The Zero Hour

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The Network does exist, though under a different name and at another location in New York City. Some of the details, particularly those having to do with security, have been fictionalized or deliberately obscured.

But the vulnerability remains real. In 1992 a New York Times correspondent wrote of the real-world equivalent of the Network: “Were the flow to stop unexpectedly, financial empires would teeter and governments tremble… If something were to go seriously awry in the nearly perfect world of electronic money, the whole system could come to a wrenching halt in the twinkling of a gigabyte.”