"c11" - читать интересную книгу автора (Burt Andrew - Noontide Night)
NOONTIDE NIGHT - Chapter 1.1
Chapter 1.1
11:55 P.M., Friday, December 31, 1999
Manukau, New Zealand
The partygoers at Morgan and Desiree Hyland's apartment
gave the VCR sidelong glances. Morgan, relaxed against the
kitchen counter with a Fosters, eyed them in turn, a small, proud
smile hidden under the lip of the beer can. Things were under
control. People were having fun. People were stealing peeks at the
VCR.
The symbolic VCR had been Desiree's idea, but Morgan felt
he'd done it justice. Morgan had set the VCR's clock—to the knife-edge of the second—based on Universal Coordinated Time. He
and Desiree had spent hours arranging the VCR prominently on
the yellow pass-thru counter between their small kitchen and
eating area. Desiree dressed it up as Old Father Time: fake beard
in front, feathered wings behind, toga draped around, and a small
scythe propped against it. Guests had jokingly added multi-colored confetti and ribbons and strands of tinsel off the Hylands'
miniature Christmas tree atop the TV. A small package wrapped
in red foil with delicate outlines of poinsettias nestled in the VCR's
beard.
Bracketing the VCR were two shoe boxes filled with guests'
names for the contest—the winner for the red-wrapped present to
be drawn from among those who correctly predicted the VCR's
fate. The underlying idea for the contest had been Desiree's; but
Morgan had implemented it, had written up the rules and most
importantly, found the shoe boxes. Desiree had labeled one shoe
box, in her graceful artist's script, "succumbs to Year 2000
computer bug" (below which some wag had written "blinks
12:00"). The other box, in Morgan's hasty, uneven scrawl, read
"survives Y2K" (below which the hand of another wag had
penned, "no blinky").
The heap of folded papers in the "no blinky" box seemed
much fuller than "blinky"'s. His own would have been in there
with the majority, had he allowed himself to vote. Sure, he'd
stocked up a couple extra cans of beans and checked the flashlight.
Well, Desiree had. But all the recent reports said don't worry, be
happy. Well, most had.
"Five minutes 'til she blinks," Riki Tauroa announced in
Morgan's general direction. Riki, a staff artist at HHF
Architectural like Desiree and a large, imposing fellow, added a
quick Maori tongue-dancing haka. It was his third haka of the
evening, complete with stamping, slapping, and fierce, wide-eyed
"bleah! bleah!"'s that he'd said were to scare off the evil Y2K
spirits. Morgan chuckled. Riki had possibly had one too many
Steinlagers.
"If she blinks," Angeline Lansdale teased, grabbing a handful
of mixed nuts. "September 9th was a bust. Someone said all kinds
of programs would treat 9999 as end of data or stuff. Someone sure
burned me on that bet." She leered at Morgan.
Morgan unrolled a noisemaker at her with a wheezing honk.
He'd been jealous that she'd gotten a bigger raise than he had, and
she was 'only in sales' while he was someone who 'actually did
something,' namely, wrote programs. They hadn't talked about
the bet since he'd won. He was surprised she was still sore.
"Well, any programmer who stored September 9th as 9999
instead of 090999 is an idiot," Tom Lansdale said, "and was
probably fired long before then. I mean, take 11199. Is that
January 11th or November 1st? You need the zeros. Did Morgan
sucker you on that?" He shook a finger at Morgan. "But, no, hon,
Y2K is real." In fact, Morgan knew Tom had a stockpile of
supplies at home, and wouldn't have been here if he hadn't been
threatened with firing if he weren't.
Chuck Guthrie, fresh in from the States, was rifling through the
fridge for a beer. "I don't know 'bout y 'all," he drawled Georgia
style, "but the government said all's well, and that's enough to put
my vote in the no blinky box."
"This is your same government that said 'read my lips, no new
taxes' and 'that depends on how you define "is"'?" Tom shook his
head. "No, no, this is the big one."
"Holy shittin' it is!" someone said. Morgan recognized the
loud, preacher-like voice as belonging to his boss and project
manager, Dieter Axton. " 'And he gathered them together into a
place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon,'" Axton quoted.
"'And the great city was divided into three parts, and the cities of
the nations fell: and great Babylon came in remembrance before
God, to give unto her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his
wrath.'" He dropped his voice back to conversational. "Of course,
even if not," he paused for a small belch, "what software ever
works right that's got within ten feet of Morgan?"
