Kill Switch
by Leviathan
"Ready Mr. President? We are twenty seconds to air. Good. TelePrompTer? Camera one, ready. Audio, ready. Announce."
A deep male voice spoke quickly. "President Martera, address to the nation, March 4, 2019, 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time."
The woman's voice returned. "Ready in five... four... three..." Her voice tailed away. "My fellow Americans. Our nation continues to suffer needlessly at the hands of those who would threaten our traditional American Judeo-Christian values. The terrorists who call themselves 'protesters' are seeking nothing less than the overthrow of the U.S. government and my removal from office."
"Their illegal effort is being aided by those who would repeat the scandalous lies being spread about my administration, through Internet-based social media sites. We have received evidence that these terrorists are receiving their financing through Al-Qaeda. We will not let these godless, treasonous enemies win the heart and mind of even one American who might be deceived by their lies."
"This evening I have taken the steps within my authority to restrict Internet access. Only authorized sources of news and information will be permitted, so that you can be sure the information you receive is accurate. As you know, we have already removed subversive elements from broadcast radio and television, so that you may continue to obtain reliable and trustworthy reporting."
"In addition, I have directed that wireless phone networks be restricted to only those users that have received and activated special pass codes from the Department of Homeland Security, ensuring that only responsible users have access to these services."
"These actions are necessary to stop the enemies of our nation from bringing about the complete destruction of the American way of life. Once order is restored and the domestic terrorists are placed behind bars, we will permit the resumption of full Internet, wireless, and broadcast capability. Remember, it is the responsibility of every American to report any person who spreads such false information to DHS or local police."
"Thank you for your attention. God bless you, and God bless the United States of America."
***
"Can you believe this? That common criminal Martera pulled the switch on the Internet."
Sigmund Laclair leaned his six-foot-four frame over the glass counter containing an assortment of telecommunications gear: brand new handheld transceivers, digital controllers, and accessories on display in their open boxes. "How does someone pull the rug out from under every grandmother with an AOL email address? For that matter, how the hell is this store gonna survive?"
Ken Stichler's brow furrowed as he stood holding a can of Coke against his belly near the store's front door. "Gee Ziggy, you're not going to have to close the store, are you?"
"If that jerk keeps the Internet down for any length of time, I'm gonna be hurting. Seventy percent of my sales are over the Internet, not from cheapskates like you walking into the store every day and buying nothing."
Ken's face broke into a broad smile. "Yeah, but who would you talk to all day?"
Just then, a radio transceiver on a shelf behind the counter squawked, "KD8YFT listening on niner-four."
Ziggy rubbed his chin with his left hand. "Christ, I don't know." His powerful broadcast voice dropped in tone and volume. "Kenny this is bad, this is serious stuff. We have no idea what's going on except what you can hear from overseas on shortwave. I don't trust the Chinese with the news, but they've got more information about this than American stations! Problem is, the Canadians shut down the relay station, so you can hardly hear them. How are we supposed to find out what's really happening?"
Ken took a sip of his Coke and shrugged. "Just keep listening to China when the signal's good, I guess. That's something."
"Yeah but they don't even acknowledge Tiananmen Square, to this day." He half-pointed, half-waved in the direction of the broad store window. "Who's gonna tell everyone else what's really happening out there, without the lies? 'Financed by Al-Qaeda,' my ass. And the two stations left on AM are just a mouthpiece for the government."
"Yeah I know. Any other stations beside China on shortwave?"
"A few. Russia, India, Cuba. But their news reporting leaves much to be desired. All the major countries with decent news organizations have long since shut their shortwave stations. Satellites are down too, after Martera got to all those telecom companies." He walked out from behind the counter to the front window and looked up at bulging gray Michigan clouds laden with rain. "Kenny, we gotta do something."
Ken nodded, drained the rest of the Coke, then crushed the empty can in his hands. "Makes you wonder what's next, huh Ziggy. Are they gonna pull our ham radio licenses, you think?"
His head snapped around quickly to face his friend. "Over my dead f*cking body."
***
The sound coming out of the small speaker was faint but clearly understandable. "This is the BBC World Service, the news read by Colin Rodgers."
The regular gathering of shortwave and scanner enthusiasts from the Albany area - they called themselves the Empire Monitor Club - smiled at each other in recognition of this historic event. They huddled closer around the receiver in the meeting room of Denny's restaurant. It had been years since the BBC had broadcast on shortwave.
Rodgers went on to explain how the British media giant had returned to the international airwaves since "our primary distribution method - the Internet - is presently inoperative in the colonies," as he put it.
