Press

“Reporting neighborhood-wide Power Grid attack. Mesh network connection lost.  House power backup systems coming on line. Attempting outbound connection reroute,” Alexia interrupted.

Rachael brought up the ping list from the radio network and mapped it into a Google Earth map.  Different homes were waking back up as private power backup systems came on line.  But the traffic requests were showing extensive congestion due to every house trying to connect through the few active radios.  

“Reroute achieved; but the DIL connection is limited with packet loss, long delay and low data rate.” 

On this map, Rachael overlaid the power outage report from the SMS alert feed. It was clear that the whole substation was out.  ‘If that was from a hack by Jonathon’s team, and the coincidence was pretty damning, then he had just crossed the line from harassment to felony criminal activity.’ Rachael thought. ‘I can use my phone to connect to a remote tower which was showing outside the substation outage zone.’  But Rachael’s safe room was already set up as a Faraday cage, blocking electromagnetic spectrum.  She would need to venture out of the panic room and reach her communication closet down the hall. Rachael reaches down and strokes Toby, looking him in the eyes.  “Ready boy?”

‘Time to see what's outside the door.’  She cracks it open.  Just outside the security robot is aiming its tangle mesh toward the cracked door.  Toby twists free of her hold and lurches at the door inadvertently slamming it shut in an attempt to get the bot.  Lucky miss. She goes to her lecture go-bag and pulls out the antique high-power laser pointer, purchased before the restrictions on consumer laser pointers. 'This should do the job.'  But she would need to protect Toby from the robot's stun gun diodes.  She opens her personal defense locker located in the corner of the safe room and pulls out a Kevlar vest.  Using a half a dozen spins of desk adhesive tape she finds in her bag, she fastens a makeshift set of armor for her dog.  Not so easy as Toby continues to bark and lung at the robot behind the door. 'That should do it."

Holding Toby back with her legs, she slowly cracks the door again, this time pointing the laser at the security robot’s sensor cluster she thumbs on the high power.  Then slams the door again.  That should have blinded the bot, eliminating pinpoint aiming. But it would still have sonar and radar detection capabilities.  She sends Toby out first.  He leaps on the security bot. Ducking back behind the door, she hears the crackling of the robot's Taser discharging, but no yelp from her loyal companion and defender.  She counts to three, opens the door and walks through.

Only Toby is moving, back and forth with a sense of great accomplishment, tail wagging with the thrill of the kill. The security bot lies lifeless on the floor with wires pulled from and its electric blue optical retinas flickering like the last licks of a candle flame. The security lights from the hallway provide dim red lighting.  Rachael rushes toward the communication closet and jacks in her 5G LTE phone.  She immediately establishes a 1GB connection back to her home office. Accessing Network Functions Virtualization she maps the NFV phone controls to her home office system.  She does a manually triggered spectrum search with Dynamic Spectrum Access.  It finds that the 3.5 GHz band is open but under attack.  She engages status monitoring against interfering signal levels using current bit-loading.  Then she sets up a commercial encryption package in line with the newest spread spectrum technology.  Lastly, she engages the phone's artificial intelligence/machine learning feature, setting it to optimize for reliable throughput and minimum lag. She out calls her providers NFV agent and requests priority bandwidth service from the remote cell tower.

Remise

It was cool in the safe room, and seems to be getting cooler. While she cannot trust the house gadgets not to be compromised, she uses the remote in her phone to do a quick sweep of the house monitoring system.  Her home thermostat controller has been disengaged and set to external control via the vacation settings.  

“Now why would he be concerned with home climate?”  she rhetorically asks Toby, who continues to stare outward towards the appliance maintenance closet cocking his head as if listening, but not responding to her.  She starts going down the climate systems manually.  Winter status has been activated.  External vents are closed. Home recirculating systems engaged.  As she watches, the heating system clicks on but the natural gas pilot light is still turned off.  She freezes.  'Is he planning a gas explosion to hide his local tracks?'

Toby barks and leaps upwards.  She sees the dusting-service flying drone dodge his leap, continuing its swoop on her head. Blades whip around her face and the collision slams her head back against the wall. She drops to her knees and screams as the blades tangle her hair and rip out auburn chunks.  Toby leaps on the drone ripping off bits of plastic and wire and then nudges her, licking the bleeding gash on her forehead.  She finally screams - not in agony, but with the frustration that has overcome her.  “Enough is enough!”

Rachael uses her home controller app on her phone to cut outside communication connections for all her home systems. She cuts off all devices from the emergency power UPS, eliminating spark possibilities. That would leave only the battery operated systems to which she broadcasts a ‘go to sleep’ command. She powers and engages only the emergency purge system to vent the current gas-infused air.  ‘That takes down care of that.’  The only connection to her house is now from her personal phone and its encrypted VPN connection out.  She stomps back to the control room closet. Pulls the first aid kit, tossing it on the cool white porcelain bathroom sink and cleans and tends to the gash on her forehead, considering her next move.