Free An Armageddon Duology by Erec Stebbins

wicked. It can do anything and...oh no!”
    “What is it, dear?” his mother asked, her eyes never leaving the screen in her hand.
    “It’s just going up and up. It’s too high!” He looked frantically around the park for the child who was trying to control it. His face dropped. “It’s going to be lost.”
    And soon enough it was. The small object disappeared from view as it ascended into the sky. It did not return. The boy continued to look around the park, but there were no children in distress or racing after an out-of-control toy. His shoulders sank and he dug into the soil with his shoe.
    The woman looked up from her phone. “What was that you said, dear?”

12

Virtual Money
    “ S o it seems the internet is going to blow up.”
    Savas sat in front of a table in the computer science department at NYU. The academic setting was made all the more surreal by the presence of NSA staff, Interpol officers, and members of the Secret Service alongside several professors and students.
    The NSA man tried again to assume command of the conversation. “That’s a rather dramatic way to put it, Agent Savas.” The representative of the agency was stiff in his gray suit, looking down his nose at the students and especially Lightfoote. However galling, Savas had to admit, she looked the part of a freedom fighter from some post-apocalyptic dystopian teen film. Eyes tended to wander toward her.
    Savas was still trying to parse the odd collection of people around him. The NYU students had stumbled upon something. Fine. They had called, of all places, specific NSA branches . Why? Because along with Homeland Security, the NSA was funding their research. They were a “National Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance and Cyber Defense.” Information Assurance. He liked that.
    Then there was the presence of the Secret Service which had been explained by the financial end of this story. Yes, Agent Savas was aware that the Secret Service was responsible for investigations into financial fraud, in addition to its protective function for governmental VIPs. But still .
    Finally, Interpol! But that is where things really got interesting and expanded from a local to a distinctly global problem. In fact, it was the Interpol officer who cut in on the NSA suit.
    “Drama, Mr. Teller, may in fact be warranted here.” His thick Scottish brogue worked as an aural spotlight. “Our offices in Singapore have this worm penetrating systems all over the world, including major financial institutions and governmental entities. We believe upwards of ninety percent of machines exposed to it are vulnerable.”
    The NSA man cut in quickly. “There hasn’t been time to ascertain how widespread it is.”
    “With all due respect, I think the NSA has a lot of reasons to minimize the threat of this code.” The Interpol and NSA representatives stared each other down.
    Savas leaned forward toward the European. “Why is that?”
    “Because the worm has gotten the most mileage out of piggy-backing on the NSA’s own spyware— their worms—used for hacking and stealing the secrets of everyone from the UN to foreign leaders. And don’t even try to deny your agency’s actions,” he said, cutting off an attempted protest by Teller. “Snowden let that cat out of the bag a while ago.”
    The Secret Service agent spoke. “It’s a financial instrument,” she said. “Once into the system, there are a set of specific programs it looks for. When it finds them, it adds modules of code that relate to options trading on the derivative market.”
    “What does this code do?” asked Savas.
    The Interpol officer spoke. “From what we can tell, it’s funneling enormous sums of money from the off-market derivatives trading.”
    “Off-market?”
    “Yes,” he continued. “Contracts, bets if you will, that do not show up on any exchanges and are poorly regulated. In fact, we don’t even know how much money is tied up in those deals. But it