Internet Kill Switch (26 page)

6
4

They buried Sani before leaving. Rick dug her grave next to Harold’s, in the backyard at the edge of the vegetable patch.

They wrapped Sani in a bedsheet and lo
wered her into the shallow grave; her tiny body was easy to move. Then they covered her with the fresh earth where she would lay for eternity next to her beloved Harold, whom she had married at 99.

Scarlett clipped a dozen roses from Sani’s bushes and laid them at the head of the grave. They had no idea what to do for a headstone, so they left it
without one. When it was over, they stood around the grave, remembering. Was it really possible they’d met her just five days ago? It seemed like they’d known her their whole lives.

Scarlett sobbed as she looked at the grave. “I love you, Sani.”

Tony held Scarlett’s hand. She squeezed it tight. “None of us will ever forget you, Sani,” he said. “I wouldn’t be standing here without you, or walking, or probably alive at all.”

Rick looked skyward, imagining the old woman smiling down on them. “I hope you’re dancing and riding horses and doing all the things you used to do,” he said.
He began to hum a simple tune Sani had hummed many times. Scarlett and Tony joined him; they all knew it by now. They hummed it through another time. It seemed a fitting way to send her off.

Without another word, the
y got in the car and set off for Maryland.

They got on Route 40 for awhile before heading around Knoxville on a slew of back roads. These roads were less congested by abandoned cars, and they didn’t want to go through any more cities, as they’d just become too dangerous. The day was typical for April in east Tennessee: Overcast and chilly, with rain threatening.

“I can’t tell you how nice it is to not be on a bike right now,” Tony said as Rick drove. “Sani did us one huge, last favor.”

“Yup,” Rick said.

A question had been gnawing at Scarlett ever since
they’d discovered Sani’s body, and she had to ask it, even though just asking it might be disrespectful. “Do you guys think… Is it even possible…” she fumbled for the words. “Do either of you think Sani might have… killed herself?”

“No way,” Rick said immediately. “Not Sani.”

“It sure doesn’t seem like her,” Tony said.

“I know, but… the timing is just so strange,” Scarlett said.

“I thought the same thing,” Tony said. “But I checked her nightstand and bed, and all around her room and the bathroom after… you know. No pills or bottles out anywhere. I think she just knew it was her time.”

“Yeah,” Rick said. “All that stuff she said to us the night before. The note
she wrote us. It was almost like… like our coming was the last thing she needed to do with her life. The last task.”

The thought sent a shiver down Tony’s spine. “And she had this car. Maybe that’s why she didn’t try to sell it or anything after Harold died. She had a feeling it would be needed.”

“It’s a shame the Internet’s down,” Rick said, changing the subject as he looked around the car’s cabin. “This thing has built-in GPS and that huge screen.” He pointed: the Prius had a large display in the middle of the dashboard that currently showed engine efficiency and miles per gallon, among other data. He pushed a button to bring up the GPS, but of course couldn’t get a reading. “It could take us right to the front door of this “root” thingy Max is always going on about.”

Max sighed. “Root DNS server cluster. It’s what runs that
‘Internet thingy’, Einstein. And there’s no guarantee, you know, that I’ll be able to restart the Internet once I get there.”

“Thanks for the encouragement,” Rick said.

65

President Cameron French was in a Cabinet meeting when an aide came into the room, an air of urgency propelling his steps. He whispered into the president’s ear: “The power grid’s been restored, nationwide. All states report having electricity again, sir.”

French leapt to his feet: He was a man of action, and men of action leapt to their feet. He was sure Teddy Roosevelt had leapt to his feet in the White House hundreds of times.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said dramatically, “America has power again.” A roar went up from the gathered, along with high-fiving, back-slapping and some tears. He turned to his press secretary. “Marge, I want to make a statement within two hours. Will the networks be up and working by then?”

Marge Tilley shook her head. “I don’t know, Mr. President. I’ll certainly find out.” She left the room, followed by several aides.

French turned to the aide who gave him the news a moment ago. “Any word on the Internet?”

“Just that it hasn’t been restored yet, sir.”

So, that was something, the president thought. And something good, too. The power was back: He could certainly take credit for that, even though he had no idea how electricity worked. But the Internet being down still meant they were in crisis mode, and he could look very presidential as he dealt with that situation. In all, it was a win-win, as they said in the business world.

W
hen the room calmed, French looked at his energy secretary, who had a PhD. in electrical engineering. “Now that we have power, will the phones start working again, too?”

