This book is based on real events. Only the people, places, and events are fictionalized. The stupidity is 100% real.
Daniel Cypress was having a rough morning.
He sat three stories up the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians’ Administrative Building, which was located in the middle of the Everglades’ sawgrass prairie about a third the distance between Miami and Naples on a tiny slit of elevated land running along Tamiami Trail. The larger Miccosukee reservation lay about 35 miles due north, but this tiny Native outpost had a dark history.
After the U.S. government figured it had killed or removed enough Natives to ensure they couldn’t resist Florida’s white colonization, it basically forgot about the Miccosukee. The Tribe (a long way yet from federal recognition), along with its Seminole compatriots, sheltered its children from the Indian boarding schools that physically and culturally brutalized Native youth out west for a century by residing on tree islands.
These slightly elevated areas were exactly what they sounded like: literal islands in a river of grass where hardwood hammocks provided refuge to the Miccosukee, panthers, bears, deer, and all other Everglades residents under threat from white encroachment.
That changed in the 1930s when the Army Corps of Engineers began to construct a spider web of dikes, canals, and roadways that fundamentally altered the steady southward flow of water from Lake Okeechobee 100 miles south to the Keys. While well-connected agricultural concerns busily drained thousands of acres to plant the sugarcane that would poison the Everglades and Americans’ diets for decades to come, many of the tree islands drowned in the rising waters.
The federal government promised to provide the Tribe with compensatory plots to replace its irreplaceable homeland. What it got instead was 128 square miles bisected by I-75, 55 acres along Krome Avenue where the Miccosukee later built their casino, and the 712 acres of artificially raised land along a two-lane highway that crossed the sawgrass. This was where Daniel currently sat.
As previously mentioned, his had been a difficult morning. The Tribal Secretary, Daniel was primarily responsible for internal Tribal communication. That meant he had spent the day fielding calls from seemingly every Tribal member, all of whom were justifiably worried about how the white powers that be would use the Bulge’s sudden appearance to once more screw over the Tribe. Meanwhile, the governor’s office stonewalled him while the federal government hadn’t the slightest clue what was going on.
That was when Cynthia burst into the room.
“What the hell!”
Daniel threw his arms in the air.
He was a tall man in his mid 30s with a short-cropped beard and long, straight dark hair down to his chest. He wore a traditional Miccosukee patchwork vest over his long sleeve shirt.
“What on Earth are you doing here?” he demanded.
“You weren’t answering your phone,” responded Cynthia with a wry smile. “So, I decided to visit you.”
She plopped herself into one of the chairs facing Daniel’s desk. The two had connected while Cynthia worked for the Herald and remained on friendly terms when she left for more wilted pastures.
“Of course I didn’t answer your call!” he cried with wide-eyed bewilderment. “I’m drowning in Tribal business right now!”
“Why?” she asked without the slightest hint of irony. “Is something going on?”
Daniel stared at her like one might at a person with a surgically grafted and fully functional fish head on their shoulders. He then flashed a tired half-grin when he realized she was joking.
“Are you actually trying to give me an aneurysm?” he asked, relaxing slightly.
His office phone lit up with calls.
“Listen,” he said. “Give me an hour to talk to my members and I’ll give you five minutes to answer whatever ridiculous question made you drive all the way out here.”
“Deal!” exclaimed Cynthia. She stood from the chair and walked into the hallway, closing the door behind her as Daniel rushed to field as many incoming calls as possible.
Two and a half hours later—which Cynthia spent draining her phone’s battery with a mix of news articles, podcasts, and spectacularly inane mobile games—Daniel walked out his office looking like he was halfway through a tour on the Western Front. He slid onto the bench beside her.
“Alright,” he said wearily. “What do you want?”
“Any idea what’s going on with the Bulge?” asked Cynthia.
“No,” he groaned, cupping his head in his hands. “Sorry you wasted your time driving over here.”
“Well, then there’s just one favor I have to ask. I need you to connect me with bluebunny.”
Daniel raised his head, his face creased with concern.
“I don’t think you understand what you’re asking,” he replied seriously. “bluebunny doesn’t mess around. They’re dangerous. They’ve supposedly done some crazy stuff.”
Before he was elected to the Tribal Council, Daniel worked with a confederation of Native and environmental activists to stop the construction of oil pipelines on Indigenous lands. This included a loose, unaffiliated network of hacktivists that provided insights into the petroleum companies’ plans and tactics. They were invaluable assets to a hard-pressed, under-resourced movement up against the wealthiest corporations in the world, and the hackers’ services helped the activists win major concessions. Their most effective and infamous operative went by the handle “bluebunny.”
“I heard all sorts of rumors about what they’ve done,” he continued. “DoS attacks on the offices of congressional climate deniers. Shutting down Exxon Mobile’s intranet for five hours. You remember that cruise ship making left-hand circles in the middle of the Atlantic for a week?”
“You mean Danish Cruise Lines’ Conquest of the Seas?” asked Cynthia.
“That was bluebunny,” answered Daniel. “Overrode its steering controls. They helicoptered in their best IT personnel to try to fix the hack, but nothing worked. Ended up physically destroying the propellers and rudder and towing it back to port. Turns out the ship had been dumping thousands of pounds of trash and human waste into the ocean for a decade.”
Daniel paused and narrowed his eyes.
“So, I hope you understand this isn’t some amateur Redditor futzing around with VPNs. bluebunny is deadly serious. And if you want to talk to them, they’re going to investigate every nook and cranny you’ve got with a freaking pipe cleaner. You’ll be completely at their mercy. They’ll have access to your bank accounts, all your personal information, all the most embarrassing, ill-advised things you’ve ever done. Are you sure you want to connect with them?”
Cynthia cracked a pained smile.
“What, so they can steal the $500 in my checking account and see the nudes my ex put online in college?”
Her smile disappeared, replaced by a grim, almost desperate look.
“I literally have nothing to lose. Please make the connection.”
Daniel sighed.
“OK, Cynthia, I’ll do it. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“Thank you,” she replied earnestly. “How do I reach out to them?”
Daniel chuckled.
“Oh, no,” he replied. “They’ll reach out to you. And when they do, you’ll know.”
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