“Graceful degradation is the problem.”
I grabbed a bowl from the counter. “Like an aging porn star?”
Chuck frowned, trying to make the connection. “If you view technology as sex,” he mused after a pause, “then yes, maybe. Needs to keep working even if it gets old.”
“And a lot of people like technology better than sex.”
“You first among them,” he replied with a smile. He picked up a bowl and waved it at me. “I’ve noticed how you’ve been itching for your e-mail.”
“Boys, boys, we have children here,” said Susie, shaking her head but smiling, holding her hands over Ellarose’s ears.
We were all together in Richard’s place, the only space large enough to hold twenty-eight people at the same time. We’d added three more refugees from other floors, but Rex and Ryan had left for the emergency shelters, to try to find a way out. Richard had offered to provide lunch for everyone, so we were crowded together in the open-concept first floor of his place.
“How long do you think this power outage is going to last?” asked Sarah, filling my bowl with the stew she’d made. It was amazing the stuff Richard had managed to find.
“I’d give it another week. This new snowstorm will be over by tomorrow, and the NYPD sergeant told me Con Edison had things sorted out, at least for Manhattan. Lights should be on for New Year’s.”
Chuck raised his eyebrows. I shrugged. Where he was a pessimist, I was an optimist, and there was no sense in scaring people with his theories.
“Sounds good to me,” said Tony.
We were trying to rotate guard duty in the downstairs lobby, but he was taking more shifts than anyone else. I’d just texted him, using Damon’s messaging app, to come up and grab a plate of food.
The wind howled and churned outside the windows. We were down to a handful of radio stations still transmitting, and by consensus we tuned into New York Public Radio to listen to a steady stream of emergency announcements. Many were requests for assistance, but none were close to us, and in any case, it was too dangerous to go outside.
“What I mean by graceful degradation,” continued Chuck as Sarah filled his plate, “is that there’s no longer a way to revert to previous technology if something fails.”
“Example?”
“Like this logistics thing that screwed up shipping. Everything is ‘just in time,’ with a handful of central warehouses located in the middle of nowhere that stock almost nothing.”
“So no local stock if the supply chain gets disrupted?”
“Exactly. The complex systems supporting cities are balanced on a knife’s edge. Knock out one supporting leg—logistics, for instance—and poof,” said Chuck, blowing on his hand, “the whole thing goes down. Supply chain attack is the big weakness.”
“So back to horses and carts?” said Richard, sitting at the kitchen counter with Damon, Chuck, Rory, and me. The kids were sprawled on couches with Lauren and Susie.
Chuck laughed. “Where are the horses?”
“The countryside?”
“There are none anymore, not like there used to be. We’re five times the population of when humans last used horses for transportation, with maybe one-fifth the horses. And back then, 80 percent of people lived in the countryside and had a shot at supporting themselves. Now that 80 percent live in cities.”
“Horses?” I said. “You’re seriously talking about horses?”
Richard shook his head and smiled. “I’ll leave you boys to your fun. I gotta go to the bathroom.” He got up to leave.
With no running water, we’d started using apartments we’d broken into on the fifth floor as a communal latrine to maintain some semblance of sanitation. We collected wastewater in buckets and used it to flush the toilets. Richard picked up a wash bucket by the door on his way out.
“I’ll tell you what the problem is,” said Damon. “No legal framework.”
“You think lawyers could stop this snowstorm?” laughed Chuck.
“Not the snowstorm, but the cyberstorm, yeah, maybe.”
It was the first time I’d heard the term “cyberstorm.”
Everyone went quiet.
“New York isn’t being beaten by snow. It’s had big snowstorms before,” continued Damon. “It’s being beaten by cyber.”
“And you think lawyers could stop that?”
Damon looked up at the ceiling and then back at Chuck. “Do you know what a botnet is?”
“A network of computers that have been infected to use in a cyberattack?”
“Right, except not just infected. People can voluntarily let their computers be used as part of a botnet.”
“Why would they do that?” asked Chuck, frowning.
Rory waved his spoon in the air. “There are very good reasons why someone would want to join a botnet.”
While Rory and Chuck could both be described as liberals, Chuck leaned a little more to the right. “You enjoying that rabbit food?” said Chuck with raised eyebrows. Rory was trying to stick to his vegan diet, eating a plate of carrots and beans. “This may be a good time to decide to switch to a higher-octane food source.”
“Vegetarian is the best option for survival situations, and we’re not down to Funyuns yet,” replied Rory, smiling. “And getting back to botnets, denial-of-service attacks are a legitimate form of civil disobedience, like a cyber version of a sixties sit-in.”
“You’re that blogger for the Times who covered Anonymous, right?” said Damon.
Rory nodded.
“So you support what Anonymous did to the logistics companies, what got us into this mess?” demanded Chuck.
“I support their right to defend and express their point of view,” replied Rory, “but I don’t think they were the ones—”
“We’ll see how much you support them,” said Chuck angrily, “when we lock you onto the goddamn roof in this storm.”
“Hey, play nice,” I said, raising my hands.
“It’s criminal is what it is,” grunted Chuck.
“Actually, it’s not,” pointed out Damon. “And that’s my point about legal framework.”
“So it’s legal to operate a botnet and use them to attack?”
“It’s illegal to operate a botnet,” explained Damon, “but it’s perfectly legal to join one, as an individual. In denial-of-service attacks, each computer just pings the target a few times a second, and there’s nothing wrong with instructing your computer to do that. But when you control hundreds of thousands of computers and direct them to do the same thing, that’s when the problem starts.”
“So it’s illegal to run a botnet, but legal to join one? That doesn’t make any sense.”
