Computer security -- Fiction; Didactic fiction; Privacy, Right of -- Fiction; Records -- Access control -- Fiction
"Exactly. Noise is simply electromagnetic energy that interferes
with the signal. Right?" Scott waited for Tyrone to respond that
he understood so far.
"Good. Imagine a magnetic pulse so strong that it not only
interferes with the signal, but overloads the electronics them-
selves. Remember that electricity and magnetism are the same
force taking different forms."
Tyrone shook his head and curled his mouth. "Right. I knew that
all the time." Scott ignored him.
"The EMP-T bomb is an electromagnetic explosion, very very short,
only a few milliseconds, but incredibly intense." Scott gestured
to indicate the magnitude of the invisible explosion. "That was
the bomb that went off at the Stock Exchange."
"How can you possibly know that?" Tyrone asked with a hint of
professional derision. "That requires a big leap of faith . . ."
Scott leaned over to the side of the couch and picked up the two
items he had retrieved from the Exchange.
"This," Scott said handing a piece of ceramic material to Ty, "is
superconducting material. Real new. It can superconduct at room
temperature. And this," he handed Tyrone a piece of red glass,
"is a piece of a high energy ruby laser."
Tyrone turned the curios over and over in his hands. "So?" he
asked.
"By driving the output of the laser into a High Energy Static
Capacitive Tank, the energy can be discharged into the super
coil. The instantaneous release of energy creates a magnetic
field of millions of gauss." Scott snapped his fingers. "And
that's more than enough to blow out computer and phone circuits
as well as erase anything magnetic within a thousand yards."
Tyrone was now ignoring the football action. He stared alternate-
ly at Scott and the curious glass and ceramic remnants. "You're
bullshitting me, right? Sounds like science fiction."
"But the fact is that the Stock Exchange still isn't open. Their
entire tape library is gone. Poof! Empty, thus the name EMP-T.
It empties computers. Whoever did this has a real bad temper.
Pure revenge. They wanted to destroy the information, and not
the hardware itself. Otherwise the conventional blast would have
been stronger. The Cemex was used to destroy the evidence of the
EMP-T device."
"Where the hell do these bombs come from."
"EMP-T technology was originally developed as part of a Top
Secret DARPA project for the DoD with NSA guidance a few years
back."
"Then how do you know about it?"
"I did the documentation for the first manuals on EMP-T. Nothing
we got from the manufacturer was marked classified and we didn't
know or care."
"What was the Army going to do with them?" asked Tyrone, now with
great interest.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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