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  As soon as I hung up on Thuy's sub, Personal began beeping urgently for my attention. He'd done what he could to mollify the staff whose processes had been terminated and communications interrupted, but many of them were demanding to speak with me in person and he couldn't hold them off forever. I told him to continue blocking, then I composed and sent out a broadcast message explaining the situation and begging for patience.

  As I waited for the message to have whatever effect it was going to, I walked down the hall to my computer room. The only truly secure computer is one that's turned off and disconnected, and I meant to put as much hardware as I possibly could into that state. I entered my authorization code and the armored door slid open.

  When I'd first arrived, I'd been surprised that the computer room roared with chilled air, same as any similar room on Earth. The one difference was that the heat exchanger was a radiator lying in a sunless chasm a couple hundred meters away rather than a blower on the roof. So as I moved along the closely spaced equipment racks, powering down unused systems, routers, and hubs, I was buffeted by deafening gusts of cold air.

  I returned to my office and found that my request for authorization had neither been approved nor denied. This was an unpleasant surprise, but I knew Thuy's habits. I turned right around and headed out to find her.

  As I'd expected, I found Thuy in the gym, leaping and kicking in a frenetic series of moves she'd described to me as "battling the invisible ninjas." The lunar gravity transformed her into something from a fantasy martial arts movie, bounding four meters high and caroming off the walls and ceiling with fluid grace. It was a spectacular way of dealing with stress, and I envied her the ability to do so.

  As soon as she noticed me, Thuy finished her sequence of moves and thumped to the mat right in front of me with a bow. Her black gi was soaked with sweat. "I need your thumbprint," I said without preamble.

  "What for?" She picked up a towel and rubbed it through her hair, breathing hard.

  "To interrupt critical scientific data channels."

  Thuy picked up her phone from atop her folded clothing at the corner of the mat and turned it on. "Our counterparts back in Geneva are depending on that data," she said. "With our limited bandwidth, even a few hours' interruption would put them so far behind they'd take weeks to catch up."

  "Yes. And if this outbreak catches us with open holes in our firewall, we could lose all that data permanently. Or worse."

  "It's really that bad?"

  "It could be."

  "Kristina will kill me." But she swiped her thumb across the phone's print reader and told her sub to grant the authorization I'd requested.

  "Thanks," I said, as she buckled the phone onto her wrist.

  She started to say something in response, but her eyes widened as she read the words on her phone's screen.

  "What is it?"

  It took her a moment to find her voice. "It's spread to Tokyo. And Bangalore. And half of Russia." She looked up. "They're saying this could be the Big One."

  We looked at each other. The Big One—the Infocalypse, the Singularity, the Millennium, call it what you will—had been a theoretical possibility since before the turn of the century, but in the past five years it had become a real concern. And a real point of controversy. "Thuy, I know it might be a violation of policy to ask, but is anyone on the staff a Millennialist?" Some people—defying not just the law, but the human instinct for self-preservation—actually supported the development of posthuman technology. I needed to know right away if there were any of them inside my firewall.

  Thuy dropped her eyes. "No. No one I've talked to about it, anyway."

  I didn't like the implications of the way she'd said that. I had to know who I could trust. "Are you?"

  She still didn't look up, but after a long moment she shook her head. "But my parents are." Her hands knotted tightly together. "I . . . I like technology. You'd have to, to work in a place like this. But I've seen the kind of unintended consequences it can cause. I could never . . . believe the way my father does." At last she raised her eyes to mine. They burned with anger; they glistened with tears. "Don't worry, Mister Patterson, I'm not going to open the firewall to some rogue AI with a clever story."

  Now I was the one who had to look down. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to bring up any . . . uncomfortable issues."

  Thuy rubbed at her eyes with a knuckle. "You're only doing your job. It's just . . . I worry about my daddy. Ever since he started getting all serious about the potential of machine intelligence, I've been afraid he might do something illegal." She blew out a breath through her nose. "It's like he changed into a different person."

