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“Baby,” I said, giving her a huge smile, “did I ever tell you that I married the smartest human on earth?”

“Are you saying I thought of this first?”

“Don’t make me admit it,” I said, pretending to beg.

“You’ll have to work it off then,” she said with a wink.

I put the computer into hibernation to begin working off my
debt
with her. I hoped we were going to be newlyweds for the next thirty years, if this was how it was going to be. I was getting more sex after marriage than I ever dreamed of when I was single. Being a young, male hormone factory, I’d dreamed of it a lot.

Chapter 13 - Two Attacks, One Fear

January 1, 2016

Mom brought another tray of little wraps and sandwiches from the kitchen, Kassandra right behind her with more beers. My father and I had become beer snobs over the last few weeks after trying some house beer at one of the bar-breweries downtown. Whatever Flat Canyon Strawberry Ale was made of, it tasted like it was made of angels and honey. I’d never been a huge beer fan, but the mug served to us downtown had kickstarted something in both of us, and we’d spent the last few weeks ordering just about everything we could from small-time crafters that were allowed to ship to us.

“Don’t get wasted,” my mother lectured as my father and I, and even Kass, clinked our bottles together before taking a drink.

“Yes, Mom,” I said, receiving a light swat as she walked by me to go back into the kitchen. “Why haven’t you hired a maid or something yet?” I called after her.

“Tyler Gallagher!” she shouted at me from the kitchen.

“I wanted a French one,” my father said with a mouth full of turkey wrap.

“I heard that!”

“Maybe we’ll get a Ukranian one,” Kassi said, giving my leg a light rub with her foot.

My dad gave me a sly grin, which I returned. He had no idea about Ukranian fetish porn, a joke that Kass and I still shared. I’d probably die of embarrassment if my father and I ever talked about pornography, or even sex. I felt the heat radiating out from my face as it was.

“Don’t encourage him,” Mom said from the kitchen.

“That woman has supernatural hearing,” Kassi said in awe.

“Trust me, we know,” I said, getting a laugh from my dad.

The television suddenly blanked out and the Emergency Broadcast Signal began to blare its harsh, digital alert. My guts dropped into my feet for just a second, but I couldn’t remember reading about any strange or tragic events on New Year’s Day, so figured it was just the regular test the government did. I guess they knew ninety percent of the country would be home watching bowl games or outdoor hockey games. Or maybe just taking it easy so their head wouldn’t actually explode from the previous night’s partying.

“Scared the hell out of me,” Dad said, lowering the volume with the remote. He was just about to say something else when the EMS alert noise stopped and a voice began speaking.

“Turn it up, Dad,” I said, hoping to hear the semi-mechanical voice saying
this is only a test
.

“—at 2:14PM in Texas City, Texas. The Deer Park, Texas Shale, and Global Petroleum oil refineries are confirmed destroyed. The Department of Homeland Security has issued a Red Terror Alert warning, and advises all citizens to remain calm but report any suspicious activity, especially in sensitive areas such as power stations, hydroelectric dams, refineries, and fuel storage sites. Alert. This is a message from the Emergency Broadcast System. A major terrorist attack has occurred at 2:14PM in Texas City, Texas. The Deer Park, Texas Shale, and Global Petroleum oil refineries are confirmed destroyed. The Department of Homeland Security has issued a Red Terror Alert warning, and advises all citizens to remain calm but report—”

“What the fuck?” I asked, immediately expecting my mother to berate me for using such vulgar language, but she was standing behind the couch staring at the television.

My father got up and grabbed his laptop. He brought it back to the couch and sat down with a thump, flipped open the lid, and opened a web browser. He typed and clicked for a couple of minutes, Mom, Kass, and I alternating watching him and the television. We were all frozen in place.

“Goddammit it!” Dad exclaimed. He put the laptop on the coffee table and got up from the couch again. He went into the dining room and grabbed his phone from the table. “Goddammit it!” he shouted this time.

“What’s the matter?” Mom asked, her face full of fear. “What’s happening?”

“It’s okay, Mom,” I said, trying to sound calm to keep her calm. One look at Kass and I knew I’d have to be the calm one. Kassi’s face was lined with fear as well. “It’s an attack on some oil refineries down near Houston.”

“Oh my God,” she said and came around the couch to sit down. “Peter? What’s wrong?”

“I can’t get on the internet,” he said, looking at me strangely. “Tyler, why can’t I get on the internet?”

“I don’t know, Dad,” I said. Whenever a tech problem reared its ugly head in our house, I was the one that always came to the rescue and fixed it. “Let me check.”

I picked up his laptop and checked the network settings. It was connected to the router without any problems, and could even see Mom’s desktop which had a shared drive in it for streaming music to her bluetooth headphones when she was doing housework, one of the new toys I’d bought her now that we could afford it.

I put the laptop down and walked to the family room and sat down at my mom’s computer. Since it was hardwired, I could access the router. I logged in and checked all of the settings, but nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary. The WAN IP address was a typical address instead of the 169.x.x.x that showed up when everything was all screwed up.

“What the hell?” I said, frustrated.

I got up and walked to the router a few feet away on my father’s desk. I cycled the power on it, then checked again. The network was working just fine, and the IP address was in the correct range from our ISP, but I couldn’t get out to the internet. I tried pinging, tracing, and even tried going to our ISP’s home page, which was sometimes necessary when a new device accessed the line from our network and needed to be confirmed.

I grew frustrated and backed up the router’s settings, then did a hard reset on it. When it came back up, I got the same result. The network worked fine, but the internet was out. Even though it appeared to be working just fine. I gave up and walked back to the living room, three pairs of eyes watching me, waiting for me to tell them that I’d fixed the problem.

