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Click to play . . .
Johnston frowned. “What the hell is that?”
The board operator looked up again. “They’re finding them in a lot of the data centers, General.”
On the big board they could see more and more of the small monitors displaying strike teams arriving at the center of each data center and finding a similar plasma-screen television. All of them showed the Daemon Industries, LLC, logo with the message “Click to Play.”
Johnston closely studied the bank of monitors on the wall. Soldiers half a world away were pulling up their masks and giving the all-clear signal. “General, were we expecting to find these?”
Co
“Well, the Destroy function is still looped for these companies.”
“What about the corporate data, damnit!”
The analyst shrugged. “That’s going to take some time to determine. We’re ru
“But can’t we just check these servers?”
“It’s hard to tell where code is executing nowadays, sir. With a global blackout in place, we won’t be able to use the public Internet to co
“Jesus Christ.” Co
Suddenly sections of the world starting coming back to life on the large center screen that displayed Earth from space. Lights across Europe, Russia, and Asia were clicking back on in sections.
“Goddamnit! Why is the blackout ending? I didn’t order an end to the blackout!”
The board operator looked up. “We’re not doing it, sir.”
“Then who is?”
Just then they could see video on the distant plasma televisions automatically start as the Daemon Industries, LLC, logo was swept away in a colorful animation.
“Bring one of those onto the big board! Now!”
The board operator spoke into his headset and suddenly grainy video of an Asian Korr Military Solutions special forces captain moved into view and saluted into the camera. “Sir!” His image pixelated momentarily by the satellite delay. His voice came through fuzzy with satellite distortion. “Overlord, we’ve secured objective four-thirty-nine.”
“Get the hell out of the way, damnit! Let me see the screen. Have that soldier focus his camera on that television screen!”
The captain dodged out of the way and the helmet cam focused on what looked to be an infomercial already in progress. Cheerful music accompanied a montage of images showing darknet operatives working together. Smiling young faces, wearing HUD glasses, working with fab lab equipment, fiber optics, agriculture, and alternative energy.
“Bring up the sound!”
The distant infomercial music crackled as it filled the speakers in the big command center. The montage faded out and to everyone’s horror dissolved into a familiar face—Matthew Sobol. He was sitting in a wing chair next to a roaring fireplace and looked healthy. Words appeared at the bottom of the screen:
Matthew A. Sobol, Ph.D.
Chairman and CEO, Daemon Industries, LLC
Sobol nodded to the camera as the music came to a close. “Hi. If you’re watching this video, it means you just tried to take over the world. Now, you all know who I was. But until now, I couldn’t be certain who you were. Thankfully, your recent actions helped to clarify things.” He took a moment to place another log on the fire, and he stabbed at the flames with a poker.
Co
Sobol looked up again after putting the fire poker away. “I knew it would only be a matter of time until you broke into the darknet. No system is completely secure. Of course, you would scour my code for flaws. So I gave you some good ones.” Sobol smiled amiably. “As we sit here, the companies you attempted to harm are perfectly safe. However, the Daemon is deleting your personal and business wealth, and is, in fact, destroying all the data and backup tapes of the companies you sought to protect.”
He held up his hands reassuringly. “Now, please don’t get agitated and head for the doors because it’s already too late. Your greed caused you to concentrate your investments in a very specific way among a handful of companies—companies that someone just tried to defend with a lame-ass formatstring hack—even while the rest of the corporate world was targeted en masse with the Destroy function. That’s what we call an anomaly, and it has a signature that can be detected. The private individuals who were involved in this activity are now known to the Daemon. And what’s more, most of your wealth, the source of all your power, no longer exists. Money, after all, is just data, and yours has been erased.”
Co
The network analyst got busy, but a lot of the other people in the room were looking concerned.
Sobol was already talking again on screen. “What’s more, the Daemon will continue to destroy the resources of these individuals wherever they appear—in whatever form. And a log of your recent actions will be submitted to pertinent law enforcement agencies and the companies you were targeting. And as for the people who helped make all this possible? The assistants, lawyers, brokers, programmers, accountants, and security forces? To those people I say: your employers have no money. So do the smart thing—and just walk away.”
The cavorting corporate Muzak returned, along with manic studio audience applause. Sobol waved. “Thanks for invoking this event, and remember, if you’re not playing the game, it’s playing you. Bye-bye now!”
Credits began to roll at double-fast speed.
“Turn it off!”
The screen went black and Co
The analyst just cast a look at Co
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?”
“We don’t work here anymore. And neither do you.”
Co
Johnston just shook his head. “That’s ridiculous!”
Suddenly one of the board operators turned on the broadcast and cable news stations again, and there, on almost every cha
Co
The board operator was grabbing his coat, too. “It’s playing on every station. Someone hijacked the emergency uplink we were going to use after the blackout. They somehow got footage from the surveillance system.”
Everyone in the control center looked up at the camera pods mounted on the ceiling.
“Good god . . .”
“I advise that you try to escape as best you can, General. We have no secrets anymore.”
Co
“—but the change needs to be sold to the American people with a sudden disruption. Otherwise they’ll resist strongly. It needs to be the penultimate event that marks a demarcation between what came before and what must come after. It’s a psychological transition.”
Anderson nodded. “And the blackout does that?”
“Our studies show that a period of general anarchy as brief as forty-eight hours would make the public willing to accept severe changes in exchange for security.”