“Sure,” the secretary replied. “To some limited extent. Of course, everyone will be using their phones when they’ve charged them up again, and that will strain the networks, as they did before. But there will be service available soon, I’d expect.”

The president looked at his National Security Advisor, and the heads of the CIA and FBI. “Now we can also get back to work on finding out who caused this, and hunting them down like the war criminals they are. This can’t be the work of a few individuals; this is a large organization like Al Qaeda, or even a country, like Iran or Russia. I’m leaning toward Iran, personally.”

The National Security Advisor, Brent Housely, fidgeted in his chair. “Mr. President, you know we don’t have any leads in that direction so far. We don’t have a clue yet, unfortunately, as to who’s behind this, or even if it was a deliberate act of war, terrorism or sabotage. I’d hate to...”
“Of course it is,” French said dismissively. “We just haven’t found out who ‘they’ are yet. But I can tell you this,” he said, speaking slowly and dropping his voice an octave for dramatic purposes. “This attack on the United States of America will... not... stand. Those who have done this will rue the day they messed with us.”

He looked around the room. The faces looking back were appropriately impressed
by how he immediately took charge. He turned to his top military advisor, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Get the bombers ready for when we uncover the rat’s nest. I want them able to go at a moment’s notice.”

Press Secretary Tilley came back in the room. “The networks can be ready in two hours, sir.”

“Excellent,” said President French. The people needed their leader, and he would rise to the occasion. It would the verbal equivalent of leaping out of his chair.

6
6

“I could definitely see myself living here someday,” Tony said as the Prius wound its way north through Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. His head swung left and right as he tried to take in the fullness of the Blue Ridge Mountains. He’d never been in this part of the country before, and it left him awed. The mountains stacked up, one range behind the other, almost in layers. To his right, the first layer was dark blue, with the next layer, a little further east, fading to a lighter blue, and the last layer, furthest away, fading to a blue-gray. He took a lot of pictures with Max. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen more beautiful country.”

Scarlett, sitting next to him, agreed. “Breathtaking. Just amazing.” She wished, guiltily, that she could take lots of pictures with her phone and Instagram them. Her friends would love them.

Rick made good time, as there were few stranded cars this far from any big cities, and he didn’t have to worry about speed limits or speed traps. They’d been on the road about five hours, and were deep in the Shenandoah, when they noticed something odd: A roadside service area with its lights on.

“Do you think it could mean...” Scarlett asked.

“One way to find out,” Rick said. He took the next exit off of U.S. 81 and headed into the first town they came across. Sure enough, they saw lights on in houses, and people watching TV to catch up on the current state of things.

“Yup, the cell networks are coming online, too,” Max reported. “I should be able to make calls soon.”

Tony spoke to Max. “So how long will it be before I can make a call to my Mom, so she doesn’t worry?”

“Well, I can try right now,” Max said. “Not sure if it’ll go through yet; it’s really just hit-and-miss
at the moment. As you might imagine, everyone and his brother is trying to make calls.” Max started calling Tony’s Mom, finding success sooner than he expected.

At that exact moment, in Omega Compound, Rudolph Schnell’s phone played a special tune: Wagner’s
Ride of the Valkyries
. The song was actually an alarm, and Schnell had programmed his Android phone to play it for one, and only one, reason: It had picked up a signal from Tony Carver’s phone. Schnell, eating a hamburger at his work desk, nearly choked with surprise when it sounded.

He’d outfitted Max with a special
trace program that the phone would send out the next time it was used. It acted as a homing signal, allowing Schnell to track its exact whereabouts. He triangulated the phone’s location, an easy matter now that the cell networks had been re-activated.

Schnell ran out of the lab and found Bass, who was writing in his
Journal. Bass looked up, annoyed. He didn’t like to be disturbed while writing, but Schnell knew this was worth an interruption.

“We’
ve located the phone.”

Bass put down his quill.

“Where?”

“
Near Lexington, Virginia, in the Shenandoah Valley.”

“Any idea where they’re headed?”

“I’m not sure, but given their direction and the fact that that damn phone is with them, I’d say there’s a good possibility they’re heading toward the DNS root cluster at the University of Maryland.”

Bass’s
eyes got wide. “To use it to restart the Internet.”

Schnell nodded. “That would be my guess.”

Bass calculated in his mind. “Would we be able to beat them there in the Westland?”

“Not sure. It would be close, but if you want to stop them, there’s really no other choice. We’d need to leave within 10 minutes.”

