Cybersp@ce

Act One

• In Corona, New Mexico in 1947 a young boy named Henry Summers is gazing in wonder at an electrical storm flashing in the skies above his home in New Mexico when he spots a strange object floating just above the tree line getting struck by lightning. His family subsequently feels the impact as it crashes into the ground.
• Fast-forwarding to the present, Nick Reynolds is young, handsome man and a shameless womanizer. He is also a brilliant, highly-trained analyst working at U.S. Cyber Command.
• With his expertise on China’s Online Blue Army and China’s growing dominance in cyber warfare, Nick is appointed to head a new project called Operation Counter-Punch, intended to combat cyber-attacks from nation states like China and Russia, which pose a danger to the national security of the United States.
• Soon after stepping into his new role Nick learns that computer systems at a number of power plants nationwide have recently fallen victim to a new and more dangerous breed of cyber-attacks. The government has been unable to halt the outbreak, with attacks becoming increasingly more frequent.
• The threats associated with the recent attacks have also become increasingly more ominous. Whereas cyber-attacks had once been focused on espionage, the new attacks are focused on disruption and destruction.
• While Nick is working to stop and contain the disturbing and dangerous new threat, Nicolai Chervanko, a former KGB spy who dreams of a re-unified Soviet Empire, slowly unveils and begins to execute his plan to pit his country’s two greatest adversaries, China and the United States, against one another, in a battle to the death.
• Kate Summers and her father, Henry, are scientists, working together at the S-4 military base at Groom Lake, Nevada, the lesser known cousin of its next-door neighbor, Area 51. They’ve spent decades trying to reverse-engineer alien technology recovered in 1947 from the infamous Roswell, New Mexico crash.
• Kate is extremely passionate, feisty, and territorial. She initially feels threatened when Nick arrives out of nowhere, having been advised by his commanding officer that a solution to his troubles could possibly lie at the S-4 base and the beyond-top-secret project Henry and Kate have been working on.

Act Two

• Ready to step everything up a notch, Chervanko uses a highly advanced, one-of-a-kind cyber warfare system he’s had developed to shutdown the coolant system at a nuclear power plant just outside of New York City, while making it appear the attack originated from China. The resulting meltdown at the plant results in the deaths of over 100,000 people.
• Outraged by the attack, the American people cry out to Congress for justice, pressuring their representatives to declare war on the Chinese, and to prepare America’s military for nuclear warfare. Nick, however, grows increasingly confident the Chinese are not behind the deadly attacks.
• Unable to stop the onslaught with conventional cyber-defenses, and now facing an even more devastating attack, which is said to be imminent, the pressure intensifies for Nick, Kate, and Henry to find another means to stop the attacks before it’s too late.
• Despite everything going on around them, after working through some initial conflict, sparks begin to fly between Nick and Kate, and they fall in love.
• Working together, Nick, Kate, and her father get the computer Kate removed from the alien ship powered-up and operational. They nickname the computer Ignis.
• The team discovers that a small helmet, discovered on the ship, is used to interface with the computer by entering a virtual world inside the mind.
• After several test-runs they learn how to interface and work with Ignis.

Act Three

• The team prepares to use Ignis to stop Chervanko’s massive attack.
• The day the attack comes the team is ready.
• They are soon able to locate and destroy Chervanko’s Ares cyber-warfare system by overloading its power system.
• Chervanko barely escapes in-time when his site is raided by Russian FSB agents. With support from former KGB contacts, Chervanko sneaks out of Russia and into the United States. After learning from a contact where the system that destroyed Aries is located, he begins making his way to Area 51 and then to the S-4 base. where he ends up meeting Kate, Henry, and Nick. When his identity is exposed Chervanko kills Henry, before taking Nick and Kate captive.
• Chervanko then puts on the helmet and tries to use Ignis to take control of the missile launch systems in both China and the United States so he can launch simultaneous nuclear attacks against both countries, getting back to his mission of setting Russia up to become the worlds’ lone superpower.
• As if unwilling to become an instrument of genocide, Ignis refuses to do what Chervanko asks, instead leaving the spy in something resembling a vegetative state.
• Later, after help arrives and Nick and Kate are freed, the world learns that the Chinese are innocent and that Chervanko is behind the attacks, though everything about Ignis and the alien technology is kept secret.
• Nick learns that the computer is more than just advanced technology of alien origin when the sentient alien life form reveals itself as such to Nick inside the virtual world in the form of the deceased Henry Summers. Lacking energy and independent mobility, the alien had lain dormant since 1947, until reviving when once more connected to power in the S-4 lab.
• With Chervanko exposed and with a mountain of evidence clearly implicating him laid bare, the military stands global tensions begin to ease and the danger of global nuclear war soon subsides.
• Ignis then hacks the Allen Telescope Array in California, run by S.E.T.I., and signals for a ship to come to Earth to give him a ride home.
• Before departing, Ignis leaves a parting gift in Nick’s mind, the ability to read and understand the language of the alien race that built the crashed ship, granting him access to the ship ‘s onboard database, thereby enabling humanity to build its own interstellar ship in the sequel, Frontiers.
• By the end of the story Nick has gone from being a player to a serious, responsible, save-the-world hero, a leader, who is also ready to settle down with Kate.
• Nick and Kate later marry, and have a child they name Henry, the protagonist in the sequel, Frontiers.