Deadline Y2K (3 page)

Ethical and compassionate, Doc thought the little guys should have a fighting chance. He'd done his bit to save the big boys by creating programs to save Chase Manhattan and the other banks, but $160 million worth of Copeland 2000 software wouldn't help Chase if basic services shut down and New York collapsed. Doc felt the least he could do was try to save the city from itself. He would use his money to fund a project Copeland knew nothing about. Even if it failed, it would be an amusing antidote to Copeland's wild Hollywood scheme to rob the bank.

*   *   *

Posing the problem was easy: How do you keep the power on, the phones working, the water flowing and the subway running in New York City when the computers that controlled those systems failed? Answer: Build an alternate control center for every system, hardwire each to its original, and at midnight on New Year's Eve 1999, seize control of the systems and run them with a computer that hadn't been corrupted by the millennium bug.

Vital control systems always had redundant backup systems that kicked in if the primaries failed. The problem was that the backup systems contained the same Y2K flaws as the primaries. Nevertheless, it was the concept of redundancy that made Doc's project feasible. In the first few seconds of the 21st Century, all the key computers in the city's vital systems had to be tricked into switching over to secret alternates instead of their own flawed backups. Was that possible? It was a large and expensive undertaking, and to do it Doc needed to buy the hardware, steal the software, and find a handful of people he could trust.

*   *   *

“I'm building a new computer lab for a special project at my own expense,” he said to Copeland. “I'm paying, so don't worry about it. I don't want internal audits or anything like that, and I want you to keep out.”

“What're you gonna do in there?”

“The world will be a mess after the century rollover. Maybe I can develop some software to put it back together.”

Copeland pursed his lips and his mind clicked over. “Telecommunications, operating systems of all kinds, things like that?”

“I'm just gonna play around with a few things.”

“I want a piece of that action,” Copeland said.

“Talk to me in January 2000, but for now, can it, Donnie.”

Reluctantly, Copeland agreed, and took off on a long tour around the world visiting clients and drumming up business. When he returned, he looked in once, asked no questions, and honored Doc's request to keep away.

First, Doc sealed off the rear sixty feet of the third floor in the building on Nassau Street and bought a brand new IBM s/390 mainframe. He divided 9000 square feet into space for the computer, a huge air-conditioner, a half dozen large workstations with dozens of terminals and monitors, a telephone switching station, a bedroom, bathroom, kitchen and lounge with TVs, a high-end audio system, and old leather couches. When everything was in order, he started to search for people.

He didn't have to look far to find his first recruit. Late one night he was working alone on a Chase terminal at the Metro Tech Center, scanning an electronic fund transfer program for flawed code. A window on his screen told him how many authorized users were using the system at that moment, which was zero. Around three in the morning someone logged on, but instead of transferring money between accounts, the user attempted to unlock the protocol files Doc was working on. It was an eerie moment in cyberspace. Doc promptly traced the call to a Chase commercial branch in Boston.

The next afternoon he hopped a shuttle to Boston, showed the branch manager his legitimate credentials as the bank's chief Y2K consultant, and asked to be introduced to the back office staff.

One of the people the manager introduced him to was a thin, relaxed, 24-year-old African-American programmer named Bo Daniels. Dressed in tidy banker's clothes, Bo stood up from his terminal to shake hands with Doc, who said, “Innumber 437 hop 22 halt bang path.”

Bo's hand froze in mid-handshake. Doc had uttered the UNIX commands that had led Bo on his illicit mission inside the fund transfer protocol.

“Well, you lost me,” said the manager, who excused himself and left them alone.

“May I?” Doc gestured toward a chair.

They sat in silence. Bo studied his fingernails and wondered if he could crawl into his computer and disappear.

Doc turned a beatific smile on the young man, stroked his beard, and waited. He finally said, “It was you, wasn't it?”

The programmer offered a sly smile and asked, “You gonna turn me in?”

