Bots

The idiot with the generator forgot blackout curtains. It was the third thing on Brian's list. Blackout curtains. It provided fifteen pages of annotated notes. This idiot had forgotten them entirely. But, this idiot had also provided Brian with numbers 1 through 15 (excluding the blackout curtains) on his list. The idiot, Craig, and his idiot wife, Barbra, had been shocked when Brian opened the door and shouted "What up muthafuckas?!?!"

He'd introduced them to a set of new rules. They'd made blackout curtains in the dark. They'd soundproofed the basement - also in the dark. They made him a sandwich in the dark. Here was a rule. If night falls on the Easter Seaboard of the U.S. and the power grid is shut down, be sure to run your generator in a soundproof area enclosed in the house. Here was another rule: never advertise your generator to outsiders.

If Craig had used blackout curtains, he and Brian would not have met. Craig hated to admit it, but he was lucky Brian had found them. Brian let them live by the rules. Brian knew how to live until the power came back on.

"The power is never coming back on Craig. Deal with it." Craig didn't care for Brian's pessimistic attitude. Craig missed his wife. She left after a few nights without power. Craig never got to see her again. Craig never got to see the generator run again either.

After a week of hard labor, there was no more Craig. There was CNN and ice cream. There was Brian's laptop and mobile connection, and Craig's Crappy Celeron Cumputer (sans Craig) slaved off to it, just as five million other Crappy Computer Zombies were slaved off to the server Brian rented. A server in Canada that was buried in a bunker with generators and blackout curtains.

Zombie Bots were the future. Brian didn't need his three computer science degrees anymore. He needed two programs and a decent server. Other People's Computers became his Slave Bots, his Zombies. This allowed Brian to work on his survival skills.

Here's the theory. A computer can perform multiple tasks at once in a fration of a second. A simple task, like requesting information from a server, can be done over 100 times a second by one computer. That's over a half a billion requests from just five million bots. Five hundred million requests a second. It was the Holy Grail of internet terrorism. That kind of traffic would shut down any network. All Brian had to do was click.

One person could mobilize five hundred million requests a second without writing a single piece of code. Brian wrote code in his sleep. After Craig disappeared, Brian played Light Wars, his new online game, until the police arrived.

Officer Friendly asked about the generator, asked where his parents were, told him to be safe and left. If he'd told the truth, Officer Friendly would not have believed him. Craig and Barbra were a lot like his parents anyways. Helpless victims of their own outdated mode of thinking. Brian was more like his Grandfather. Grandpa had always been conservative and understood the value of being prepared. The Russians, Grandpa always warned. The Russians. Most of Brian's Bots were computers in the former Soviet Union. The server in Canada was rented in his Grandpa's name.

Boredom is the enemy of youth. Brian fought it for as long as he could. Three days. Boring. He put the Bots on idle and drove his MoPed home. He was sure to leave early in the morning. The power would take a few days to come back on, maybe weeks. He rehearsed his story, adding a detail as he went. He threw his laptop into a river. His folks would be so happy to see him, they'd surely buy him an early 25th Birthday present.