Groveland rocked by terror

[Note: this is a creative writing exercise, hopefully the first of many.]

(UPI, Groveland, CA, 15 May 2014) The Hatfields versus McCoys type of feud went out of style with the 20th century or so we all thought. Local conflict is making a comeback, though, as we wend our way through the early part of the 21st. Last week, right here in Groveland the Acorn Block Association was hit with a denial of service attack that took down their security net and opened them up to a physical assualt in which their network server vault was firebombed.

Sheriff Winters has no suspects at this time, officially, and her investigation is ongoing. But with our reporting ears to the ground, though, we hear this may be the work of neighboring Chinese Camp Block Association. Certain elements of the CCBA are up in arms over Acorn plans to divert a stream that currently meanders downhill from Groveland to Chinese Camp and this week’s events were a pointed “Do not go there.” No representative from either group was willing to speak on the attacks although one member of the CCBA did shout at us as we were leaving “Just tell them over in Nut Street that a certain bit of water better keep coming downhill if they know what’s good for them.” Nut Street is the not so affectionate term used by the CCBA for the Acorn’s location.

Details of the denial of service attack are rather sparse although the Acorn security net was offline for about 15 minutes and the network server vault was firebombed less than two minutes into that time. Acorn techs were able to get their backup servers online at the end of that time but expect that replacing and restoring the original vault will take several more days to complete. “In the meanwhile,” said Acorn president Tim Byron, “are people are spending most of their off-work hours monitoring everything to prevent another attack before we’re ready.” He declined to speculate on the source of the attack.

Sheriff Winters is quite concerned about the situation. “This is quite an escalation of conflict, at least for our sleepy little county. I know neighborhood groups in the Bay Area have been fighting for a couple of years now and there have even been a few unintended deaths there, but this is 100 plus miles away and we just don’t expect folks to do things this way. I just hope it isn’t the start of something worse.”