Silence Like Diamonds

Silence Like Diamonds

By John Barnes (excerpt)

While I read NitCo’s report about the drone collision, the firefighters from Lightning Fast arrived. As soon as Markus was satisfied with their perimeter security, and that they knew enough to stay out of flowerbeds, he came down.

“Some burning debris landed in the yellowwood and the burr oak on the south side of the house, and some smoke was rising from that bed of soaproot. The house was flooding it with the drip irrigator, but whatever was burning was probably off the ground. I had the firefighters spray all up and down those trees, and a lot of junk fell out. I used your garden hose to spritz that soaproot bed myself, since it wouldn’t be good if they watered a fire hose?”

“My garden thanks you.”

“It’s gorgeous; I’d hate to see a place like that messed up.” Markus loved gardening like I did. “So what happened?”

“The opposition dove the griffon that carried most of Arcata’s traffic toward my roof and collided a Roverino with it,”

“Explain the Griffon. Little bitty words. I’m just a big lug that beats people up?”

“Oh, right, fish for compliments.”

“Roverinos are common as crows around a tech town. I’ve never seen a Griffon.”

Silence Like Diamonds. Photo by Elena

“Normally you wouldn’t. It’s a hydrogen-inflated drone, shaped like an airplane, transparent plastic on top, solar-powered plastic underneath. Maybe five meters long with a twelve-meter wingspan. The Griffon circles around over town, 35,000 meters up. It’s a wirless broadband relay. Normally during the day it stores up power and rises a few kilometers as the sun warms the hydrogen; at night it slowly circles downward. To ascend fast, like when they first go up, they inflate auxiliary bladders. To descend fast, like for a solar flare or a government shutdown, they pack hydrogen back into their tanks and collapse to the size of a desk chair.”

“Which is what this one did, about ten minutes before it went bang over my house – it sucked its wings and stabilizers back into its body, reformed into a raindrop shape, and was diving at 700 km/hr by the time it arrived. If it had hit the roof, it would have penetrated, its hydrogen tanks would have burst and there’d have been enough explosion and fire to gut the house.”

“But in the last thirty meteres, it inflated all its bladders to the max. Air resistance had ripped it into sheets of loose plastic when that little Roverino’s red-hot microjet came blasting through that cloud of hydrogen. So instead of taking the roof off and the walls down, it was just loud enough to give me the mother of all headaches and scare the hell out of me. So not only did they penetrate through what’s supposed to be a high-security backdoor, they did it almost instantly, just to give me a warning shot.”

“That’s quite a warning. Do we know who’s trying to scare you?”

“Not yet.”

“How long before it blew up did it start down?”

I stared at Markus. “No more jokes about being a big bomb lug. That question was brilliant.” I tapped the wall with my finger. “Report on Griffin hijacking here. US letter size.” A rectangle of light appeared. I tapped next to it. “15 cm, Yazzy live.” A smaller squareshowed Yazzy’s face.

“Yip, I’m glad you’re OK. Markus, what have -”

I asked, “What was the exact time when you accepted the deal with NitCO?”

My sister likes to socialize but she recognizes, she glanced down at her display and looked for a moment.” K, contract was finalized 15:54:12 universal -”

“Well, at 15:54:18, six seconds later, something took over that Griffon and sent it into an emergency-protocol drop at my roof. Six seconds after you signed that contract. We’re hacked. We are so hacked. But on it, whoever the opposition is, they’re listening to us this second.”

Yazzy was nodding slowly. “You’re right, or at least we’re probably hacked and NitCo is definitely hacked. Six seconds afther they sign us a contractor, our main subcontractor asset gets a massive, scary warning shot.”