Deadline Y2K (10 page)

On screen the NBC camera captured the first few seconds of a riot in Vladivostok. Despite the danger of a computer malfunction causing an uncontrollable chain reaction, angry citizens demanding that the power remain on stormed the gates of the plant. A squad of white-helmeted militia swarmed out of nowhere and attacked the crowd with tear gas and batons. Blood flowed on the snowbanks. The audio carried the piercing sounds of shouts and screams, Russian agony, and freezing, whistling wind. Abruptly, the screen went cockeyed, then black. The bug had reached the mainland of Eurasia, and humanity had responded with repression and ignorance.

Doc flipped through the channels. All the networks were on the story right away. A shot by Fox from the space station caught a huge swath of Siberia as it went dark. The Russians aboard the spacecraft were somber, wondering aloud what was happening in their country far below and asking whether or not their ground control was going to survive the night. Doc was reminded of an incident at the Chernobyl reactor disaster in 1989. When the meltdown occurred, the power plant lost all communications with Kiev. The Soviets had had to lay a telephone line by hand from a caravan of trucks between the burning reactor and the responsible authorities, who, when finally connected, had nothing to say.

The world had made a huge mistake by relying on high technology without considering the full implications, and the millennium bug was simply a way of making it obvious to everyone. What interested Doc most was NBC's picking up the Magadan story from Russian short-wave radio. Short-wave, old vacuum tube receivers, and manual typewriters would be operating in the morning when more modern equipment failed. If things went the way he expected, the Third World would thrive while the First World went to hell overnight. If that happened, a '57 Chevy would be the vehicle of choice, a classic with no computers.

Doc called the Midnight Club and Judd answered by screaming into the phone, “Yo, Doc.”

“You online with the Russians?” Doc asked.

“Got Serge online from Vladivostok,” Judd replied. “He says Eastern Siberia took it in the shorts big time. There's bad news all across Russia, but Serge is no dummy. He has a generator and a dish, so he'll be ready when it hits him in another couple of hours.”

“What does he know about the Magadan reactor?”

“They scrammed. They knew they had to.”

“Thank God,” Doc said. “How did Con Edison take the news?”

“They're frantic,” Judd said. “They're watching this riot in Vladivostok and cursing the media for reporting it. Right now they're arguing over whether or not to shut down Indian Rock.”

Indian Rock was Con Edison's nuclear plant in upstate New York, perhaps the world's most thoroughly Y2K-tested nuclear generating system.

“Indian Rock isn't the problem,” Doc said. “It's all the equipment between there and here.”

“We'll see about that,” Judd said. “Got Bo's override codes yet?”

“Not yet,” Doc answered. “I'm dialing.”

He punched in the number of his spy inside Con Edison and she answered, “Operations.”

“Doc here.”

“Got nothing for you. Can't talk. I'll let you know.”

Damn. Two and a half years of work, twelve million dollars, and it came down to this: hope and luck. Doc's stomach churned. He had to sweat it out. Like any good engineer, he had a backup plan, but he hoped he didn't have to use it.

Doc turned back to the TV wondering how long the networks would stay on the air. How many microprocessors between Siberia and New York had to function perfectly to transmit a signal around the world? Thousands. How many had been tested? How many embedded chips had been overlooked, never located, or improperly fixed? One bad chip and the whole thing goes kablouie.

The employee line on Doc's phone was blinking, causing him to start thinking about the phones. How many…? What if…? He could drive himself crazy like that. He picked up the handset and answered, “Copeland Solutions, Doc speaking.”

“Dr. Downs? This is George Kirosawa from the Chase account. I'd hoped you'd be in early this morning.”

“Good morning, George. Everything all right?”

“Well, no, actually. I've been watching the news, and to tell you the truth, I don't want to ride the train this morning. I hope you understand.”

“The subway will be all right, George. They won't have any problems until late tonight, if then.”

“I know, but my wife is terrified and my kids are upset. These reports from New Zealand and Russia have her shaking. I have to stay here with her.”

