Space Stations

A few minutes later they were up in his office, Tom talking all the while about the fishing he had done so far this summer, the sleep-outs in the back pasture, and about his cousin Lloyd, who lived in the next town over, Hancock, and who died of something called polio. Rick shivered at the matter-of-fact way Tom had mentioned his cousin's death. A generation ago, a death like that never would have happened. Hell, a generation ago, if somebody of Tom's age had died, the poor kid would have been shoved into counseling sessions and group therapies, trying to get closure about the damn thing. And now? Just part of growing up.

In his office Tom oohed and aaahed over the photos on his wall, and Rick explained as best he could what they were about. “Well, that's the dot of light we just saw. It's actually called a space station. Over there, that's what you used to fly up to the space station. It's called a space shuttle. Or a rocket, if you prefer. This… this is a picture of me, up in the space station.”

“Really?” Tom asked. “You were really there?”

He found he had to sit down, so he did, his damn hips aching something fierce. “Yes, I was really up there. One of the last people up there, to tell you the truth, Tom. Just before, well… just before everything changed.”

Tom stood before a beautiful photo of a full moon, the craters and mountains and flat seas looking as sharp as if they were made yesterday. He said, “Momma said that it was God who punished the world back then, because men were evil, because they ignored God. Is that true, Mister Monroe? What really happened back then?”

His fists suddenly clenched, as if powered by memory. Where to begin, young man, he thought. Where to begin. Let's talk about a time when computers were in everything, from your car to your toaster to your department store cash register. Everything linked up and interconnected. And when the systems got more and more complex, the childish ones, the vandals, the destructive hackers, they had to prove that they had the knowledge and skills and wherewithal to take down a system. Oh, the defenses grew stronger and stronger, as did the viruses, and the evil ones redoubled their efforts, like the true Vandals coming into Rome, burning and destroying something that somebody else created. The defenses grew more in-depth, the attacks more determined, until one bright soul—if such a creature could be determined to have a soul—came up with ultimate computer virus. No, not one that wormed its way into software through backdoors or anything fancy like that. No sir. This virus was one that attacked the hardware, the platforms, that spread God knows how—theories ranged from human touch to actual impulses over fiber optics—and destroyed the chips. That's all. Just ate the chips and left burned-out crumbs behind, so that in days, almost every thing in the world that used a computer was silent, dark, and dead.

Oh, he was a smart one—for the worst of the hackers were always male—whoever he was, and Rick often wished that the designer of the ultimate virus (called the Final Virus, for a very good reason) had been on an aircraft or an operating room table when it had struck. For when the computers sputtered out and died, the chaos that was unleashed upon the world… cars, buses, trains, trucks. Dead, not moving. Hundreds of thousands of people, stranded far from home. Aircraft falling out of the skies. Ships at sea, slowly drifting, unable to maneuver. Stock markets, banks, corporations, everything and anything that stored the wealth of a nation in electronic impulses, silent. All the interconnections that fed and clothed and fueled and protected and sheltered most of the world's billions had snapped apart, like brittle rubber bands. Within days the cities had become uninhabitable, as millions streamed into the countryside. Governments wavered and collapsed. Communications were sparse, for networks and radio stations and the cable stations were off the air as well. Rumors and fear spread like a plague itself, and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse— called out from retirement at last—swept through almost the entire world.

There were a few places that remained untouched: Antarctica and a few remote islands.

But for the rest of the world… sometimes the only light on the nightside of the planet were the funeral pyres, where the bodies were being burned.

He grew nauseous, remembering what had happened to him and how it took him months to walk back here, to his childhood home, and he repressed the memory of eating something a farmer had offered him—it hadn't looked exactly like dog, but God, he had been so hungry—and he looked over to young Tom. How could he even begin to tell such a story to such an innocent lad?