Damon shrugged. “And what’s illegal in one place is legal somewhere else. You can hire a botnet over the Web, paid through PayPal, to attack a competitor. How is the FBI going to arrest someone in Khuzestan? They have international laws for dealing with money laundering, drugs, terrorists, but few for cyber.”
Chuck frowned at Damon. “We need to make sure that anyone who messes with this stuff knows they’ll be tracked down. Scare the shit out of them.”
“Fear as a weapon?” shrugged Rory. “Deterrence based on fear is a holdover from the Cold War. So that’s your idea?”
“Worked pretty damn well for forty years.”
“And look where it got us,” said Rory, his voice getting louder. “A democracy based on fear is not a democracy. Fear of the commies, fear of the terrorists—it never ends! You know who else used fear to keep people in check? Stalin, Hitler—”
“That is such a load of left-wing horseshit. You want somebody to blame?” Chuck pointed at the Chinese family huddled together on the stairs in the corner of the room. Then he lowered his hand. “You know what? I am afraid,” he continued. “I’m afraid of what the hell is going on out there. I am afraid.”
The room went silent, the only sound the wind whistling outside.
“Y’all want something more concrete to be afraid of?”
We all turned to the entrance.
It was Paul, the intruder from a few days before, and he had a gun to Richard’s head. A group of men appeared behind him. Stan, the owner of the garage, was with them, also holding a gun.
“Sorry,” said Stan, looking toward Chuck and Rory. “But we got families too. Nobody needs to get hurt.”
Paul shoved Richard into the room and pointed his gun directly at Tony. “We don’t got any heroes in here, do we?”
“I’m sorry.”
The wind howled outside. It was getting dark.
“It’s not your fault, Tony. I told you to come up, remember? And I sure as hell didn’t want a gun fight in here with the kids.”
He nodded, unconvinced.
They’d slipped into the building during the few minutes when he’d come upstairs and the lobby had been empty. Upon entering Richard’s apartment, they’d immediately zeroed in on Tony and removed the .38 from his pocket. They must have been watching us for a long time.
“We could just rush them,” whispered Chuck.
“Are you out of your mind?”
Lauren had Luke on her lap and was staring at me, willing me to stay still. The thought of being shot in front of my son was terrifying. We had to let them take what they wanted. Even if they took everything, we still had what we’d stashed outside. It was better to wait this out.
“Quiet over there!” shouted Paul.
He was sitting by the entrance with Stan, and they’d corralled all of us at the opposite end of the apartment. We could hear the rest of their gang dragging and pulling things in the hallway. Our things.
“We can’t let them take everything,” muttered Chuck under his breath. With every scrape and bump we heard, he tensed up, cursing and glaring at Paul.
“Chuck, do not do anything,” I whispered. “Do you hear me?”
Chuck nodded.
“I said QUIET!” yelled Paul, waving his gun at us.
Outside the door we heard a grunt, and something heavy hit the ground. It sounded like they were dragging the generator. And then it went quiet. Paul fidgeted with his gun, smiling.
The door opened a crack and Paul turned toward it. “You guys done?”
“Nyet.”
A long rifle barrel appeared through the crack in the door, nudging it open. Irena materialized, holding an antique doublebarrel shotgun. She was still wearing her cooking apron, stained as usual, with a tea towel thrown over one shoulder. Stooped over the gun, she shuffled through the doorway, the barrel shaking as she tried to keep it centered.
Paul and Stan backed away from the door, separating.
“Drop it, grandma,” Paul said slowly, pointing his pistol at her. “I don’t want to have to put you down.”
Aleksandr appeared in the darkness behind Irena. The lights were out in the hallway. He was holding the ax from the emergency fire locker, and it was dripping with blood.
Irena aimed her gun straight at Paul’s chest. “You know how many times I have been shot?” she laughed. “Nazis and Stalin couldn’t kill me. You maybe think a worm like you can?”
“Put that freakin’ gun down, lady!” yelled Stan, waving his own gun at us. “I’ll shoot one of them, I swear to God.”
Grunting, Aleksandr winced and stepped in beside his wife. “You hurt one hair, I eat your liver for dinner while you watch. I killed bastards like you before your whore mother was born.”
“I’m warning you, grandma, put it down!” screeched Paul, his voice wavering.
He was pointing his gun at Irena’s head but staring at the blood dripping off Aleksandr’s ax.
Irena laughed. “Tupoy. So stupid. You want kill, don’t shoot head.” Her eyes narrowed. “You aim chest, more painful, less chance.” Smiling, she bared a mouthful of gold-capped teeth and began squeezing the trigger of her gun. “Say good-bye, dolboyeb durak—”
“Okay, okay, stop,” whimpered Paul, holding his gun up.
Irena motioned for him to get rid of it with a flick of her chin, and he dropped it on the floor with a loud thud.
“What the hell are you doing?” screeched Stan. He spun his gun toward Irena. “You never said anything about these freakin’ psychos.”
“Don’t point that at my wife,” growled Aleksandr, taking two powerful strides toward Stan, raising the ax. Stan dropped his gun and backed away, raising his hands to protect himself.
“Okay, okay!” I yelled, standing up and running toward them. Reaching behind Irena, I shut the door. “Where are the rest of them?”
Irena said, “One at end hallway, dead I think. Others ran away.”
“We gotta make sure they’re not in here,” said Chuck, collecting the two guns from the floor and reaching into Paul’s jacket to remove the .38 he’d taken from Tony, then handing it to me. “You watch these guys while Tony, Richard, and I go and make sure they’re gone.”
Chuck looked down at Paul’s legs and then smirked at him. “Looks like grandma made you wet your pants.”