"The colonies! Did you hear that?" John Ketchmar, the club's distinguished, elderly president, looked around at the half dozen members at the table. "Britain's taking great pleasure in our misfortune, I think! Calling us the colonies after almost 250 years."
The shockingly attractive red-haired woman, Rita Laclair, smiled as she put her index finger up to her lips while increasing the volume on the portable receiver.
"Investigation by the BBC's Washington Bureau has uncovered more circumstantial evidence that President Martera's administration ordered the brutal murder of two American journalists in May of last year, evidently for reporting on the military kickback scandal which implicated Martera's Chief of Staff Joel McLaren and his deputy Lawrence Young. Further, there is evidence of a detailed, complex chain of command between the assassins and the President himself."
Their rapt attention was interrupted by the dark-haired waitress who had entered their meeting room. Her rotund, middle-aged face blanched white.
"There's a police officer in front asking all kinds of questions about someone here with a radio." Her hands were shaking. "You all should better leave, now. Don't worry about the tab."
A smiling Ketchmar, with his shock of white bushy hair, reached into his blazer pocket and pressed five folded twenty-dollar bills into the waitress's hand, then waved to the others to gather their things. As she pointed them to the rear access door, they slipped outside one at a time, quietly walking to their cars and driving off into the upstate New York chill.
Rita was the last one to walk out. She trembled as she secured the portable radio in the crook of her arm, under her coat.
***
Inside the Stichler family's summer cottage, there was a faint musty smell. Ken started the furnace and turned on the main water valve. Rain had given way to bright sunshine that streamed through old lace curtains in the living room and made bright patterns on the brownish-red linoleum floor.
"I've got a couple of nice folding tables we can put all the gear on."
"You've got a great place here, Kenny. Perfect for what we gotta do. Let's get the data nodes up first."
Ziggy connected the data controllers to his laptop and preconfigured each one. Then he attached the transceivers, antennas, and power supplies.
The equipment came alive in a flurry of green and amber flashes. Within 15 minutes he had both controllers linked over 25 watt VHF radio waves with other nodes in Detroit and Kalamazoo, and saw data packets being relayed beyond those points on his laptop screen.
He cracked open a can of beer with a flourish and an Austin Powers-inspired laugh. "Yeah baby... we are up."
Ken, meanwhile, hunched behind the voice transceivers, making the connections with cables, microphones, and power strips. Before long, that equipment also sprang to life, filling the room with distant voices and call letters.
"I guess this is what we got our licenses for, huh Ziggy?" Ken attached the last of the antennas. "I mean this is a disaster just like a flood or a hurricane."
"Absolutely. This is what being a ham is all about, man."
"Scares the shit out of me though, with all that's going on. So what time are the others getting here?"
"I told them to show up before the beer's gone. Between five and six. Or before President Martera decides to do something about us 'subversive elements,' whichever comes first."
***
Rita was greeted by the morning sun shining directly into her eyes as she answered the knock on her front door. She squinted to make out her neighbor Henry, a slight man with oversized plastic-frame glasses and a flannel shirt who lived four houses north of her.
"Morning Ms. Laclair, sorry to disturb you this early but I took this message for you last night on the traffic net." He smiled and handed her a green and yellow paper with the word "Radiogram" across the top.
Rita seemed taken aback. "Oh, well thanks Henry, I appreciate it. Call me Rita."
"You're welcome, Rita. Just let me know if you want to reply back."
"I will. How are things on the air, I mean in terms of what's going on with the country?"
"Oh things are getting strange, you know?" Henry was pleased that Rita showed an interest in him. "There are fewer hams, but a lot more traffic now that they shut down the Internet and all the wireless phones. Some of us amateurs are keeping the nets going 24 hours, also the data networks are very busy. I just hope they don't take away our licenses."
"I know. We had the police asking all kinds of questions about our monitoring club. Did you know the BBC is back on shortwave and reporting all about the scandal?"
***
***
"Status report, Joel."
"Yes. The Internet shutdown and wireless restrictions have been highly effective in stemming the tide of protests and demonstrations. Compared to pre-March 4, the number of such incidents has declined by thirty percent."
"Not enough. It's a start."
"Mr. President, there are a couple of items of concern. British Broadcasting has resumed beaming programs directly to America over shortwave radio. Their news reports are very detrimental to our cause."
"Jam them. We still have the radio jamming transmitters from the Cold War, do we not? Drown them out. This should have been done already."
