Deadline Y2K (7 page)

“We're gonna find out soon enough,” Packard said, looking at his watch. “In seventeen hours and fifteen minutes. Hey, Bernie!” he shouted. “Turn on the TV, will ya?”

“Why?”

“The new year will arrive in the middle of the Pacific Ocean in a few minutes.”

“So what?”

“Just turn it on, Bernie.”

“You want some breakfast, Bill?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

The delicatessen owner grudgingly switched on CNN and scowled at a commercial for Budweiser, the official beer of millennium insanity.

“Expecting a big night?” the policeman asked the doctor.

“Are you kidding?” Packard replied. “I'm just glad I don't work in the emergency room, but I got problems you wouldn't believe. Do you know how many computers we have at Bellevue? Do you have any idea how many computers run every goddamn device in my ICU? Do you know how many have been checked out? None. N-O-N-E, that's how many.”

“You're supposed to work on the people, Bill, not the computers.”

Grimacing, shaking his head with frustration, Packard poured himself a cup of coffee and stared at the TV.

Jonathon Spillman, now the manager of the brand-new Safeway Store at 96th and Broadway, walked in and sat down.

“Don't say it,” Garcia warned.

“Don't say what?”

Packard winked and silently mouthed,
Happy New Year.

“I'm Jewish, in case you forgot,” Spillman reminded them. “The New Year is in September, and the year is 5760, if you didn't know. Where's Copeland?”

“Not here yet,” the doctor replied. “Tonight he'll find out if all his fancy software works. Will Donnie boy save Chase Manhattan from extinction? As if I give a shit.”

“Copeland won't, but his guy Doc Downs will,” Spillman said. “Doc knows what he's doing. I'm on top of this thing, guys. Safeway spent millions on this thing and Doc said we did everything right.”

“The horse's mouth,” Garcia said. “That's just great. The bank and the grocery store survive while everything else goes all to hell.”

“Nuclear reactors,” Packard said. “How many worldwide? Four hundred? Five?”

“More,” Spillman said. “Nobody really knows. There's secret reactors all over the place.”

“You gonna eat?” Bernie hollered at Spillman.

“Gimme a poppy seed bagel with…”

“… with nothin', I know, I know.”

They sat for a moment in comfortable silence, three guys from the neighborhood who'd all made good and done well. Intelligent men, success stories, and still primitive villagers. Being together made them a little less afraid.

“Hear from your wife?” Spillman asked Packard.

Leery of violence and looting in the event of a blackout, the doctor had dispatched his wife and children to the rural coast of Maine.

“Yeah. She's at her sister's place. They spent all day yesterday stacking firewood. Did Shirley leave?”

“No. That's just not gonna happen.”

“Make her go,” Packard said, and Garcia added, “Put your foot down.”

“C'mon, Ed,” Spillman said. “You know my wife. Shirley thinks the millennium is the greatest thing since Princess Di's wedding. Besides, you've never been married.”

Fanfare from the TV caused them to swivel their heads toward the screen. A smiling CNN anchorman in Atlanta faced the camera and said, “Only a few more minutes, ladies and gentlemen, until the first people on earth experience the millennium. We're going live now to the Marshall Islands and Joanna Springer. Joanna?”

*   *   *

Old Blue now lived in the air-conditioned basement of Copeland's brownstone on West 85th Street. In an instance of whimsical cybernetic overkill, the mainframe ran the house including an elaborate alarm and security system. Old Blue began its duties at 6:30 in the morning, turning on the heat, starting the coffee, collecting e-mail and feeding a Welsh terrier named Micro. The computer called up a program that dispensed exactly one and a half cups of lamb and rice meal into Micro's bowl, and in perfect Pavlovian fashion the dog wolfed down his breakfast in forty seconds. Meanwhile, the coffeemaker brewed a cup of dark roast espresso, and at precisely 7:00 the computer turned on the TV in the master bedroom.

