Matthew Mather's Compendium

by Matthew Mather

  “And that is definitely broken,” added Pam, examining Chuck’s swollen left hand.

  Chuck grimaced. “Not much we can do about it right now.”

  “I can wrap it up,” suggested Pam.

  “Maybe later. It’s not so bad.”

  We’d invited Pam and Rory, along with Chuck and Susie, over to our place for dinner. With the power back on, the mood was upbeat but still nervous, and the snowstorm was getting worse. Nearly two feet of snow had fallen in the last twenty-four hours, with another storm, CNN had announced, coming close on its heels.

  The weather outside, though, was taking second stage to the surreal drama playing out on the world’s news networks. Images of the destroyed village in China and the storming of the US embassy in Taiyuan had been replaced by images of burning American flags in Tehran. A video denigrating Mohammed had appeared on an Iranian Web service and had quickly spread, sparking rioting in Pakistan and Bangladesh.

  It seemed the world had turned against us.

  The source of the video was unknown, and the Iranians were claiming it was the US government. The Iranian president was claiming that the East Coast storms, power failures, and bird flu outbreaks were the divine hand of God, striking down evil America.

  The idea of the video coming from the US government was complete nonsense, and was of course denied, but it was just one thing in a long list that governments around the world were denying that day. While nobody had claimed responsibility for any of what was happening, something had brought the world to a screeching halt. The Internet had slowed to a crawl worldwide, bringing business and communications down with it. Europe was nearly as affected as America—the chaos had triggered runs on banks and long food lines, as well as rioting in Spain and Portugal. The only relatively unaffected areas were the Halal Internet of Iran, China behind its Great Firewall, and North Korea, which was barely even connected to the Internet. America was the most connected, however, and was suffering the most from whatever was happening. Conspiracy theories flooded the airwaves.

  In spite of all this, or perhaps because of it, Susie had insisted on preparing a proper holiday dinner. Tony was going to join us. I’d even offered to invite Richard and his wife, but Lauren was uncomfortable with the suggestion.

  “Why all of a sudden don’t you want to have Richard here?” I’d teased. Chuck had rolled his eyes at me, but I wasn’t able to resist. “He’s been your best friend lately.”

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea,” she’d replied. By that point Chuck was shaking his head at me, and Susie was eyeing me as well, so I let it go.

  We were using our apartment for dinner since theirs was full of bags and bottles of water. We shared the tasks of preparing the food, taking breaks to watch CNN and drink beers. The image on TV was blocky and pixilated all day, with the sound coming in and out, but that wasn’t just a local problem. CNN reported that cable carriers across the country were experiencing technical issues with bandwidth.

  Images of tanks surrounding the CNN building appeared from time to time, apparently highlighting how critical CNN’s continued operation was to the nation. I wondered where the tanks were on our city corners. A few tanks would be nice about now.

  “It’s snowmageddon out there,” commented Rory. During the day, he’d struggled up to the New York Times building, where he worked as a journalist as a sideline to his novel-writing career.

  CNN played in the background while we talked. “The Pentagon made very clear years ago that if the United States was subject to a cyberattack that resulted in loss of life, the US military would respond with a kinetic attack.”

  I’d spent most of the day trying to help neighbors to get their heating working. The power was back on, but the Internet was clogged, and the entire building was run on IP networks. The hallways had warmed up, so a large part of the solution had simply been for all the tenants to leave their doors open.

  “—kinetic attack means with conventional weapons, bombs, and tanks—”

  Of course, the Borodins were fine and needed no help. When I’d dropped in, the Russian soap operas were once again playing on their TV while Aleksandr slept in front of them. I was going to bring them over a plate of food after dinner.

  “They’re only plowing the big avenues,” continued Rory. “Snowbanks on the sides of Eighth are higher than me now. Port Authority and Penn Station are already overflowing with people.”

