Deadline Y2K (11 page)

In New York, the consensus was that the exchanges wouldn't open. It was obvious and not unprecedented. On days when the markets were imbued with extreme anxiety, the exchanges remained closed. The Russian declaration of martial law in Siberia had been the first indication that the markets wouldn't open. To keep things interesting, traders were betting for and against military rule being expended to the entire country. The air crashes in Micronesia provoked considerable interest as well, because wrecks always affected the market; however, a few airplanes falling out of the sky wouldn't have a long-term impact on the global economy, and neither would any event in Russia which had become an economic cesspool. Japan, however, was a linchpin of the world economic order.

At 8:52 a rumor flashed across millions of screens that declared the core computers at the Central Bank of Japan were at risk of crashing when the millennium bug hit Tokyo at ten o'clock, New York time. If Japan collapsed, economic chaos would be unleashed. With the European markets already shut down, there was no way the American markets would open.

Chaos, meltdown, and no electronic fund transfers—the key to the heist. Seething, Copeland typed in Doc's password and brought the Big Red Button up on his screen again. Should he wait until midnight and see what happened, or touch the screen? He fidgeted, pacing back and forth across the carpet, turning off the TV and then the computers. He was sick of looking at screens and hearing bad news, but he couldn't help himself. He flipped on the TV again just in time to hear the announcement that neither the NYSE nor NASDAQ would open. As far as the stock markets were concerned, 1999 was over and had ended with a giant bust.

Wall Street was stunned. Members of the financial community of Lower New York usually felt immune from distant events, but not this time. Buffered by the most powerful economy in the world and isolated in their private lives from the hand-to-mouth, daily struggles of ordinary people, they shared a peculiarly insular mentality fostered by a decade of nonstop prosperity. Many young brokers had never seen a down market. When the exchanges didn't open, they closed their laptops and said “Happy New Year” to one another, hoping against hope that everything would return to normal on Tuesday morning. Somehow they knew it wouldn't. Like most Americans, the brokers and bankers were abysmally ignorant of science and technology and had no real understanding of the millennium bug or the computers it was attacking. Nevertheless, however dimly, they could comprehend the effects. The global economy, absolutely dependent on computers, was vanishing before their eyes.

*   *   *

Jody and Doc sat quietly smoking and watching the rolling catastrophe now heading for Japan. Doc shook his head in despair. Misbehaving computers weren't to blame—ignorance was the culprit, the ignorance he encountered every day from sales clerks who knew nothing about the products they sold and couldn't make change without a calculator. The clerks were mere symbols who represented an empty, alienated, neurotic national existence, the talk shows that substituted for company, the telephone psychics, the thousands of hours of screaming advertising for products no one needed, the bad blockbuster movies with silly special effects, and the idiotic how-to-get-rich-lose-weight-and-find-your-inner-self T-shirts disguised as books. Deluged with lies and propaganda, few people knew how to distinguish truth from bullshit. The responsibility lay with corporations who hired minimum wage mental cripples and exploited them for profit. The ruling class had sold the nation's soul to a binary devil. Three and a half million people worked in the American computer industry, and they were near the top of the food chain. The rest of the two hundred seventy-five million zombies walking around were the food, and they didn't deserve what they were going to get: rampant fear and hysteria bred by ignorance. Doc hoped the millennium bug would wake them up, but he didn't believe it would.

The newspapers and TV had been full of news about the bug for weeks, and idiots who didn't know a CRT from a CPU were running around saying all the computers in the world were going to crash at midnight. They should have spent their energy fixing the damned things. Months of nonstop hype and predictions of horrendous doom and destruction had the entire planet in a state of steroidal frenzy. The cover of every magazine in America had featured the coming millennium disaster. Bank failures were predicted. Billion-dollar liability suits had already been filed against software companies and chip manufacturers, sending high-tech and financial stocks on a roller-coaster ride.

