What Happened in Strasbourg

Chapter thirteen: The cyber attack

What in the world had I just read?

It was fake. It HAD to be fake even though it looked as believable as something out of a textbook -- with times, dates, and some facts so exact they seemed impossible to make up.

I knew not all of it could be right, but not all of it could be wrong either.

Fentanyl? If it was true that Landry had decided to use this as a coverup, it hadn't been well thought out. Wasn't the CEO of Acheron smart enough to create a more convincing story, without a single hint of foul play?

But maybe, I thought, as I set my computer down on my nightstand, it was all on purpose. The shakier the coverup, the easier it would be for Acheron's customers to go after Mir-Tek -- for Mir-Tek to go after itself. The company would chase its tail -- the executives would be fired, the board would appoint one CEO after another, no one in the company could trust anyone else. Everyone would be a suspect. But nobody would suspect Acheron.

I knew poisonings orchestrated by Russian authorities had been commonplace for so many years that Landry's decision to use this tactic as a way to deflect blame away from Acheron would be genius - dangerously easy to misinterpret.

My mind flew forward like a car on an icy road. I turned on my white noise machine, pulled my curtains down over my window to block out the cold glow of street light outside, and shut my eyes tight. But I still couldn't fall asleep.

. . .

The next morning I went downstairs so early that all the lights were off. Even though it was the middle of summer, the sun was still below the horizon. I found my dad in his favorite chair checking the news on his phone, and my mom lying half asleep on the couch with a frown on her face. She looked up when she saw me, "You're up early," she mumbled. "Is something wrong?"
"No, not really," I said, sitting down next to her and wrapping a throw blanket around my shoulders. "I just didn't get a lot of sleep last night."

"Well, look at that," my dad said, a smirk on his face. He'd stopped scrolling.

"What's going on?" I said.
"AIMA's taking charge of the internet for once, and shutting those commies down."

"What do you mean?" I felt a cold, sinking feeling in my head.

My dad read off the article, "Late yesterday evening, Acheron's Internet Moderation Agency saw a surge in suspicious search patterns and of web traffic heading off the "map." AIMA made the decision to crack down on all unapproved sites and browsers. Browsers in this list include, Shar, a search engine with Russian origins, which was only recently discovered by AIMA."

"Who gives AIMA the right to shut down browsers like that?" I said. "Maybe if people weren't scared of an online secret police breathing down their neck, they wouldn't feel like they had to find a backdoor onto the internet in the first place..."
My parents were staring at me. My dad was scowling. My mom had this look in her eye like the idea of "online police" had never crossed her mind before, and she wished she could forget it.

"Listen," my dad said. "If you keep talking like that, if you keep disrespecting the work Acheron and AIMA does everyday to keep you safe, there will be consequences. If I can't trust you to keep yourself safe online I might have to set some restrictions for you myself. And if those don't help.... well, you're handing over your computer until you learn to make better choices."

I took a sharp breath and gripped the blanket tight. My hands had gone from cold to damp with sweat. Who knew I had that in me? I hadn't. This past week had felt like a fever dream. Why couldn't I just snap out of it and go back to "classic Gracie" -- who was thankful for Acheron, content with life in general, and could listen to other people talk for hours without finding one point to disagree with.