Bidadisndat
Contributing Member
EFTPOS OUTAGE
It had been a very pleasant Friday evening and the small group of friends who’d been celebrating Ted McMahon’s forty-sixth birthday at one of the better restaurants in the city were now saying their farewells as they headed for the door, Ted’s wife Janine having told them that the party had already been paid for and there was no need for them to reach for their wallets. It was typical of the McMahons, which family was known to be generous to a fault, though to be fair their many friends were also inclined to donate substantial sums towards good causes, and whilst there were no protests there were promises to return the hospitality “the next time around.”
The waiter hadn’t yet returned to the table with the credit card that Janine had given him, though when she looked towards the front desk there were quite a few people gathered there and she simply assumed the concierge was busy. Whilst she and Ted were regulars at the restaurant and had never been worried about the integrity of the staff it’s never good to have a credit card out of one’s wallet or purse for longer than is necessary so she decided to pick it up on the way out rather than sit until the waiter returned. As she stood Ted lifted her evening wrap from the back of the chair where she had placed it and draped it across her shoulders before they made their way to the desk where they found that there was a problem with her credit card.
In fact it was not just her card that was having problems, but with all cards that had been presented from nine o’clock onwards. Frantic calls by the restaurant’s manager to the bank’s after-hours hot-line revealed that, as unlikely as that was and almost impossible to believe, all banks’ computer systems had gone offline.
Fortunately for the many customers who didn’t carry much in the way of cash and needed to pay with plastic the restaurant did have one of the old manual imprint machines and a large stack of forms, both items that the manager, along with many other smart business people, had decided to hang onto for just such an event. It was a bit slower than swiping a card or tapping it on an electronic reader however people were at least able to pay for their meals and be on their way.
Janine actually had enough cash with her to pay the bill but decided to hang on to it and wait until it was her turn to have her card’s details imprinted on the paper form. As she waited, Ted, who was actually the manager of one of the bank’s suburban branches, pulled out his mobile ‘phone and made a call to the computer centre at the bank’s head office. It took several attempts before he got through, which wasn’t all that surprising given the circumstances, however the information he got from the staff working there wasn’t any more enlightening than what the restaurant manager had gotten from the after-hours hot-line: To all intents the computer system of his bank was down and as yet nobody had been able to figure out why.
Ted recalled that the last time such an event had happened was when fibre optic cables had been cut by a construction crew working on a building in Chatswood, and that had knocked out internet, ADSL services, many banking EFTPOS machines and a broad range of other users. It had taken some time to repair the damage and although there was a rumour of it having been sabotage by a disgruntled ex-employee of Telstra no evidence of such had been produced. He was hopeful that the systems going off-line was not as bad as that particular incident had been, and that the problem would be sorted out quite quickly.
As it turned out, whilst the systems of all the major banks plus many smaller banks and Credit Unions had also gone down, by noon next day they were all back on line and functioning normally. Thorough checks were made throughout the following week to find out if the various systems affected had been hacked in some way or if there had been a disruption to the power supplies, however nothing untoward was found. Those in charge were left scratching their heads for several days however by the end of the week, when there had been no further disruptions, the event was relegated to an unexplainable anomaly akin to the Bermuda Triangle and two weeks later was all but forgotten.
That is, it was forgotten until a Friday night one month later when a failure of the computer systems controlling the state’s electricity grid blacked out the entire city of Sydney and its surrounding suburbs. When the system suddenly righted itself eighteen hours later and the lights came back on those in charge were left in the dark as to how it had happened, although despite there being no evidence the feeling this time was that it had been the result of a hacking attack.
Not surprisingly the media was making the best of it, with accusations being flung at suspected hackers both at home and as far away as North Korea, China and Russia. Even the United States’ CIA came in for a drubbing although that was mostly from the Tin-Foil-Hat Brigade, some of whom claimed there was an extra- terrestrial aspect that needed to be considered. Of course exactly how that would be determined was beside the point as the proponents of the E.T. theory were not to be denied the opportunity to throw away more of the few remaining marbles they may have possessed.
The sudden loss of power had disrupted just about everything in the city and whilst hospitals, nursing homes, radio and television stations and some vital services were able to switch to backup generators, railways and traffic signals were knocked out bringing further chaos to the darkened city. Service stations, apart from a few that had emergency generators were unable to pump fuel and this resulted in many cars being driven until their tanks were empty then parked, locked up and left abandoned whilst their drivers tried to find their way home or to wherever they’d been going. Buses continued to run however their schedules were thrown way out due to having to travel slowly through darkened streets and many just stopped at the end of their runs. Crimes of opportunity soared, though fortunately all were of a comparatively minor nature rather than a major heist.
For the most part, Simon Six-pack, Mr and Mrs Clueless and even the more affluent Soppie-Clotts and their families fully expected the government to take care of any problems that might arise from such attacks in the future, whilst more prudent people decided that it would probably be a very good idea to top up their already well-stocked pantries and stores… without attracting undue attention of course. True, the government had on several occasions advised people to always have at least three days of food and essential supplies put aside for emergencies, but that advice was rarely listened to and less often heeded.
Many of their friends would probably have been more than a little surprised had they known the McMahons were included among those that were prepared quite a lot more than just having on hand the 36-pack rolls of toilet paper that had been on special at the local supermarket the week before. In fact Janine had not only heeded the advice of the American Red Cross to have two weeks of water, food and essential supplies put aside but had upped the ante by an extra two weeks and gone to the extent of putting together simple Grab-Bags for herself, her husband and each of their two children.
Whilst personally doubting they’d be needed Ted had been quite supportive of her efforts, especially when seeing how much enjoyment she got from being able to save quite a bit of money by buying food items in bulk, though he did have a quiet chuckle to himself after finding half a dozen Jerry cans of fuel she’d stashed in the garden shed. Fuel, she told their teenage son Geoff who had a set of wheels in the form of an old Hyundai Accent, which was to be used only for extreme emergencies… which did not include taking his girlfriend Jessica on a day trip to the Blue Mountains or even to any of the local beaches when he had no cash to fill his car’s tank.
To his credit Geoff did purchase and fill two Jerry cans for himself, one of which he kept in the trunk of the car along with the Grab-Bag that Janine had provided him with; something that she was extremely pleased to hear about. Deciding that it was an easy way to keep on the good side of his mother he also added a case of bottled water and a few other ‘Escape to the Country’ items, laughingly telling her that it was just a precaution in case she suddenly decided to throw him out of the house… Not that that was likely as they were a very close-knit family.
Ted of course didn’t have any option other than to carry his Grab-Bag in his car: Janine had told him to, and due to the happy wife mean happy life principle that he followed there was no argument. Their daughter Anne wasn’t quite old enough to have a driver’s licence and even though she’d learned to drive a car she didn’t own one yet so kept her Grab-Bag in the coat closet adjacent to the front door of the house.