Axton was a tall, flat-faced man with an inch of military-cut
sandy hair on his head, a shiny ball of a nose and the devil's
cherubic smile. He stood with one hand on his hip, the other
holding a beer near his lips, as if he were perpetually about to
drink, but constantly had something more important to tell
everyone. His eyes roved around the room, looking either, as
Desiree once commented, for a target to insult or a low-cut dress
to look down.
Axton had made his remark from the other end of the skinny
kitchen, where he was the crux of a separate throng. It annoyed
Morgan when Axton intruded into someone else's conversation
like that, as if he couldn't bear missing an opportunity for a jab.
Morgan eyed him sidelong, looking to see if he was in one of his,
as Desiree called them, 'zoning in and out druggie moods'. Hard
to tell. Morgan contemplated a biting reply, but remembered,
irritably, that he'd promised Desiree to be on his best; he opted to
avoid eye contact with Axton and act like he hadn't heard.
"Oh, it'll blink all right," said Lai Wang. A slender Taiwanese
woman, Lai wrote the database retrieval code for Axton's group,
where Morgan wrote the user interfaces. She spoke just loud
enough for Axton to hear, but, Morgan thought, with an exertion
to her voice to let Axton know he wasn't included in their
conversation. "If I know Desiree, she probably made Morgan
reburn the VCR's EEPROM chips just to make sure!"
Morgan pretended to flinch guiltily behind his beer, but he
appreciated Lai defending his abilities. On reflection, maybe the
guilt wasn't all feigned. Desiree had urged him to set the VCR's
clock ahead just to see what it would do, so they'd know, but
somehow he'd forgotten in the hubbub of planning the party. She
asked about it again this very morning. Then she'd gotten onto the
baby clothes thing again; why hadn't they bought any yet? It
hadn't been a real fight. They worked so well together as a team,
and looking back, he wasn't sure why he had resisted. He even
felt sorry at the time that he was defending himself. It felt
somehow like an affront to his competency, to his manhood, for
her to suggest he couldn't handle a problem when it arose, that he
should prevent every possible problem, as if he were a clumsy oaf.
That's what rankled. She knew he could fix damn near anything.
She'd argued, what, that Morgan was in denial? Morgan couldn't
quite remember. Or understand. What would he be in denial
about—the baby coming? He was bursting with joy about that.
The year 2000? How did baby clothes fit into that? She'd sniped
something about him never planning. He'd gently argued that
he'd already set the clock so precisely he hated to fiddle with it.
The VCR was only symbolic, after all. Why did she act like the fate
of the world hinged on it? Probably a pregnancy thing. He
shrugged. She'd relented: Okay, have your adventure! Wait to see
if it'll blink. He knew that wasn't the end of it, but it felt good to
take her words at face value, so he could enjoy the day. They'd
sort things out tomorrow. If she still had any issues to sort out.
With now less than five minutes of 1999 to go, he reveled in the
eager tingle.
"Morgan? Morgan, sweetie, what time do you want to open
the champagne? It's almost midnight." Desiree called out from a
throng on the balcony. A wedge of the city of Manukau spread out
below them in a sea of shimmering lights on a warm, magnolia-scented summer breeze. Sitting on a chaise lounge to rest her back,
she looked to Morgan like a vision in a painting; Woman in White
Dress on Park Bench, Brushing Honey Blond Hair out of Kind,
Gray Eyes. Well, maybe that was a bit long for a title. In the
distance toward Auckland, lights of small party yachts and
powerboats glistened on Manukau Harbor, haven to the same gay
laughter and giddy anticipation. The sky was clear and starry, and
free of the planes they could usually see taking off or landing so
that even the airport seemed to hold its breath. "Sweetie?"
"Got it covered, hon." Morgan returned to his conversation.
He rolled his eyes by way of apology to his guests, feeling as if she
had inadvertently exposed a weakness in him, and thus, in their
hospitality. "She's getting her mothering hormones." Morgan
winked to the clump of guests around him, smug in the knowledge
that—he'd computed earlier in the day, to appease Desiree's
unease about his lack of planning—he could wait until 11:57 before
uncorking the champagne. Ensuring maximal freshness, all that.
He'd get out an old, wheeled TV stand from the closet and place
the glasses on it like open-mouthed baby chicks waiting to be fed.
He could then wheel through the crowd at the dramatic moment,
a master champagne deliverer.
Morgan looked at Desiree out of the corner of his eye. She'd
been crabby all day, unusual for her; and aloof at the party.
