be felt around the world at the speed of light. Its effect is so damaging, no retaliation is even possible.

  “Computer viruses?” Gerald wonders aloud.

  Wars can be fought and victors declared at the press of a button. This powerful weapon. This destructive force. Is . . . the Information Bomb.

  Nadine mouths “information bomb” to me. I shrug.

  The video cuts to photos of Orson Welles speaking into a microphone and a montage of the alleged panic over his War of the Worlds broadcast. Next, a newspaper with the headline is paul dead? fills the screen, followed by images of the Beatles and the rumor that one of their albums hid the message that Paul McCartney had died.

  “I get it,” says Nadine.

  The narrator continues:

  In the electronic age, warfare isn’t fought with bombs dropped from the sky, but with information cruise missiles flying through the telephone lines, radio waves, and the digital communications of tomorrow.

  “Information cruise missiles?” Gerald shakes his head at the clumsy phrase.

  The ammunition is rumor, innuendo, misinformation, and leaks. More biological than mechanical, the delivery vehicles are ordinary citizens, journalists, media personalities, and politicians.

  He snorts. “Even better!”

  The Citizens Communication Agency is at the forefront of safeguarding our nation and our allies from the spread of information warfare.

  “Thank god,” Gerald says sarcastically.

  Our goal is round-the-clock monitoring of news media and other forms of information dissemination. Our first line of defense is information countermeasures working hand in hand with trusted news agencies, local authorities, and citizens dedicated to preventing information age warfare.

  I think of the empty building we’re in and whisper, “Well, I feel safer knowing the hardworking men and women of the CCA are protecting us.”

  The video ends and Nadine turns away from the screen to face us. Her expression is one of shock. “What the hell was that?”

  “At least half a million dollars if you ask me,” says Gerald. “I can only imagine what the rest of this boondoggle costs.”

  “Yeah, but can you explain to me what this was supposed to be?” No nonsense, and not afraid to sweetly tell someone when they’re bullshitting her, she’s having a problem with this. We all are.

  “A government public relations office?” Gerald asks.

  “Why would a public-facing PR office be a super-secret government agency? It kind of doesn’t make sense,” I observe.

  “Maybe this is a front for something else?” Nadine replies.

  Gerald points to the television. “That’s a lot of effort for a smokescreen. This is something you show employees to get them psyched about their mission.”

  “Or to convince a senator to keep funding you,” I add.

  Nadine now seems confused. “Fund you for what? It’s just an empty office. What were they supposed to do here?”

  “Protect us from information cruise missiles. Isn’t it obvious?” Gerald answers drily. “I mean, there are a lot of agencies that don’t make sense. The more secretive they are the less oversight they have. This could have just been some NSA idea that went nowhere.”

  “We’re asking field agents to cut down their gas mileage and we’ve got the money for this?” Nadine is getting more incensed by the whole concept as she ponders it.

  “Protecting democracy isn’t cheap. Or efficient,” Gerald replies.

  “Maybe there’s more to this place?” I think of the security guard’s talk of underground levels. As a little girl I lived in a house with secret passageways and rooms. I was six before I found out that wasn’t normal.

  “We didn’t see anything else,” he says.

  “We weren’t exactly looking,” I explain, thinking of all the times guests walked right past hidden doors in our mansion. “Maybe we should look again?”

  Nadine is staring at her phone. “Southeast corner.”

  “What?” I look over her shoulder. She’s pulled up a Google Maps aerial view of the building.

  “See that?” She gestures to a metal box on the roof. “That’s an elevator housing.”

  “We looked inside the elevator. It only had two floor buttons.” Gerald had made a point of inspecting it.

  “That was the one in the front.” She shows us the entrance. “Notice on the image how there’s no motor box? That’s because it was a piston elevator. It only went up one floor. This one is in the back, and it has a machine room on the ceiling because it probably goes much deeper.”

  I’m amazed at how she knows this. “You can tell that from a photo?”

  “I once wanted to work with the CIA. This is the kind of thing they look for.”

  Gerald and I nod with approval, impressed by her yet again.

  A few minutes later, we’re in a conference room at the back of the building knocking on wood paneling, looking for a secret passage. Counting strides and comparing it to the aerial photo, we’ve narrowed the possible section down to just a few meters. Nadine taps the butt of her flashlight against the wall right in the middle, and it sounds hollow.

  Gerald pulls out a pocket tool and uses the blade to pry open a hidden door being held shut by a magnet. When we swing it aside, there’s an elevator behind it.

  “Holy crap,” he mutters. “This is some Mission: Impossible stuff!”

  “I guess this makes sense,” I reply. “If you want to go to the secret section, just call the people into a conference room and lock the door.” I use my lock pick to activate the call button. A moment later, the doors open.