  That brought back unpleasant memories. "I know how that goes." She quirked a questioning eyebrow at me. I hesitated. "My ex, Jessie," I admitted at last. "Right after we got out of the service, she told me she really, really wanted children. It came out of nowhere. But I . . ." This was hard to explain. "Look, you know how when your friends have kids, it's like they vanish behind a wall? They turn into completely different people? I didn't want to vanish." I stared at the mat, remembering a crummy little military apartment where I'd been happier than ever before or since. "I didn't want us to change."

  What an idiot I'd been.

  We stood together for a while in awkward silence. Thuy broke it by folding her towel. "I'll ask my staff if they're aware of anyone with Millennialist tendencies, and if there are any I'll call you right away."

  "Thank you." I automatically glanced at my phone, to check that it was active and charged. A Missed Message indicator blinked silently on its screen; the ringer must have been drowned out by the noise in the computer room. I clicked through and viewed the message.

  What the hell? It was a Priority one notification from Firewall, dated almost ten minutes ago. If I failed to acknowledge a Priority one message within one minute, all my subs knew they were supposed to follow up—they could even sound sirens in the halls if necessary.

  The text of the message was "VERY LARGE INCOMING DATA STREAM ON SCIENTIFIC CHANNELS. UNKNOWN DATA FORMA"—it cut off in the middle of a word.

  "What's wrong?" said Thuy.

  My heart pounded. "I think the firewall may have been penetrated."

  "Oh my God."

  I ran out of there as fast as I could.

  As I hustled down the hall, caroming off walls, I used my phone to tell Network to close all the internal partitions—cut off every subnet completely from every other subnet, especially the DMZ. I had Software, Hardware, and Storage begin full top-to-bottom diagnostics on their subsystems. I told Personal not to interrupt me except for the most dire emergencies.

  By the time I arrived at my office the initial results from the diagnostics showed nothing obviously wrong on the internal network, and I allowed myself a moment of relief. Maybe Firewall's cut-off message with no follow-up was just a glitch, not an incursion.

  But I didn't want to take any chances.

  I got out my old clipboard—I hadn't used it in weeks and it had nothing of value on it any more—and yanked its wireless card with a pair of needle-nosed pliers. Then I found a network cable at the back of a drawer and connected the clipboard to the dusty patch panel behind my desk. Finally I had Network open a single connection from that patch panel to the DMZ.

  I swallowed and powered the clipboard on.

  The image that appeared on the scratched little screen was not the face I'd selected for Firewall. It was the firewall's default skin: a knight in shining armor, carrying a shield with the manufacturer's logo.

  This wasn't good. This was not good at all.

  The knight saluted. "Ready to defend!" it said, in that gratingly chipper voice I'd turned off five minutes after I'd installed it the first time.

  "Report status."

  "All firewall functions operating normally. Intrusions blocked in last twenty-four hours—twenty-one thousand two hundred nine. Incoming packets—fifteen hundred sixty-three per second. Outgoing packets—eight hundred
ten per second."

  That all sounded reasonable. The data volume seemed low, but that would be expected if the text-only restriction I'd placed was still in effect. "Summarize your most recent operational orders."

  "Find and terminate all nonessential processes in the DMZ. Intercept any incoming data other than text-only communications and security updates. Notify you if anything unusual occurs."

  I blew out a breath. At least it remembered my orders. And it knew who I was, because it had said "you" instead of "Jeff Patterson." But I had other concerns. "You sent me a priority one message over twenty minutes ago. I didn't acknowledge it. Why didn't you follow up?"

  The knight had no face. Its metallic visor was implacable. "I sent no such message. Nothing unusual has been detected."

  I licked my lips. "Why have you reverted to your default skin?"

  "No appearance changes have occurred."

  My heart started to beat faster. If I couldn't trust my firewall . . . "Open diagnostic interface."

  "Password required."

