It had finally begun!! November was here, and NaNoWrimo had officially started. And during his morning commute, Travis was thinking of whether it could be possible for him to leave home a little early, so that he could get more time working on his story. Luckily for him, there was not much work to be done, and he was able to leave an hour early, and thus, reach home an hour hourly.
Some time after reaching home, Travis booted his personal computer and navigated to the Penana website. Once logged in, he navigated to the story he had created for NaNoWriMo and started a new issue. Then, staring at the empty editor on the web page, he started thinking.
He thought about how he should begin his story. Almost all stories devoted the initial chapter to setting up the scene for the sequence of events to follow. Most authors considered this as a sort of a prologue and did not give it any chapter number. Travis decided to adopt this idea and make the first issue of his novel an introduction to story world and some of the main characters (but not the protagonist, that would come in the first chapter). He would end it with a mention of Energised Inc.'s announcement of their new technology.
This brought him to the next production. Every story has to begin at some point in time. When should he begin his? He thought about it for some time and decided the year 2031 as the time when the events in the story take place. The prologue, he decided, should take place in the immediate future. That way, he could draw inspiration from real life events and still make it not look out of place. With these thoughts, he began writing.
We always knew the energy crisis was upon us. We knew that it was going to happen. The experts estimated we had two decades before we ran out. That would have been enough time, I guess. We were preparing to overcome this in every way possible. Considerable money had been pumped into renewable and other new forms of energy.
We were confident that we would find a solution well in time. But like the innocent little fools that we were, we didn't expect the unexpected.
I still remember the day when it all started. The day the world, as we knew it, changed forever.
Travis read what he had written so far, trying to analyse it from the point of view of a reader. He thought that it made sense, and so he continued.
The leaders of the world had gathered together for a week long conference to discuss the problem of global warming and climate change. On the second day of this conference, one of the leaders from North Korea was found dead in his room. Apparently his tea had been poisoned. This naturally put suspicion on some of the other participating countries, who were enemies with the deceased leader's country. Though this increased the tensions between the attendees somewhat, the host nation immediately initiated an investigation into the matter, with a promise that all those involved would be brought to justice. This announcement seemed to diffuse the situation a little. Some more level headed discussions might have brought things back to normal, had it not been for the second murder, which happened that night.
This time, the deceased was an American diplomat. The killer had somehow poisoned the jug of water kept in his room. Immediately after the news went public, theories that this was a 'revenge killing' started doing the rounds. The situation could have been salvaged, had not a third diplomat, this time a European one, died under the same mysterious circumstances the next day.
Travis studied what he had written so far. It seemed to make sense. The reference to the ongoing political tensions seemed to add a slight touch of realism to it. He decided that three murders were enough and it was now time to put the world changing events in motion.
There was very little to be done after that. The conference was cancelled and discussions on climate change were soon replaced by discussions on 'sending a message' to the North Koreans.
Here he paused to think a little. The tone of the paragraph seemed somewhat abrupt. After a moment's thought, he understood that there needed to be some event or evidence to incite suspicion on the North Koreans. So, he erased the last paragraph he had written and started again.
A little later, investigators were busy examining the footage from the security cameras found that around the times of both the so-called 'revenge killings'. They noticed that in both cases, a suspicious looking person, probably of Asian origin, was seen entering the rooms of the victims on the day of the murder. He was dressed as a janitor. It was suspected that he was the assassin. Fortunately for the authorities, his a portion of his face was visible in one frame, and this they fed into their facial recognition system. They ended up with a eighty percent match to one of the world's most notorious contract killers, who was known to have worked for the North Koreans on previous occasions. Also, a further investigation of all the attendees revealed suspicious looking wire transfers made by a few North Korean diplomats. The persons in question however, denied making the transfers, but got very little support from others.
There was very little to be done after that. On the fifth day, after the conference ended, discussions on 'saving the environment' were immediately replaced by discussions on 'sending a message' to the North Koreans. Accordingly, a covert operation to hack their systems, with a view to 'obtain information' was authorised.
But the North Koreans got wind of it somehow and were able to neutralise the attack. Coincidentally, a few days after, Europe and America were simultaneously hit by one of the biggest distributed Denial of Service attack (DDoS) attacks ever seen. The malware used in the attack was sophisticated enough to keep the cyber security experts of both the countries guessing for a full week. That time period of one week adversely impacted the day to day life in the two nations. On the eighth day, when the malware was finally isolated and removed, the root cause analysis began. The investigation revealed that the malware was constantly communicating with a few servers located in China and North Korea. A further check on these servers with respect to their owners led the authorities through a maze of dummy companies and fake organisations to the respective governments of the two countries.