Morgan chalked it up to wanting to avoid Jennifer La Duca.
Axton's entire team was here at the party, on so-called Millennium
Watch in case they were beepered for Y2K problems (of which
Morgan was certain there would be none, and had lobbied to have
everyone assemble at his party instead of at the office; fixing
software that controlled shipping manifests could wait until
Monday, surely). Jennifer La Duca, with her Sinead O'Connor
look, unfortunately reminded Desiree of a girl she'd known who'd
died of cancer in junior high. Desiree had never forgiven herself
for listening to the rumors that the girl had a communicable
disease that made your hair fall out; she'd stood idly by as other
girls had roughed her up. Storm Lake, Iowa in the 70s had not
been an enlightened town. Only later, when the girl was on her
deathbed, as Desiree told the story, had they become friends.
Morgan sighed. Nothing he could do about it. He hoped Desiree
would find some way to enjoy the party.
"So, you guys don't seem to have much baby stuff around.
Isn't the baby due soon?" Riki asked.
"February 29th, if you can believe it," Morgan said. "And
yeah, we have to get on the stick about clothes and all that. First
we thought we'd be back in San Francisco, so we didn't rush,
'cause, you know, we'd just have to lug it all home. Then my
contract got extended a year, but we figured, Let's pretend we're
not pregnant until after the New Year's party. One last blast of
freedom, so to speak. And here we are."
"Truth be told, I'm surprised you didn't invite us all to South
Island to climb Mt. Cook or something. A party at your flat is so...
normal. Not losing your edge, are you, old man?"
Everyone laughed, and Morgan circulated, restlessly. He was
antsy for midnight. Desiree liked the planning, enjoyed the
waiting, but not Morgan. Climbing Mt. Cook! Now there was
something he'd have to do before they left New Zealand. But
climbing it wasn't enough. Morgan liked to wring the sponge of
life dry for all it held. He envisioned adventures on the way. He
daydreamed they'd claw to the top, unpack a tin of baked beans,
and find—they'd forgotten the can opener! He'd have to
improvise, chipping away at a rock outcropping to make a crude
axe. No, they'd already have picks. Do something unique, then,
group oriented. Save a member of the expedition who'd fallen in
a ravine by forming a human ladder, that's it. "America's about
teamwork," his father always said. He would thank his father
when they interviewed him for his heroism and quick thinking.
Axton's quip about Armageddon gnawed at Morgan. He tried
to dismiss it, dismiss Axton himself really, but it required
conscious effort. The government never said there was a problem,
so all will be well, he reassured himself. I'm not being naive, he
thought; pound for pound, the U.S. government is the best form of
government now or ever. If there were about to be major chaos in
less than five minutes, they would only keep it quiet for good
reason. They'd have planned for it. Not to mention, New Zealand
said they were even more well prepared than the U.S. Morgan felt
better.
Snatches of conversation wafted on the air.
"...two thousand years..."
"This is the future?"
"...lots of water and canned food..."
"As a kid in 1975..."
"...heard Hezbollah terrorists will take advantage of the
chaos..."
"...technically it's 2001..."
All the while, the guests stole looks at the VCR as if their
probing eyes could tell whether, instead of keeping perfect time at
the stroke of the new millennium, it would lose its mind and blink
12:00... 12:00... 12:00...
"Morgan!" It was Desiree.
He looked at his watch. 11:58. "Ooh, right!" Morgan wheeled
around Angeline and snagged the first bottle of Dom Perignon
from the platoon of bottles standing at attention by the microwave.
He tore the foil with his thumbnail, cranked off the wire with a
jerk, started to ease out the cork and pop! Dom geysered, foamed
over the lip. "Whoa, look at that! Where are the glasses!"
"Don't waste it!" Lai said. "Here, I'll pour, you open another."
Morgan undressed the next Dom, and the next. He handed
open bottles, production-line, to Lai. She continued her
conversation with Angeline Lansdale while she poured. "I agree,
there are a lot of chips out there, but most aren't date-sensitive.
That's not the real problem. It's all the custom software that's a
problem. It's kind of a dirty little secret in the business, but a lot
of companies have lost the source code—the human readable,
master copies of the programs they need in order to make changes.
Or they're so old they won't build correctly because the other
software around them has changed. People say 'we'll be ready' but
there've been so many heads in the sand that..."
Morgan's attention drifted away. He'd be so glad to see all the
doomsayers proved wrong.
Desiree called again. "Morgan?"
