Sally climbed the steep steps, and nodded to the private manning the machine gun. “Ma’am,” he said, standing to attention.
“At ease,” Sally said, “I just came for a look-see.”
Sally peered out — seeing both Patuxent Freeway nearby and the Baltimore Washington Freeway in the distance. Cars were stationary on both highways. Not a traffic jam — they were spread far apart. Just stopped.
“What happened, private?”
“I don’t know, ma’am. About forty minutes ago all the vehicles just stopped. Civilian and military. I seen a couple of old diesel Jeeps go by on the base, but that’s about it. Ma’am.”
Sally stood for a minute, then headed back to the building, double-time. She arrived at the USCYBERCOM control room breathing a little fast.
“General, I’ve seen it. But what does it mean? Ma’am?”
“That’s what I want you to find out. All civilian communications and vehicles are down right now. Keep the infected bases quarantined, but pull your people off segmenting the bases. Instead I want you to look at the virus. I want to understand what it’s doing. I want you to tell me how we can counter it. Surely we have something in our arsenal for that. And get some coffee sent around, I think your people need it.”
Sally looked at her squad, which in fact had been on duty for eight hours, and should normally go off-shift now. They’d need some coffee and some breakfast to boot.
“Yes, ma’am, we’ll get right on it.”
Leon punched the button for the elevator for the third time before giving up. Last year the ancient elevator had been broken more often than not, and after months of ongoing repairs, the superintendent replaced it with a brand new model. Leon shook his head as he went for the stairs. This was the first time the new elevator had been broken. He walked down the six flights of stairs.
As he emerged onto the side street where his apartment was located, he felt like something was wrong. He looked around curiously as he slowly walked toward school. The streets were crowded with people like usual. People walking to work, people waiting for the bus, people driving. But their voices were loud, almost strident. Suddenly it hit Leon: there were no car noises. None of the cars in the street were moving. He peered down the street. Maybe one up front was broken down?
Leon continued his walk, ignoring the adults, and turned onto Flatlands Avenue, a big multilane street. And there he stopped, mouth open in astonishment. As far as he could see, Flatlands Avenue had turned into a giant parking lot. He looked in both direction. Strangely, it didn’t appear to be a traffic jam. The cars were spread out. A few were stopped at unusual angles. Adults milled about in the street and on the sidewalks, leaving their car doors open. City buses sat just as quiet and motionless as the cars.
He hopped onto a mailbox for a better view, his sneakers squeaking against the slick metal surface. From his vantage point he saw a firetruck a few blocks distant, lights blinking and siren going, but totally still. It sat at an intersection with room to move if it wanted too, but it was just stopped there. Half a block up he saw a police car, lights flashing as well. The police officer stood in the street, radio in hand.
Leon jumped off the mailbox and ran over to the cop. “What’s going on?”
“Dunno, kid. All the cars just stopped about half an hour ago. The radio doesn’t work either.” The officer turned to fiddle with the controls again, and Leon slowly walked away, his brain addled, struggling to put two plus two together.
He trudged the few blocks to school, deep in thought, to find a crowd gathered outside the main entrance. The principal stood on the steps, and behind her the school janitor struggled with the front door.
“School is closed,” the principal yelled, her voice sounding hoarse. “We can’t admit any students. We can’t get the security doors open, and the Internet is down anyway. Go home.”
A loud whooping went up from the crowd of kids, and they scattered quickly before the principal could change her mind.
Leon stood still in astonishment. Could this be? It had to be. His head swam. Was all this from his virus?
He was suddenly thumped on the back, and he spun around to see Vito and James. He gave his friends a hesitant fist bump, and they joined the rest of the kids streaming away from school.
“Where to?” James asked.
“Diner,” Vito replied, and they crossed the street, only to find that a few hundred other kids had the same idea. And it was moot anyway, because when they got there, the door was locked. A handwritten sign hung on the inside of the door: “CLOSED: Kitchen down due to computer bug.” A waitress in a blue uniform stood inside, shooing kids away through the glass door.
“Shit,” Vito said. “I’m starving.”
“Let’s walk back to my place, guys. I’ve got something to tell you.”
When they got back to Leon’s building, they found the front security door propped open and the elevator was still not working. They walked up the stairs to Leon’s apartment. Vito raided the fridge and Leon started to talk.
“Are your phones working?”
“What? Yeah, of course,” James replied, looking at his.
“And yours?”
Vito took a break from grabbing cold cuts and mayonnaise to look at his phone. “Yeah, why?”
“Because none of the adults’ phones are working, and not their computer equipment either. Not anywhere in the world.”
“What are you talking about?” James asked, getting interested in the food raid, and helping himself to leftover chicken.
“Look, did I ever tell you about my uncle Alex?”
The two other guys shook their heads no, mouths full of food.
“He lives in Russia. He went to college in the U.S. ten years ago, and then went back. I never really knew why, but we stayed in touch a little bit. Then he sent me a message last week. He told me he worked for the Russian mob.”
“What, he said that?” Vito asked, his tone incredulous.
“Well, not exactly, I don’t think, but I was reading between the lines, and it was what he meant. He works for the mob, and he writes computer viruses for them. He’s one of the guys that makes botnets.”
“You’re talking about those big networks of computers that have been compromised,” Vito said, ”and that the Russians use to blackmail companies and do denial of service attacks, and stuff like that?”
James paused in mid-bite to see how Leon would answer.
“Exactly. And he said he was in big trouble. Over the last year, the viruses he wrote were not nearly as effective. He didn’t know why, but the botnet was only a tiny fraction of the size it had been. He made it sounded like he’d be in serious trouble if he didn’t write an exceptional virus, and soon.”
“What kind of trouble?” James asked, chicken leg now dangling forgotten in his hand.
“Like they would kill him. That’s what he said.”
They all took that in for a minute. Vito and James were still stony-faced, not really believing the story.
“He wanted my help writing a computer virus,” Leon finally continued.
“What do you know about writing viruses?” Vito laughed.
Leon was hurt by the laughter, but he tried to brush it off. “Nothing, which is why I used the thing I do know something about: biology. I took apart an open source virus scanner to see how it recognizes virus behavior. Then I wrote a virus that would uses virus scanner code to find virus-like behavior in bits of other code, and then incorporate those algorithms into itself. Look, viruses do a couple of things: they exploit security vulnerabilities on computers, they transmit themselves from computer to computer, and they take over other programs to mimic them, so people think they’re browsing the web when really they’re using a virus to enter their credit card info. The virus I wrote is a kind of meta-virus that incorporates bits of other viruses into itself. It tries them out, keeps the bits that work, and discards the bits that don’t. So it’s constantly evolving.”