  “—the president has now declared a national emergency, invoking the Stanford Act to bring the military in for domestic—”

  I’d only gone outside the front door to our building. Beyond the awning, the snow was nearly waist deep, and it was below zero and windy. Not the sort of weather I wanted to be outside in, and I was impressed that Rory had braved nearly twenty city blocks to get to work on such a day.

  CNN continued in the background. “Sixty million people are affected by this storm on the East Coast, and though the power has been restored in many places, several million people are still without power, with emergency services remaining at a total standstill.”

  I looked at the TV, and then back at Rory. “Are we at war? Are they bombing China yet?” I was barely joking.

  Rory shrugged. “The main thing we’re at war with right now is this storm. That Professor Latham on CNN earlier was just being dramatic for the cameras.”

  “Come on!” I pointed at the television. “You’re telling me that all this is a coincidence? China was declaring war yesterday after they said we downed one of their planes. Now the power outages, the train crash—”

  “He has a point,” said Chuck. “Somebody is doing something.”

  “Yes,” replied Rory, “somebody is doing something, but you can’t go bombing everyone on the planet when the Internet shuts off.”

  “It has to be China,” I said, shaking my head. “Why else would we have attacked them back?”

  “You mean that destroyed village under the dam?” asked Rory. I nodded, and he rubbed the back of his neck, pursing his lips. “The US military hasn’t admitted to the attack. And China didn’t declare war. They’re denying everything. That guy on TV was just the governor of Shanxi Province trying to get some airtime. He’d been shut out of their Politburo process—”

  “Nobody is admitting to anything! This may be a virtual attack,” I said, my voice rising as I rose to my feet and pointed out the window into the swirling snow, “but real people are dying out there!”

  “Boys!” came a quiet hiss. It was Susie, glaring at us. “Quiet, please! The kids are sleeping.”

  “Sorry,” I said sheepishly.

  “Could you please switch that off?” she demanded. “I think we’ve all had enough for one day.”

  “But we might miss something—”

  “Mike, if you don’t turn it off, you’re going to miss a really nice meal,” said Lauren. “Come on, you guys set the table.”

  Picking up the remote, I looked at the TV.

  “—the question now is what constitutes use of force, but there has definitely been loss of life. Over a hundred confirmed dead on the Amtrak crash this morning, with dozens more still missing; eight suspected deaths from bird flu; and already twelve reported dead from the power outages and looting.”

  I clicked it off.

  9:00 p.m.

  Candles flickered in the dim light while we all held hands. In the silence, the wind howled through the darkness outside, rattling the window panes and demanding entry. I wondered what poor souls were stuck out there right now, what convoluted paths had led them to be struggling against the elements, alone and cold somewhere. Lauren’s fingers squeezed mine, and I smiled at her, trying to put the thought of being stranded from my mind.

  “Dear Lord, please watch over us and keep these people, our families, safe,” said Susie. “We thank you for this food, and for your gift of life. We pray for everyone’s safety, and that you will guide us to the light.”

  Silence again.
We were sitting on bar stools arranged in a semicircle around our black granite kitchen counter. It was as close to a dining-room table as we had. I’d festively positioned our little Christmas tree at one end of the counter near the wall. It glowed in alternating reds and yellows and blues under the overhead lighting. Lauren had lit a few vanilla-scented candles, which flickered between us.

  “Amen! Let’s eat!” said Chuck with enthusiasm, and the busy noise of humans being human filled the room as we dug into dinner.

  I hadn’t felt very hungry, but when they’d started stacking the kitchen counter with turkey, stuffing, mashed sweet and grilled potatoes, and more, my stomach started growling. By the way everyone else was piling their plates, it wasn’t just me.

  “You get to church much these days?” asked Chuck with a smile, pulling off one of the turkey legs. He’d noticed my hesitation when Susie had asked everyone to hold hands to say grace.

  He was teasing me. Church brought to mind memories of bored Sunday mornings when I was a kid, fidgeting with my brothers in the pews. While the minister would drone on about something I didn’t understand, I’d pick at the edges of the threadbare cushions, my little legs swinging above scuffed linoleum floors.