Dozens of government agencies from Social Security to the Department of Defense to the city welfare department had been issuing reassuring statements every day. Nobody in his right mind believed these agencies were staffed by competent people. While the government was mouthing platitudes that failed to inspire confidence, millennium cults were running amok. Doc had no idea what they believed and didn't care, but they scared the hell out of people by constantly screaming at the top of their lungs that the world was going to end. A huge gathering of alienists was assembled in Roswell, New Mexico, and forty thousand people were expecting imminent mass deplanetization. A much larger assembly of two million fervent Christians were waiting for Christ to appear at midnight in Hermosillo, Mexico. All over the planet people were expecting miracles, the apocalypse, redemption, salvation and the destruction of their enemies, as if the cosmos knew or cared about our faulty and arbitrary way of measuring time.

A half million people were freezing in Siberia, and that news would spread terror around the world, heralding the arrival of the bug. The citizens of New York had been advised to prepare for the millennium the way they'd prepare for a massive blackout like those of 1965 and 1977. Stock up on candles, batteries, canned goods, and bottled water and locate your gas shut-off valve. At the same time, as though the left hand had no idea what the right hand was doing, the city was gearing up for the biggest, blow-out New Year's Eve party of all time. The police had published plans to ban vehicles from several areas of the city and turn those streets over to revelers. Hotels had been sold out for months. Fireworks dispatched from barges in the rivers were going to light up the night, and if airplanes were going to fall out of the sky, everyone wanted to be in a tall building with a good view of the spectacle. Twenty-four giant video screens were already up and running in Times Square. Sometimes it seemed as though half the people in New York
wanted
the millennium bug to strike all the computers dead. They thought having everything fall apart would be amusing. Christ Almighty. New York was always crazy, but if this town went really nuts—he shuddered to think of what would happen if the ball started its descent in Times Square and then stopped halfway down.

“Doc?”

“Yeah?”

“You're talking to yourself,” Jody said. “You're mumbling.”

“Sorry. Just thinking.”

“Can I have another vodka?”

“Sure. You okay, Jody?”

“Well, the stock markets aren't going to open. I suppose everyone around Wall Street will start partying this morning.”

“They should,” Doc said. “They may not get another chance for a long time. Huge parties are planned from Beijing to Washington to greet the 21st Century. Isn't that great? Doesn't that make you feel warm and fuzzy? Astronauts in the space station are hoping to see the fireworks from their aerie in the sky, and they've promised to watch out for alien spaceships as well. The world is primed for the weird, the bizarre, the wonderful and the totally insane. In New York City, dear lady, we're sure to get it. After all, this isn't Vladivostok, is it.”

6

Copeland charged off the elevator and into Doc's office. “There you are,” he snapped at Jody. “Let's go kiss the ass of the venerable Chase Manhattan Bank. Are you ready, Ms. Maxwell? They called. We're on. Let's go. What are you doing? Having a drink?”

“Yes, boss,” Jody replied. “I'm having a drink.”

“Jesus, it's nine o'clock in the morning.”

“Happy New Year,” she said and swallowed her second vodka in one gulp. “I'm all business.”

“I hate holidays,” Copeland said. “Nobody gets any work done.”

“Nobody in New York is working today, Donald,” Doc said. “The markets aren't even going to open.”

“I saw that. It's the big shake-out. The strong will survive and dominate.”

“Like Chase,” Doc said.

“That's right, like Chase, thanks to us.”

“Ho, ho. Thanks to whom?”

“To you, Dr. Downs, of course.”

“Thank you, Donald. And if Chase falls, we can blame you.”

“You bastard.”

“Let me ask you a question, Donald,” Doc said, stroking his beard. “The bank's big systems will be fine, but did anyone remember to check the time locks on the vaults?”

Copeland stammered. His face contorted and he finally said, “You were the supervisor on this project. You tell me.”

“I can't remember,” Doc said, cracking up. “Gee whiz.”

“Come on, Donald,” Jody said, standing up and setting down her glass. “Let's get this news conference over with.”

“Someday,” Donald said to Doc, “you'll go too far and really piss me off.”

Jody grabbed his arm and pulled him out of Doc's office.

