Senator John Barker of the Great State of Wisconsin leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. Ever since he was a young man, he had always skipped breakfast and dinner, instead having coffee in the morning, tea in the evening, and a small snack before bed. The only meal he ate was lunch, followed by a nap. Today’s menu had been two thick, greasy, meaty tacos with all the trimmings, along with some fresh-made tortilla chips and a can of cola. With his belly full, he pulled his lips momentarily into a small, peaceful smile, already dreaming of next week’s vacation at the lake house.
His cell phone rang, jerking the senator from his almost slumber. He could have sworn he’d turned the damn thing off. As he took out his phone, his desktop booted up out of hibernation all on its own. The cell phone rang a few more times and then stopped. The screen was black except for a white clock with a red hand counting down the seconds from 60. The same thing appeared on his desktop, in perfect sync with the little countdown on his phone.
There are times like this when something happens and the world is suddenly wrong, and you can’t do anything but watch and wait. Senator Barker remembered when he was sitting in the living room and his wife answered the phone to that ungrateful psycho bitch skank, out for blood after he’d dumped her. While Martha listened, all he could do was look straight back at her darkening face and wait for whatever happened next.
When the countdown reached zero, both screens went black and the lights flickered. His scrotum tightened as his mind flashed to the security briefing he got when first elected, and how a total loss of power that affected battery-powered devices is caused by an electromagnetic pulse, the first sign of a nuclear attack nearby. Then near the top of each screen, letters began to appear as if someone was typing. The message read:
Hello, World!
– Your pal, Levi
Then the screens went black and in a moment everything looked normal. Senator Barker opened the video app on his phone. He wiggled the desktop mouse and opened a game of Solitaire. Everything seemed to be in working order.
Into his office burst a wide-eyed young man, one of Senator Haigram’s interns. “Did – did it happen to you too?”
Senator Barker nodded but said nothing, some of the puzzle pieces in his mind falling into place.
“It happened to everyone I could find. It might not just be us, but the whole country! Could it – could it be the Russians? The Chinese? The Bolivians? Terrorists?”
Again the senator said nothing. Suddenly embarrassed, the intern bolted out of the room.
No longer sleepy, Senator Barker felt himself infused with the primal energy of anger, one of nature’s greatest gifts to man. This stunt was the work of a terrorist all right, some punk loser wannabee hacker who just kicked the hornet’s nest, lighting off a suicide bomb all over the senator’s vacation plans. What a shit show. He took a moment to fantasize about finding the worm responsible and sending him off to get his just desserts. Probably the little jerk was some pimple-faced teenager, Dennis the Menacing out of his parents’ basement. He wondered, how hard it would be to send a minor to the CIA black site in Albania? He knew a few hardboiled guys who’d have no qualms about giving the kid a little enhanced interrogation.
The phone on his desk rang, bringing the senator out of his reverie. His life as it should have been for the next week flashed before his eyes – fishing, he and Martha taking their young grandson for boat rides on the lake, the majestic trees and happy squirrels, his well-stocked liquor cabinet. Now it all just melted away.
“Goddammit” the senator muttered, reaching for the phone. It was time to get to work.
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