Copeland liked to jumpstart his day with a little hard news, and on this day of days he was awake long before the TV popped on. CNN was broadcasting live from Majuro, capital of the Republic of the Marshall Islands near the International Date Line in the middle of Pacific Ocean, nine thousand miles and seventeen time zones west.

“The millennium has arrived, ladies and gentlemen!” gushed a breathless woman standing next to an airport runway with the lights of a terminal and a small town behind her. Fireworks were igniting above the town, the first pyrotechnics to welcome the new century. “We're only a few miles from the International Date Line, and I can't express just how thrilling this is. It's 2000, ladies and gentlemen, the Twenty-First…”

Static punched out her voice and behind her the lights of the town flickered before the audio snapped back, “… in Micronesia which lies just west of the 180th meridian, the International … Line. We … eem to be have … me trouble wi … an aircraft is appr…”

In the background the lights of the town and terminal blinked out and seconds later the blue landing lights on the runway disappeared. Startled, the reporter turned around, then faced the camera again, her mouth working but producing no audible sound. Above her, the exploding rockets and bright star bursts of the fireworks created an eerie illumination.

“Something … happen…”

Copeland could hear the roar of aircraft engines approaching the runway over the voice of the journalist that continued to break up.

“… tourists who want … the first landing of … entury, but the run … lights … vintage DC3.”

And then he heard a crash and saw a wall of flame before the screen went black. The television director quickly cut to the studio in Atlanta and the talking head of the anchorman.

“We seem to have lost contact with Joanna Springer, ladies and gentlemen. I don't know exactly what happened. Just a moment. Do we have audio? Yes, I believe we have audio. Go ahead Joanna.”

Her disembodied voice echoed around the world, heard by millions in every nation. “Oh my God, a plane has crashed. The runway lights went out and all the lights went out except around our satellite truck because we're running on a gener…”

Silence, black screen, and then the studio again.

“This is a somber moment, ladies and gentlemen. We're trying to bring you live coverage from the Marshall Islands, as we expect to bring you live coverage of the arrival of the millennium throughout the next 24 hours, but we seem to have started off with a tragedy. Excuse me, can we restore audio, at least? No? Now they're telling me the satellite connection has failed. I don't know quite what to say, ladies and gentlemen, but it appears that what we feared the most and hoped would never happen has occurred. The predictions of computer failure at this moment seem to have come true, at least on the Marshall Islands. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsors.”

One of the curious things about the moment the world started to fall apart was that the entire planet heard the news instantaneously. During that first hour CNN reported four more air disasters near the International Date Line, all aircraft charted by tourists who thought they were purchasing an exotic experience by being among the first to welcome the 21st Century. Power failures disrupted dozens of Pacific islands. The technical explanations were complex and varied from island to island—old computers in some power plants decided it was 1900 and all maintenance was seriously overdue; on some island-embedded chips in automated transmission and distribution systems failed—but the results were the same. The Pacific Ocean went dark. The only exceptions were islands, like the two Midways, with virtually no computers in their electrical systems, or those with brand-new systems, like Guam, where the power company had installed year 2000 compliant software.

Copeland shouted at the TV, “I told you so, you fools! Everybody has been telling you for
years,
but no! Jesus fucking Christ.”

Then he smiled. Neither shocked nor surprised, he knew this was merely the opening salvo of what promised to be a most interesting day. His vision on the bridge nine years ago was coming true, but he didn't need vindication. When you're right, you're right. What he did need was nonstop catastrophe to divert attention from the real Y2K event that would take place in seventeen hours, at midnight Eastern standard time.

As far as Copeland figured, the mighty Chase Manhattan Bank was going to suffer temporary cybernetic oblivion at midnight. He believed that when the last bits of Copeland 2000 software kicked into the bank's electronic fund transfer system at the stroke of twelve, a hidden program buried by Doc in a larger diagnostic package would instantly transfer $72 million to accounts Copeland had established in Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Panama. Seconds later, the program would temporarily destroy the bank's ability to perform electronic fund transfers, scramble the records of thousands of accounts and then self-destruct. No known monies would be missing; the bank would recover within a day or two and go on to be profitable well into the next century. To the bank, the mess would look like a millennium bug flaw that had been overlooked. Sorry, we made a mistake.

