F Wilson - Fatal Error

Claude Fournier met him across the street from the Order's Lodge in Lower Manhattan.

Eddie had arrived early and had been dismayed by the number of scurvy types dawdling on or about the front steps, smoking in the chill air. Over the years he'd attended a number of meetings in that venerable, granite-block building. Now it looked like some sort of halfway house.

"What is going on here?" he said as Fournier stopped next to him.

The man removed the cigarette that had been dangling from his lips and gazed across the street. He didn't look happy at what he saw.

"Kickers. Didn't you know?"

"I'd heard talk, but…"

Fournier was nodding. "Yes. I know. A scruffy bunch."

Outsiders in one of the Lodges. It wasn't supposed to happen. And yet, here they were.

"Whose idea was this?"

"Word came from the High Council last year to give them the run of the place. The High Council would not make that decision lightly. It must see them as useful in some way."

"Useful how?"

He gave a typically Gallic shrug. "They have not yet deigned to inform me."

Eddie was surprised at how offended he felt. And chagrined at how deeply he'd bought into being a brother in the Order.

"We're not meeting with one of them, are we?"

"Hardly. An Actuator maintains an office there. It's him we are meeting." He gestured across the street. "Shall we?"

Actuator? Eddie thought as he followed Fournier. Why does that sound familiar?

They crossed the street and headed up the stone steps. The lounging Kickers gave them curious stares but no one challenged them until they stepped through the heavy front doors into the large open foyer.

"Can I help you guys?" said a bearded heavyset fellow who looked like a biker.

"We have a meeting."

"Who with?"

Appalled by the spectacle of brothers of the Order explaining their presence in a Lodge to an outsider, Eddie wandered deeper into the foyer and stared at the bas relief sigil on the rear wall.

As a kid, whenever he'd seen it over the door of the Lodge in his hometown, he'd found the pattern vaguely confusing, like an optical illusion. Now he was so used to it-hell, it was seared into the skin on his back-that he found the Mobius-strip quality almost comforting… a promise of eternity… or infinity.

He noticed a dark smudge or smear on the edge at about seven o'clock. It looked like something had been wiped off. He wondered what.

Fournier appeared at his shoulder. "The Actuator is in a meeting that is running late. He will see you as soon as he is free. Come with me."

He led Eddie to a small room furnished with a couple of chairs and nothing else. Their footsteps echoed on the bare hardwood floor.

"Wait here. It won't be long."

Eddie walked to the window as Fournier left. He stared out at the street for a moment. Nothing interesting there, so he sat in one of the chairs and tilted it back against the wall. He began rehearsing what he'd planned to say when he noticed a murmur of voices. He looked around and saw the door was closed. So where-?

A ventilation grille was set in the wall just above the baseboard a few feet away. He leaned closer. That was the source. But where from? Curious, and with nothing else to do, he dropped to a knee and tried to listen.

Nelson Ferron's grin shone through his thick white beard as he turned off the network broadcast he'd recorded. The attack on the data center was all over the news.

"Hear that? My babies worked like a charm."

Hank nodded and decided the fat Dormentalist deserved some props.

"Yeah. Those guns made crispy critters of the servers. You did good."

And what was better, their use of EMP had really shaken things up. All the on-air experts were wringing their hands at the "dire implications" of this sort of attack.

"Yes," Drexler said from the far end of the table. "Excellent work."

"What about me?" said Kewan, the fourth attendee around the basement table. "I'm the guy who ran the show. I took out that transatlantic cable."

"You surely did," Hank said. "But you got yourself caught on that cell phone. Not good."

He rolled his eyes. "Can't help that. If y'gonna be on the street, there's always that chance. Everybody got phones." He turned to Ferron. "Hey, can't you make a bigger EMP thing?"

Ferron shrugged. "Of course. How big?"

"One big enough so we don't have to show our faces or risk getting nabbed. Something that can fry those circuits from a distance, or zap the whole city in one shot."

"Not possible-at least with existing technology. That would take a nuclear explosion."

"I didn't say blow the place up-"

Hank had heard this before but he didn't mind listening again. The subject fascinated him.

"You wouldn't have to," Ferron said. "You'd detonate the bomb outside the atmosphere. In fact, the higher the better. Set one off thirty miles above Lebanon, Kansas, and you-"

"Why there?" Kewan said.

"It's the belly button of the lower forty-eight. Right smack in the center. Explode a nuke thirty miles over that and you toast all the circuitry in the Midwest. Set it off three hundred miles up, and you take out all of North and most of Central America."

Kewan's eyes lit. "You mean the whole country would be an Internet-free zone? Let's do it!"

Hank shook his head. That had been his own reaction. Then he'd learned that more than the Internet would be affected. "We'd also be cell phone-free and car-free, plus-"

"Wait. What you mean, car and phone free?"

"Well, cell phones use the same kind of chips as computers, and all modern cars have onboard computers."

"Right," Ferron said. "If you had a vintage car with original equipment, you might keep that going, but you'd have trouble finding a working gas pump because there'd be no electricity."

Kewan frowned. "Why not?"

"Because the EMP would also toast the power grid." Ferron snapped his fingers. "Like that we'd be back in the eighteenth century."

"Okaaaay," Kewan said slowly. "Let's not do that."

Hank knew that the Change was coming soon, bringing the Others back to this world, and he'd been doing his best to prepare the way for them-hopefully guaranteeing himself better treatment when they took over. But he didn't want to go back to burning wood for heat until they showed up.

"Right," he told Kewan. "Let's just limit our target to the Internet."

Kewan nodded. "We're gonna need more of those guns, then-lots more."

"Wrong. The data centers and exchanges aren't the real targets. We just want people thinking they are."

He looked offended. "You mean last night was all for show?"

"Yes. And you put on an excellent show. Too excellent, perhaps."

"What that mean?"

Drexler spoke up. "Your image was captured on that cell phone, Mister Lyford, and shown on national TV. You must leave the city."

"I ain't leaving. This where I live."

Hank leaned toward him. "It's okay, Kewan. You're being transferred to one of the field groups."

"What's that? I never hearda no field groups."

"That's where the real work's going to be done. They're getting set to move. And when they do, it won't be for show." He glanced at Drexler. "Any word from your man on that final piece of code?"

Drexler nodded. "He guarantees sometime today."

"About time. And if it lives up to its press, when can we expect Jihad to be ready?"

"Jihad?" said Kewan. "What's this Jihad talk? We dealin' with Arabs?"

Hank caught Drexler's furious look. He shouldn't have mentioned that in front of Kewan and Ferron. Until his slip just now, he'd been the only Kicker in on the virus. Top-tier Dormentalists knew, but Ferron wasn't one of those.

Drexler composed his features. "Just a figure of speech, Mister Lyford. Jihad is a holy war, and we're leading a holy war against the Internet."