"Blast." 11:59. "Coming!" Then: "Can you scoot that cart
around the room, Tom? Thanks a bunch." Morgan scooped up a
glass of Dom and a Dom-lite, as he called the alcohol-free
sparkling grape juice.
"That's the fake stuff, right?" Desiree double-checked with a
motherly smile as he joined her on the balcony. She sat on the
edge of a lounge chair, seven months of their son warm in her
belly.
"Of course! I'm not that daft," Morgan joked. He helped her
up, so they could toast and watch the VCR flick over the new
millennium. Morgan waved his hand for the crowd's attention.
"Champagne is—" he announced, then quickly located the cart
where Tom had wheeled and abandoned it—"over there."
"Hey mate," Chuck Guthrie called out in Georgia drawl faking
an Australian accent. "Whyn't ye have Times Square on the telly?
Dick Clark, the descending apple... They're supposed to have
twenty-four screens, one for each time zone... Why are y'all
looking at me like that?"
"Who's running the contest for most clueless American?"
Macky Drew said with a laugh. "Time Square won't get to see the
future for another seventeen hours... mate. Do the words
International Date Line ring a bell? You flew over it a hair before
you landed. 'First into Tomorrow,' that's some Kiwi company's
motto."
"Okay, everyone!" Morgan announced, holding up his watch.
"Almost time. In twenty seconds." He and Desiree intertwined
arms and glasses. "Ten... Nine..."
Couples jockeyed into position, readying for kisses, toasts, and
best views of the VCR's symbolic clock. "To the Twenty-frist
Millennium!" someone shouted, sounding pleasantly soused.
"Two... One... Happy New Year!"
Amidst a cacophony of shouts, honking noisemakers, clinking
glasses, kissing, tossed confetti, car horns below and other
oddments of celebration, the VCR quietly and uneventfully did not
blink.
And there it was. Morgan let out the breath he didn't know he
was holding. The world didn't explode. Civilization still twinkled
beyond the balcony. He thought back to how ridiculous his
argument with Desiree had been. It hadn't hurt to wait to get baby
clothes.
After more minutes of clinking and hugging and handshaking,
Morgan worked his way to the shoebox of "survives" predictors.
The VCR meekly displayed 12:03. "Okay, okay, everyone! The
winner of our little contest is..." He averted his eyes and
rummaged amongst the papers like a rat scritching in a box.
"Stir 'em up good. No fair picking from the top!" Riki
shouted.
"The winner is..." He held the folded paper up tantalizingly.
The lights blinked out.
Below them, Manukau went dark.
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NOONTIDE NIGHT - Chapter 1.1
Chapter 1.1
11:55 P.M., Friday, December 31, 1999
Manukau, New Zealand
The partygoers at Morgan and Desiree Hyland's apartment
gave the VCR sidelong glances. Morgan, relaxed against the
kitchen counter with a Fosters, eyed them in turn, a small, proud
smile hidden under the lip of the beer can. Things were under
control. People were having fun. People were stealing peeks at the
VCR.
The symbolic VCR had been Desiree's idea, but Morgan felt
he'd done it justice. Morgan had set the VCR's clock—to the knife-edge of the second—based on Universal Coordinated Time. He
and Desiree had spent hours arranging the VCR prominently on
the yellow pass-thru counter between their small kitchen and
eating area. Desiree dressed it up as Old Father Time: fake beard
in front, feathered wings behind, toga draped around, and a small
scythe propped against it. Guests had jokingly added multi-colored confetti and ribbons and strands of tinsel off the Hylands'
miniature Christmas tree atop the TV. A small package wrapped
in red foil with delicate outlines of poinsettias nestled in the VCR's
beard.
Bracketing the VCR were two shoe boxes filled with guests'
names for the contest—the winner for the red-wrapped present to
be drawn from among those who correctly predicted the VCR's
fate. The underlying idea for the contest had been Desiree's; but
Morgan had implemented it, had written up the rules and most
importantly, found the shoe boxes. Desiree had labeled one shoe
box, in her graceful artist's script, "succumbs to Year 2000
computer bug" (below which some wag had written "blinks
12:00"). The other box, in Morgan's hasty, uneven scrawl, read
"survives Y2K" (below which the hand of another wag had
penned, "no blinky").
The heap of folded papers in the "no blinky" box seemed
much fuller than "blinky"'s. His own would have been in there
with the majority, had he allowed himself to vote. Sure, he'd
stocked up a couple extra cans of beans and checked the flashlight.
