CyberStorm Read Online Free PDF Page A

doing my expenses, I noticed Luke was being awfully quiet. He’d fallen asleep against Gorby.
    I yawned.
    A nap seemed like a great idea, so I quietly walked over and picked up Ellarose to deposit her in her pack ‘n play by the window. Reaching down, I picked up Luke, his sleepy head lolling around like a sack of potatoes, and laid down on the couch, cradling my son on my stomach as I drifted off to sleep.
    CNN droned on in the background as I dropped off. “At what point does cyberespionage become cyberattack? With more on this we go to our correspondent...”
    §
    A loud banging on the door woke me up. My brain slowly awoke out of its fog, and then there was the banging again.
    “I’ll huff, and I’ll puff, and I’ll blooow your door down!”
    Luke had drooled all over my T-shirt. My muscles were sluggish from sleep. How long was I out? I groaned as I struggled to sit up, carefully holding onto Luke.
    “Yeah, yeah, just a sec,” I called out.
    Holding Luke in one arm, I got up and ambled toward the door and unlocked it. Chuck burst through holding brown paper bags in both hands.
    “Anyone for lunch?” he announced enthusiastically, proceeding to the kitchen counter where he began unpacking.
    Luke watched Chuck with half-open eyes. I crossed over to the couch and laid him down, covering him up with a blanket, and then returned to Chuck. By then he’d emptied everything out onto plates.
    “Is it lunchtime already?” I asked, rubbing my eyes and stretching. “I was conked out.” I yawned. “What is that?”
    “Foie gras and French fries, my friend,” said Chuck with a smile, waving a baguette around in the air like a magic wand, “and some Creole shrimp in butter dipping sauce.”
    It was no wonder I was getting fat.
    “I can feel my arteries hardening already,” I joked.
    Reaching around the counter, I slid open a drawer to pull out two forks and handed him one while I dug into the French fries with the other.
    “No restaurant stuff this time of year?”
    “This is the busiest time of the year,” laughed Chuck, picking up a meaty chunk of foie gras from atop the French fries. “But I got stuff to do here.”
    “More stuff for your doomsday locker?”
    He smiled and stuffed the fatty liver into his mouth.
    I shook my head. “Do you really believe it’s all going to come apart?”
    Chuck wiped his greasy lips with the side of one hand. “You really believe it never will?”
    “People are always saying the world is ending, but it never does. Society is too far advanced.”
    “Tell that to the Easter Islanders and Anasazi Indians.”
    “Those were isolated.”
    “What about the Romans, then? And tell me we’re not isolated on this speck of blue called Earth?”
    Picking up a shrimp, I began shelling it.
    “I’ve been researching the cyber world, at your suggestion,” said Chuck, “and you’re right.”
    I regretted I’d said anything.
    “What’s happening now,” Chuck whispered conspiratorially, “it makes the Cold War look like an age of transparency and understanding.”
    “You’re being dramatic.”
    “For nearly all human history, the ability of one country to affect another was based on control of physical territory. Guess what broke that link for the first time?”
    “Cyber?” I guessed. Popping the shrimp into my mouth, the rich texture of Cajun spices and butter exploded into my senses. Oh, that’s good.
    “Nope. Space systems. Ever since Sputnik launched in 1957, outer space has been the military high-ground, to gather information and project power globally.”
    “What does that have to do with cyber?”
    “Because cyber is the second thing that broke that link. It’s replacing space as the new military high-ground, and for exactly the same reasons—gathering information and influencing events anywhere on the planet.”
    I thought about that for a moment.
    Chuck stuffed a mouthful of greasy fries into his mouth. “And outer space is already a part of cyberspace.”