It didn’t take much reflection to recognize that Zellerbach was probably right. Because of his line of work, Smith was close to very few people — and even he was already considering how he could quietly get them to disconnect. If he’d had a wife and children, they’d have been his first call.
Klein’s silence suggested that he had come to the same conclusion.
“It’s actually an interesting idea,” Zellerbach continued, getting uncomfortable in the silence.
“Marty, please…”
“Think about it, Jon. It’s just a question of how you set up LayerCake’s criteria. I’m guessing that if you had Dresner’s password, you’d kill all the al-Qaeda guys pretty quick.”
“They’re murderers and terrorists,” Randi said.
“Okay. But what about Iranian physicists? They’re not murderers or terrorists. You just don’t like what they’re doing. The truth is that you don’t object to Dresner’s weapon. You just want to be the one aiming it.”
Smith knew that Zellerbach had been taking some philosophy courses online and he had to admit that he’d made strides. But this was not the time to get bogged down in an existential debate.
“How do we stop him?”
“Do we know where he is?” Randi said.
“No,” Klein responded. “We can try to locate him, but he’s always been strangely difficult to track. Now I guess we know why.”
“What would you do even if you did find him?” Zellerbach said. “Unless he’s an idiot — and he’s not — he’s got it set up to automatically trigger if he’s separated from his Merge or if it determines he’s dead.”
“Could we dart him? Keep him in an induced coma with his unit attached?” Smith said.
“I doubt it. The Merge monitors brain waves. If it were me, I’d have it set up to trigger if anything weird started going on with my head. I mean, even if you had a whole day — and I doubt you would — getting everyone on the planet to disconnect isn’t exactly realistic. It’d be like showing everyone in the world incontrovertible proof that cell phones cause cancer. Half of ’em wouldn’t listen.”
“Okay,” Randi said. “We can’t kill him. We can’t drug him. We can’t shut down hundreds of thousands of networks all over the world at one time. And we can’t allow critical people to stop using the system. Have I missed anything?”
“That he’s going to be looking for us with the most sophisticated search engine on the planet and unlimited funds?”
“I just checked sales numbers,” Klein interjected. “There are somewhere in the neighborhood of eight million Merges on the street.”
“Jesus,” Randi said. “Even if only a quarter of those people are targeted, that’s two million people dead. Why hasn’t he done it? He knows that we’re going to try to stop him.”
Smith nodded. “I don’t know. Maybe he can’t for some reason. Maybe he’s having second thoughts. Hell, maybe he’s just waiting for peak daily usage. But whatever the reason, it at least buys us some time.”
Randi settled back into her seat. “Yeah. But time for what?”
69
I don’t want to hear that, Marty,” Smith said, easing the car off the highway and onto an empty rural road. Best to stay away from civilization to the degree possible.
“Just forget shutting down the networks, Jon. Sure, you could pull down Afghanistan, because it’s on military satellite. But you can’t take down ATT, Verizon, and every little cellular carrier in America. And even if you did, how many of those people would be near a Wi-Fi hot spot that their Merge would immediately connect to? Killing all the networks at the same time in the U.S. — let alone worldwide — isn’t technologically feasible. Believe me. If it was, someone like me would have done it. They’d be a legend forever. People would build statues to them. Write songs about—”
“What about the power grid?” Randi said, cutting him off before he could get lost in fantasies of hacker fame and fortune. With his meds back at the house, his mind was starting to loop a bit.
“No, no, no! Forget coordinated efforts. Right now LayerCake is scouring the web, emails, forums, chat rooms, and probably half the secure servers on the planet for any hint of something like this. It’s like Santa. It’s watching everything, everybody. And you want to try to coordinate thousand of people and get every one to keep his mouth shut? You’re thinking completely wrong. Not every problem can be solved with a huge hammer.”
“If we’re thinking wrong,” Smith said. “Then help us think right.”
“I’m bleeding again. Bleeding…”
His ability to focus was just going to get worse as his medication continued to wear off. They could stop and fill a prescription but then his mind would turn lethargic for the next couple of hours. Not something they could afford.
“You’re fine, Marty. Now tell me what we’re missing.”
“You’ll yell at me because you won’t like it.”
“I promise I won’t yell at you.”
“And you won’t have someone shoot me again.”
“Marty…”
“Fine. Electromagnetic pulse.”
Randi actually laughed. “Are you suggesting we airburst a bunch of nukes and fry the world’s grids?”
“Told you you wouldn’t like it. Besides, I’m not sure it helps. With no power, how do you warn everyone to turn off their units before the lights come back on? Carrier pigeon?” His gaze turned far away. “How many birds would that take? Seven billion people in the world. Pigeons average about eighty kilometers per hour. What’s the total land area of the earth? About a hundred and fifty million square kilometers, right?”
Fred Klein was still listening on the speakerphone and weighed in while Zellerbach got lost in his math problem. “I’m afraid I have to agree, Jon. Even with the NSA fully behind you, it’s not doable. And the process of getting the NSA behind you wouldn’t escape Dresner’s notice. All risk, no return.”
Smith was suddenly reminded of a television show he’d once seen on the Rapture and how Dresner had, in his twisted way, taken on the role of God. Any minute now, millions of people could just collapse, leaving his innocents to stand in stunned silence.
And then what? Piles of rotting bodies. The destabilization of governments and economies across the globe. Mass graves. But would the seemingly inevitable chaos ensue? Or would all the potential creators of that chaos be dead?
His phone beeped with an incoming call and Smith looked at the screen, eyes widening. “I have an incoming call, sir. You’re not going to believe this, but the ID says it’s from Christian Dresner.”
“Dresner?” Klein said, obviously equally surprised. “Go ahead and conference him in. He can’t track me. I’m connected through a coffee shop in Cambodia.”
Smith reached out, hesitating for a moment before picking up. “Hello?”
“I have to admit to an increasing respect for you, Dr. Smith. Or maybe ‘wariness’ is a more accurate word.”