  We nervously eye the interior. I wonder if one of us should wait behind, but we all step inside. There’s no way I’m not going down there, and I’m sure they feel the same way.

  “Are we taking bets on what we’re going to find?” Gerald asks as he presses the only button.

  “Sex dungeon,” says Nadine sweetly, shocking Gerald and me a little.

  “It’ll be spiders. Lots of spiders,” I groan.

  A few seconds later, the doors open. None of our guesses are even close.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The Bridge

  My grandfather taught me a lot about suspense, expectation, and surprise. One of the most important lessons was that to truly enthrall your audience, you need to exceed whatever it was they were imagining was behind the curtain.

  What’s on the other side of the elevator is going to have us talking for a long time.

  Nadine is the first one to speak as we try to process what’s in front of us. We all wan
t to say the same thing, but she’s the only one fearless enough to just put it out there. “Is this supposed to be a spaceship?”

  It’s an absurd question, but a spaceship is exactly what comes to mind as the lights flicker on at the end of the corridor and we step into a chamber that resembles the bridge from an old Star Trek episode. The walls are all curved metal panels. A large metal chair sits on a riser in the middle, flanked by two sleek workstations with large CRT monitors. Headsets rest on the consoles alongside an array of buttons.

  Directly in front of them is a huge video projection screen, the kind of thing you’d expect to show alien spacecraft or planets right before phasers start firing. Smaller monitors line the walls over workstations with plastic signs saying things like: information ballistics and communications trajectories.

  The expressions on Nadine and Gerald’s faces are of confusion and wonder. What the hell have we stepped into? Our initial assessment of this being something like an Epcot ride is only reinforced. Clearly we’re not on a spaceship, but this thing has some purpose beyond just entertainment.

  We spend the next few minutes silently exploring the room. I take a seat in the central chair and try to understand what this is all for.

  Whoever sits here is meant to direct the action of everyone else in the room. There are jacks for audio equipment, but no display. On the right armrest there’s a clunky keypad and an LED display. Possibly for entering some kind of authorization codes, or maybe just to make phone calls?

  “Is this a war-gaming room?” Gerald asks, ready for us to start guessing.

  I point to a plastic sign that reads: demographic analysis. “That doesn’t sound like something you’d find in NORAD. Maybe this is some kind of emergency response center?”

  “For what?” Nadine replies.

  I shrug. “Information cruise missiles?”

  She sighs. “Whatever those are.”

  Gerald slides his hand along an aluminum panel on the wall and gives it a push, revealing a hidden compartment. There’s a bank of switches inside. “Should I turn it on?”

  “Why not? What’s the worst that can happen? We start World War Three?” I say halfheartedly. Although this place has power, it’s been sitting dormant for decades. “Just don’t press anything that says ‘Launch,’” I add, only partially joking.

  He flips a switch. “Well, if that’s all that’s at stake.”

  Old computers whir to life all around us. The CCA logo appears on the main screen—a little hazy and pixelated, but still clear enough.

  Gerald takes the right workstation, and Nadine sits in the left.

  “Where to?” I ask.

  “Mars?” Nadine suggests.

  “Nineteen seventy-two?” Gerald counters. He types into the keyboard on his station. A simple green text menu appears before him. “Is there a selector knob on your captain’s chair?” he asks.

  I look down on the armrest and see a rotating knob that corresponds with the layout of the room. I turn it toward his workstation. The CCA logo vanishes, replaced by his computer screen.

  “I guess my job is just to decide what channel we’re watching,” I reply.

  Gerald reads the list of menu options aloud. “System Check, Simulator Options, Command Mode, and Archive. What do we want?”

  “Let’s try Simulator Options.” That sounds reasonably safe.

  The screen fills up with a list of odd titles:

  Cleveland Initiative

  Ohio Compromise

  Chicago Fallback

  Niagara Switchback

  Los Angeles Heat Wave

  >More

  Well, that’s helpful. “Okay? Something tells me these aren’t folk music groups. Any suggestions?”

  “Did you see the movie WarGames?” Gerald asks.

  Nadine pulls her hands away from her console. “The one where Ferris Bueller almost starts World War Three?”

  I give my buttons a nervous look as well, afraid to touch anything. “This is a simulator, right?”

  “We’re in the simulator mode,” Gerald says hesitantly.

  “So we can’t do any harm? Can we?” I ask, hoping he has some insight I’m not privy to.

  “Well, even a nuclear submarine has a simulator mode. It’s your call, Captain.”

  “Why did I have to choose this chair?”

  “Like any of us had a chance,” Gerald replies.

