Hacking the Sun [Old Version]

Chapter 8.3 Blindsided

Jessica sat knees bent, head leveled to the mismatched shoes beneath her jeans. She doted on the necklace folded delicately under her fingers. The silver star was all that remained, all she had of Beth. She could only stare at the symbol and coat its glimmer in memories.

Eventually, she turned from the star to the sun above, scanning its sidereal sequence. Wherever the great fire in the sky rested, it seemed unchangeable. The most concrete evidence of inevitability. Can you ever be manipulated? she thought. From the top of yet another roof, her eyes fell from that sun and onto the remnants of Pine Rim Hovels.

An inflated dome encompassed the ruin, everything but the charred pine trees of the neighboring park, the tragedy's memento. Cement would eventually erase everything else.

Her fingers instinctively went to her collar, remembering what the EMT said: she would have been concussed, or worse, if the airbag didn't break her fall. The memory of the shockwave burned viscerally enough to make her shutter. None of it mattered. She stood on her feet and grabbed one last glance of the dome and park, fastened her goggles, then abruptly stiffened. 

"Hmm?" 

Dirt on the lenses. She flipped the strap and rubbed the lens against her shirt. "Babel Vision on." Nothing happened. Sighing, she ran her fingers along the top rim, to note that Babel was inert. "What happened to you?" Fingers on the screen, she held until yellow numbers blinked.

"Babel, Safe Mode reboot." Almost immediately, the watch returned the correct time of day. "Why were you off, to begin with?"

".17 seconds before I disconnected, I detected a discharge," Babel replied.

"That was rhetorical—a discharge?" She casually rotated 360 degrees, checking the empty vicinity. "Babel Vision on." The goggle's HUD illuminated, and flashing in the upper left corner was the timer countdown: 1:35. "Why would the HUD freeze if they didn't break? Babel..." Her legs bent into a pretzel. "There was still time left. The explosion went off early. Why? It's like someone saw me coming..."

"A manual detonation?" Babel posited.

"I beat them to it. The timer was there to create chaos." She caressed her chin and peered at the sky. "So, the bomb had a micro EMP. EMP. EMP.  Why would the bomber need an electromagnetic pulse? Since when do terrorists set the stage only to erase the spectacle?" 

"A fire's purpose is not solely destruction."

"It was a distraction." Madness. Jessica clawed her scalp in the hope for answers. "Anyone determined to make rubble has something to bury. If hiding something is more important than getting a point across, the point is not the answer." Everything that happened before and after New Sumer's 15 minutes of terror vividly played back in her memory. "What was the real purpose of it all?"

Babel reran an audio portion of the broadcast. "Citizens of the deceitful sovereign, this is your equal speaking." 

Jessica scowled in rage. "That makes no damn sense, you terrorist, lying sack of shit."

"Are you speaking to me or..."

Her heart beat faster, electrical thoughts overtaking the previous melancholy. "Why the fuck would there be a countdown in the first place? Why not just blow everything up? The resistance had to exploit Goliath's faulty encryption, but no one outside Goliath knew about the holes, except for me and David... apparently."

Her mind dug deeper.

"You transmitted a signal through seven locations as a failsafe. The others were there to hide a single detonator, but how would a bomb like that slip through city surveillance if it's all connected?"

A random memory suddenly jumped. Something Valerie said two days ago, 'All I know is that hacks have been messing with mobile navigation.'

CrownSoft. 

The thought hit her like a ton of bricks. "CrownSoft controls mobile apps; you take that, you take New Sumer, theoretically. Tell people where to go, cameras where to scan, etc, etc. But if you want to erase every trace of the hack, there's hardly a clean getaway. So how do you stay safe, this day and age? EMP... Pine Rim just happened to be the epicenter of region-wide cyberspace infiltration." She started to tremble back and forth. "No! No! She didn't die just cuz of some shitty coincidence. I refuse to believe that! No!" 

"CrownSoft utilized the SK-3 program. If not, there'd have to be a mole inside of Goliath, the syllogism suggests. It's not adding up!" Reaching into her memory, she extracted images of frantic bystanders and the Bomb Disposal Unit. More questions panged around her skull.  "Was there only one target the whole time? What was the bigger scheme?" 

Somebody important was involved. 

"Were you involved, David? Did I help you do this?"

She tossed the goggles aside, inflamed by the lack of answers. Not since high school had she felt so inadequate. The sensation suffocated her breath into a snivel. Relaxing her grip on the necklace, she sentimentally peered over Beth's keepsake again. "I will get answers." 

In the end, the necklace hung around her neck. As she stood up and stared at the western horizon, the silver star gleamed under the sunlight and burned into the center of her red vest. 

"McFly!"

Swerving from high place to high place, past the sign of Archaea District, Jessica gauged the functionality of her gravity board. It worked fine, despite the EMP blast, a fact that provided another clue.

"Advanced technology was involved but wasn't strong enough to pierce Faraday Cages, which means the person—or people—responsible were worried about collateral damage." She recalled the rubble, the dome, the state of everything around Pin Rim.

"Controlled explosions are no characteristic of terrorism. They're not relying so much on havoc. There's no clear message here, but somebody involved was definitely nearby. If only there was a record...

"Assuming the data wasn't fed back and deleted inside Goliath, there's no way of knowing without getting inside." 

Jessica counted hypotheticals in her head before the evening caught up with her. A new moon tallied the shadows of the next few terraces, company for the solitary ride home. 

Some people still knew how to embrace the night, those who sat among the many rooftop lawns. Patios illuminated by white, hovering lights shimmered green against the violet sky. In many ways, strolling through the evening suburbs, one might suspect Pine Rim never happened—was never there. Like the animation of the recycle bots, humans carried on robotically in the canvases of the world, neither more lively than the other. 

At the very least, the fresh air had performed wonders. Jessica entered her apartment, feeling quite different than when she left. For one, the desire to wallow had gone. Questions still harangued her rapid mind, though she leaned on them as a distraction. In the realm of problem-solving, she was adept at getting lost until answers came. 

A sudden knock on the door steered her out of mental wandering, however. She glanced back, curious, to flashbacks of a redhead. "Who?" she inquired through the door.

"It's me," said a familiar voice.

As soon as the door slid open, Jessica saw Valerie sweating intensely on the other side. Her friend clung to the wall, darting a desperate look. Only one plea escaped her heavy breath.

"I need your help!"