This book is based on real events. Only the people, places, and events are fictionalized. The stupidity is 100% real.
Monica’s 9 AM alarm woke her the same way she always transitioned into consciousness: violently, with a flurry of arms, legs, and sheets all fueled by panic. She bolted upright in bed and waited for her heart rate to drop below 140. One of these days she could give herself a heart attack through the simple act of waking up, she thought. Not today, though!
Her analogue coffee maker had been programmed to begin brewing five minutes before the alarm sounded, so the van was already full of the rich, earthy aroma of single source arabica. The only items in her possession that connected to the internet were the ones expressly designed for that purpose, but that didn’t mean Monica didn’t like tinkering with her appliances to streamline her day.
She dropped from her bedspring, wrapped a robe around herself, and slid into a pair of bunny slippers—blue, of course. Monica yawned loudly, stretched her arms above her head, and grabbed the waiting mug. She fumbled through her fridge, found a jar of overnight oats, and plopped into her computer chair. She took a sip, a bite, and fired up the monitor.
Even though everything Monica owned was relatively energy efficient, when operating multiple appliances at the same time, her van still needed a fair amount of electricity. Normally, this wasn’t a problem, since she collected plenty of power from her solar panels, but she obviously couldn’t rely on them while parked in Carlos’ high-rise garage. So, she simply jacked into the building’s power supply. Though she wasn’t an enormous fan of the Poultry Point nuclear power plant, she took some small solace in the fact that the building drew its electricity from a renewable source.
First, Monica checked the integrity of Carlos’ router, appliances, cell phone, everything anyone could possibly hack into. She had alerts set to inform her if intruders had entered his network, but her fixation with thoroughness led her to check manually. So far, he was still clean. Out of curiosity, she also briefly looked into his social media browsing history and noticed that he spent a good amount of time scrolling through Cynthia’s profiles. Monica smirked and took another sip.
Cynthia’s online presence was another story entirely. Monica’s firewalls had blocked at least a dozen serious attempts to hack her banking and social media accounts in the last 24 hours. Meanwhile, Santos’ army of trolls was dragging her name through the mud, posting fake nudes, and making barely veiled threats of violence against her on every right-wing message board on the internet. Monica was glad Cynthia didn’t have her phone on her and therefore couldn’t see the animalistic vitriol with which she was being attacked. In the meantime, she took great satisfaction in taking down the worst posts and clandestinely frying their owners’ mainframes with weapons-grade malware.
Next up was a review of the latest news stories, social media posts, and forum chatter about the Bulge. Her preset keyword searches brought up a flurry of articles speculating on Miami Height’s burgeoning real estate value, breathless features on Elzos’ future development plans, and analyses of how the new, uber-rich neighborhood would affect South Florida’s economy. A few social media and message board posts mentioned explosions around the Bulge, but nothing even hinted at the imbecilic scale or fallout of the previous night’s battle.
She sighed. So much for traditional and citizen journalism. She promised herself she’d release her drone footage of the firefight on the dark web sometime in the coming weeks. She’d also leak it to a few choice journalists she’d worked with in the past.
Monica finished her oats, downed the coffee, and girded herself for a long day of formulating new plans and angles of attack on Santos, Elzos, and the Bulge. She cracked her knuckles, rolled her shoulders, and loosened her neck like a boxer about to enter a ring. However, just as she was reaching for her keyboard, Monica felt a nagging twinge, an annoying urge pulling her in a completely unexpected direction. She did her best to ignore it and started typing.
Over the last several years, Monica had been a lone wolf, almost completely isolated from meaningful human contact. She drove where she wanted, lived where she wanted, and did what she wanted when she wanted, and she liked it that way. That’s not to say that she was a hermit. Monica had plenty of interactions with grocery store clerks, gas station attendants, restaurant servers, and the like. She also kept in touch with a wide network of eco-hackers and activists, but those relationships were strictly online and behind several layers of protective obfuscation—no names, no addresses, no phone numbers, and definitely no personal biographical information. The only people on the planet with whom she had a genuine personal connection were her parents, and that was now only over the phone, since she hadn’t been back to Boston since dropping out of school.
Monica didn’t have anyone on the planet she could call a real friend, no one she could rely on to share her burdens or lend a sympathetic ear, and that was fine. She’d been a loner since her family had brought her to the United States, misunderstood and maligned by just about everyone she’d met. Her penchant for self-isolation was only further reinforced after she embarked on her clandestine hacker career. Monica had to protect herself, stay on the move, and never give the powers arrayed against her—be they the world’s wealthiest corporations, rival hackers, or the U.S. government—the slightest opportunity to find or entrap her. That translated into no human contact. And that was fine… she’d convinced herself. She had a greater mission than salving her own loneliness.
And yet, that annoying twinge remained. Worse still, it seemed to be growing stronger. Despite what she told herself, Monica didn’t want to stay locked in her van all day. She wanted to breeze by lobby security, wave her counterfeit fob at the elevator reader, and hang out with Cynthia and Carlos.
“Ugh!” Monica craned her neck toward the van’s ceiling. “This is so stupid!”
She had done deep dives into both Cynthia’s and Carlos’ personalities, quirks, foibles, and shortcomings. She’d gone so far as to pull up their Myers Briggs charts. She knew Cynthia was an unstructured, occasionally manic trophy-chaser, while Carlos was a smug, depressive intellectual braggart weeks before meeting either in person. She could and did analyze and judge their capabilities from the safety of a monitor inside a locked, climate-controlled aluminum box.
But then she actually met them and had to deal with their chaotic, nuanced, occasionally ridiculous humanity. They were smart, and ambitious, and funny, and weird, and enormous dorks. They just needed some help, a little shove to get them on track toward attaining their goals. And she’d provided that because she knew who they were before they even knew her name. But now… goddammit. Now she actually wanted to spend time around them, joke around with them, make fun of them, learn from them, and work in tandem toward their shared objectives.
Monica rolled her eyes and groaned. She shouldn’t go. She knew that. The desire for human companionship was just a sign that she was getting soft, and being soft meant she was vulnerable. Vulnerability inevitably led to disaster. But the twinge wouldn’t go away. It was still there, annoying as ever, and only getting stronger.
Monica pushed her keyboard away, frustrated. She didn’t want to braid Cynthia’s hair or play Minecraft with Carlos. She didn’t need or desire best friends, but she did want to share space with them. She wanted to see their awkward, bumbling romance progress, not by watching it on camera or reading through their messages, but by seeing its messy progression in person. Then she wanted to ridicule them mercilessly.
“Fine!” she yelled at no one in particular.
Monica dressed in a huff, turned off her electronics, threw a laptop into a bag, emerged from her van, and slammed the sliding door shut behind her.