“Well, I understand,” Doc said. “It's all right. Happy New Year.”

“You, too, Dr. Downs. Thanks.”

It was starting.

As the day progressed, fear and tension among knowledgeable, rational people could be unbearable by noon, let alone midnight. Staying home was a good idea for anyone with a family.

He heard a burst of noise in the corridor and peeked out to see the public relations director Jody Maxwell slumped against the wall and uttering sighs and growls of irritation.

Jody had dressed her plump, expressive body in pale green Armani for her press conference with the bank's chief financial officer. In her late twenties, she was the rare geek who'd crossed the line to conventional businesshood. She knew the ins and outs of successful public relations as well as she understood computers, and she had a nongeeky earthiness that Doc liked.

“What happened to you?” he asked, concerned to see her disheveled.

“I couldn't believe it,” she said. “First, my neighbor stood on his balcony and threw his laptop down three stories into the street. I heard the crash and a scream and went out on my balcony, and he was right there looking like Jack Nicholson in
The Shining
with wild eyes staring down at the sidewalk. He almost hit a woman walking her dog.”

“Wow,” Doc said. “What did he say?”

“That's what was so weird. He didn't say anything. And then on the subway this group of about twenty lunatics crowded on and started handing out pamphlets, and when people refused their shitty little booklets, they threw them in their faces. I'm telling you, it was completely insane.
Renounce your sins,
it said.
Judgment Day is here.
They were all Asians, Koreans I think, and people got pissed off. One guy punched this woman and broke her glasses. I got off a stop early and walked. It's crazy out there. People are dressed up in paper hats and blowing horns. I saw a naked woman with ‘2000' painted across her tits. I swear to God.”

“Want a cup of coffee?”

“How about a shot of Scotch.”

“Vodka.”

“Even better. Donald in?”

“His Donaldness is downstairs and waiting for you.”

“We're supposed to have a news conference with the bank this morning, but I don't know…” she said, her voice trailing off.

On TV CNN was reporting from Moscow where a very shaken Russian Minister of Information was announcing the imposition of martial law in Siberia.

“What's going on?” she asked Doc.

“The Russians just paid for a bad mistake,” he said. “Siberia doesn't have many computers except the oil and gas pipelines and the reactors, but Russian infrastructure is a mixed bag. The telephone system is an antique with old-fashioned mechanical relays that should have no problems. Moscow and Petersburg are going to get slammed, but most of rural Russia is still in the 19th Century. The bug can't stop a horse from pulling a plow.”

“Fascinating,” she said, sitting down and making herself comfortable. “Horrifying but fascinating.”

Doc poured her a double shot of vodka. A noisy crowd of employees came into the office, laughing and picking bits of paper from their hair and clothing. Greetings of “Happy New Year” rattled down the corridor and someone blew a horn.

“Don't you want to join the party?” Doc asked.

“Give me a break,” she said. “Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we shall die.”

“Hail, Caesar,” Doc added. “Don't worry, things aren't as bad as they look.”

On TV CNN reported three spontaneous antinuclear demonstrations at power plants in Oregon, California and Pennsylvania.

“No nukes, no nukes, no nukes,” the people shouted. Unlike their Russian counterparts, the American police for once looked like they believed the demonstrators had a point.

*   *   *

At 8:45 Copeland was in his office with one computer screen showing the red button and another displaying a chart of Y2K stock symbols and data. VIAS, TPRO, ZITL, and DDIM were companies like his that sold Y2K software and services, but unlike his they were publicly traded. These stocks had risen steadily during the last three years, but in the month of December had leveled off. With more business than they could handle, Y2K companies were unable to take on new clients because the world had run out of programmers. Copeland didn't care. In the last year he'd doubled programmers' salaries in order to keep them, and passed the cost on to his clients. Today he was merely curious. In the past week he'd liquidated every stock and bond he owned, cashed out everything, and reduced his portfolio to zero. Tomorrow, if his scheme worked out the way it was supposed to, he wouldn't need equity.