"Yes, Mr. President." McLaren shifted his weight on the oval office sofa. "One last item, intelligence indicates that amateur radio operators in this country and abroad have assembled a full-time voice traffic relay network and a primitive TCP/IP network, using radio links instead of copper and fiber. As a result they are recording and retransmitting the BBC reports, passing telegram-type messages, and relaying basic electronic mail."
"Okay Joel, now listen to me. I want these people shut down. Revoke all their licenses, and have Congress remove the whole Amateur Radio Service from the Federal code. Just to make sure, go to each one of those hams' addresses and cut off their electricity."
McLaren sat in shock. "Chuck, it will take weeks to do all that."
"You got me into this mess. You have three days."
***
Henry connected his transmitting gear to a large truck battery, charged by a solar panel mounted on the south side of his house. He lit a kerosene lantern and held it in front of him. Rita followed him down the stairs to his operating position, a wooden desk in a small corner near the silent furnace. She shivered in the cold, damp cellar.
"What frequency was that again, Rita?"
"He'll be on 3885 kilohertz." Ten years were gone, but she still remembered the frequency on which she used to meet her then-husband. In a few moments, she heard his unmistakable, announcer-quality voice as she took the microphone.
"Hey Rita girl, how are things up there?"
"Pretty much the same. So I got your message obviously, what did you want to tell me?"
"We're up at Stichler's place running on gas generators. There's about ten of us working in shifts. We have a bunch of linked data networks up, as well as voice. We're retransmitting all the Brit's news broadcasts despite the jamming, and people are catching on. I think we're making history here. Why don't you drive up and join us?"
"I'm glad you're okay but I'm staying here in Albany."
He tried to convince her but to no avail. "Okay well, be safe and give me a call on here when you can."
"Ziggy?"
"What, Rita girl?"
She paused before pressing the microphone button. "You be safe, too. I'm proud of what you're doing."
***
The Empire Monitor Club naturally decided that meeting at Denny's was too risky. They opted to meet at John Ketchmar's small townhouse in New Scotland. The members all chipped in for refreshments for this meeting.
As usual, first stop on the dial was the BBC, but on this night the reception was terrible, as the government's jamming of the frequency was unusually effective.
"Let me try something."
John connected a large ten-inch cone speaker with an equalizer/amplifier and propped it up to a good listening angle on his dining room table. It was a marked improvement as the group could now make out some, but not all, of what was being broadcast.
"Today in The Hague, an ... charges against U.S. President Martera, Chief of ... five other ... crimes against humanity stemming from last May's ... separately ... impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives."
The assembled listeners started high-fiving and hugging each other.
"Accord ... from amateur ... protesters risked their lives ... Congress to abandon their party loyalty ... proceedings."
The celebration, genuine but subdued, continued in Ketchmar's dining room. Rita broke down crying with relief on John's shoulder.
***
The next morning Rita answered the doorbell, and once again Henry was standing there with a green and yellow Radiogram in his hand.
***
"President Corbin, address to the nation, March 15, 2019, 7 p.m. Eastern Standard Time."
"Okay. Ready in five... four... three..."
"My fellow Americans. With the resignation and imprisonment of my predecessor, Charles Martera, and members of his administration, we have come to the end of a tragic and needless chapter in our history.
"The censorship policies of the Martera administration have been lifted, effective immediately. The Internet, wireless phone networks, satellites, and broadcast stations have all been restored and relicensed under their previous terms.
"We take this moment to honor six men from Michigan - five amateur radio operators and one of their assistants - who, to our eternal shame, died at the hands of their own nation while ensuring that the truth could be heard within our borders. We honor their sacrifice and grieve with their families."
"William Goff, Ypsilanti. Michael Hutton, Ann Arbor. Sigmund Laclair, Ann Arbor. Shane Lee, Ann Arbor. Chad Maggio, Farmington Hills. Kenneth Stichler, Livonia. May we never forget their sacrifice and what they accomplished on our behalf."
"To the people of Great Britain, who informed our public through the BBC, we owe a debt of gratitude. Long may Britannia yet rule the international airwaves, and may our American media and news gathering organizations take a good hard look at themselves and follow your exemplary precedent."
"Today the U.S. House of Representatives passed a constitutional amendment, which now goes to the states for ratification. This amendment explicitly affords the same protection to all electronic media, present and future, as the existing First Amendment does for traditional press and speech. I encourage all 50 states to ratify this amendment quickly."
"As your new president, I ask for your prayers and support. God bless America."