[Chapter 1] American Bletchley

Chapter 1: The Gathering Storm

Yu Zedong was busy at work desoldering components in their small office lab. The sun in Palo Alto had set an hour before, but she couldn’t dare leave and feel the shame of failure. That was why she decided to hole up in the lab and not the office desks where she usually worked. Each proprietary chip she could salvage felt like a quiet personal victory at a time when everything seemed to be falling apart.

Terry Bennet stared blankly at a whiteboard nestled between two empty server racks and ergonomic chairs nobody wanted anymore. He looked at the complex elliptic curve he had designed to give SuperNova groundbreaking data security and make their fortunes. The math was correct, it was the market that was wrong.

There was a sudden rap at the door, startling him. He looked up and was startled again to see two men in black suits wearing sunglasses. They were clearly feds.

“Hey Yu…” he called out.

Yu stepped out of the lab.

“What’s going on? I’m in the middle…”

She stopped when she noticed the feds. She took off her safety goggles slowly.

“Hey, we aren’t the ones you want,” she quickly said. “Neither of us were executives. We weren’t involved in any of that.”

“I’m not interested in your business, but in your skills.”

In walked a man that they recognized from the news: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. He looked around the room with a pitying curiosity.