Page 6 of Even If the Sky is Falling
“I tried to tell him that he should just put that in the break room until we were ready to celebrate, but he just doesn’tlisten.” Jake chewed on the side of his lip as he tried to swap out some of the damp wiring, but a spark zapped his fingertips, and he drew his hand away, shaking it out. “Song, go get more paper towels,” he barked.
Willy turned to go to the break room, muttering, “I just thought that, since I had already brought the ice in here, I might as well put the beer on ice and let it chill while we worked.”
Jake squeezed his eyes shut, and Halley pictured a tiny person inside his brain screaming at the top of their lungs. The sirens continued, and Halley rushed outside to make sure she wasn’t dreaming. The blaring echoed from the mountains as flocks of birds scattered, undoubtedly confused by the commotion. Her mind raced, as she pictured accidents on the highways, people panicking and running through the streets and Nova running to the basement with Luna in tow. She ran back inside, praying the guys had found a resolution.
Jake was removing wires from another server as one sparked close to his hands. “Shit!” he shoved a finger in his mouth. “We are so fucked,” he muttered.
“Please tell me that’s not true,” Halley begged. “Song, where is my situation report? Move!”
Song looked like he could both cry and puke at the same time. “I—I don’t have answers right now, boss. I need more time to assess what’s happening.”
An emergency alert sounded on Halley’s cell phone, then Song’s, then Griffin’s and then Jake’s. Halley looked down at her phone. “We’re fucked alright,” she whispered.
Griffin stepped to her side, not bothering to look at his own. “What is it?”
Halley’s hand shook as she read the alert on her phone. “‘This is an official announcement—aerial debris detected. This is not a drill. Please find immediate shelter in an underground bunker or interior parts of a building away from windows. Remain sheltered and wait for an all-clear.’” She set her phone down and then snatched it up again. “The chief.”
Song’s eyes widened.
Halley pressed Chief Henry’s contact information, but the phone wouldn’t connect. “I’m not getting a signal. We didn’t do that, did we?”
“No,” Jake responded matter-of-factly. “It’s more likely that the panic of over three hundred million people trying to use their phones at the same time is jamming cell towers. Calls aren’t going to go through via radio frequency right now.” He continued to reroute different cables on the servers. “Honestly, I could really use a line to HQ right now, because I don’t have time to read through eighteen system binders to figure out what all these servers control, but half of them are pretty fried.”
Song’s shoulders slumped so far down that he bowed over his desk. “Boss, I don’t know what to report. I don’t have answers for how long it’ll blare, or how long it’ll take to get to an all-clear signal. I—I’m sorry. I should have listened to you.”
“Song, we don’t have time for apologies now. We need answers and we need them fast, or we’re all getting pink slips right at the start of the weekend.” Halley pressed her hands against a control panel, leaning her weight on it.
Jake interrupted, “Boss, I’m losing telemetry on our local satellites. I think a hard reset may have been triggered by the shorted servers. The entire system is going to reboot starting in five minutes.”
“Jesus Christ. Turn on the TVs.”
Jake and Song flipped on several television networks on their big monitor, and all had digital monikers—all stations had posted an immediate emergency warning for everyone to get underground. News agencies were warned not to try to capture panic—that everyone needed to move safely to bunkers, including their people. Halley stared at the lifeless screens. Everyone across the country was waiting to hear the three blasts to alert them that they were safe.
“Okay,” Halley breathed. “So we have a full system reset that’s about to happen, and then what?”
Jake shrugged. “We’ve likely got hours for the reset to complete before we can have everything fixed, but we won’t know for sure until we can get back online and Song can see all of the systems that were tripped.” He jutted a finger in Song’s direction. “Honestly, we could have messed with other systems or station communications outside of what we’ve currently identified and simply have no idea.”
“Do you think cell phones will be down the entire time?”
Jake turned his palms face up by his sides. “It could be a number of things. The siren system might be interrupting radio frequencies, or just the sheer number of people trying to use their phones at the same time is doing the job, which could overwhelm the bandwidth of cell towers. Given the sirens, the latter makes a lot of sense. The amount of network traffic across the entire country is certainly enough to knock out signals. People will probably receive random texts, but likely after long delays. They could probably reach each other if they had a landline phone in their bunker, but I think most people wouldn’t have had the forethought.”
“Hmm...that’s something we didn’t think of.” Halley’s eyes swept the control room for a hard-line. “I know we have one in the control room at headquarters, but is there a landline phone in the HQ bunker?”
“I honestly don’t know, boss. I didn’t get to visit the bunker at base.”
Shit, I should have worked a bunker visition into our implementation plan.Perspiration beaded on Halley’s forehead, and knots turned in her stomach. The more she looked around the control room at the sizzling servers and a six-pack of beer on ice, the more she wanted to scream into oblivion.
“You don’t look too good, boss,” Jake whispered, eyeing her closely, his blue-green eyes observing her. He leaned closer for privacy. “Maybe you should go lay down for a little while. We’ll update you once we have anything determinative.”
It didn’t feel right to leave, but Halley felt the walls closing in her, as if she was suffocating. She turned to Song. “Willy, if you don’t get this figured out and we somehow manage to get out of this with our jobs still intact, I will make sure you are never assigned such a big detail again. I don’t care who your uncle is—I will make it my life’s purpose to end your career. Understood?”
Song blinked slowly and nodded.
Lights began blinking across the control center, and their control screen went completely black. The sirens finally stopped sounding. Halley looked around the room feeling completely out of her depth, unable to contribute any working knowledge to the technology issues they were facing.
“The reset just started, boss. It’s going to be at least a few hours, so best hit the barracks for some shut-eye. We’ll come get you when we have something.” The corners of Jake’s mouth turned upward slightly—the closest he got to a reassuring smile. “We’ve got this, Hal. Don’t worry.”
Halley patted away the sweat on her forehead with the palm of her hand and nodded. “Okay, but don’t worry about waking me—I want to know the second you know anything.”