Outside, a traditional New Year's Eve day had started in earnest. With the stock markets closed, people poured out of the brokerages to join the party on the sidewalks. It was cold, a few degrees above freezing, but that didn't stop anyone. As Copeland and Jody walked toward Wall Street, Jody related her harrowing experiences of the morning, and Copeland could see she was rattled. Normally poised and self-assured, she was pale, flighty and unhappy. At her insistence, they hailed a cab.

“Where to, pal?” asked the driver.

“Chase Plaza,” Copeland said.

“That's three blocks. You can walk faster.”

“We'll ride, thank you.”

“You know,” the driver said as he turned onto Wall Street, “the freaks are out, man. It's weird out here. I seen more—”

“There they are,” Jody shrieked. “The people from the train.”

A whirlwind of earnest Asians was moving up the sidewalk, foisting pamphlets into the hands of passersby. Horns honked. People shouted, “Happy New Year,” and “Jesus loves you even if I don't.” Adding to the cacophony, across the street, in a hail of shredded paper, a bearded, wall-eyed, Bible-waving street preacher summoned up apocalyptic visions from the Book of Revelation, the ultimate source of all millennium theology, legend and nonsense.

“You gonna die, brothers and sisters, you gonna die in a worl' of agony and pain if you ain't ready for the Second Coming of our Lord Jesus. You got less than fifteen hours to git ready fo' Judgment Day. The worl' is gonna end. The worl' as you know it ain't gonna be here no more. The ocean is gonna come right up on this street and drown all you people who don' accept Our Lord Jesus.”

The driver turned around, looked at his passengers and threw up his hands just as the proselytizers reached the car and tried to shove pamphlets in the driver's window. The cabbie rolled it up, pinning an arm inside with fingers wiggling like horrid tentacles before the arm pulled free.

“The millennium, yech,” the driver said vehemently. “I can't stand this shit.”

“It'll all be over tomorrow,” Copeland said. “One big hangover.”

“I don't think so,” Jody said. “Look at Russia. They've declared martial law.”

“That's not going to happen here,” Copeland said.

“For God's sake, Donald. What do you think this is right here right now? Look at these people. If I were governor, I'd call out the National Guard.”

She gestured frenetically at the wild melange of proselytizers and horn tooters outside the cab.

“These are just the nuts, Jody. We'll be fine.”

“What about all the nuclear reactors? Do you believe that every single one of those is ready? In Russia? At Three Mile Island? Jesus. Let's get this press conference over with. We're here. Let's go.”

Jody scrambled out of the cab while Copeland paid the driver, who asked, “What did she say about nucular reactors?”

“Forget about it,” Copeland said hastily. “Happy New Year.”

As they entered the building, Donald noticed long lines snaking away from the tellers' windows in the lobby branch. It wasn't a run on the bank yet, more like a walk, but dozens of nervous people were withdrawing their money in cash.

They stopped at the lobby desk for a security check, and the attendant was apologetic. “I have to call upstairs and confirm your appointment,” she said. “The computer is down.”

“Good God,” Jody exclaimed. “Just what I wanted to hear this morning.”

“Are you all right?” Copeland asked her.

“Stop asking me that and I'll be fine.”

The fiftieth floor was quiet and serene, the thick carpets and acoustic ceiling reducing every spoken word to a whisper. The male receptionist who fronted the chief financial officer's office wore a conical hat and a button that read, “Year 2000. We're Ready,” the bank's new slogan.

“Mr. Edwards will be with you in just a moment,” he said, “but I'm afraid I have some bad news. The press conference is canceled. All the media people have been calling saying they're just too busy this morning. The ABC crew that was supposed to be here is at La Guardia, and Channel 2 just phoned to say the president of NASDAQ has called a press conference, so they can't make it.”

“Is there anything wrong with the contract?” Jody blurted.

“Not as far as I know,” the receptionist answered blithely, “but perhaps you should direct your questions to Mr. Edwards.”

Five minutes later the receptionist escorted Copeland and Jody into a paneled office where they were greeted warmly by David Edwards, CFO, a robust and congenial man of sixty.