Part 8 (1/2)
He looked up and saw the face on the monitors.
A girl with dark gla.s.ses and an anime T-s.h.i.+rt. Caleb thought he recognized the Betty Page haircut, but her presence on the screen did not immediately connect with a customer who had been in the store.
The girl smiled placidly but said nothing. It wasn't a static image, because at one point she sipped from a can of Red Bull.
”Yo!” growled one customer as he pounded at his keyboard in a vain attempt to break the connection. ”What the h.e.l.l?”
”Hold on, guys,” said Caleb loud enough for everyone to hear. ”Must be a server error. I apologize for the delay, let me see what I can do.”
Caleb pulled his laptop closer and tapped some keys, checking the router status, running a diagnostic, doing the routine things that should have fixed this in seconds. The image remained in place. The Korean girl took another sip of Red Bull.
”Okay,” Caleb announced, ”I'm going to have to reboot the router. Everybody should be back online in a couple of seconds.”
”I'm not paying to sit here and stare at some j.a.panese chick,” groused the man who'd yelled earlier.
She's Korean, jacka.s.s, thought Caleb, but he didn't see any value in saying that out loud. ”Gimme a sec.”
He unplugged the router from cable and power sources.
Every screen in the cafe flickered to black for one second, and then the Korean girl was back.
Caleb stared at the dozen-plus copies of her face scattered throughout the room. He looked at his own laptop. With the plugs pulled all that he should be seeing was a no-connection screen.
The Korean girl smiled.
Caleb said, ”What?”
He tried several other things. The image of the girl blipped and for a moment Caleb thought he'd solved it, but when the girl sipped the Red Bull in exactly the same way as before he realized that this was a video loop. That was weird. If the computers weren't connected to the Net and yet were showing the girl, then that meant there was some kind of video file planted on each machine. Even computers belonging to customers who came in after that girl left the store. Was that possible?
Yeah. And if it was true it could be real trouble for the cafe.
That girl could have uploaded a Trojan horse to all of the rental computers here at the Surf Shop, and anyone logging on through the router was probably receiving it when they agreed to the terms on the cafe's homepage.
s.h.i.+t.
The customers were mad now. Several were badgering him about getting things fixed. The loudmouth was saying that they should all get their money back.
Caleb quickly restarted his MacBook Pro. He entered his pa.s.sword and for a moment he saw his usual desktop display.
And then the image of the Korean girl reappeared.
”What the h.e.l.l are you doing over there?” demanded the loud customer.
Caleb shook his head. ”I-I'm having a little trouble with ... Um. Hold on, let me try something else.”
He plugged the router in and waited as it ran through its opening diagnostic.
”Hey,” said a woman seated by the window. She held up her iPhone. ”It's not just us. It's on the news.”
Everyone scrambled for their cells. Caleb subscribed to several RSS news feeds, and as soon as he unlocked the screen he saw a string of news alerts from USAToday, New York Times, Yahoo News, and even the BBC news. Caleb fished under the counter for a TV remote and aimed it at the flatscreen on the wall, which had been flas.h.i.+ng advertis.e.m.e.nts from a CD-ROM. He channeled over to CNN.
And there she was. The patrons got up from their laptops and began drifting toward the TV. Below the Korean girl's face was a t.i.tle credit: CYBERHACKER MYSTERY WOMAN.
”Turn up the volume,” said a woman, one of the cafe's regulars.
”... will auto-delete in a few seconds,” the Korean girl was saying. ”Good luck trying to figure out how we did this. And even if you do, so what? Big deal. Give yourself a cookie.”
This wasn't the video loop still playing out on their laptops. This was a live feed on national news. And ... the girl looked different. The hair and sungla.s.ses were identical, but she no longer looked Korean. Caleb thought that she looked older. A young woman instead of an older teenage girl. And maybe-Chinese? He wasn't sure, but he knew that something was different.
”What the h.e.l.l is this?” demanded the loudmouth.
All Caleb could do was shake his head.
”Okay, monkeys,” continued the woman on the screen, ”pay attention, 'cause there are three things you need to know and Mother Night is here to tell you.”
Caleb mouthed the words, Mother Night.
”First, if we do not all rise up against globalization then we do not deserve to be free of the shackles welded around our necks by groups like the World Trade Organization, the Group of Eight, the World Economic Forum, and others like them. We are slaves only if we allow ourselves to be slaves. We are free if we take to the streets and take the streets back. Occupy Wall Street failed because there were too many do-nothing p.u.s.s.ies. That wasn't anarchy. The pigs in the system haven't seen anarchy. Not yet.” She licked her lips in a mock-s.e.xy way, as if tasting something forbidden but delicious. ”But it's coming. The only action is direct action.”
”Jeee-zus,” said the loudmouth. ”What kind of Communist bulls.h.i.+t is this?”
”It's not communism,” said a college kid seated near him. ”It's anarchy.”
”I don't give a flying f.u.c.k what it-”
”Shhh,” hissed several people. Caleb raised the volume.
”Second,” said the woman who called herself Mother Night, ”because complacency is not only a symptom of a corrupt society, it's also a cry for help, I am going to shake things up. Will it take the sacrifice of one in three hundred to force the pigs in power to let true freedom ring?”
Mother Night paused to smile. She had perfect white teeth, but smiling transformed her from a pretty girl to something else, something unlovely. The effect was transformative in a chilling way. It was a sardonic, skeletal, mocking grin, a leer that was hungry and ugly.
The screen display below the image changed to read: WHO IS MOTHER NIGHT?
”Third, Mother Night wants to tell all of her children, everyone within the sound of my voice, all of the sleeping dragons waiting to rise-now is the time. Step out of the shadows. Be seen, be heard. Let your glow cast enough light even for the blind to see. 'Cause remember, kids, sometimes you have to burn to s.h.i.+ne.”
She gave another of those terrible, leering grins, then every screen went dark. TV, laptops, smartphones.
For five seconds.
And then, one by one, the screens returned to Yahoo, Safari, Gmail, and websites. They returned to normal. The TV suddenly showed the confused faces of the unnerved reporters.
Everything looked normal.
But Caleb-and everyone else at the cafe or who'd watched the broadcast-knew that normal was no longer a part of this day.
Chapter Fourteen.