Here again Travis paused for a review. He had now provided a suitable backstory for the conflict. Now, it was time to take things to the next level.
This discovery started the biggest cyber-war the world had ever seen.
The warring nations went for the one thing that was a pillar of the economy. Power Plants. Less power plants running means less electricity generation, which means power cuts which will ultimately have an adverse effect on the economy, leading to its eventual collapse.
As he was writing this, he realised that there was a real life incident which he could base this on. He had remembered about Stuxnet, a tailor-made worm that was used to take out the industrial equipment of a country. He quickly searched the Internet for a few articles to better understand the way the attack took place. Then, composing his thoughts, he began to write.
The first attack was on a Chinese hydroelectric power plant. It was through a very special kind of malware delivered through a very unique method. The malware caused the turbines to malfunction, and would randomly change the wicket gate and turbine blade angles (the power plant primarily made use of Kaplan turbines to generate power), resulting in highly inefficient operation, which led to almost all of the turbines being taken offline, either due to excessive damage, or as a precautionary measure. This plunged the areas to which the plant supplied into a temporary energy crisis.
A whole month later, when experts were able to contain the malware and analyse how it had gotten into their systems, they came across a rather startling discovery. The malware had been delivered concealed inside a firmware update for one of the supervisory control and data acquisition (or SCADA) systems which controlled the turbines. That is why it had gone undetected through the firewall and virus scanners.
Such a high level of sophistication and access meant that there were some big players involved in this attack. As the SCADA system had been built by a European manufacturer, the European government was at the top of the list of suspects. But as was to be expected, nothing could be proven.
A few months later, a power plant in France was the victim of a similar malware attack. Here again, an infected computer connected to the system was identified as the carrier of the worm. When the worm was analysed by experts, they found it to be of the same architecture as the one used in the DDoS attack on Europe and America.
This served to increase the tensions further and led to mass paranoia. Countries from both sides slowly started breaking ties with each other. With this, the ongoing cyber war also cooled down a bit. Needless to say, businesses across the world were affected. Companies that could not adapt to this change went bankrupt and ultimately out of business, while the volume of exported goods decreased by several orders of magnitude. International collaboration became virtually non-existent. Slowly, the world had gradually started getting used to the change caused by this breakdown of relations.
Travis again stopped writing and took some time to verify that these paragraphs were in sync with the previous ones. Satisfied, he decided to now write about the virus that will bring about the real energy crisis. Taking a moment to think what should the name of this all powerful virus should be, he resumed writing.
And then Apocalypse came. And with it came darkness.
On a summer morning in the year 2024, all the power plants in the world were simultaneously hit by a powerful malware, which took control of a majority of them entirely and left a few ones operating at a fraction of their design capacity. Even the wind and solar energy farms were not spared. The malware was sophisticated enough to install its own firewall to restrict access to the power plants from the Internet and block any attempt at remote access. In one power plant, they had tried to pull the plug on one of the infected machines. Apocalypse had somehow sensed that, and had blown up the entire power plant by overloading the generators. Needless to say, nobody else felt inspired enough to do the same thing again.
The effect of the blackout was catastrophic. Entire cities were plunged in darkness. Industries ground to a standstill. The prices of diesel and other generator fuels increased to such an extent that they became the most expensive commodity on the planet. The government's inability to solve the problem led to discontent among the people, which finally resulted in riots.
The affected countries had launched their own investigations into the matter. What they found was completely unexpected. It appeared that all the hardware like motherboards logic controllers and the chip sets used in SCADA systems contained this malware. A further investigation revealed that this infection had been done during manufacture itself, where the malware was burned onto the board's ROM along with the firmware. Also, the hardware manufacturers themselves seemed to be compromised in a way similar to the power plants, as here too attempts to take one of the firmware burning stations offline resulted in an explosion of the device. The only solution which had seemed to work was shutting down the assembly line. Also, surprisingly, only those manufacturers which manufactured boards for SCADA systems were affected. In addition, the malware, for some reason, had not become active in other industries, even though the systems there were using the compromised hardware.
As the findings of these incidents gradually spread, governments all over the world realised that this was something far bigger than a cyber war, and had been going under their noses for far longer than it should have. The earlier cyber war was quickly forgotten, and efforts were initiated to get a joint investigation underway. This led to even more startling revelations.
