CyberStorm Part 21

"Had some trouble?"

I'd been expecting him to lead us somewhere formal, to sit down at a desk to fill in paperwork, to lead our prisoners into a concrete room with double-sided gla.s.s. He just motioned for us to sit down at a table in the cafeteria.

"These guys attacked us last night-"

"We attacked you? You butchered my brother, Vinny, with a friggin' ax!" yelled Paul. "G.o.dd.a.m.n animals."

"Shut your hole," said Sergeant Williams. He turned to me. "Is that true?"

I nodded. "But they were holding us, our wives and kids, at gunpoint, stealing our stuff. We had no choice-"

Holding up a hand, Sergeant Williams interrupted me. "I believe you, son, I do, and we can hold them for a while, but I can't promise anything right now."

"What do you mean?" said Chuck. "Lock 'em up. We'll write down statements."

Sergeant Williams sighed deeply.

"I'll take your statements, but there's nowhere to put them. As of this morning, New York State Correctional is releasing all minimum-security prisoners. No food, no water, no staff, generators out, and can't open and close cells electronically. Had to let them all go. Nearly thirty prisons emptied. G.o.d help us if they release any of the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds in Attica or Sing Sing."

"So, what, you're going to let these guys go?"

"We'll lock them upstairs for now, but we may have to let them go depending on how long this lasts. Even if we do, though, it's not forgiven, just delayed."

He looked at Paul and Stan.

"Either that, or we put a bullet in their heads in the bas.e.m.e.nt."

Is he serious?

I held my breath, waiting. Chuck nodded slowly.

Sergeant Williams clapped his hand on the table and roared out laughing.

"You should have seen your faces," he laughed at Paul and Stan. "G.o.dd.a.m.n idiots."

He looked back at us.

"Army is here now, taking control of the emergency stations. Martial law being declared later today. From this point on, any more of this, and it will be a bullet, get me?" he said, returning his gaze to Paul and Stan.

They both nodded, some color returning to their faces.

"Okay, Ramirez, get 'em out of here."

The officer who'd led us in grabbed Paul and Stan by the arms and pulled them up from the table, leading them out of the cafeteria. He left our guns behind on the table with Sergeant Williams.

"Sorry, boys, it's the best we can do for now. Is there anything else?" asked Sergeant Williams. "Is your family all right?"

"We're okay, yeah," I replied.

For the first time since entering, I looked around the cafeteria. Before it had been a bustling beehive of activity, busy and lived-in but clean, but in just a few days it'd become filthy. It was almost empty.

Seeing my eyes, Sergeant Williams antic.i.p.ated what I was thinking.

"Lost most of my men. I mean, not dead-although we have had a few officers down-but mostly gone home. No sleep, no supplies. Thank G.o.d the military's arrived, but so far they don't have a tenth of the manpower they need."

"You're not going home to your family?"

He laughed sadly. "The force is my family. Divorced, kids hate me and live anywhere but near me."

"Sorry," I mumbled.

"Here is as good as anywhere for me right now," he continued, slapping the table. "And I may need your help before all this is over."

"We do have one thing that may be helpful," said Chuck.

"You," said Sergeant Williams slowly, "have something that will help all this mess?"

Chuck pulled a small memory chip out of one pocket.

"We do actually."

Day 9 New Year's Eve - December 31.

"APPEt.i.tE FOR RISK," said Chuck drunkenly. "The problem with America, why we're in this mess."

"Risk?" I said skeptically.

"Yes," came the slurred response, "or, I mean, our lack of appet.i.te for it."

We were back in Richard's place for a New Year's Eve party, with nearly everyone in the entire building, over forty people. After the break-in and drama yesterday, we had two people on a rotating watch in the lobby, each armed with a .38 and a cell phone that could broadcast alert messages to all residents in the building through Vince's mesh network.

Some light had finally appeared at the end of the tunnel.

The two radio stations still transmitting, New York Public Radio and New York Public Services, were predicting that power would be returned to lower Manhattan within the next day. The Army Corps of Engineers had arrived and were throwing their weight behind fixing whatever the problem was.

Heavy military helicopters were skimming the city all day, and the noise and commotion gave a feeling of safety, a sense that the big boys were finally here.

While the men hauled snow up for water and went foraging outside, trading with neighboring buildings for supplies, the women did their best to clean up, decorate, and cook some food. Chuck wired the generator into the music system and TV at Richard's and was playing videos and music from Vince's phone. Streamers hung from the ceiling.

We'd invited the group from the second floor, nine people, up for the party. In the raid two days before, Paul's gang had started to empty out their supplies as well. They were celebrating Irena and Aleksandr as the heroes that had stopped them, a role the old couple weren't comfortable with, but accepted with smiles and nods.

People stood around in groups, chatting, some even danced. If you closed your eyes, it was almost as if everything was normal-almost. n.o.body had showered in five days.

"Appet.i.te for risk?" said Rory. "Yesterday you're saying we need more fear, and today you're saying we need more risk?"

"I'm agreeing with you," replied Chuck.

"You are?" said a bewildered Rory.

"I thought about it, and you're right. Fear isn't the answer. If we're afraid of everything, then we're afraid to do anything and we're giving up our freedom. You were right!"

