His voice did not sound like he was joking. Adam laughed a little, but Mannerheim didn’t join in.
“Wait. Our government set this loose?”
“Remember, jumping into anything that intersects with the StreamNet, cyber systems, satellites, anything like that is like walking naked through the pentagon carrying a rocket launcher … you’ll get noticed.”
He paused. Adam didn’t know what notes to take, so took none. “Just tell me what happened. We’ll all sort out the blame later …”
“I simply don’t know. It’s going to take decades to figure out, if we have decades. Aliens maybe … That is all I know.”
The line severed.
Aliens. Adam laughed. “Aliens!”
“Aliens!” Someone in the newsroom yelled back.
“Aliens!” Another added.
The room erupted into laughter.
XIV
By the time they got the paper to bed and Adam had watched the last edition roll off the patched-together presses at 1:30 a.m., the world had become a strange place. Each combined paper chunked through the last compiler that stuffed in ads for all the things humans might not ever think to buy, wrapped and stacked. We’ll always want and need, Adam considered as he unpacked the sections and ads of the last edition of the night during his final proof slipped out, but we’re unlikely to have such niceties forever. He tossed the pages of the paper into the recycling bin. The defining noise of the presses hammered his sobering head.
If they were all at war, it was not like the kind of war that had ever been fought before: There were no geographic borders to line tanks up on; no cities or military installations to bomb. If there were terrorists to hunt down with drones, it was unclear how to build the profile. The entire federal government focused on some free-love cyborg cult? Silly. Nobody yet knew what exactly was happening let alone who was responsible for it. Maybe it was some kind of accident, a sneak solar flare or some hitherto underestimated satellite link that broke. No one really believed it could be an accident or natural catastrophe, but they couldn’t rule it out since they didn’t know what the hell was going on. There was just this quiet struggle raging in the background, network-by-network, over control of the infrastructure of human society, and it appeared to Adam that Americans, if not humanity itself, had already lost. One White House science advisor had even added via shortwave: “We could be facing forces not of this world. Not spiritual forces, but extraterrestrial forces. What better way to conquer a world than by taking over its infrastructure?”
Little green men might be responsible, but where were they?
The Daily-Record editors had debated headlines off and on around the newsroom for a couple of hours before submitting the first edition, silencing with glares those reporters who tried to wedge into the conversation. The debate centered on what they could say in a headline that would be gripping but not completely wrong the next day. In the end, Beach had agreed to “Cyber War?” as the slammer. The runner up was “Cyber Blackout.” Adam had argued for the winner, because everyone already knew there was a blackout and even if the whole thing started as an accident, reporters were out uncovering lots of evidence that suggested a war, signs that conflict between nations was underway under the darkness of a media blackout, either as a part of war or a response to it. Design wise, the paper’s graphics had set up bullet points under the all-caps slammer headline:
StreamNet Communications Blackout Blankets Nation
Key Infrastructure Systems, Some Phone Systems Up
Extent of Shutdown Worldwide Unknown
Terrorists? Foreign Agents? Accident?
It was a daring, avant-guard design for such a serious event, but since they didn’t have great art to lead the page, they went with it. The photography staff, hindered by the fact that there wasn’t anything to shoot, came up with a photo of an online sales company in the Belltown neighborhood with an open floor full of people looking at the camera while sitting and standing next to hundreds of computers all showing the same error message. Lots of mugshots of the people quoted in stories, some fresh art of local experts. Graphics built a map of the country showing known outage areas, basically the entire country. They also created a world map with major cities blacked out that reporter sources confirmed were also knocked out, but that was pure guesswork and second hand at best. So, they led the page with a three-column vertical crop of the photo of the sales-company computers all offline paired with the typographical screamers. Not as powerful as the Twin Towers in New York City roiled by explosions and smoke under a cobalt sky, but one that would be framed on possibly millions of walls and thousands of museums and history centers, reprinted in history books for generations. Yes, the staff was giddy.
