The end of normality

From her window on the fourth floor of the math building, Jack could see students gathering heaps of autumn leaves and chasing each other across the lawn. Undergrads. She shook her head at their antics and spun around in her computer chair a couple more times. Her PhD had seemed so glamorous back when she was still designing the embedded software. Now it was all debugging.

"Hey Jack, I'm stuck again.” Ian was taking another shot at hacking into the Australian Airforce satellite.

Jack peered over his shoulder.

“Disengage immediately,” flashed on his screen. Memories of the French Special Forces turning up to escort Jack to a Juvenile Detention Center fifteen years ago made her breath catch. This was exactly why she didn't do military hacks.

Then again, the world was technically at war. Jack could understand Ian’s desire to go beyond the New Zealand government's media blockade. Pushing aside her doubts, she nudged Ian aside. "I’ll show you how it's done."

Her fingers flew over the keyboard, inputting commands into multiple programs and setting time delays for the execution of later protocols. "You have to keep moving. The military defends against what they know, but you can outrun them."

Ian groaned. “Yeah, but only freaks like you can think that fast.”

“There, you’re in. Now tell us who the Aussies are bombing today.” She gave a hollow laugh.

Ian started to trawl through the directory. Within moments, the screen began to flash ‘warning - ping2 inbound’.

“Shit.” Jack stuffed her trembling hands into her pockets. “You’ve got about five seconds until they boot you.”

The screen was suddenly taken over by a large, green map of Australia and New Zealand. Jack was transfixed for a moment, before noticing a small red blip with projected flight path that looked disturbingly close to home. Her breath caught. “Please don’t let that be what I think it is.”

Her fiance, Simon, put his book down. “What’s going on?”

"I think it's bad. Isn't a red blip normally bad?"

Simon shrugged. "I'm a linguist, what would I know?" He returned to the book.

"But you're a geek who watches way too many sci fi's,” Jack countered, “come on, what do you think it is?"

"You're a professional hacker. Why don't you click on it?"

Jack rolled her eyes. Ian laughed nervously and clicked on the dot. It zoomed in and began listing known details about the unidentified object. It was definitely a missile and it was just passing the coast of Australia. There seemed to be a second dot right behind, though the system couldn't verify if it was a sensory echo.

"Jesus!" Jack grabbed the phone and dialled an extension. "Shit, it's engaged.
Simon!"

"Hmm?"

She fumbled in her pocket and pulled out her ID. "Run down to Engineering and talk to Professor Collins - you remember the room, right? Basement, second corridor on the right from the stairs? My pin is 7812. Go straight in there and tell Michael to call me now. Tell him they need to activate ARC in the next thirty minutes."

Simon frowned. "What's wrong?"

“Yeah,” Ian got out of his chair. “What the fuck’s going on? You don’t think anyone would actually fire a missile at us... we’re bloody neutral.”

“Missile?” Simon yelped, scrambling to his feet. “There’s a missile?”

“Just shut up and go!” Jack snapped, tossing him the card. Simon caught it and raced out the door.

“But this is ridiculous,” Ian whined. Jack pointed at the door and said, “call everyone on the ARC project. I don’t care if they are asleep or hung over or in the middle of a WOW clan war, get them here in the next 30 minutes. We are going to need all the help we can get.”

Ian was still shaking his head as he stumbled out the door. Jack locked it behind him and then sank into her chair, taking a deep breath. She had thirty minutes to eradicate as many of the final bugs as she could. They already had proof of concept, ARC would work, but it had never been tested before on this scale. Still, there was no time for doubt. She blinked and then looked at the code with new eyes...

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Bubble Theory - a serialized novel by Beaulah Pragg and the Iconoclast.