Common Wealth or The Ransomware Play by Hallie Palladino
Lara, the City Manager of Popperville, arrives at work to find emergency services down, databases locked, and staff email inaccessible. It’s a ransomware attack. The small, cash-strapped town must pay millions to cybercriminals or lose decades of records. They have twelve hours. Town Hall erupts into conflict. Lara is adamant: rewarding anonymous bandits with taxpayer money would be a gross betrayal of public...
Lara, the City Manager of Popperville, arrives at work to find emergency services down, databases locked, and staff email inaccessible. It’s a ransomware attack. The small, cash-strapped town must pay millions to cybercriminals or lose decades of records. They have twelve hours. Town Hall erupts into conflict. Lara is adamant: rewarding anonymous bandits with taxpayer money would be a gross betrayal of public trust. Conversely, her ex-husband Jason, the low-key corrupt City Treasurer, seizes on the crisis as an opportunity to force an emergency vote to privatize the town’s beloved lakefront. Monique, the City Auditor, warns payment would force them to slash essential services from the town’s anemic post-Covid budget. Corey, the IT Director, counters: reconstructing lost data costs exponentially more. Outside, a blizzard rages and motorists are stranded on icy roads. The hard truth: Popperville is insolvent and barreling toward bankruptcy.
Enter Wes, a former FBI hostage negotiator, hired by the mayor to cut a deal with the hackers. Jason’s suspicious, but Lara’s drawn in by his cowboy-like charm. She nearly says yes, to his deal and his dinner invitation, only to discover he’s scheming to take a cut on both ends. Disgusted, she throws him out into the snow.
With compromise off the table, the only choices left are the hard ones. Finger-pointing escalates into damning revelations about kickbacks and cover-ups. And when the hackers start releasing the staff’s private emails, the fallout spares no one. To save the town, Lara must join forces with Jason. Climbing over the smoldering shrapnel of their imploded union—he’s moved on with his pregnant girlfriend, while their shared custody agreement traps Lara in Popperville with no prospects, romantic or professional—Lara and Jason must reckon with past misdeeds and, crucially, seek wisdom from Liam, their tech-savvy tween, whose sobering dose of reality is the catalyst for his parents’ eleventh-hour act of moral courage.