Sometimes, I wish I could construct his memories.

The three of us are out in the woods. A perfect autumn day. Jones is beaming, amazed by everything, and Rachelle is the light that made him, brought all this into being, and I know that sounds corny but it’s true. It just is. The wind passes through some branches and a tree casts red leaves like sparks. And I envision suddenly waking into this holy moment. Jones climbing a hill, pulling himself up by the exposed roots of trees, Rachelle, smiling and laughing, chasing after him. The colours and smells all so vivid and ancient, and what were the odds that this would become my life? What miracles have fallen upon me?

But I know I cannot keep up with the robust play. I will sit in the car. Recharge my oxygen. Wait for them to get back. And as we are waving goodbye and shouting encouragements I lose myself to the inevitability of watching these two do things I cannot, of watching them move further away from me and deeper into this world, and as I am making this transition Rachelle asks if I heard that.

I am in the forest again and Jones is holding out a stick, looking at me.

Heard what?

He said, “I carry the fire.”

And it takes me a moment. The phrase, “You carry the fire,” from a book I loved about a nearly spent man trying to shepherd his son through a dangerous landscape. Foolishly, I used to repeat the phrase to Jones when he was younger, hoping to instil some beautiful purpose within, but it never took. Jones never repeated it, and soon enough I just stopped saying it to him and let it fall away, but now, standing before me with a perfect, red maple leaf pierced through its heart on the stick he was holding out, he says, “Look daddy, I carry the fire.”

That moment that easily could have slipped away– and would have if not for Rachelle’s intervention–now alive forever, blazing in a forest.

The system, it turns out, was a terrifying fail, and as a result of this the government has decided to refine the system before launching it anew in a few months. I, along with a number of other writers, have been hired to help write clear, effective messages for the probable alert scenarios the government is most concerned about. These are some of the alerts we have been working on:

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Emergency Alert #1

Emergency Alert #2

Emergency Alert #3

Emergency Alert #4

Emergency Alert #5

Emergency Alert #6

For years there’s been an obdurate, official position that there is to be no negotiating with terrorists. Negotiation, or worse, capitulation would lead to utter catastrophe and societal ruination.

It was a mantra that echoed, even boomed in our heads, and to so much as question it was to let the terrorists win. It’s all a little bit counter-intuitive, because on an personal level, we all know that if somebody we loved were taken hostage, we would negotiate, doing whatever we could to bring that light safely back into our lives. When the stakes are intimate and truly meaningful to us, we only care about the results, not the precedent we’re setting in achieving that result.

In acquiescing to the Guardians of Peace demands and agreeing not to release the movie The Interview, Sony was acting in self-interest.

They were not concerned with freedom of speech or following the US government’s rulebook on dealing with terrorists, or even protecting the vulnerable part-time employees who’d be working in the threatened cinemas over Christmas, or anything else that wasn’t a part of their bottom line.

A corporation is not a moral agency, and it exists for the singular purpose of making money, and whatever serves that interest, whether it’s long-term or short-term, serves the corporation. In tatters and reeling, their internal system almost destroyed, Sony made a rational, tactical decision. Put the movie on the shelf for now and see how it all played out.

What’s interesting is that when money, when the unencumbered progress of private enterprise was put in peril, objectives were met. Now, all sorts of smoke and mirrors surround this, but it reduces to the valuation of corporations over actual humans.

One could argue that the dominant species on the planet are actually corporations. Single-minded and constantly feeding, they’re boundless, traversing and devouring landscapes and cultures like a predatory science fiction behemoth. They must feed, and in so doing behave in a very reptilian, even predictable (if strategic) fashion. Although they may, very weirdly, have some of the same rights and responsibilities as human beings, they’re not human beings and don’t serve the broad interests of the species—they’re just seeking to metastasize, and any concessions that are made to modernity, social progress or environmental stewardship, for instance, are done purely to ensure they’re continuing to maximize profit within an evoloving host.

The lesson to learn here is that when an economic system is disordered, as was Sony’s, then a meaningful tactical response was achieved. Our hearts might break to see hostages taken in a coffee shop in Sydney or journalists executed in a faraway desert, but the terrorist’s goals are not achieved until what really matters is threatened, and that is the free market. Corporations, massive, powerful and ubiquitous, perhaps more powerful than nations, remind me of dinosaurs, and the cyber attacks now threatening them are a virus to which they might be vulnerable, and could ultimately cripple the entire species.