Beach sent a copyboy out for pizza and salad, so by 2 a.m. the newsroom was littered with pizza crusts on paper plates, bits of lettuce scattered on the floor around the serving table, stacked high with greasy pizza boxes and besmirched by salad dressing and splashes of soda. Consequently, Adam’s heartburn arose in full flame. Most of the reporters and editors had gone home—those with kids, dogs or still married. The rest were smoking and drinking out on balconies or at their desks. Some drank happily alone. A few had found couches to lay on. The place was ominously quiet since no television channels had come back on. Beach typed away at some report or other on an electric typewriter in her office, kept for nostalgia from a generation earlier, documenting and justifying the day’s obscene expenditures. She smoked in her office again, though she had been warned repeatedly to stop. But what were they going to do? Adam went to the bullpen table where all the food and drinks were stacked and grabbed a sparkling water, downed half and belched loudly.
He too intended to sleep at the office. He would take over the big couch at the back of the news library upstairs. Everyone knew to keep clear of it when he spent the night. First, though, he needed to chat with Beach. During the tumult and blackout, Natalie had somehow emailed him a video interview with Celestine, according to the file name. He’d stuck it on his desktop but hadn’t played it. It was a big file, so it would take some time to get through. He wanted to see if Beach wanted to watch it with him, something to wind down the night. Adam wasn’t going to sleep anytime soon, and he suspected Beach wouldn’t either. His agenda was to start the video then casually talk to her about putting together a special section for late morning. They could distributed it in the city. Perhaps Natalie’s video could be edited into a Q and A. They still had the loose tie with that group based on the court order and their photos of Mannerheim, dramatically out of date as they now were. Their lead story, however, would be an unusually good column by their technology writer, William Marr. He interviewed the U.S. Chief Technology Officer in the White House Office of Science and Technology: “We will rebuild a stronger and smarter StreamNet.” Adam needed Beach to give him permission to spend the cash. Everyone assumed much of the StreamNet would be back online within the day. Every genius and online company, especially the major search engines and retailers, were hacking away at the problem. So, having a forward looking column alongside whatever updates they could gather from the streets by noon or one o’clock would get them that Pulitzer for sure. More to the point of his motivations, Adam held every intention that his paper would rule this story locally and nationally for days to come.
He tapped a knuckle on Beach’s nearly shut door. She coughed. “Come in!” He lit a cigarette with his right hand as he pushed the door in with his left. He closed the door behind him and took a seat. They smoked in silence for a minute as she banged on the typewriter. Her office was at street level, with a bank of windows looking out onto the sidewalk. Traffic noise usually poured in through her window, opened for smoking, but nothing was happening outside at 2 a.m. that night. It was a wild Wednesday night and a soon-to-be very busy Thursday morning, but you couldn’t tell from the streets. That Natalie’s video had gotten through to his email inbox was evidence to him that the StreamNet was going to be up and running in a fe
w hours, running in fits and starts maybe but running all the same. Once everyone’s cellphones, email and so on fired up, there would be a rush of news conferences and a flurry of interview requests all the way up to and through the White House. Plus, they’d be able to get their overseas stringers reporting on how widespread the outrage was in Europe and Asia. They didn’t have freelancers in Africa or the Middle East, so wire reports would have to do from there.
Beach stubbed her smoke out. Adam reached up and did the same, reclining as he blew.
“Heard from your missing reporter?” She too reclined in her chair, eying the pack of cigarettes within reach on her desk. A lone delivery truck ground by.
“Yep. Just now.” Adam fiddled absently with the cigarettes in his jacket pocket.
She recognized what he was doing and smiled sheepishly as she leaned forward and grabbed her pack. She shook out a smoke and stuck it between her lips. Beach hadn’t freshened her makeup, but the vigorous duties of the day had put color in her cheeks. The skin around her eyes was white, though, and sunken. She had clawed her way over sixty and was in the homestretch for retirement. So all in all, she was holding up pretty well. Better than himself. They blew smoke at the ceiling.
“Any idea where she is?”
“She sent me a video …”
Beach raised her eyebrows.
