Monday

You woke up on Monday to a warm breeze sweeping up the coast through your open balcony door.

You head over to the Institute to disassemble the jumbo-iron, to take the eight terminals you had assembled into one make-shift display back into a whole computer lab.

You notice a double line of cars waiting for gas stretching along Del Monte Ave. What is going on in this country, now we have a fuel shortage? Great.

As you enter through the basement door, the hallway was as dark as always. The bank vault door was closed again.

Had someone been here to close the door?

The number next to the giant door was a two today.

You put the eight terminals back where they belong.

You try to log back into the EMPART cluster, but no luck. They must have shut it off to save cost.

You ping Kristof.

Based in Ukraine, Kristof always seemed to be online, most certainly by this hour.

‘How were they going to pay?’ you wonder.

Did they even have your address? or banking details?

You can see light coming down from the staircase. You hear muffled voices. It’s the first time you’d heard anything all summer except the cleaner once a week.

You walk upstairs for the first time.

Upstairs the wing is a very similar configuration to the basement. Instead of vault on the left and computer lab on the right; upstairs there is a fishbowl conference room on the left and a row of offices on the right.

There’s three people in the conference room. You recognize some of the folks from the website. Even though you aren’t starting classes for another month, you figure you’ll introduce yourself.

Maybe they know something about the grant.

There is a whiteboard on the far end of the conference room. They appear to be in some kind of exercise. There’s some major university initials up on the board: UCLA, NYU, MG, UoI, JH, WR, FD. Some schools you know, some of them you don’t. They each have a red number and a green number next to them. All the greens appear to be zero except for WR and FD, which are at a hundred.

A woman on the near end of the conference table writes down a number on a clipboard and finishes her call, turning her attention toward you.

“Hello, I’m Jody. I’m an incoming graduate student,” you say.

“Hi Jody, I’m Sara. How’d you get in here?”

“Oh I’m the one that was running EMPART all summer. I always come in through the basement.”, you say.

“Dr. Khan?”, she raises her voice toward a slender black man at the end of the conference room who raises his hand, but then glances your way and stops.

“I’m sorry, one moment.”, he puts his hand over the phone receiver to address you.

“Who are you and how did you get in here?”, he asked.

“I’m Jody, I was the one running EMPART this summer, since June. I used the basement door.” you say.

“Katia!”, he says, raising his voice.

“Mac, Sara, forget what you just heard.”, Dr. Khan says, “I’m sorry Sir, I’m gonna have to call you back I have a security situation here.” as he hung up the phone.

You go to back up, but a muscular white haired woman in a pant suit is now blocking the door.

“Let’s go to my office Jody,” Dr. Khan said, “let’s figure this out.”

The three of you walk across the hall to an executive office. Katia positions an armchair in front of the desk for you to sit in. And the two of them sit on the edge of the desk above you.

Dr. Khan begins to pepper you with questions.

“You were running an EMPA simulation this summer?”, he asked.

“Yes an EMPART simulation.” you say.

“What is EMPART?” he asked.

“It’s a continuous simulation to evaluate the total human and financial cost of an EMP using simulated data feeds.”, you explain.

“It runs continuously with simulated data?”, he asks again.

“Exactly,” you confirm.

He and Katia look at each other.

“Who were you working with?”, he asked.

“Kristof”, you say.

Again, Dr. Khan and Katia exchange looks.

“Who recruited you Jody”, he asks.

“Professor Carl Sable”, you say.

“He’s a tenured professor here?”, he asked.

“… from the Vermont campus, I think he was an adjunct, I only took one course from him.” you explain.

“He had a pulse.” Dr. Khan glares.

“Do you know what happened yesterday?” he asks.

“I don’t know. I imagine lots of things. Can you be more specific?”, you offer.

“Okay, here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to sit there. Katia is going to ask you some more questions. Katia is then going to check your answers. And then we’ll figure out what to do with you.”, he says.

Continuing, he says, “If you leave this office, I will call Monterey PD to find you and take you to the nearest FBI field office. You will likely be charged with high treason and face swift execution given what has happened and our current climate.”

“I don’t understand.” you say.

“I know Jody.” He says, “I’m sorry.” as he leaves to cross back to the conference room and draws the white vertical blinds shut blocking your view.

Katia gets a clipboard and starts firing. Date of birth, parent’s date of birth, siblings. High school, home address, friends, family. Medical history, medications, drug use. She takes your wallet. She goes through your Telegram, social media, email, call logs.

She runs you through the chain of events on Sunday evening. She wants to know everything you saw on the jumbo-tron. Again and again and again.

She doesn’t seem to care about the vault door.

She goes outside, and stares at you from the hallway, checking what you’ve told her with a series of phone calls.

After about an hour. She summons Dr. Khan to come back in and says, “wait a minute.”

With the three of you in the room, she gives her reports:

“There is no record of a Carl Sable teaching at the campus in Vermont. Your transcripts list the course as being taught by a Scott Johnson, who they admit went on a last minute sabbatical, but they have no record of who taught in his place. Nobody ever filled out paperwork. There is no Carl Sable fitting your description that lives in Vermont.”, Katia pauses.

