"Every man is guilty of all the good he didn't do."
-Voltaire

"A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education."
-George Bernard Shaw

October of 2003

A surgical hack works as follows:

Vladimir Plekhanov sits at a console somewhere in the Caucus, and decides he isn't too fond of OBL's sort of "help" in the struggle for Chechnya.

The date is October of 2003, and the Opera House attack changed Plekhanov's mind about the Mujihadin struggle.
At his keyboard, the Russian rectifies a mistake he'd made in cooperating with the Arab.
Iridium's 24 commercial communication satellites are in extreme low orbit, ready for a final plunge into the Pacific Ocean.

Plekhanov simply captures the source code and makes a simple change in a western debugger.

"If (equals sign) then go to access accepted"

One only has to change the equal sign to unequal.

"If (unequal sign) then go to access accepted"

There's your Boolean logic for you. Broken down to assembly, you get one number for true, and one number for false. Simply change one number in the right space, and things are turned upside down without a single flag being thrown up.

This is textbook, but sometimes when programmers are pressed by a deadline, or they just quit early to watch DBZ, they'll resort to shortcutting security. ( The empirical data indicates the number of successful hacks shot up when DBZ episodes were first aired in the United States.)

When somebody successfully breaks in, just blame it on the mythical super hacker, then repair the problem. (Meaning, upload saved copies of whatever pages were defiled, and read some manga, the myth will protect you, as long as the baby boomer bosses don't catch on.)

Everyone's talking about the Russian hacker with Chechen sympathies turning on Bin Laden. Okay, we've covered 101 hacking, now time for 101 physics.

If you've taken high school level physics, you probably know that mass multiplied by acceleration will equal force. Okay, so let's say each satellite weighs a hundred metric tons. What happens when one hits the Earth at nearly 9.8 meters per second? The authorities would rather spare you from the mental gymnastics. You nearly get a metric megaton from every satellite.

Now, Vladimir Plekhanov figures OBL, or UBL, depending on which paper you read, is holed out where he stayed when the Soviets went after him, probably a cave somewhere north of Peshawar. He decided the first impact should be at the coordinates thirty-four degrees north of the equator, and seventy degrees east of Greenwich. Surely the equivalent of 24 tactical nukes nailing northern Pakistan would get him, but Vladimir's personal doctrine of overwhelming firepower dictated that he should add the Compton Gamma Observer, too. That heavy scientific bird should come closer to a Hiroshima.

With a chuckle, he prompted Mikhayl Ruzhyo with an Instant Messenger.

Wheelman (Vladimir): "John of Patmos gave me special mention in his book."

Rifle (Ruzhyo): "And how is that?"

Wheelman: "And there fell upon men a great hail out of heaven, every stone about the weight of a talent, and men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail; for the plague thereof was exceeding great."

Rifle: "I see. That comes from Revelations, all right. So you did it."

Wheelman: "Yes."

Rifle: "Is Anna feeling well?"

Wheelman: "She responds well to the new anti-angio genesis drugs coming from Roche."

Rifle: "Great. Tell her 143, please? BBL."

Wheelman: "BR."

Doubtlessly, the National Security Agency's Echelon orbiting ELINT birds could find the uplink. If not, the United States should just fold as a country and invite some other nation to run business. Surely, they'll know who did the deed, and their analysts will deduce why.

Nationalist Chechens no longer want jihadist backing.

Quod erat faciendum, thought the Russian expatriate, as he disconnected his terminal. That which was to be shown, now is. Tell the Americans their new doctrine works, sever ties with those their President is after, and they'll leave you alone to fight the Russians. Just as long as Ruzhyo keeps them from finding a foothold, they'll never come into the Caucus now.

I'm no giver. My good deed is done, now to do for myself. He strolled to his garden, snipped some tealeaves.


The date is December of 2003, and the team walks across the terminal of Hopkins International Airport, in Cleveland, Ohio. Protesters encircle the Abrams plant in Akron, and CBS strangely has a reporter covering from Cleveland. Paul recognized the reporter, a middle-aged Caucasian male with thinning blond hair, as an airline correspondent.

Should have worn a different shirt, he thinks, as the camera focuses on his "Press Relations" shirt, with his favorite Emoticon stamped on the torso:

:-x

"Excuse me, you look like a strapping young fellow. What do you think of the passive resistance demonstration at the Akron plant?"

Paul Evens, retired Marine, considered thoughtfully.

"Well, I'd be mad too, if the automobile industry tied me down to the cars churned out in Detroit. Internal combustion, limp pieces of aluminum, and draconian complexity rolls out of Detroit and Tokyo. They have every right to demand the safety standards set in Akron."
The airline reporter wiped his gleaming forehead.

"Sir, the protesters are demonstrating over their use in Iraq!"
Evens feigned confusion.

"I can understand their jealousy, sir, but do they want our boys driving Detroit cars in Baghdad?"
The reporters abruptly moved on.

Well, that one's good for faux news broadcasts.

Robin rushed over and grabbed a hold of him.

"Evens, nobody's going to think that's funny!"
Paul feigned hurt, than burst a heavy chuckle.

"C'mon, what was I supposed to say? You can't balm some people's feelings sometimes. They're only hurting themselves by picketing blue collar labor, anyway."
Molina scoffed.

"Hearts and Minds strategy doesn't allow for frivolous blunt-force trauma, Marine."
Evens replied in the same tone.

"I thought we weren't into propaganda in our country."
To the Marine's surprise, Robin muttered 'propaganda' like a curse.

"You don't understand my trade, Jarhead."
The Master Sergeant didn't understand what got to Molina, but both skulked apart.


Tom Ricci and Pete Nimec also tried making light of the current state of affairs, as they supervised the transport of the heavy IVIS boxes and infrared pods needed for their fortiori vehicles.

"Try to view the nation as an organism," suggested Ricci, "as the body grows tired, a wave of relief, called endorphins, will see us through this war."
Although Nimec never wavered his practiced eye on the crowd, he expressed a smile at the ex-cop.

"I like the analogy, but what do the endorphins represent?"

"A moment of Zen? Beats the heck out of me. Sorry, but this moral support stuff is just too far out of my character. Go jump on Megan's lap or something."

"I now think your analogy sucks. So there."


The marine and the special operations force guy walked in circles for a while, seeing holiday paraphernalia strategically located by carefully calculating marketers.

Evens sensed something about the reporter or something had gotten to Molina, but couldn't get it together. Was it something I said? Perhaps he believes I'm angry? I was just jesting with the reporter. I could tell him I'm not bothered if he's cool. One shouldn't allow these things to linger. Fix the team. We need an integrated core.

The intercom temporarily calmed, and pedestrians could hear an unusual pop song about postcards featuring primates.

Hey, nutty stuff usually cheers that Molina right up, judging from what I know of him. Could this balm his ails?