False Idols: When Technology Becomes Religion

Prologue

Had the voice really spoken?

No. She must have imagined it.

Dr. Mary Ramos willed the grogginess out of her mind and looked around the Hurricane Reactor’s control center. Her deputy on the overnight shift, Anil Dado, must have gone to the rest room, and for the moment she was alone with the blinking holographic displays that summarized the nuclear power plant’s status.

All the safety parameters were flashing green.

There was no crisis. No one had just alerted her to an emergency. Maybe she’d dozed off and dreamed it.

Mary shook her head to reprimand herself. The prototype thorium fission reactor at Hurricane was too important to the nation’s future for her to sleep on duty. She eyed the security cameras that observed the room uneasily. Hopefully, no one would review the tape.

“You’re being attacked! Listen to me!”

The voice. This time Mary was sure she hadn’t dreamed it. She glanced once again at the holographic safety indicators. They were all still green.

Her colleague Anil ran back into the room.

“Anil, do you know who that voice is?”

“I was about to ask you the same.” Anil’s eyes scanned the green safety indicators.

Mary knew the safety indicators were superfluous, as was she. Hurricane’s systems were maintained by autonomous software. The computer systems would notice and react to any dangerous situation far faster than Mary or any other human could.

Even those computer systems were practically superfluous. Meltdowns were impossible at thorium reactors. It was a matter of basic physics.

“Must be somebody from downtown hacking into our comm system,” offered Anil. The reactor complex had gotten its name from the nearby city of Hurricane, Utah. Many residents were hostile to the newly constructed nuclear power plant. This would not be the first time they had harassed plant staff.

Mary paused only for a moment before deciding that Anil’s answer was the only one that made sense. “I’ll make a report to plant security and the state police. You do a walk around of the reactor buildings just to be sure.”

Anil nodded as he strode quickly back out of the room.

***

“You’re being attacked. Listen to me!” Rad Jaeger pleaded into the Hurricane Reactor comm system.

There was no response. Through the Hurricane security systems he had hacked into, he watched the two safety technicians conversing. They thought his messages were a prank.

But this was no prank. The plant’s computer networks were under attack.

In theory, there was nothing short of dropping a bomb on the thorium reactor that could cause it to leak radiation. In theory, the worst a computer hacker could do would be to force the plant to shut itself down.

But Rad was a realist. Theories gave him no comfort.

A few years earlier, from his position deep in the shadows of the United States military intelligence apparatus, Rad had identified a nascent threat to the nation, a threat that he was sure would infiltrate the highest levels of government and frustrate all official efforts to combat it. The best way to combat the threat was to operate alone and in complete secrecy. So Rad’s program was completely secret, save for one well-connected friend in Washington who could quietly arrange the funding he needed.

Complete secrecy meant that no politician could be bribed to shut down Rad’s program. It meant he could violate the normal rules of engagement without having to answer to superiors. But the secrecy also meant that if he faltered, there was no one else to provide backup. He was the last, the only, line of defense for the United States.