Shimmer (19 page)

And still, by eleven
A.M
., disaster plans were being cracked open.

Still, maps and layouts were being drawn, then redrawn, then refined again.

Still, wire was being run down hallways and stairwells.

Still, new Blue Boxes were being shipped out to clients to replace those destroyed by the waves.

Still, servers were being rolled toward the DMZ on hand trucks, carts, skateboards and scooters.

Still, I stood near Leonard, telling him,
Yes, make that decision, move that forward, take that chance, it doesn't matter, somehow, Leonard, somehow we'll make it work.

And still, the building was filling with people. Some had only now answered their home phones or turned on their cell phones. Some had flown back from vacations or weekend getaways. Most were techs, network administrators and software programmers called in to rebuild
the network. But people from Marketing, Customer Service, Legal, Finance—all had been called to the office as well. The marketing teams were forming contingency plans to repair our image in case of the worst. The customer service groups were being prepared for what could be a surge of angry, threatening calls. The legal and finance teams were developing plans for a response to clients, partners and, of course, the market.

All of them, everyone now entering the building, were motivated by some varying mix of pride, fear, responsibility and greed. Because even though no one knew what this would do to the shadow network, everyone understood what could happen to them, and to the company, and to grace, if we missed the Sunday deadline.

Back in my office for a moment, checking on the shadow network for the fifth time that morning.

So far, Shimmer was fine. So far, those parts of the shadow network I could see were fine.

Shimmer, shining gold, the numbers still, the motion quieted. A picture of the shadow network waiting simply to restart.

The secrecy of the shadow network would, now, be its salvation. The shadow network was made up of thousands of independent parts. Server farms. Test centers. Satellite uplink stations. All had to operate on their own. Not because they were built to withstand something as severe as the waves or reset that had brought down the real network but because I'd known from the beginning that the only chance I had of keeping the lie alive was to have each part of the hidden system operate independently. And so now all those parts were unaffected by the waves and reset.

The shadow network was undamaged. But I had no idea if it would reconnect to the new network.

Toward one o'clock that afternoon, with the smell of Chinese food and coffee mixing together in slightly dank, sweet-and-sour winds, three techs and two security officers arrived on the eleventh floor with a small wooden crate. Two of the techs carried the crate, the security officers walking in front of it, the third tech following behind. A hush spread through the people, the crate being moved very carefully across the floor, the escorts slowly leading it toward a specially prepared room near the DMZ.

It was the Blue Box from Tulsa. Ready now for immediate analysis.

An hour later, Leonard had gathered enough information from the box—and had laid out a clear enough plan on how to restore the network—that he could give the senior staff, Perry and other top managers a summary damage assessment.

“The costs are in the eighty-million-dollar range so far,” Leonard was saying.

Cliff held his calculator above his lap, working the buttons with both his thumbs, almost on the verge of cracking the small machine in half.

“However,” Leonard said, “that's before full reporting from all the field offices.”

Cliff's attack on the calculator paused, then resumed with even greater force.

“But word is that damage was light in Asia, correct?” Julie asked.

Leonard nodded. “And Europe. The damage was minimal.”

“Did the wave even hit Europe?” Perry asked.

“No,” Leonard said. “Not Asia either. The damage overseas came from the reset. And none of it was debilitating. That fact certainly helps with costs and the speed at which we can restore operations.” He looked down at the notes in his hands, ready to start up with his damage assessment again, but Perry interrupted him.

“Did the wave hit Canada?” Perry asked.

Leonard looked over his notes. “No,” he said. Then he looked at
Perry. Staring now. Realizing something. Speaking more slowly. Almost quietly. “Not Mexico either.”

“But Hawaii?” Perry said, part question, part comment. “Alaska?”

Leonard's eyes were opening wide. He sat down. He nodded very slowly, carefully. “Yes.”

Perry turned to stare out the window, face made gray by the very distant fall day.

I had lowered my head as Perry spoke. Realizing. Realizing what Perry saw, realizing something very obvious but something no one had had a moment to consider.

“What?” Cliff asked, looking up from his calculations. “Tell the money guy what this means.”

Leonard started to answer, then paused, biting his lip, as if he couldn't bear to say it.

“The system,” Perry said when it was clear Leonard was not able to answer, “our system, has little sense of countries or borders. It just knows data. It passes data from a mainframe in Berlin to a mainframe in LA, from a satellite over Mexico to a transfer station in Canada. If the waves were simply a failure in the system, why would they stay within the United States?”

Cliff squinted for a moment. Then he blinked. The last one in the room to see it. “The Blue Box didn't fail,” Cliff said. “We were hacked.”

Leonard shook his head, a motion so large, so involved that I had to stare at the structure of his neck for a moment, concerned that maybe it could not support Leonard's skull. “No,” he said quietly, his voice falling toward a whisper with each word he spoke, “we were assaulted. We'd thought about hackers. But this, this was something else. It was a calculated, comprehensive assault by a very sophisticated group.”