I stared at Chuck, and then looked at Vince and Tony. They both shrugged at me. We had no idea where he was going with this. I smiled back at Chuck.

"Explain?"

Over Vince's shoulder I could see Susie and Lauren sitting on the carpet of the living room, holding up Luke and Ellarose together, helping them dance.

Everyone looked happy.

Chuck grinned and picked up a bottle from the middle of the table and poured himself another drink. We were sitting around Richard's kitchen table, with an a.s.sortment of his finest scotches in the middle.

"A few weeks ago at one of my restaurants," said Chuck, "guess who walked in?"

This is going to be one of those stories.

"Who?"

"Gene Kranz."

Everyone but Vince shrugged. "Head mission controller for Apollo?"

"Right! Back in Gene's day, they were strapping themselves to rocket sleds and lighting the fuse with a cigar. You know that guy who just set the new high-alt.i.tude freefall jump, from the Red Bull balloon?"

We all nodded.

"It took them three years and a whole team of engineers to beat the old record Joe Kittinger set more than fifty years ago, and even then they only barely beat him. Joe Kittinger was Gene's buddy, and back in 1960 when they set the old record, Joe and Gene and a few guys just went out into the desert with a balloon, a case of beer, and an old pressure suit...and jumped."

"They sure don't make 'em like they used to," said Tony, nodding.

"No kidding. Do you know the average age of the mission controller during the Apollo program?"

We all shrugged, but he wasn't really asking.

"Twenty seven!"

"And your point?" I asked.

"My point is that these days people barely trust a twenty-seven-year-old to cook their burger properly, never mind land on the moon. Everything needs to be vetted by a million committees. We're just not willing to accept any risk anymore. No appet.i.te for risk, and it's killing this country."

"Like antibacterial hand soap for kids," I ventured. "Disinfecting and cleaning them all the time, weakening their immune systems and making them less healthy when we're trying to do the opposite-it's why kids have so many allergies. I'm always telling Lauren to just let Luke stay dirty."

I nodded at everyone impressively. I was drunk too.

"Mostly because you're lazy," Chuck laughed. "Not quite rocket s.h.i.+ps and moon landings, but yeah."

"I see where this is going," said Vince. "If we don't accept any personal risk, then we're putting that responsibility into the hands of others to handle it for us, with exactly the opposite result of what we want."

"No risk," said Chuck loudly, wagging one finger in the air, "equals no freedom."

"Exactly," agreed Rory. "We're afraid of terrorists, so we let the government start to collect personal information about where we are and what we're doing, put up cameras everywhere."

"But if you're not doing anything wrong," I pointed out, "you have nothing to be afraid of. I don't mind giving up a little privacy for a little security."

"That's where you're wrong. You have everything to be afraid of. Where's that information going?"

I shrugged. In the new media business ventures I was working on, we regularly collected huge amounts of information about consumers online and sold it to businesses. I didn't see anything wrong with it.

"Do you know there are new laws that give the government the right to look at all your e-mail, all your records, everything you do, watch everywhere you go?"

"I didn't know that."

"Anytime there's even a hint of the government limiting the ability to buy a.s.sault rifles, the public goes crazy, saying they're trying to take away our freedom. This law that gives the government the right to look into everything you do, without your consent-and not even a peep."

"Now don't get me wrong, I think that the right to bear arms is fundamental, but you know what freedom really is?" asked Rory loudly. "Freedom is civil liberty, and the foundation of civil liberty is privacy. No privacy means no civil liberty means no freedom. You know why they don't just fingerprint everyone?"

"Seems like a good idea to me," laughed Chuck.

"Because once they have your fingerprints," continued Rory, ignoring Chuck, "you instantly become a suspect in every crime. They'll run your fingerprints against everything they find at a crime. You go from being a free citizen to being a criminal suspect."

"And fingerprints are just one way of identifying you," added Vince. "Location, your face on a camera, things you buy, all your personal information creates a digital fingerprint."

Chuck wasn't convinced. "But who really cares if the government has a bunch of information about me? What are they going to use it for?"

"What are they going to use it for is exactly the question," replied Rory heatedly. "Do you like the idea of being a suspect in every crime across the country? Do you really trust the government to keep your information safe? All the biggest data breaches are from the government-the bad guys are stealing it all the time, not to mention thefts from corporations. Talk about losing privacy."

He pointed at me.

"And the new media applications you work on are the worst."

"Hey, come on now," I said defensively, raising my gla.s.s.

On closer inspection, Rory was even drunker than Chuck. His eyes were swimming as he looked at me angrily.

"If you're not paying for a product, you are the product. Isn't that right? Aren't you selling all the private information you collect on consumers to marketing companies?"

Chuck shook his head. "Where are you going with all this?"

"Where am I going?" said Rory. He blinked and took another sip from his drink. "I'll tell you where I'm going. Our grandfathers stormed the beaches of Normandy to protect our freedom. And now, because we're afraid, we're giving up those same freedoms they fought for and died to protect."

He stood up out of his chair and began pointing at each one of us.

"We aren't willing to accept any personal risk, exactly as Chuck says, and because we won't accept personal risk, we give the government the right to invade our lives, to turn us into suspects in our own homes. We're giving away our freedom because we're scared."