Obfuscate (20 page)

W
e had barely sat
down when Sheridan ran into the dining room. “Quick, quick—it’s terrible! You’ve got to see this. They’re calling it the Mega City Atrocities!”

One by one, we funneled into the living room and watched the horrific pictures of major cities all over the world up in blazes. The news was reporting power substations had been blown up, leaving millions without electricity, water, and communications.

The news ticker scrolled across the bottom of CCNN listing the cities currently cut off or under siege from fire: Beijing, Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto, Chicago, Las Vegas, New York City, London, Buenos Aires, Los Angeles, Moscow, Mumbai, Cairo, Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Manila, Delhi, Seoul, and Jakarta.

We watched clips of film footage from news stations’ helicopters of the rioting, looting, and utter panic of the black-outs.

“This is not good. Not good at all,” Charlie muttered.

Cheyenne turned to Harris and Briggs and asked, “Don’t we have redundant backup servers located in New York, London, and Beijing?” Her fists clenched and relaxed as she paced. I reached out to help calm her down, but I knew how important it was to her, to all of us, to keep
ExsanguiNation
online.

Sheridan cursed under her breath, “Dammit, I bet we’re down. We need to log in and learn what grids are offline. Our game could be a news source of the communication to help people if they’re able to access generators and wireless Internet.”

I watched as Abbey counted on her fingers. “Those cities alone total up to over a hundred million people without power. Do you have any idea what this could snowball into here in the United States?”

Mason pumped his arm in the air. “Oh, hell yeah—I do! We get to blow us up some terrorists!”

Charlie reached for a shotgun behind the kitchen door. “All right—let’s keep our heads on straight. First thing we need to do is fuel up every vehicle and a few of the fifty-five gallon barrels.”

Kiernan said, “There’s no telling just how long it’ll take to get those fires under control, especially if any of those substations are located near refineries. Those cities could be without power for a long time.”

The anchorwoman broke the chatter among us. “This just in: We’re getting reports that Houston, Vancouver, and Phoenix are now without any power. Electrical substations are continuing to explode in metropolitan areas. Citizens are encouraged to lock down and remain calm. Firefighters are evacuating areas of the city where the fires are uncontained. Officials are working to redirect power from neighboring cities.”

“Vancouver?” Abbey questioned, her brown eyes large with panic. “That means they might hit Seattle next, or even Billings. We aren’t that far from there.”

“Blimey, what a balls ache.” I rubbed my head and wondered if Vhalencia and my team in Dubai were experiencing the same situation.

Khai squirmed in Sheridan’s arms, and she placed him down in his playpen. I watched as my son pushed himself into a sitting position. He reached up his arms to me and I leaned over and picked him up.

Khai is growing just as fast as he did in utero. He’s only two months old, but he’s taking on the traits of a six-month-old already.

“What happens if we lose power here?” Aunt Maisie’s normal calm, serene voice pitched up a couple notches, revealing her anxiety. “What’ll we do if we lose our freezers full of meat?”

Charlie eased a hand down on her shoulder. “It’s all right, love. Everything will be fine. I’m sure this won’t affect us.”

Aunt Maisie wasn’t believing a word of it. “Charles, I need to inventory the pantries. We should make a run into Sam’s tonight and get more bags of flour and sugar. I can’t believe this is happening.” She untied her apron and reached for a steno notebook and a pen. Briggs was on his phone and right behind her.

Harris had already pulled out his laptop and checked in on the servers for
ExsanguiNation
. “It looks like we have sections 5, 8, 16, 17, 39, 40, 41, 42 … oh hell, the whole Asian node is completely gone. Even with the redundancies we’ve set up, most of them route to one of these cities being affected.”

Cheyenne blew out puffed cheeks and her eyes tended to widen when she was deep in thought. “Unholy hell. Seems like the only safe place for our backup servers is somewhere the terrorists can’t blow them up. What are we going to do?”

“C’mon, Kiernan, we need you to drive another pickup so we can run into the feed store.” Mason was already back in the mudroom, pulling on his boots and coat. “We’re gonna need to make sure we have enough chick grower, layer mash, salt blocks, and a few other necessities. We’ve got just enough time to drive into town and buy these supplies before the farm store closes.”

