*
"Yeah she's a hot chick and she's been fooling around with me all night," Roman light-heartedly moaned into his pillow. His eyes were still closed as he spoke, and Kadie pressed her weight against his back.
"Sorry my love," she said with melancholy. "Open your eyes."
Roman opened his eyes prepared to roll her underneath him, but the first visual he saw was the glowing red screen of his own com. "What?" he proclaimed taking the device from her hand, and holding it at eye level. Kadie rolled off and lay beside him.
"It has probably been flashing for a couple of minutes."
"Yep," Roman responded, entering text into the device. He rolled over onto his back, hand on his forehead to hold back his hair as he read. After a minute, he stopped and looked at his girlfriend.
"Problem?" Kadie asked, knowing that was all a flashing red message could be.
He leaned over to her face, the com and his hand brushing against her breasts. "Sorry my love," he entreated, kissing her. "Good morning." He moved to sit up with his hand still holding the com, and continued to text. When he finished, he stood up. "Electricity has gone out."
"What?" Kadie instinctively looked out the window where streetlights twinkled in the darkened Aspen streets.
Roman followed her gaze. "Not here. From Canada, moving down the center grid towards Kansas City."
"What's moving?"
"I do not know, my love," Roman replied, as he walked towards the bathroom.
"But what are you talking about?" Kadie theoretically knew electricity could go out, since there was always a miniscule but possible chance of simultaneous catastrophic failure in all active and back-up distribution locations at the same time. But redundancies in the inter-locking grid maximized resources. No blackout of any length had disrupted a developed country for decades.
"I'm talking about an electricity shortage," he shouted back to her over the sound of running water. "They are re-routing from James Bay, but people are without electricity."
Kadie could not believe the news she was hearing. "But why are they contacting you?" she shouted back. Several minutes passed before he reappeared, wrapped in a towel, water droplets dripping off his skin. "Why are they contacting you?" she repeated.
"Security issues, baby," he replied, slightly exasperated as he began to dress.
Kadie rolled her eyes at him. She had a higher security clearance level than he did. "I know it's security," she retorted. "But what?"
"I don't know, but I've got to go." Roman had swiftly shaved, groomed, dressed, and holstered his gun. She always marveled at how rapidly he could prepare for the day. Catching her anxiously watching him, his demeanor shifted. Walking towards her, he leaned down to kiss her lips, before politely adding, "I'm unbelievably sorry, but I have to leave you to go and deal with an international emergency." He stared into her softening eyes. "I love you, and I'll let you know the moment I know what is going on."
"Security permitting," she warned as she kissed him back.
"Yes of course, security permitting."
"I love you too. Be safe."
He smiled, kissed her again and turned to leave. As the door closed behind him, Kadie picked up her com and began looking at overnight messages. Neither Kadie nor Roman were officially in Aspen, and they certainly were not known to be sleeping together. Kadie had no reason to know there was an emergency on the North American electricity grid. But she looked for a search route to the details of Roman's alert notification message that would not be uncovered by The Network.
As government monitoring of free public Internet activity had grown increasingly intrusive, technologists from around the world, highly skilled engineers and computer programmers declaring no affiliation to a government or business or non-governmental organization, had built a separate internet. Initially, they had only known how to hide their server farm physical infrastructure, but not digital signal transmission equipment permitting instant global access. The situation dramatically changed when the acceleration of personal travel to outer space, expanded into personal cargo shipping, and people with resources launched their own satellites faster than any government could legislate against the practice. Since shooting down satellites could lead to war, the private civilian launches created a crisis. Almost all commercial satellites had been controlled by public companies, not wealthy individuals operating behind shell corporations. Governments tried to outlaw private, individual satellites, but lost all of the court battles. The technology was too advanced to claim interference with national security, and the territory of the earth's orbit was too substantial to demand more than limited control over its expanse. If individuals adhered to the operational treaty agreements of their home governments, the satellites were legal.
Although governments could use their own satellites to monitor all others in the sky, on the ground the rogue techs, as the independent technologists came to be known, had sliced the electromagnetic spectrum to carve out private lanes in the virtual cloud to untraceably carry their data. They called these electronic roads off the public information superhighway, off-ramps. The governments knew the off-ramps existed, but whenever their official technologists reached an identified entry point, they could not find a way in. Rogue techs had built impenetrable firewalls, coded multi-level encryption keys, created redundancies around the world, and most importantly, attracted the support of billionaires who had wanted a secret, but accessible internet for their personal use. The work was a volatile risk that changed every day. Rogues, with deep-pocketed friends, managed to build and re-build their off-ramps and private networks, faster than governments and law enforcement could find and infiltrate them. The rogues considered the challenge of creating virtual construction projects the greatest videogame ever played, and a battle they had to win. When they had uncovered the most efficient means for traveling back and forth between their servers and the worldwide Internet, while virtually masking the access to their off-ramps, the separate, secret networks proliferated. Although conspiracy theorists warned that people were delusional if they thought governments did not have control over every bit of data, those who could afford rogue tech assistance bought access to an off-ramp, and the software to use their coms while masking the activity from The Network. The switching was seamless from a Networked com, Global Intelligence rarely knew who was on private off-ramps around the world. And although technically, government officials were not permitted to access the unofficial entry points using their high security level coms, unlike most people who were monitored for the activity by The Network, presiding officials like Kadie, were not.
She projected a screen in front of her eyes, and using an off-ramp, accessed a private global news forum for government and industry officials who cared about sharing non-public information. The site had been built and populated through virtual word of mouth, as a portal for invited members to anonymously post information they could use in negotiations and international discussions. The contributors saw the confidential bulletins as efficient diplomacy, their governments would likely have another word for the practice, disloyalty. But claiming disloyalty was an overreaction, a threat to limit the actions of thinking people. True disloyalty put millions of lives in danger, their knowledge sharing, saved millions.
Kadie navigated to a forum site. Users entered information in their own languages and had developed their own coded terms. If a user were serious about staying up-to-date, she would have to master the ability to read other people's coded comments. Quickly Kadie wrote, 'Driving into dark near Kansas today, looking for divergences on the road?' Expecting the wait for a reply would not be long, she hit 'post.'