Seventy-two million dollars, half of it his. Ordinarily, he was already eating breakfast at Bernie's, but this was going to be a long day and he was in no hurry. Shower, shave, ablutions, blue pinstripe, wingtips, a check in the mirror to verify his standard-issue yuppie good looks, then coffee and exactly two minutes of frenzied affection with the dog while he read e-mail in the kitchen. Old Blue had scanned the morning papers, culled his name and that of his company from seven articles, all of which referred to a new software contract with the bank to be formally announced that day, and displayed the news on the kitchen terminal of his house-wide net. He rapidly looked through the articles, reading only the headlines.

“Copeland Solutions to Announce Another Software Partnership with Chase,” declared the
Wall Street Journal.
“A Revolution in Dial-Up Banking Software to Be Unveiled by Venture Capitalist Donald Copeland and Chase Manhattan,” said the headline in the
New York Times.
All the articles carried variations on the theme, and Copeland reminded himself to congratulate Jody Maxwell, his PR director, on a job well done.

It was all a charade. By tomorrow morning the world would be in such a mess that neither the
Times
nor the bank would care a whit about new software for telephone customers. Copeland's problem was getting through the day without revealing his giddiness over the robbery.

He flipped on the kitchen TV in time to see a report from Wellington, New Zealand, the first major city to be hit by the bug.

“… and so, to reiterate, an explosion in an oil refinery on the outskirts of Wellington at twenty minutes past midnight is competing with millennium fireworks to light up this charming city. So far, local electric power here and in Auckland has remained stable, but we have reports of blackouts in outlying areas. Rural districts seem to be the hardest hit, and local authorities are broadcasting instructions on emergency power. It's not known at this time how many people in the affected areas can receive them.”

“John,” said the anchorman, “is it cold there in Wellington?”

“Well, we're in the Southern Hemisphere here, William, and it's midsummer, so the answer is no, it's not cold, but many people are very, very frightened. The rest are, shall we say, seriously inebriated. After all, it is New Year's Eve.”

Copeland turned down the sound and watched commercials flash across the screen. The world was beginning to disintegrate, but that wouldn't stop anyone from trying to sell product. He turned back to the computer terminal and was ready to move on to personal messages when the phone interrupted his ritual. He grabbed it.

“Copeland.”

“You watching TV?” asked Bill Packard.

“Yes,” Copeland said. “It's quite a show.”

“You predicted this,” Packard said. “You were right.”

“I wish I wasn't,” Copeland lied. “You at the deli?”

“We're all here.”

Bill Packard lived three blocks away with his wife and two kids. Partly by chance and partly by design, Copeland, Packard, Garcia and Spillman still lived in the Upper West Side neighborhood where they'd all grown up. Over the years Copeland had come close to bragging to them about his plans for Chase Manhattan. He would have loved to deal a hand of five card stud to his buddies and casually say, “Guess what I'm gonna do, fellas?” Packard and Spillman might think the scheme was clever and laugh it off, but he had no doubt Ed Garcia would put him away. It was hard to bullshit guys he'd known since he was three years old, but he'd been doing it for five years. What the hell, it would all be over in the morning.

“It's going to hit Siberia in about forty-five minutes,” the doctor went on, “and two hours later, Japan.”

“Fuck the Russians and the Japanese,” Copeland said. “They'll get what they deserve. How are things at the hospital?”

“I'm worried. Damn near every piece of equipment in the place has embedded chips, and none of them has been checked out.”

“That's crazy,” Copeland said.

“I know. I gotta meet with the manager of misinformation services. These fucking bureaucrats don't understand that this thing is serious.”

“Do you need help?”

“Hell, yes, but the powers that be say it isn't in the damned budget, so I can't even bring in help on my own. It sucks.”

“Did you sell your stocks?”