Briggs had been on his cell phone and said, “I’ve pulled some strings and got a flight back to New Orleans in the morning. They said they can drop you off in Orlando before the flight destinations in New York. They have a flight at six-thirty. There’re only a few seats left. I’ve reserved them if we need them.”

Torchy had also been on the phone. He ended his conversation and swiped it off. “Aye, I can take you into town. I’m meeting with a supplier to get some emergency needs for the baby.”

Sheridan turned her head toward Torchy and smiled as if shocked that he was thinking of them before anyone else.

He sheepishly smiled back at her. “Listen, I need to make a few more calls and check in with my associates. I’m afraid if the shite continues to hit the fan, I dinnae if we’re prepared for this level of security. Since people are already going mental, then it makes me wonder…” Torchy mind messaged the rest of his sentence since there were humans in the room,
But will the Supes go nutters, too? If this power outage continues too long, it’ll only be a matter of time before things snowball the feck out of control. I’ve got to add extra security wards with the Witches around the Super Market locations to ensure the safety of their businesses.

Torchy spoke out loud again, “Harris, are all the grids down or just the ones you listed? Are we able to use the private communication channels?”

“No, we’re at sixty percent. It doesn’t look as though Orlando has been affected, but the traffic on the grids is maxing out the capacity on the servers.” Harris ran a nervous hand through his brown curls. “Cheyenne, we should consider removing the game graphics and implement a text-based only communication until we can reroute more power. Or at the very least, get the redundancies in a place where they aren’t going to blow up.”

I patted Khai’s back while he sucked his fist. Not sure how the team was going to accept my question, but I figured now was as good a time as ever. “Can we use my satellites? The Iridium Network?”

Cheyenne, Sheridan, Briggs, and Harris turned to look at me as though a Cthulhu crawled out of my nose. A long, warm line of drool slid down my back and Khai tried biting into my shoulder.

He’s already teething?

Cheyenne seemed to ask the question on everyone’s mind. “What do you mean, your satellites?” She tilted her head waiting for me to reveal I was joking. “Do you—own the Iridium Network?” The tone of her voice revealed that she felt her question was ridiculous, yet she kinda sorta believed it could possibly be true.

I’ve always been a private man and never cared for anyone to have knowledge of my assets and holdings. However, this situation seemed necessary to trust in Cheyenne as much as trusted in Vhalencia.

I inhaled, opened my eyes wide, and smiled while massaging the back of my neck. “I reckon so. Several of my companies launched and maintain the satellites.” I shrugged, not sure of how they were going to accept this new information about me. “That’s what it was built for. It’s primarily used by Internet and cellular networks. If
ExsanguiNation
needs to be secured to help communicate to people, then it would easily become another network to load up into its software. We could probably have the entire grid back online before midnight.”

I was a freak show attraction as they stood there, blinking at me. I shifted Khai to my other shoulder waiting for someone to say something. Any time now, I was sure they were going to bust out laughing.

Harris finally broke the drone of the newscaster spouting more cities without power. “Hell, yeah! Let’s do this! How come you never told us you own satellites? Seriously, dude?” His voice was alive and non-stop. “What are you? One of those secret, private bankers the conspiracy theorists always say runs the world? Are you one of the Illuminati?”

I placed Khai into his playpen and noogied Harris on the head and said, “C’mon, mate—let me power up my laptop, and I’ll assign you the security protocols you’ll need to work with Sheridan to set this up.”

Sheridan slowly smiled. One I hadn’t seen in months. It was breathtaking to see her engaged in life once again.

Sheridan held her hands in the air as if it were an answer to prayer. “This’ll be fantastic. We can really make a difference for people who can get power.”

“This is perfect, Khaldon.” Cheyenne grinned ear-to-ear and hugged me around the neck. “We’ll easily set PADME to monitor the news feeds, and she can help us stay informed. We’ll know exactly what’s going on. We’ll program her to extrapolate news communications and then transmit them to us.” She pulled on her red curls when she got excited. It was great to feel the energy of everyone in action.

We had a unified purpose … again.

Cheyenne talked so fast I almost couldn’t keep up. “I can set up PADME to send messages to our smartwatches and phones. If we’re in a wi-fi area, we can receive her updates as soon as she learns them.”