“I don't know yet,” Doc replied. “If I were going to commit computer theft, I'd go right to Innumber 437, just like you did.”

“I just wanted to see if I could do it,” Bo said. “If I can, then someone else can. The bank is vulnerable.”

“Did you file a breach of security report?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Bo shrugged and didn't answer. “Tell me what else you can do,” Doc asked.

“You want to see my resumé?”

“I don't think you'd put what I want to know in a resumé,” Doc said. “How good are you? Can you write COBOL?”

They spoke geek for twenty minutes. Doc thought Bo was more than competent. He was a wickedly bright but frustrated artist hiding behind a starched shirt and suspenders. When Doc was satisfied that Bo knew enough and could learn what he didn't know, he offered him a job.

“Doing what? Y2K?”

“Something like that.” Doc leaned forward and quietly said, “Here's the deal: four times the salary you're making now, a nice bonus down the line, long hours, no sleep, no dress requirements, and whatever you need to keep you going. Sex, drugs or rock and roll, I don't care. I'm leaving you a ticket to New York and a thousand dollars. You can show or not. It's up to you.”

*   *   *

A week later Bo arrived at Nassau Street dressed like Jimi Hendrix. Doc discovered he could play a computer the way Jimi played guitar, and he was willing to play for Doc. A virtuoso, Bo could write twelve computer languages from COBOL to Java, and analyze a database management system faster than a Cray supercomputer. More than anything else, he understood how a complex series of systems worked together.

“What do you know about the generation and distribution of electric power?” Doc asked.

“Nothing.”

“That's a good place to start because you won't have to unlearn anything. How long do you think you'd need to understand a power plant?”

“Oh, I don't know. A couple of years, at least.”

“How about six weeks.”

“Impossible.”

“Nothing is impossible to a willing heart. Disraeli said that. Sit down and look at this,” Doc said, ushering Bo into a chair. He turned on a terminal, and the screen came up bright blue with simple text:

C
ON
E
DISON
R
ESTORATION
A
SSISTANT

O
PERATOR'S
T
RAINING
S
IMULATOR

C
HOOSE
I
NCIDENT
T
YPE

“This simulator is where the company trains advanced operators to deal with breakdowns and blackouts,” Doc explained. “Lesson one: Bringing the power back on after a failure is called ‘restoration.'”

“How'd you get this?” Bo asked, incredulous.

“There's only one way,” Doc replied. “I hacked it from the ConEd command center. The simulator isn't nearly as secure as the system itself, but it contains an excellent model of the entire Northeast power grid that's updated weekly. Once you're familiar with the simulator and the model, we can go after the real thing because the model tells us where everything is.”

Bo blinked rapidly, his mind whirring away. “You mean you want to hack into ConEd and steal their entire operating system?”

“More or less. Maybe a hundred or so applications. Only the parts we need.”

“Need to do what?”

“Keep the power on in Manhattan,” Doc answered with a wide grin, “from here.”

“You're crazy.”

“Correctamento, I'm crazy, but that's a given. The question is, are
you
crazy enough to become Con Edison, Bo? You have two and a half years to learn every system, every application, the location of every embedded chip. You can learn to reconfigure the system, make all the Y2K corrections, and, yes, keep the lights on in Manhattan at the moment of the century rollover. That's the idea. If ConEd can't do it, you will.”

“Mamma mia. I don't know.” Bo whistled and played a little air guitar. “Plus data, I suppose.”

“Correct. Plus data which we check for Y2K and fix, the long, hard way. First we learn how to isolate ConEd from the grid, and then how to isolate Manhattan and the four power plants on the island plus one in Queens from the rest of ConEd. We need the operating systems of each of the five plants, plus the system operation that ties them together.”

“And we're supposed to do this by ourselves, just the two of us?”

“No. We need phones, so I'm looking for a phone freak to keep the lines open, and I'm looking for a train freak to run the subway. Maybe a few more. If you make it to January 1st, 2000, there will be a bonus of a million dollars for each of you.”