  That set me back on my heels. If it knew who I was, and it did, it should have known I had full authorization. I racked my brain for the password I'd used to configure the firewall in the first place, popped up a keyboard on the clipboard's screen, and typed it in.

  "Sorry, please try again."

  I tried again. Same result. I tried several other passwords. No good. "Security admin override," I said. "Patterson, Jeffrey William. Accept thumbprint." I swiped my thumb across the clipboard's reader.

  "Sorry, please try again."

  Shit. Shit shit shit! I reached into my pocket, but the empty gum packet crinkled between my fingers. Gritting my teeth, I wadded it up and flung it toward the wastebasket. It fluttered impotently to the floor before it got halfway there.

  Okay, I told myself, calm down. I checked my other screens; there was still no sign of anything unusual on the internal network, and the only open connection to the DMZ was the clipboard in front of me. Whatever had gone wrong with the firewall, it was trapped in the DMZ.

  For now.

  "Shut down firewall."

  "Password required."

  "Fuck you."

  "Sorry, please try again."

  My fingers tightened on the clipboard's knobby rubber casing, but throwing the damn thing against the wall wouldn't help anything, so I just powered it down. The knight's featureless visor stared implacably at me as it faded from view.

  I called up Hardware on the main screen. He hadn't changed his appearance or mannerisms, but I realized I didn't trust him the way I had even an hour ago. "Identify the power supplies for all computers, routers, and hubs in the DMZ." I had to shut down the DMZ completely, before whatever had corrupted the firewall figured out how to break through my internal defenses.

  "Just a moment, sir . . . done. Rack fifteen, bays five through nine."

  "Power down rack fifteen, bays five through nine."

  "Please confirm."

  "Repeat: power down rack fifteen, bays five through nine."

  "Just a moment, sir . . ."

  I waited. Hardware still appeared to be breathing and blinking, the same as usual, so his process wasn't hung. My fingernails bit into my palms.

  "I'm sorry, sir," he said after an eternity of thirty seconds. "The power supply is not responding."

  Oh, shit. "Detail status and error condition."

  "Communication channels are functioning. Command was received and acknowledged. No error code. But rack fifteen, bays five through nine, is still powered up."

  I ground my teeth. "Not for long."

  I grabbed the cable cutters and headed for the computer room.

  "What do you mean, can't?" I kept my voice level through an effort of will. Shouting wouldn't help anything.

  "It's not exactly that I can't power down the computer room from the main panel," Dan clarified. "But I can't power down the computer room and leave life support functioning. The whole central core's on one physical circuit. Detailed control is supposed to be handled through software."

  Dan and I were standing in his office, which was even more cluttered than mine. I'd come here for help after I'd found myself unable to get into my own computer room.

  I pressed my lips together hard and blew air through my nose. I refused to be outsmarted by some jumped-up computer virus. Even if it had managed to find a way to lock me out of hardware control and change the codes on the doors. "Can't you just turn it off for a few seconds? That might be enough to clear the thing out."

  "It might. But I can't guarantee that a hard shutdown like that won't mess anything up in there, and I can guarantee that a power cycle won't open the doors or reset the lock codes—the locks have battery backup. If anything breaks, and we can't get in there to fix it . . ."

  "We could all find ourselves trying to learn to breathe CO2."

  "Exactly."

  I was still holding the cable cutters. I slapped them into the palm of the other hand, over and over. "Okay. Then we'll just have to cut through the door."

  Dan nodded, but his expression was grim. "I'm afraid so. But it's not going to be quick." The walls and doors in the whole core area were hardened against blowout and radiation—it was supposed to be our refuge if anything went wrong.

  "How long?"

  He shook his head. "I don't know. Assuming we can find a way to unship the rescue cutter from the crawler . . . maybe two or three hours. Maybe more."