“OK. Tell Marty to get his best 11 men, fully armed and in the chopper, now. Make sure it’s gassed up.”

“It has been
since the day we brought the kid and phone back, but I’ll double-check.” Schnell left.

Bass needed a moment to gather his thoughts.
This is why he’d prepared so carefully, and it was finally paying off. He’d bought a used helicopter at auction years ago, as a way to get around if he needed get somewhere fast -- or get away fast, if the government closed in. The helicopter, an AgustaWestland AW139, could hold up to 15 people, go as far as 700 miles before needing to refuel, and zoom along at 165 knots, or almost 200 miles per hour. Helicopters didn’t need runways, so they were the perfect apocalypse vehicles.

He could never have imagined he’d need it to chase down three kids on their way to try to u
ndo the revolution he’d ignited, but that’s why you prepared for anything, after all; the unexpected was more likely to occur than the expected, in his experience.

Bass closed his
Journal and tucked it in his backpack, then headed out of the private library toward the helicopter pad. He would get there in time. He would stop the phone. He would see his revolution carried out. It had already begun, and was starting to dig in. Nothing would get in his way. Of that he was sure.

6
7

The helicopter’s blades droned on as it made its way toward Maryland. Schnell, tracking Max, saw that the kids had turned east onto I-66, toward Washington, D.C. That was more confirmation that they were likely going to the University of Maryland, in the northeast D.C. suburb of College Park. He reported this to Bass, who grunted in distracted acknowledgement. He was deep into his next Journal entry.

Thanks to my efforts, we’ve seen the end of the execrable “head-down generation”. Let me explain why I call it that. A few months ago, I was on a college campus, buying a book I couldn’t find anywhere else, as it was a textbook for a particular class. The bookstore was inside the student union. I sat down in the big hall of the student union and started reading the book.

Nearby sat a group of
about a dozen students, occupying chairs and sofas arranged in a square. In years past, even as recently as five or ten years ago, they would have been talking with each other; interacting, looking at each other. Now, however, they looked like a group of complete strangers.

Every single one of them -- every one -- had his or her head down, lo
oking at their phones or iPads or laptops. They were texting and clicking and updating their statuses or checking out threads on Tumblr -- whatever. The point is that NO ONE WAS TALKING. No interaction of any kind. No indication that other people existed in the world. No acknowledgement that they were with a group of friends.

Of course, you may ask how I know they were friends? They could have been strangers
, after all.

I know they were friends because, as I observed
them, one guy laughed and looked at a girl sitting across from him. “Did you really?” he said to her. She looked at him and nodded, put her head back down, then started typing into her phone again. They did this for awhile, texting each other back and forth.

I got up and walked casually around the outside of the circle, looking at their devices. They never really noticed me, of course -- they were too involved in staring at their little screens. I saw that several people there got involved in the same texting conversation that the boy and girl were having.

Imagine the scene. A group of college students,
within 10 feet of each other
, opting not to talk, but rather to text, head-down; gazing at, mesmerized by, glowing screens. They would rather text than talk to people right next to them.

This phenomenon, of course, has extended to much of society as a whole. Take a ride on a subway, for instance: No one talks at all. Everyone is looking at their phones or computers, whether it’s a tablet, laptop or Kindle. It’s too much work, I guess, to converse. Or walk down a street in a city. Same thing. Everyone’s looking down, answering email or texting or updating their social networks or
announcing their location on Foursquare.

Thus, the “head-down generation.” The generation that’s lost without instant updates from friends. The generation that
always needs to look at more pictures of kittens or babies dancing. The generation that needs instant stock quotes and fantasy football scores. The generation that can’t walk into bookstores anymore because buying on Amazon is easier than browsing the shelves. The generation that would rather check a blog than read a newspaper.

This generation would rather read about other people’s lives than live their own lives. This generation is more desperate to learn about the latest Internet meme than to feed starving millions in Africa.

Imagine what could happen if people would start looking up again? Seeing the world around themselves? Realizing that there actually IS a world around them? They could see where they’re going, both literally and figuratively. And those kids in the student union might learn that talking is more satisfying than texting, that hanging out in a chat room isn’t really hanging out at all.

The head-down generation will soon be a relic of the distant past, gone the way of the Dodo bird and knights on horseback.
Without the Internet to pull everyone into its dungeon of mindlessness; without technology turning society into a mass assemblage of ostriches that bury their heads in devices, we can rise from the ashes of this dementia known as “distraction” and start to live again.

Viva la revolucion!