“But, I have not looked at it yet. The file name suggests she has an interview with the head of that group or cyborg cult or whatever it is. She must be with them, but I’m not sure where. I’ll check it out in a few. But first, though, what about that special edition? We gonna do it?”
She took a drag off her cigarette. Blew smoke sideways.
“What have you got?” Cool. Tired, but cool. An older Bacall.
“Marr’s thumbsucker. It’s pretty good, a little technical, but I think people will be interested in where we can go from here to protect the StreamNet, yet again. We have that sidebar on how much money is being lost every hour this thing is down, that’s based off a good interview with Dunaway. His flacks printed out some graphics we have permission to copy online.”
“Dunaway, huh? Why not lead with that?”
“Well.” Adam stretched the word out to let her know he’d certainly considered it. “I just think the thought piece will put us ahead of the curve. Dunaway gave his information out to anyone who wanted it, the whore. We got one of only two interviews with …”
“Who was the other one?”
“NYT.”
“So they can print?”
“Assume so.”
She crimped her mouth and nodded resignedly.
“But, Marr’s got several other industry leaders who are also talking about how big of a screw-up this all is. He’s got the story I never could get the national desk to write. The fault of this disaster falls squarely on the tiny shoulders of those pricks who privatized a public utility a decade ago. Quote, It’s become a monoculture, a realm protected by one gateway, get past that one gate and the realm collapses. It’s a single network controlled by a handful of nitwits, unquote. That’s the head of the Free StreamNet First Foundation, which has grown as big and important as the ACLU and NAACP combined. The Dunaway piece is good sidebar stuff. A case in point. A major case in point, but a case in point all the same.”
“Okay, let’s do it.”
“Sponsors.”
“Enough to run an eight-page tab.”
“A tab?” Adam hated tabloid papers. “Why not a broadsheet?”
“Because we can run the tab off the back of the Entertainer, and we can stuff it inside tomorrow’s paper. 350,000 copies. We’ll sell it on the streets in the city and deliver what we can in the neighborhoods and then put what’s left in the first editions of tomorrow’s paper.”
He whistled. “Sweet Jesus. Catch the suburbs but keep it for sale by itself in the city. Nice.”
“The big man upstairs thought of that.”
“Almost gives me hope.”
“Almost. Can we use anything from Natalie? Do we know if Mannerheim has anything to do with this?”
Adam explained they didn’t have anything new and Natalie’s stuff was second string and he hated to spend the morning trying to put something out of it together to stuff in that special section. Beach said he should put Robert back on it, since he was still hanging around.
“Send him out to that house with a photographer and let’s see if we can get anything. They may yet have something to do with this, even if just cheerleading.”
Adam dragged on the last bit of his cigarette. Blew. Sighed and yawned. “Yeah, maybe. I still think they stole something from the government, some research or something. Maybe Mannerheim set them up to loose a virus or something. His people are certainly smart enough. I just think this Celestine is nuts. But!” He raised his hand in the face of her rising objections. “I will sic Robert on it and see if photo has a live body. They can head out at first light.”
“Okay, Bucko.” She yawned a great face-stretching yawn with arms flexing upward. “Whew. I’ve got to get home. You staying?”
“I’ll be here.”
“Ship’s under your command, then.” She stood and swooped her coat off the rack in the corner next to the fake ficus tree.
“Aye aye captain.” Adam stood and followed her through the office doorway.
XV
At his desk, settling in with a can of Coke and a couple cookies from a corporate baking company’s promotional kit arranged around his keyboard, Adam double-clicked the video file in the email from Natalie. The monitor screen filled with her face elongated by perspective, black eyes wide and looking over her shoulder. He experienced a sudden jolt of fear. He’d forgotten to worry about her situation for a few hours and suddenly here she was looking alarmed. He clicked the play button. Natalie’s face animated but held the over-the-shoulder-fear look as crying from somewhere in the background of the video pierced the air around him. Adam shot a hand forward to tap down the sound, but then Natalie turned and glanced at the camera, probably her cellphone’s camera.