  “Maybe this is God’s punishment for the sinners of New York,” joked Chuck as he smothered his plate in gravy. “I’ll bet there are some Amish in Pennsylvania right now who’re getting the last laugh.”

  Only half listening to him, I nodded. To my right, Pam was asking Lauren if her family had made their flight to Hawaii. Lauren responded that she thought so, but shrugged, and then Pam asked why we hadn’t gone with them. Lauren hesitated and then lied, saying that she hadn’t wanted to. Lauren had practically begged me to go; I wondered if she was telling a white lie to stick up for me, or if she was just too embarrassed to tell the truth. If I’d let her family pay, we might have been a million miles away, watching the drama unfold from some sunny beach, and Chuck would probably have been safely tucked away in his hideaway. But we were stuck in New York, and it was my fault.

  Hearing Luke gurgle on the baby monitor, my stomach lurched and I put down a forkful of turkey.

  “Did you manage to get it working?”

  I blinked. “What?”

  “The Internet, did you manage to get on this afternoon?” asked Rory from across the counter.

  It took me a moment to switch tracks. “Yes, um, well, no,” I stuttered. “I did get on, but it was extremely slow.”

  Rory nodded. “The New York Times tech group says the Internet is totally infected from top to bottom. They’re going to have to switch the whole thing off and restart nodes, one by one, all across the world, like clearing a city house by house.”

  I nodded, not really understanding.

  “Hey, when was the last time you ate meat?” asked Chuck, pointing toward the mock chicken on Rory’s plate. Susie had made some special dishes for them.

  “More than a decade ago,” answered Rory. “I don’t think I could stomach it anymore.”

  “Meat is murder,” laughed Chuck. “Tasty, tasty murder. You’d be surprised what you can stomach when you need to.”

  Rory smiled. “Maybe.”

  “So what are they saying up at the Times?” Lauren asked Rory.

  “Hey!” Susie pouted. “I thought we weren’t going to talk about that stuff.”

  “I just thought maybe they’d heard something that wasn’t on the news, you know, airplanes . . .”

  The table went quiet.

  “Nothing about any air or other transport accidents,” said Rory. “But then we’re barely getting any information, and what we are getting is a contradictory mess.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Even after 9/11, it took weeks to figure out what was happening. These cyberattacks look like they’re coming from Russia, the Middle East, China, Brazil, Europe, even from inside the US itself—”

  “Enough!” demanded Susie, raising her fork. “Come on, now, can we please find something else to talk about?”

  “I just—” Rory started to say, but Susie cut him off.

  “The power is back on, something I forgot to thank God for,” she said with a smile, “and all this will probably be over tomorrow and you can talk your heads off about it. But I’d like to have a nice, normal Christmas dinner, so, please.”

  “Isn’t this a fantastic turkey?” said Chuck loudly, changing gears. “Come on, a toast to our beautiful wives!”

  I raised my glass together with Chuck and Rory.

  “To my beautiful wife,” I said to Lauren. She met my eyes, but then shifted hers down. Reaching over, I tried to turn her chin toward me, but she shrugged away.

  “What is it?” I whispered.

  “It’s nothing.” She met my gaze. “Happy Christmas.”

  I drank from the glass of wine I’d been holding up, but Lauren barely took a sip from hers.

  “A Merry Christmas to you too, baby.”

  §

  “Just for a minute?” I asked again.

  Lauren sighed and picked up a bowl from the soapy kitchen sink water. She began thoughtfully scrubbing it. We’d sent everyone else home, offering to clean up since Susie had provided the whole dinner. We were enjoying a glass of wine by candlelight while we did the dishes.

  I wanted to turn CNN on to see what was happening. I’d been itching to turn it back on all night.

  “Okay, just for a minute, but I want to talk soon,” she said, looking at me steadily. “We need to talk, Mike.”