Bo didn't need to think about that for long. “You have that kind of money?” he asked.

“It's already in escrow. The money's there.”

“What do you get out of it?” Bo asked.

“Sanity,” Doc replied, reaching across Bo to the simulator keyboard. He punched “Choose Incident” from the simulator menu and selected “Total System Failure.”

The screen began to flash and beep a noisy alarm.

“Just do it,” Doc said and handed Bo a Nike cap.

*   *   *

Over the next month Doc interviewed four more hackers who failed to meet his standards. They either didn't know enough, took too many bad drugs, or were so anarchic and downright criminal that he'd never be able to keep them in line. Then he discovered Carolyn Harvey.

Carolyn's idea of fun was breaking into telephone companies' computers, stealing the phone records of prominent individuals, and posting them on the Web. Doc studied her website, “FoneFreek.com,” and followed her electronic trail to a little house in Nashville, Tennessee. A big Harley was parked out front, and Doc left a note on the motorcycle.

“FoneFreek. In town searching for talent,” he wrote, and added the number of his hotel. She called.

“What kind of talent?” she asked.

“Ever seen the machine code for the programmable logic processor in a DESS-5?”

“Yeah. So?”

Doc asked a few more technical questions and liked her answers enough to ask, “How would you like a phone company of your very own?”

“Ooo,” she said. “That would be fun. What can I do with it?”

“Anything you want as long as you can keep it working.”

“Who are you anyway?” she asked

“The Lone Ranger,” Doc said. “Captain America, Yojimbo the samurai warrior, the man with no name. You can call me Doc. Will you meet me for a drink?”

“I don't have much to do with men,” she said.

“Consider me a fellow geek and nothing more,” he declared. “I have real money, a legitimate company, and a job for the right person. I need someone who's interested in computers that run telephone systems.”

“This sounds like industrial espionage,” she said.

“It's much better than that.”

They met at the Connection, a warehouse saloon for the adventurous. Carolyn turned out to be a leather-girl motorcycle dyke with a butch haircut and braces on her teeth.

“You Doc?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“What's this about?”

“Y2K.”

“Ooo. I like it already. You can buy me a drink.”

“Communications will be vital on the big day,” Doc explained as they sat in a corner away from the music. “We'll need working phone lines, and T-4 lines direct to the power company's control center and power plants and to the subway's central dispatch center. We'll also need an in-house router hub, telcom center and interconnect. Think you can handle all of that?”

“Are you rich?” she asked.

“Got it covered. You'll have to trace the lines and physically check every switch.”

“I'll need a phone company truck.”

“Okay.”

“Logic probes, a lot of stuff.”

“Anything you need.”

“This could be the biggest phone goof of all time. Wow.”

“Yes, but you can't talk about it with your buddies. No bragging rights.”

“I don't know about that,” she said.

“That's part of the package. For two and a half years this will be your life, and the rest of the world will cease to exist.”

Doc offered her the same money and bonus as Bo, a considerably better deal than her job as a lowly programmer for Bell South. The next day he took her to New York and introduced her to Bo.

“I'm Con Edison,” Bo said. “Who are you?”

“I guess I'm Bell Atlantic,” Carolyn answered.

*   *   *

Ronnie Fong was a fatally cute young Chinese woman from San Francisco with four nose rings, each of which represented a triumphant computer break-in at the Department of Defense. DOD hadn't exactly proved she'd done it, but they'd offered her a job hacking into computers at the Chinese Ministry of Defense. She'd laughed at them. When Doc called, she naturally believed he was a missionary from her nemesis in the Pentagon. He asked her to meet him at Mario's Bohemian Cigar Store, a North Beach café.

“The only reason I came,” she said when she walked into the café, “is because otherwise you DOD people won't leave me alone.”

“I'm not one of them,” Doc protested.

“Then how did you find me? How do you even know about me?” Angry and defiant, she refused a menu, folded her arms across her chest and dared him to speak.