A dry Ham Sandwich was on the lunch menu this afternoon.  Jimmy hated the way the faux wheat bread made a lump in his throat but had no one to blame but himself, he made it.   He choked down a bite as he keyed up the mic, “CQ, CQ, W9THR”.  He loved to spend his lunch breaks sitting in his Jeep XJ , DX’ing with whomever was there to receive.  So far during the first few bites of his sandwich he’d worked Florida from Indiana on 10 meters.  Not bad, but he had done better.  Spinning the dial on his Yaesu FT-897D across the band he picked up another HAM.  He caught him mid-sentence, the signal was almost unintelligible, something about an accident and he thought he heard the term RACES.   The signal then abruptly ended.  What?  RACES?  He heard footsteps quickly  approaching.

Jimmy looked up just in time to see Bill Allen the plant manager frantically running over to the Jeep.  “Jimmy, you’d better get back in the plant, all hell’s breaking loose.  The conveyors just started running double speed, the sorters are jammed, and the electro-magnetic separator caught fire just before it quit spinning!” Blasted Bill.

“What?!” was about all Jimmy could get out of the surprised look on his face.  He turned off the ignition, pulled the keys and slammed the door to the Jeep.  Jimmy trailed Bill through the icy parking lot towards the employee entrance.  As they passed the picnic tables a loud crash and the sound of tearing metal stopped them in their tracks.  About 20 yards to the left of them their brand new Hyster forklift was busy ripping its way through the corrugated metal wall of the plant.  The funny thing was, it was driverless.  It finished chewing through the wall and headed on the downward slope towards the parking lot, finally stopping after it speared the boss’s Mercedes and its wheels lost purchase on the ice.

“What the?!” This time Jimmy managed two words out of the surprised look on his face.  The pair continued on back towards the plant.  When they got to the man door Bill’s access control card refused to unlock it.  It didn’t matter, the door burst open as one of the line workers came running out trying to escape the melee inside.

Jimmy’s office was just inside the employee entrance door on the South side of the plant.  The sound of chaos filled his ears, glass crashing, machines running out of control.   He rounded the corner and opened the door and lunged towards his PC.  The whole plant was run off of PLC controllers; he could quickly shut this mess down with a mouse click.  The surprised look on his face didn’t utter a sound when he saw the screen.  His display, which previously displayed a graphical representation of the plant now had a picture.  A picture of a dog taking a dump, the words “IT Happens” displayed below it.

He knew it would be futile but he hit CTR-ALT-DELETE anyways, nothing happened.  Jimmy wasn’t a rocket scientist, just a retired Marine maintenance tech, but it didn’t take one to figure out what was going on.  “We’ve got one hell of a virus” he muttered under his breath.

Jimmy was against connecting the PLC network to the internet in the first place.  Admittedly for selfish reasons, he didn’t want remote access and 2am phone calls while he was at home in bed.  But he had also considered this possibility.

As Jimmy turned to reiterate his last statement at a level Bill, who was standing aghast behind him, could hear, the lights went off along with all power.  Within a few seconds the sounds of chaos which were echoing off the walls of the plant wound down, finishing with a single spinning Snapple bottle.

It was at this point that Jimmy’s sense of smell became of top priority to his senses.  The acrid smell of burning electronics and garbage was quickly filling the air.  His next thought was to call the fire department but a quick glance at the dead POE powered phone told him he’d better reach for the iPhone in his pocket.  He reached in his pocket and as he pulled it out a little warning light went off in his brain.  The phone was like 120 degrees.  He instinctively pressed the top button, but when he went to swipe..there was the dog.

CONTINUE READING

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