  “Ohio Compromise,” says Nadine. She makes a hesitant smile. “Come on. It’s just a simulation. We’re not really going to nuke Ohio. Or info bomb them. Right?” Her curiosity seems to have overcome her initial fear.

  I wish I had her confidence. I suddenly feel silly for being so nervous about the room. “Go for it. At least we’re in a bunker.”

  “Here we go.” Gerald presses a button.

  The screen vanishes and is replaced by a new list of menu options.

  Philippine Destabilization Initiative:

  Time to live: 5 hours

  Phase 1:-5 hour mark

  Media pre-seed

  Phase 2:-4 hour mark

  Broadcast interrupt

  Phase 3:-3.5 hour mark

  Proxy initialization

  Phase 4:-2 hour mark

  Capital blackout

  Phase 5:-1 hour mark

  Civil defense communications disruption

  “Um, okay?” This looks like some kind of old-school computer text adventure to me. “Does this make sense to any of you? We went from Ohio to the Philippines.”

  “Press another button? Phase One?” Gerald asks.

  “Sure,” I reply.

  To our right, a loud printer that was probably built during the Nixon administration begins to fire off. I climb out of my chair to get a better look. It’s actually an old-school telex machine wired into the command center.

  I rip the printout off the feeder as soon as it finishes.

  “Well?” Nadine asks.

  I show her the page. “It’s an Associated Press report. It says that a Philippine senator has been placed under house arrest after pushing for a probe of the president’s finances. It goes on to say the presidential administration has issued a denial.”

  Nadine reads the news report for herself. “They don’t name names.”

  Gerald leans over her shoulder. “I guess it’s supposed to be a generic situation. They don’t want this to feel too dated.”

  I take the captain’s seat again. It’s an odd room. I can’t quite figure out the purpose of the simulation but a hazy picture is forming. “There’s something we’re missing here. Press Phase Two,” I instruct Gerald.

  “You want to see how we manage a broadcast interrupt?” he asks.

  “Yes.” I don’t tell him what my hunch is. I could be way off base.

  The monitor on a workstation to our left glows as it turns on. A video map of the Philippines appears on the screen with red dots and lines that connect them. Each dot has a number. Another screen lists names next to the numbers.

  1. DZBB

  2. DZWET, etc.

  Below the screen is a keypad that lets a user select one of the numbered dots.

  Nadine leans in to look at the map. “Well, that explains nothing.”

  “Select a number and press the red button next to the pad,” I tell her.

  “Okay.” She chooses DZBB. A third monitor flickers, showing a Samsung phone commercial.

  “That’s certainly not prerecorded,” Gerald points out. “At least not when this was made. I guess this must be a live feed.”

  Nadine presses the button and the screen goes blurry, wavy lines turning to static.

  “Did I break it?” she asks.

  “Let go of the button,” I reply.

  The moment she does, the video comes back as clear as before.

  “There must be a short,” says Gerald, his fingers about to tap the keyboard.

  “Crap! Nobody touch anything!” I shout, suddenly sick to my stomach. “There’s no short. That’s what’s supposed to
happen. This isn’t an emergency response room. This is for creating emergencies.”

  Nadine glances at Gerald, then back to me. “I’m not getting it.”

  I point to the screen. “Those simulation options, they’re all real situations. If we go into the active mode, everything we just did would actually have happened.” I point to the telex. “We weren’t receiving a news report. We were sending one. A fake one. A report designed to get people angry. The broadcast interrupt, that’s connected to some kind of jamming device. Or would be if they ever finished this place. The power outage option? They might have equipment in place to cause blackouts. This is a war room. It’s what the film upstairs described. Only the CCA isn’t meant to prevent these information bombs, it’s meant to launch them.”

  “What’s the Peter Devon connection?” Gerald asks.

  I get a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. “He wanted to predict the future. When he realized that was impossible, he decided he’d try to control it instead. This is the project his former partner, Professor Cyprian, told me about. He got the government to fund his mad mission to try to influence people, and change history.”

  “So this is like a big psychological warfare control center?” Gerald lifts his hands from the console in front of him.

  “Exactly. Only most of it is push-button tricks and sabotage. Nineteen eighties style. And the riots, the flooding, are all some newer version of this.” I slap my palm on the armrest. “This is where it started!”

  “But it didn’t end here,” says Nadine.

  “No,” I agree. “It morphed into something even worse than trying to foment a coup d’état by interrupting international television. They actually figured out how to cause disasters.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Escape Valve

  When we get back to Quantico, the assistant director of the FBI, Breyer, is waiting in our bullpen. Jennifer, fresh off the plane from South America, is walking him through a PowerPoint presentation on the overhead projector.