“The apartment building is owned by a local realtor. They said that flat was rented by an off-shore corporate entity located in the Seychelles.”

“I already knew this, but wanted to double check given new information. Kristof returned home to fight for Ukraine in 2022. He was captured in March of 2023. He died in captivity in May of 2023. His body was returned showing signs of torture.”, Katia swallowed.

“He would never talk.” Khan said. “Not Kristof.”

“His children were two of the lucky few to return in the last week April 2023.”, Katia said.

“Welp. It’s not like they got anything. It was their satellite.”

“That’s what can’t I figure out.” Katia said.

“Given what this little country mouse has told us. It seems there was a group that knew an attack was imminent, from hacking Russian intelligence. But then chose to mitigate for loss of life instead of stopping it.”, Katia explained.

“Anonymous?” Khan asked.

“… put out a statement condemning the attack, the use of nuclear weapons in space and disavowing any advance knowledge”, Katia said.

“Who else?”

“Well, we could speculate all day. It could have been any of the four eyes, NATO, Japan, China, Israel, even India is fairly good at hacking now. But given the way the United States has been conducting itself on the international stage, it might be easier to make a list of entities that didn’t want to fry US financial markets into the stone age.” Katia explained.

“What about she who shall not be named?” Khan asked.

“I don’t think Jody would have come upstairs looking for a check if that was the case.” Katia said.

“I guess that’s true.” Khan said.

They both turn to look at you.

Khan says, “What the hell are we going to do with this albatross now? Faque!”

“There is an old sailor’s trick, but the lore says it’s very bad luck.” Katia grins.

“We could outsource the job to local security forces.” Khan says.

“They’re getting hungry by now. It’s almost time.” Katia said.

“Do you know what happened yesterday, Jody?”, Khan asks again.

“Yes.” you say solemnly.

“Given what has occurred, even if you weren’t privy to it, we can’t really let you go. Nor can we really turn you in given what we’re currently working on.” Khan explained.

“You seem too dangerously naive and green to be alive, and yet here you are in the colosseum death pit with the scariest monsters known to man.”, Khan paused.

“You’re a little country mouse Jody. But you’ve made it this far. So you’re going to meet some new monsters. We’ll either solve our albatross problem or you will have made a friend.” he said.

“I don’t understand.” you say.

“You’re going to go let my dogs out.” he said. “And feed them.”

“My family fled apartheid South Africa when I was three. My mother liked these big dogs; they made her feel safe. I unfortunately inherited one of these beasts from her. He’s going to be your first test Jody.” Khan said.

“This is my address,” he said handing you a note.

“Do you know how to get there without GPS?”,

“It’s a few blocks from here”, you say.

“Good. You’re going to be navigating a lot without GPS.”, he muttered.

“This is the protocol,” he says, “You look in the mail slot. There will be another dog barking before you reach the door, that’s Flash, he’s harmless. But Thor will come to the mail slot to snarl, growl and snap at you.”, he paused.

“Do you like dogs Jody?”, he asked.

“Normally?”, you asked.

He said, “Are you left-handed or right-handed Jody?”

“Left.”

“Okay,” he says, “give me your right hand.”

He takes a small bottle from behind his desk and puts a spritz of a red oily substance on your hand. It smells fruity and floral.

“That’s the passcode.” Khan says. “If you ever try this without the passcode, no more hand. If you use the wrong hand… “

He pauses to ensure you grasp the implication, then continues, “So you put your right hand all the way in the mail slot. You leave it there while Thor growls and snaps at it. When it’s clear he has decided he’s not going to eat your hand, you open the front door and try with the whole enchilada.”

“Thor will come out to inspect you. He’ll give you a woof and a growl or two. If he doesn’t think you are a threat, he’ll go check the perimeter and do his afternoon business. Don’t move until he has finished his assessment. When they come back in, you put two scoops of food in the large bowl and slide it into the room off the kitchen. Thor will go in, lock the door behind him. Flash gets half a scoop. Wait until Flash is done eating to release Thor, or you’ll have a dog fight on your hands. Don’t try to break up a dog fight.” he finished. “That’s the protocol.”

“Okay. Then what?”, you ask.

“Then you bring us back food.”, Dr. Khan said.

“Given what you told us about EMPART. It’s probably best if your phone stays here off in a Faraday box, right?”, Katia confirmed.

“That’s probably good.” you say.

Dr. Khan’s modest compound was ringed by a pueblo wall with an iron gate to a front walkway. As soon as you open the gate you hear Flash’s excited howling. You walk across terra cotta pavers toward the front door with a large “BEWARE OF DOG” sign. As you touch the mail slot flap you hear Thor’s deep throaty growl. Wow that’s scary. You look in to see black demon eyes and massive fangs and chomping jowls. By all appearances, he seems very angry. He’s actively growling and biting at you.

‘Here goes’, you say.

And you give up your right hand as an offering, moistened with a few close test chomps, then given a through inspection of five sniffs. Satisfied Thor steps back to announce your arrival with a couple sharp barks. You follow the protocols for feeding and proceed to find Flash’s best spots as Thor finishes his dinner from inside the locked room.