“I’m okay,” she whispered then turned back over her shoulder toward the crying, a deep sobbing wail now. No faking that wail, but the drama of it … “They said I could interview Celestine, but she’s still crying. I’ll explain what I know. I can’t get to my computer to type notes, so this Streamlog will have to do. They said I’d be allowed to email it directly to you.” She moved the camera back to selfie-distance and looked into it, “Adam. Olivas and Gaines, The uh Twins, said it’s important that we get this message out, uh, once Celestine calms down, because they said they are trying to save us, as many of us as they can. I asked them from what and they said from the Mind Hive.”
Adam pushed the space bar, pausing the video, and stretched far over the back of the chair. Natalie looked out at him with half-open eyes and ruddy cheeks, her mouth in the form of aspiration. He examined the setting behind her. It looked like she was in a cave or basement dug out of a vein of gravel. A little spooky but she said she was fine, and she looked okay. He got to his feet. He would need another can of pop or maybe a coffee to get through this. “Mind Hive!” He scoffed. Might as well say “Aliens!” Someone else still awake in the newsroom yelled “Aliens!” Half of the scientific community thought it impossible for an AI to ever be sophisticated enough to take over humanity. The other half said not only can AI take over humanity but it was very close to doing so already … oh, not the AI of the Terminator or Matrix movies, but a stupid AI making choices for all of us without any human-like sentience. The real threat was a machine running the world that did not know it was a machine running the world. Well, he thought, it ought to be entertaining at least. Over by the sink, the twin-decanters of the brewing machine were still half-full of coffee. Half the newsroom was staffed by people with ADHD and they drank coffee like water. The other half chugged caffeine to keep up. So, the coffee was almost always fresh. He tossed the dregs and re-filled his cup. Strolling back across the newsroom t
o his desk, he looked at blank terminal screens again hoping he’d see a browser window pop open a website or even an advertisement. He glanced up at the TV hanging from a support column. Just snow. As long as Natalie was okay, he’d go with the flow, but there was no way he would run any of her nonsense in the special edition. The only person connecting Celestine or The Clans to anything important was Mannerheim and even he didn’t really believe it. Perhaps she would get filler space on the local front if photo shot any art to go with the story. They could use a centerpiece, and a feature story about a local group all freaked out over the end-of-the-world could fit in. He wouldn’t have time to turn her notes into a story, but perhaps Robert could. He could also track down Mannerheim, get a new photo of that crazy bastard and a fresh comment from him or his lawyers unclouded by Adam’s on-and-off-the-record confusing status. Adam, looking down at Natalie’s face frozen in low-resolution video, marveled at how much the world had changed.
“What a difference a day makes.” He pushed play.
Natalie put the phone close to her face, one eye and eyebrow filling the screen, “Just between you and me,” she aspirated. Adam hit pause and dug around in his top drawer for headphones. He didn’t feel like attracting a crowd, especially since Robert was running around somewhere. He plugged the headphones in. “I think they’re crazy. Not dangerous,” she said shakily. “But you never know.” She put the camera closer to her mouth, darkening the screen except for a bit of out-of-focus lip. He leaned closer to the screen. “We left the house two hours ago in a van. We got out at the outskirts of Bellingham and into some tunnels dug under a house. I think they are refugee tunnels into Canada. That’s where I am now. Just in case.” Her voice did sound a bit shaky. “They said those people, she called them Sims, dug up in Nevada were their friends. Clan members. It’s got them pretty upset, scared or angry, I can’t tell which for sure. Both, of course. Olivas said they weren’t scared of the government or whoever killed their friends, though that was why we all left the house in Seattle. Now they are afraid of The Mind Hive. That’s all they call it. The Mind Hive. Obviously it’s this artificial intelligence The Twins alluded to. Maybe they have released a virus. I don’t know how far the problems go. Just that my phone can’t connect to the StreamNet. If I agreed to join them, she said Celestine would explain and allow this video … Oh!” She pulled the phone back from her face and turned it down the rough tunnel, ceiling lined with propped up boards.”
Mind Hive Page 9