Copeland tried to distract himself by watching the stock exchanges gear up for the opening bell. Since June every major corporation in America had been put on the spot and forced to declare itself Year 2000 compliant or not. Corporations unable to prove their computers were ready for the 21st Century had seen their stocks tumble to all-time lows. Some companies threatened with Y2K liability suits had tossed in the towel, declared bankruptcy and gone out of business. The corporate landscape was being recontoured in surprising ways. IBM was stronger than ever, but General Motors was dead in the water, a ship without a rudder. Like many large companies, GM had so many computers in so many divisions and was such a bureaucratic mess that the company simply didn't know how many systems it had. One of its subsidiaries, GM Electronics, which manufactured computer chips for GM vehicles, had cranked out millions of chips infected with the millennium bug, and instead of dealing with the problem with engineers and technicians, GM had turned the fiasco over to lawyers and spin doctors. Meanwhile, computer-driven robots in GM assembly plants were poised to quit at midnight, although even if they functioned properly, they wouldn't have much to do because only a fraction of the company's 1300 suppliers were Year 2000 compliant. In the last few weeks GM had frantically tried to install new systems, but had run up against one of the harsher truths of the cybernetic world: any new system will be 100% over budget and take twice as long to install and test as any projection. The entire supply chain and sophisticated just-in-time delivery systems were going to break.

So what, Copeland thought. I drive a Porsche. GM deserves to die.

At 8:46, fourteen minutes before the stock markets were to open, America's stockbrokers, day traders, and millions of ordinary citizens who owned shares in the global economy were in their hot seats. Their computers were humming and telephone headsets chattering away with the peculiar jargon that drives the world's biggest pile of money and paper. The Internet and the floor of the New York Stock Exchanges were abuzz with the usual mix of fact and rumor, though the facts had more impact and the rumors were more intense than anyone could remember. The key fact, of course, was the reality of the millennium bug, a topic that had been debated for years. Virtually everyone in the financial marketplace was tracking the bug's progress and trying to second-guess its effects on the portfolios they managed. Players were holding their breath, waiting to see what would happen next.

They didn't have to wait long. At 8:47 all the European exchanges simultaneously cut short trading and closed. At 8:49 the Federal Republic of Germany declared a bank holiday and closed all German banks. Like dominoes, the rest of Europe followed suit. During the previous year, much of the continent, particularly Germany, had persisted in belittling the millennium bug as a concoction of hysterical alarmists. They'd ignored the bug, and thousands of their mission-critical computers were not Year 2000 compliant. After all, they were Europeans, older and wiser than the rest of the planet, and they knew better. Nothing would happen. A few computers would break down, that's all. Computers failed all the time, didn't they? As the chain reaction of events steamed across Siberia, the implications of their delusions hit them like a comet: the bug was real. With the shutdown of the nuclear plant in Magadan, the Europeans suddenly woke up and started to worry frantically about the hundreds of nuclear reactors between Moscow and Lisbon. Closing the stock exchanges and banks was easy but wasn't life-threatening. Shutting down waves of power plants in the middle of winter was another matter entirely.

Copeland's phone was blinking nonstop, but he ignored it. Someone knocked on his door and he ignored that, too. His European clients were probably demanding his august telephonic presence, but he no longer cared what happened to them. On cable television's New York 1, a United Nations representative from the European Union was explaining that the introduction of the new Euro currency had created massive software problems, and that countries and companies had had to decide whether to concentrate on the Euro conversion or deal with their Y2K problems. They chose the currency because that was hard cash and something they understood. Too bad for them, Copeland thought with sage nods of his head. Now their pig-headedness had caught up with them, and he wondered why the dumbbell Europeans had taken so long to close their markets. In any event, they did close them, and the ripple effect would be a complete shutting down of the global economy until the crisis had passed. How long that took depended to a great extent on what happened to the European nuclear reactors later in the day.