You pick up the dinner order on your way back to the institute. You’re a little nervous about being mistaken as a delivery person, but They aren’t out tonight.

When you arrive back at the Institute, you’re greeted with cheers.

“Yo, Greenland is back! Yay Greenland!” Mac yells.

“What happened?” you ask.

“Well Vermont, while you were gone, Danish intelligence services announced they had obtained advance knowledge of yesterday’s EMP attack over the midwest as part of their own intelligence gathering. They took credit for running a year long clandestine harm mitigation operation with the objective of minimizing loss of life.”, Katia said. “Which is why air traffic was warned and so many people at high risk had decided to go out of town.”

“But how did they make all those people go on vacation?”, you ask.

“Oh come on Jody.” Sara says, “A special offer, targeted ad, flier in the mail. It’s fairly easy to manipulate behavior on an individual level, especially when most people carry a computer with push notifications enabled in their pocket.”

You spread out the takeout on a table under a big screen TV near the entrance of the conference room opposite the white board.

“We got you an eggplant parm Jody”, Sara said. “We didn’t know if you were a vegetarian.”

“Thank You!” you say as your turn to face the whiteboard.

The whiteboard is now full of short codes. You recognize the codes from EMPART. They are not colleges, they’re hospitals.

There’s a black hole in the middle of their map stretching from Des Moines to Cleveland. Quite an EMP.

You look up to Vermont: UVM, RR, DH, with 5, 2, and 10 percent red respectively–and all 0 greens.

Your stomach drops.

‘Mom’, you think with a jolt of panic.

“What do the numbers mean?” you ask.

“No no no, Jody don’t look at that.”, Mac says.

Katia, Sara and Mac all look to Dr. Khan.

“The kid’s going to find out eventually.”, he says, “might as well bring ‘em in now.”

“Jody. Jody look at me.” Sara says.

“Jody, there has been a strong uptick in reports of a group of people presenting in emergency rooms with severe abdominal pain. They are being diagnosed with meningococcemia or severe acute leukemia. But we don’t know what the illness is.”, Sara explained.

“What does the CDC say?”, you ask.

“The CDC dismantled their early detection programs last year. But it appears there was a series of major terrorist attacks on the United States that dispersed a pathogen to a large number of people at multiple sites over a period of at least a week.” Katia said.

“This happened last night?” you ask.

“The cases we’re seeing today would have been exposed about two weeks ago; undetected the attacks could have continued up until yesterday. They may still be ongoing.” Mac said.

“What is the pathogen?”, you ask.

“We are not speculating on a specific pathogen.” Dr. Khan said firmly. “We are waiting for confirmed tests from the CDC, they will make a positive identification.”

You look down at the conference table to see it littered with copies of a papers The 1971 Smallpox Epidemic in Aralsk, Kazakhstan, and the Soviet Biological Warfare Program and a paper titled Smallpox as a Biological Weapon. There’s a book titled Smallpox - The Death of a Disease with a bunch of flags sticking out of the end chapters. There’s a couple papers on anthrax, but it’s still in the center of the table untouched.

“What do the red and green numbers mean?”, you ask Dr. Khan.

“The red is the fraction of healthcare professionals that have been exposed to these cases of unknown illness; the green is the fraction of healthcare professionals that have been vaccinated for smallpox in the last five years.” Dr. Khan, winced and turned his head awaiting the next question.

“Why are all the greens zero?” you ask.

Katia interjected, “Because the United States stopped vaccinating for smallpox in 1972, and all modern attempts to vaccinate healthcare professionals for smallpox were sabotaged.”

“We’re not speculating Katia!”, Dr. Khan said sternly.

“Okay.” Katia said.

“The US national defense strategy for a smallpox-like terrorist attack has been to maintain a stockpile of vaccines for rapid distribution in the event of an attack.”, Dr. Khan said.

“As long as healthcare professionals are vaccinated within three to four days of exposure, they should be fine.” he added.

“Where are the vaccines?” you ask.

“The vaccines are being held in the Strategic National Stockpile pending a confirmed positive test from the CDC.” Dr. Khan said.

Silence fell over the room.

“Can I help you with your map?” you ask.

“We would be good Jody; that would help a lot.” Dr. Khan said.

You go into the basement and grab a few dumb terminals to cobble together a workstation. You find a dataset of every major hospital in North America and you put on some gospel music through your headphones to enter the whiteboard of data.

I will stand for you,

will you stand for me,

everybody deserves to be free.

You open a terminal:

sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get install qgis;

You open another terminal:

mkdir monterey-tracking;
cd monterey-tracking;
git init;
touch na-hospitals.csv;
git add na-hospitals.csv;
localc na-hospitals.csv;

You enter a column of zeros for green immunization status, fixing Fort Derick and Walter Reed to 100%.

You then begin entering the red percentages off the board into a column dated August 3rd, one hospital at a time.

next »

ea25b2ba915605f675967fe48d5cceb614b50cfdfaa83fa24e2531eac1699789