“I don’t know what’s wrong,” I said, feeling ashamed for some reason that I couldn’t solve the problem. “It does this sometimes when they are upgrading their hardware at the switch.” I knew I was talking almost in Russian to my mother and father, Kass too, but I didn’t know how else to explain it without injecting my rising panic that the government had somehow shut the internet down because of the attacks going on in Texas.

“They picked a pretty convenient time to upgrade their system,” my father grumbled.

“Yeah, I don’t think anyone is even at work today, being New Year’s and all,” I said. “I think it might have to do with what’s going on in Texas.”

“How would blowing up oil refineries in Texas mess with our internet in Idaho?” Kassi asked.

I gave her a vicious glance that said
shut the hell up!
I didn’t want my mom freaking out. Mom was usually a tank, a stoic tank that took everything in stride. I could only remember a few times in my life where I saw my mother panic or lose control. She looked like she was headed there right now. My father put his arms around her, but it didn’t seem to help her relax.

“I don’t know. Just seems like a pretty strange coincidence that the TV starts shouting a warning at us and suddenly the internet isn’t working.” I looked at my father. “Can you make a call? See if the voice network is down as well?”

Ten seconds later I heard my mobile phone ringing. I ran to my bedroom to grab it. I paused once I was in my room, the quantum computer staring back at me. Or at least I imagined that’s what it was doing. I picked up my phone from the desk and half-ran back into the living room.

“No, Dad, don’t call me. Call someone else. Someone that doesn’t live in Idaho.”

My father looked befuddled for a few moments, like he couldn’t remember knowing anyone outside of the living room he stood in.

“I’ll call my house,” Kassandra offered, pulling her phone from her back pocket. “Four bars,” she said, then made a few swipes before putting the phone up to her ear. “Hi, Gloria, it’s Kassi. Yes, I’m fine. School is fine. Yes. No, I was just calling to see if the phone worked. You don’t have the TV on?”

My parents and I stared holes through her as we listened to her conversation with whomever had answered the phone at her parents’ house in Great Falls, Virginia.

“Gloria, do me a huge favor? Can you get on the internet? The internet. Yes, please. I don’t care where, just go to any website, it doesn’t matter.” She shrugged at us while she waited for Gloria to check the internet. Her worried expression turned into a dark frown. “Are you sure? Not even Google? No, it’s okay. We lost internet access too. Listen, Gloria, I’m glad you’re okay. Is Henry there? No I don’t want to talk to him, I just wanted to know he was okay as well. I got to go. Yeah, tell them I called whenever they show up. I gotta go, Gloria. I love you. Bye.”

She pressed the End Call button and set the phone down on her lap. I could tell from her expression that Gloria, whoever that was, wasn’t able to get on the internet either. We were all now much more suspicious that the internet in Idaho and in Virginia seemed to be out of order. I decided I’d test the third rail, so to speak. I swiped through my contacts and picked Glenn Stanley. I hadn’t seen him since my wedding, as he lived in Lynnwood, just north of Seattle. My call with Glenn was shorter than Kassi’s had been, but within the first sentence I’d received an answer. The first thing Glenn asked me was if I was watching TV, and if I could get on the internet.

“This is bad,” I said after hanging up. “The internet is out everywhere.”

“What about—” Kassi said before clamping her mouth shut. I wanted to murder her for half a second for almost giving away the quantum computer. “No, never mind,” she said, trying to cover in case my parents were curious about what she was going to ask. “That’s not connected to the internet.”

I was proud of her for having a quick mind. I laughed with relief, finding humor that I’d wanted to strangle her for a second then wanted to hug her for being the greatest partner in crime I could ever wish for.

“What’s so funny?” Mom asked.

“Nothing. Just the situation. We’re all standing here panicking like nukes are detonating all over the country.”

“They might be,” my father said.

“Maybe, but I’m pretty sure we’d know about it. Unless it was a bunch of terrorists with dirty bombs, anyone nuking us would detonate an EMP hundreds of miles above the country, knocking out power, communications, stuff like that.”

“How do you know this?” my mom asked, her face showing suspicion as if I might be one of the terrorists involved in whatever was going on.

“God, Mom. You
are
suspicious of your own son.” I laughed, hoping it sounded genuine. I prayed that she didn’t somehow choose now to remember the computer that I’d never sent back. The computer that somehow seemed involved in whatever was happening. “I play a lot of video games, I read a lot of books, and I watch a lot of science fiction. It’s common knowledge for nerds to know that an EMP always precedes a nuclear attack.” I gave her the tone of voice that suggested she’d never gain access to the secret geek headquarters and she should be ashamed of that.

“I’m just worried, Tyler.”

“I know, Mom. Look, Kass and I are going to go lie down for a bit. I suddenly don’t feel like watching football or whatever this emergency thing is that isn’t going away.” I gave my wife a gesture with my hand to come with me.

“Okay, son,” my dad said. “I think we’ll do the same.”

“If the internet comes back, I’ll text you,” I said with a grin.

“Damn kids,” he muttered. “Can’t even talk to their parents while in the same house. Everything’s got to be text this or instant message that.”

Kass and I laughed as he grabbed my mom by the elbow and led her downstairs. We retreated into my bedroom. Once the door was closed, Kassi latched on to me so tightly that I could feel my ribs flexing.

*

“I’m scared, Tyler. What if this is something that we’ve caused.”

I was happy that it was
we
instead of
you
. “I don’t think it’s anything we’ve done,” I reassured her. “I think this is just something that happened and we don’t know about it because we’ve kept ourselves from learning too much about the future.”

“Don’t you think you’d have seen this though, while messing around?”

“I don’t really
mess around
,” I said, annoyed.

“You know what I mean. What about when we looked up that Gregory guy who becomes president? Didn’t you see anything in that article that referenced a terrorist attack on oil refineries and the entire internet shutting off?”