As many had suspected, this event seemed to be the work of one single organisation. Their agents seemed to be employed at (or had managed to somehow work their way up to) high positions in all major organisations, both in the government and private sector. A more old fashioned interrogation of one of the accused provided the name of the organisation behind this attack It was a secret society known simply as 'The Puppeteers' (the fact that this organisation had managed to stay under the radar for so long was a separate mystery in itself).
But it was too little too late. The damage had already been done. The monetary losses were too much for the governments to sustain, leading to collapse of economies in many countries.
The findings of these investigations prompted some to advance a theory that the earlier cyber war had been brought about by 'The Puppeteers' as well, as part of a divide and conquer strategy, or as a practice run (or maybe both). Some even went to the extent of suggesting that, the suspicious email, which had provided the first breakthrough in the case, was also work of The Puppeteers to strike fear in the hearts of the people. But nobody ever got much chance to really examine these theories.
For one year later, Apocalypse disappeared, in the same mysterious way it had appeared. All the SCADA systems in the power plants had their ROM and hard disks wiped clean of data, making it almost impossible to investigate what the malware had been doing for one year.
Here again Travis paused a little. He had so far been putting his thoughts on paper, developing the story as it came to him. But the event of the virus deleting itself did not create an energy crisis. All that would be required would be a few years of work to bring the generators back online and make the plants operational again. No, there has to be some means to deplete the natural resources of the planet. Thinking thus, he began re-reading what he had written, taking in all that he had written with an open mind and letting his imagination run riot. And as he read it a second time, he found that the had inadvertently written the cause itself.
Travis had written that Apocalypse kept the power plants running, and made only a small portion of electricity available for the outside world. So there was ample room in the plot to have the plant burn through the natural resources in cases where non-renewable sources of energy involved. Also, another possibility to incorporate in the story was that of the worm sabotaged all the connected equipment when it wiped itself. After some thought, he decided to use both the approaches, and add a little twist in the end to bring about the crisis. He continued with his narrative.
After the damage assessment began, it was found that Apocalypse had been busy all year long. In the plants which ran on non-renewable energy, Apocalypse had used the available coal and stored power sparingly. However, this was not to be the case with plants running on renewable energy sources, or the nuclear power plants.
In nuclear power plants, a preliminary analysis found that the average amount of fuel that Apocalypse had used daily was sufficient to generate power for a small town. For hydro-electric plants, there were also reports of the plant running at full capacity for days continuously. But before they could begin to proceed with a detailed analysis of the facilities, they were in for a rude surprise.
A week after Apocalypse had disappeared, one of the engineers noticed that some computers in a coal-fired plant were still operational. No sooner had he informed the control centre than the boiler furnace conveyors started with an ominous sound. But this was not possible, unless...
This was Apocalypse's parting shot. A few hours later, every generator in the plant was overloaded. A short while afterwards, all the boilers in the plant exploded due to the high pressure build up. Thankfully, all the people had been safely evacuated by that time.
Similar incidents started happening in all the plants. The meltdowns at the nuclear plants did the most damage, and left barren wastelands in their wake. In a short span of time, the world was left without any working power plant.1263Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcFZ44jfFSp
Travis reviewed what he had written, and satisfied that the situation of crisis had been sufficiently developed, decided to focus now on the aftermath.1263Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ243JMqmtzC
The initial months were hard on everyone. It was difficult to imagine a life without electricity, let live one. The law and order machinery was already strained to the maximum trying to control the protests, looting and riots that were taking place. And then the Power Mongers appeared.