  That sounded ominous, and I stopped wiping the pot I was drying. After piling my plate with food at dinner, I’d totally lost my appetite. Lauren had been quiet, avoiding my eyes, and while she could have just been worrying about her family . . .

  “What do you want to talk about?” I asked, trying to sound casual. My scalp began tingling.

  She took a deep breath. “Let’s finish cleaning up first.”

  I stared at her, holding the pot in one hand and the washcloth in the other, but she returned her attention to the sink, scrubbing industriously. Shaking my head, I stacked the last few pots and pans, put the last glasses into the dishwasher, and then threw the dishcloth onto the counter. Wiping my hands on my jeans to dry them, I picked up the remote.

  Lauren sighed loudly again.

  Immediately, CNN sprang to life. “This is only the fourth time the armed forces have been called to DEFCON 3.”

  “What in the world?” I sat down on our couch. Lauren put down the pot she was scrubbing. Images of an aircraft carrier filled the giant screen on our wall. It was one of ours this time.

  “The only other times our military have been at DEFCON 3 were the Cuban Missile Crisis in ’62, when we were at the brink of nuclear war with Russia—”

  “What’s happening?” asked Lauren.

  “—the Yom Kippur War of ’73, when Syria and Egypt launched a surprise attack on Israel, nearly triggering another nuclear war—”

  “I don’t know,” I replied, shaking my head. Lauren came to sit next to me.

  “—and of course, on 9/11, when we were attacked by unknown forces that turned out to be al Qaeda.”

  I started to get up from the couch to go over to Chuck’s place, to see if he knew anything more, but Lauren reached out and stopped me. Without questioning her, I sat down and returned my attention to the TV.

  “The only information we are getting is that CENTCOM, one of the US military’s internal command and control communication networks, has been compromised—”

  “Mike, could we turn this off for a minute?”

  I frowned at the TV, trying to understand what was going on. Multiple secret networks had been taken over, from the NSA to forward-deployed military units. They didn’t know the extent of the infection, or the purpose. Our military was readying for some kind of attack.

  “Please, Mike, turn it off,” repeated Lauren.

  I turned to her, shaking my head. �
�Are you serious? You want to have a talk now? The world is about to explode and you want to talk?”

  Tears welled in her eyes. “Then let the world burn, but I need to talk to you right now. I need to tell you something.”

  My heart raced. I knew what she was going to say, and I didn’t want to hear it. I clenched my jaw and shook my head. “Can’t it wait?” I asked.

  “No.” Tears were streaming down her face. “I . . .” she stammered, “I, um—”

  “We have just received an emergency alert from the Department of Homeland Security. Oh my God . . .”

  Lauren and I turned toward the TV. The CNN anchor was at a loss for words.

  “. . . the DHS is reporting multiple unknown and unidentified aerial targets over the continental United States, and is asking the public for any information—”

  And then everything went dark.

  The background hum of the machines went silent, and I found myself staring into blackness where the CNN anchor had been a split second before. All I could hear was the banging of my own heart and the rush of blood in my eardrums. I waited breathlessly, half expecting the brilliant flash of a thermonuclear explosion to burn through my retinas. But all I heard was the quiet howl of the wind outside while my eyes adjusted to the dim light from the candles still burning on the kitchen counter.

  Seconds ticked by.

  “Let’s get Luke and go next door, okay?” I said shakily. “Find out what’s going on.”

  Lauren grabbed my arm. “Please,” she begged, “I need to get this out.”

  “What?” My anger and fear were boiling over. “You need to come clean right now?”

  “Yes—”

  “I don’t want to hear this,” I spat back. “I don’t want to hear about how you’re sleeping with Richard, how you’re sorry, how you never meant to hurt anyone.”

  She burst into tears.

  “You pick this moment,” I yelled, “this goddamn moment—”

  “Don’t be such an asshole, Mike,” she sobbed. “Please stop being so angry.”