  I looked at my phone. It was 11:20. The outbreak had begun less than four hours ago, and it had already hit more than half the world's nations. Even the United States. Even Atlanta, where Jessie lived—with her new husband and a baby on the way. And the rate of spread was increasing. "Two or three hours from now there might be nobody left."

  The sound of Dan's door drew our attention. It was Sochima, who entered without knocking. "Thank God I finally found you," she said, looking at me. "I couldn't get that damn sub of yours to tell me where you were." She thrust a clipboard into my hands, ignoring my protests. "I need you to tell me if this is technically possible."

  Dan glanced from me to Sochima and back again. "I'll get my people started with the cutter," he said, and left.

  "I don't have time for this," I told Sochima as Dan pushed past me to the door.

  "Just read it." Her eyes burned with an appalling mixture of anger and terror. Rather than stare into that abyss, I looked at the clipboard.

  The clipboard's screen displayed a news story from the Confédération Africaine's official news service, datelined Lagos, Nigeria. It said that Enugu, Makurdi, and Yola, three of the most hotly contested cities in the Nigeria-Cameroon war, had been struck by the outbreak—despite the shortcomings of their war-damaged technological infrastructure. And it wasn't just computers that were affected. Reports from overflights of the affected cities told of vacant streets, with only a few twitching bodies to be seen.

  "This could be just propaganda," I said. "Are there any independent reports to back it up?"

  Without a word, she took the clipboard from me, switched it to another view, and handed it back. Hundreds of tiny icons filled the screen. Each one I tapped was a different source on the same story, datelined both sides of the border.

  Some of those sources were names I recognized. National news services. Reliable bloggers.

  I had to swallow before any words would come out. "We can't know if any of this is true. Every byte is passing through the firewall—and the firewall's compromised."

  Sochima shook her head. "Could a compromised firewall do this?" She tapped another icon, which expanded to a brief text message in some language I couldn't read. "This is from my brother in Makurdi. It's written in our tribal language, Enu-Onitsha Igbo. Only about fifteen thousand people speak it, and most of them are illiterate. He calls me by the nickname we used in childhood." She stroked the screen gently, unconsciously, as she spoke. "He says I shouldn't be scared—that the war is ending."

  I had to sit down. Sochima sat n
ext to me.

  "So, Jeff—is this technically possible?"

  "I . . . I don't know."

  I used Dan's screen to search for the latest information, but found nothing reassuring. Some observers had reported strange electromagnetic effects, possibly caused by coordinated pulsing of the electrical grid or radio transmitters, before being overcome. The few people who'd been retrieved from the affected areas were comatose or incoherent. Even dogs and cats were affected.

  And, although it had started in Nigeria and Cameroon, this inexplicable phenomenon was now being reported all over the world—from every place that had been struck by the outbreak, and many new locations as well.

  "I've never heard of anything like this," I said at last. "But it seems real—at least, I can't disprove it." I closed the search window I'd been using. "I'm sorry, Sochima."

  "Is this . . . is this the Millennium?"

  "It might be. But I'm not going to give up without a fight." I stood and headed for the door.

  "Where are you going?"

  "I'm going to see if I can find a way to keep it out of this station, at least. Isolated as we are, we and the other space facilities might be humankind's last refuge."

  I took a deep breath, held it, and let it out. Then I powered up the clipboard again. Immediately the knight appeared on its display. I popped up a keyboard and typed a command to the executive—the over-program that ran the subs themselves—to terminate the Firewall sub.

  PERMISSION DENIED flashed on the screen. The knight stood calmly, shifting its weight slightly from one leg to the other—as though its legs could grow tired, as though it had weight to shift.

  I sighed. It had been worth a try.

  Now what?

  I considered the fact that the firewall was still performing its normal functions—assuming I could trust what the rest of my software was telling me—and obeying the last set of orders I'd given it before it had changed appearance. Since then it had refused some of my commands, but obeyed others; there was a possibility it was merely damaged, not compromised. Perhaps some sequence of acceptable commands could be used to recover control.