The Power Mongers, literally speaking, were the ones with access to all the power generation equipment that was still standing. After all the power plants had fallen, small bands of goons and robbers had formed in order to take advantage of the situation. Each of these bands had at least one or two vehicles under their control. And they had set up their network so that they had a ready supply of gasoline and diesel. What these people would do is use these vehicles to charge the car batteries, which would then be sold to the highest bidder. Initially, there used to be fights and quarrels between the different gangs, but over time they realised the benefits of working together, and united together into one single group. Over the next four years, they even managed to take over and start up almost all of the lesser damaged coal-fired power plants. Which was good, because it meant that the plants were not all that damaged. At the same, time, it was also bad as it allowed the Power Mongers to exert their influence over other people virtually unchallenged. Pretty soon, their reach even extended up into the higher levels of the governments.1263Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTTTphSU0ci
But that was all going to change now. Three years ago, some of the owners of the erstwhile power companies had come together and founded called Energised Inc., a small research group created with the aim of attempt finding a solution to the energy crisis. Like the Power Mongers, they had also managed to get some coal-fired plants working, and were using a few of these as their main research centres.1263Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxw1pEhO4Tl
In late 2028, news that Energised Inc. had succeeded in a small proof of concept application for sustainable energy generation began doing the rounds. A few months later, it was revealed that this new invention was to be a variant of the nanogenerator, a concept that was being actively researched till Apocalypse came along and destroyed everything. Two months later, they revealed a working prototype in a press conference. It was a small electric toothbrush, powered entirely by nanogenrrators.1263Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAwUsSRTC8W
This was welcomed by the governments and people alike. Granted, it was not much, but it was a start. As news of their work spread, they also ended up acquiring a few angel investors, which enabled them to upgrade their research facilities. Seven months after the initial demo. Energised Inc. made another announcement stating that they would be releasing their first device completely powered by nanogenerators, which would be an LED powered light bulbs.1263Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgfd7ORC3Vi
This news obviously did not go down well with the Power Mongers, who tried all in their power to derail Energised's efforts. They tried to threaten the founders of Energised, and when that did not work, tried to spread rumours that the 'invention' Energised was claiming was a hoax. But after the demo at the press conference, even that claim lost its credibility. They even tried to use their government connections, but here also they met with nothing but resistance, for the governments were seeing Energised's inventions as a solution to rid the world of the Power Mongers.1263Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVmG6wnU1TU
In December 2030, Energised Inc. announced that the nLight1, the nanogenerator powered self-sustaining light bulb, would be released early March next year when they would be celebrating their fifth Foundation Day at their London office. Accordingly preparations were underway for the event. The London Police had gone to great lengths to ensure that the security arrangements were tight, and that the Power Mongers would not be able to disrupt the proceedings in any way.1263Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡF1qxSwCGSX
That was a lot of writing, thought Travis as he looked at the clock on the table. It was quarter to twelve. He decided to finish the chapter before turning in. Now only thing that was left was to set the stage for the conspiracy that was being hatched by the power Mongers.1263Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡl6g6Waonix
But little did Energised, or anybody for that matter, know that there existed within the governments, a small number of people who were supporters of the Power Mongers, primarily because they had made clandestine investments in the Power Mongers business. At the outset, they would appear to be against the policies of the Power Mongers, but that was just an act to fool the governments and the general public.1263Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡp0osBdRXtC
It was one of these government officials and a Power Monger who were currently having a rather interesting discussion inside a house in one of the less hospitable areas around London.1263Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpVuE37zjBQ
"Is everything going as per plan?", asked the official.1263Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡp4BOpw1AGD
"Yes, I have most of the pieces of the puzzle by now. In a few weeks I will have all the pieces. Then we can have a look at the final puzzle."1263Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKvVEqtzWTn
The official nodded approvingly. He knew, that these so-called 'pieces' were actually parts of a powerful long range sniper rifle they were smuggling into London. He knew, the Power Mongers were using all their connections to get the parts into the city, mainly by hiding them inside other cargo.1263Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡp58PmnTQQM
"Good", replied the official, rising up from his chair. "I must be going now. You know how to reach me."1263Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡn5oRYlTrt0
"I will use our friends at the church", came the reply.1263Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyldWSbCFNk
"Good. Till next time."1263Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡidJjFQdjPI
"Till next time."1263Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9PGnU89tLi
And soon they were out of the house and walking their separate ways. A few minutes later, both were swallowed into the lengthening shadows of the evening.1263Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡttW2wJ7exV
Travis looked at the word count after he finished writing. It came close to three thousand words. This was enough for today, he thought.1263Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2ouv9SRAPs
As he was about to publish the issue, he had a final nagging thought. He had added a little dialogue at the end of the chapter. Had he gotten the punctuation right?
Not deciding to leave it for later, he did a quick Internet search for rules of punctuation in direct speech. Reading through the articles, he discovered that he had, indeed made a mistake. The recommended practice was to avoid using commas or full stops after the closing quote. He found that he had violated this in a couple of places. He quickly corrected the errors. Then he gave a final reading to the entire chapter, trying to identify any continuity gaps. But all seemed fine to him.
He took another look at the ending. That also seemed okay to him. The fact that he had omitted the reason of smuggling in the rifle was to make the reader think that it would be used during Energised's press conference (actually, he had not decided what to do with the sniper rifle yet).
Satisfied that the prologue had turned out more or less the way he wanted. Travis copied the entered work and saved it in a new file for that chapter. Then, he published the issue in Penana and logged out. Last, but not least, he committed his changes to the Fossil repository he had created earlier, and shut down his computer.
Travis looked at the clock and gave a small exclamation, for it was five minutes to one. He hurriedly shut down the computer, made a few notes in his phone about things he needed to write about tomorrow, and decided to call it a day.
ns 15.158.61.8da2