“Yes, that’s perfect.” Sheridan kissed Khai on the head. “Then we won’t have to be chained to the computers for updates. We can also set it up where she automatically sends the updates to
ExsanguiNation
for people who can access the game.”

Everyone started talking at once as the room became a buzz of immediate needs.

Sheridan asked Maisie, “Does Uncle Charlie still have that old ham radio somewhere? I remember playing on it when I was little.”

Kiernan asked Charlie as they were walking out the door, “Do you have a generator around here? We could set it up to—” The heavy, outer winter door slammed behind them.

“Hold that thought, Sheridan.” Aunt Maisie opened the back door and hollered at her husband, “While you’re at Sam’s, will you get a few more packages of toilet paper? Here’s a list of what I need off the top of my head. We need—” Aunt Maisie’s voice cut off after the door slammed shut.

“Abbey, would you mind watching Khai for a little while?” Sheridan asked, “I need to morph out of parental unit mode and put on my programming hat.”

“Sure. Dad wants me to inventory the bullets, gunpowder, and reloading supplies down in the basement, but I can bring Khai’s playpen with me. I’ve never seen such an alert infant. He’s growing like a weed.”

Torchy took over the parental unit decisions and asked in a tentative voice, “Reloading supplies?”

“Of course. No self-respecting Montanan would be without ammunition and reloading supplies for when the shit hits the fan.” Abbey eyed her index finger and thumb as though it were a pistol. She narrowed her eyes and pretended to shoot at an imaginary target. Her voice was excited and alive as if this were the most exciting news to ever hit Wolf’s Creek. “We’ve been waiting for this for years. I hope there’re zombies. Then I can practice my head shots.”

Sheridan sucked in her lower lip and rubbed her chin. She and Torchy exchanged worried glances. “Yeah, umm … are you sure I should let you watch Khai? He won’t be too much distraction?”

“No worries, Cuz. I babysat all through high school. We’ll have a good time.”

Sheridan furrowed her brow with what looked like sincere concern.

“I’m sure it’ll be all right, Sher.” I handed Khai to Abbey, and they made way for the basement.

“Right. Okay, please don’t let him put anything in his mouth?” Sheridan kissed Khai’s head, but he seemed enamored with Abbey’s brunette ponytail.

“C’mon, you cutie patootie. Let’s go find out how much gunpowder we have for rifles and pistols.” She blew bubbles into his neck, and Khai squealed at her unmerciful air kisses.

“
L
isten
, guys, I know you wanted to go to that Race Across the Sky thing tonight. I’m gonna have to take a rain check.” Harris thumbed over his shoulder back toward his laptop. “I need to check in with the local pack, and then Briggs and I are going to move the main server.” Harris punched me in the arm. “Dude, thanks again for the access pathways. This looks like it’ll be a clean upload.”

“No worries, mate.” I returned the punch and we both rubbed our arms. “I’m glad we can put it to good use. If not for
ExsanguiNation
and PADME, then why even have it?”

Cheyenne yanked on the back of my shirt. She turned me around and pulled in tight to her chest.

With perked up eyebrows and a pull to her mouth that expressed,
you’re in trouble, but I’m not really mad at you,
she hugged the stuffings out of me. “Thank you. That’s seriously an amazing save for the system and for people. When this is all over, let’s talk how we can officially pay for that type of bandwidth from the satellite.”

“I think we can log this down as a humanitarian relief effort and call it donated time.”

She narrowed her eyes at me. Knowing Cheyenne, arguing with her wasn’t going to work, but I kissed her forehead and hoped she’d be good with the gesture. The O’Cuinn sisters were savvy business women and always wanted to do the right thing.

It seemed as though everyone had a task and was off, busy preparing for the end of the world. Uncle Charlie popped his head back into the house and asked if Cheyenne and I would run into town to fill water tanks to ensure we had enough potable water. The abandoned dinner table was left with uneaten food as everyone scrambled to help ready the needed supplies.

Not knowing how much time any of us had left on this planet, I knew the time had finally come to ask Cheyenne the one question I’d wanted to ask since I first laid eyes on her.