There was silence then, for a long moment, a room without breathing or motion or sound of any kind, and it was Julie who said the word. “Regence.”

“Scramble the bombers,” Perry said quietly.

This wasn't some kid in a university computer lab cracking a password on a Blue Box. An attack by Regence was something else completely.
Regence had near infinite means to attack our system. It could have invested in a company that was a client of ours, in so doing gaining access to a series of our Blue Boxes, creating a beachhead for itself inside our network. It could have loaded the attack software on one of the millions of cell phones it manufactured, then arranged for that phone to be sold to a Core employee, specifically someone who would plug the phone into our network in New York.

It was corporate espionage, really. Illegal, unethical, extremely risky. But possible. Very, very possible.

Whitley was standing now. Very tall, pulling her coat from her chair, sliding white-shirted arms into the black sleeves. “We've got to notify the board of directors,” she said. “About the attack. And about the risks.”

“I'm not sure of that yet,” I said. “I'm not sure how I want it presented to them.”

She paused at her chair, hands at her cuffs, dark eyes turned to me. “Robbie,” she said, “I'm not—” She stopped, then started again. “I'm not asking. I'm speaking as head of SWAT. We have to notify them. Now.”

And it was a moment before I could respond. The room was quiet. Whitley glanced around. For that second, our world had shifted. A tangible passing of control, of power. To Whitley. And away from me.

I nodded. Smiled. I nodded again.

Even Whitley didn't seem to like it. Because what had shaken the room was not that Whitley was reporting the disaster to the board now. It wasn't just that she'd asserted her authority so directly, so quickly, and in a way no one had seen before. What had shaken the room most was that this kind of demand was what SWAT, the board, auditors, lawyers and so many other people would pursue on a daily basis if we didn't get the network restored in time. Because then our world would shift completely and forever. The isolated life we'd created for ourselves, our deeply removed world of work and money and jokes and friendships, it would be invaded, broken and quickly brought to an end.

“Security?”

“Certainly.”

“And containment?”

“Absolutely.”

“Restoration?”

“Soon.”

“When?”

“Soon enough.”

The board, speaking to Whitley and me via a speakerphone on Whitley's desk. Whitley answering their questions. Questions for the past thirty minutes. Questions from board members spread out across the country, talking from cars, from weekend getaways, from their homes, from their apartments, from hotel rooms and airplanes.

But, as was always the case when we held these phone-based meetings with the board, the board members soon became one for me. One opinion. One entity. One voice.

“I can't believe we will be able to keep this quiet, Robbie,”
a voice from the board now said.

“It's in everyone's interest to keep this quiet,” I said. “Every programmer, every customer service rep, they all know what this could do to grace.”

“That's the power of grace,”
a voice said in agreement.

“Grace,” I said, blinking, telling them what they wanted to hear.

“That's the power of the company,”
a voice said in agreement.

“Power,” I said, blinking, telling them what they wanted to hear. “And we're already preparing the spin for the press and the market. There will be some ugly rumors in the papers, some fear among investors. But as long as the network comes back up, we will weather this.”

“And if it doesn't?”
the board asked.

“Then,” I said, pausing, waiting, feeding the subtext of drama with no particular purpose in mind, but knowing drama was called for, needed, necessary. “Then I will go in front of every TV camera, every reporter, every client, everyone who will listen. And I will explain.

Apologize. And most importantly, if our suspicions about Regence are, in fact, true, we will blame them. We will attack them. We will make them the villain.”

“It'll be ugly,”
the board said.

“It will be war,” I said.

“It'll be war,”
the board said.

“A war,” I said quietly, pausing, waiting just an extra moment again. “And a war we will win.”

“Yes,”
the board said.

“Win,”
the board said.

Whitley shook her head, smiling slightly. She wrote a note on a piece of paper.
Fucking brown-noser.

I nodded. “Whitley has just passed me a note,” I told the speakerphone, “reminding me that we are due back in the DMZ. But I want to make sure all your questions have been answered.”

“Absolutely,”
the board said.

“Certainly,”
the board said.

“War,”
the board said.

The board hung up. Whitley shook her head.

I shrugged.

I was ready to stand, leave, move back into the motion and work in the DMZ. But Whitley was staring.

“Do you believe any of that?” she asked.

I sat forward for a moment, gnawing my lip, readying an answer. But I looked at her before I spoke, Whitley with her head tilted forward, her hair across her eyes, not pushing it away, not blinking or sitting up. And I sat back. “I don't know,” I said quietly. “Actually, I'm far too scared to know what I believe.”

“That's not helping,” she said, lowering her eyes to the table, hiding for another moment. She looked up again, eyes that were green, something I certainly had never known.

I smiled slightly. I shrugged. “I get a moment of honesty.”

“A moment to be real.”

I nodded.

“We're dead if we don't get the network up tonight,” she said. “There's no saving us. No fighting what will happen. We'll be, at best, some two-bit networking company with a handful of clients.”