Well, Desiree had. But all the recent reports said don't worry, be
happy. Well, most had.
"Five minutes 'til she blinks," Riki Tauroa announced in
Morgan's general direction. Riki, a staff artist at HHF
Architectural like Desiree and a large, imposing fellow, added a
quick Maori tongue-dancing haka. It was his third haka of the
evening, complete with stamping, slapping, and fierce, wide-eyed
"bleah! bleah!"'s that he'd said were to scare off the evil Y2K
spirits. Morgan chuckled. Riki had possibly had one too many
Steinlagers.
"If she blinks," Angeline Lansdale teased, grabbing a handful
of mixed nuts. "September 9th was a bust. Someone said all kinds
of programs would treat 9999 as end of data or stuff. Someone sure
burned me on that bet." She leered at Morgan.
Morgan unrolled a noisemaker at her with a wheezing honk.
He'd been jealous that she'd gotten a bigger raise than he had, and
she was 'only in sales' while he was someone who 'actually did
something,' namely, wrote programs. They hadn't talked about
the bet since he'd won. He was surprised she was still sore.
"Well, any programmer who stored September 9th as 9999
instead of 090999 is an idiot," Tom Lansdale said, "and was
probably fired long before then. I mean, take 11199. Is that
January 11th or November 1st? You need the zeros. Did Morgan
sucker you on that?" He shook a finger at Morgan. "But, no, hon,
Y2K is real." In fact, Morgan knew Tom had a stockpile of
supplies at home, and wouldn't have been here if he hadn't been
threatened with firing if he weren't.
Chuck Guthrie, fresh in from the States, was rifling through the
fridge for a beer. "I don't know 'bout y 'all," he drawled Georgia
style, "but the government said all's well, and that's enough to put
my vote in the no blinky box."
"This is your same government that said 'read my lips, no new
taxes' and 'that depends on how you define "is"'?" Tom shook his
head. "No, no, this is the big one."
"Holy shittin' it is!" someone said. Morgan recognized the
loud, preacher-like voice as belonging to his boss and project
manager, Dieter Axton. " 'And he gathered them together into a
place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon,'" Axton quoted.
"'And the great city was divided into three parts, and the cities of
the nations fell: and great Babylon came in remembrance before
God, to give unto her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his
wrath.'" He dropped his voice back to conversational. "Of course,
even if not," he paused for a small belch, "what software ever
works right that's got within ten feet of Morgan?"
Axton was a tall, flat-faced man with an inch of military-cut
sandy hair on his head, a shiny ball of a nose and the devil's
cherubic smile. He stood with one hand on his hip, the other
holding a beer near his lips, as if he were perpetually about to
drink, but constantly had something more important to tell
everyone. His eyes roved around the room, looking either, as
Desiree once commented, for a target to insult or a low-cut dress
to look down.
Axton had made his remark from the other end of the skinny
kitchen, where he was the crux of a separate throng. It annoyed
Morgan when Axton intruded into someone else's conversation
like that, as if he couldn't bear missing an opportunity for a jab.
Morgan eyed him sidelong, looking to see if he was in one of his,
as Desiree called them, 'zoning in and out druggie moods'. Hard
to tell. Morgan contemplated a biting reply, but remembered,
irritably, that he'd promised Desiree to be on his best; he opted to
avoid eye contact with Axton and act like he hadn't heard.
"Oh, it'll blink all right," said Lai Wang. A slender Taiwanese
woman, Lai wrote the database retrieval code for Axton's group,
where Morgan wrote the user interfaces. She spoke just loud
enough for Axton to hear, but, Morgan thought, with an exertion
to her voice to let Axton know he wasn't included in their
conversation. "If I know Desiree, she probably made Morgan
reburn the VCR's EEPROM chips just to make sure!"
Morgan pretended to flinch guiltily behind his beer, but he
appreciated Lai defending his abilities. On reflection, maybe the
guilt wasn't all feigned. Desiree had urged him to set the VCR's
clock ahead just to see what it would do, so they'd know, but
somehow he'd forgotten in the hubbub of planning the party. She
asked about it again this very morning. Then she'd gotten onto the
baby clothes thing again; why hadn't they bought any yet? It
hadn't been a real fight. They worked so well together as a team,
and looking back, he wasn't sure why he had resisted. He even
felt sorry at the time that he was defending himself. It felt
somehow like an affront to his competency, to his manhood, for
her to suggest he couldn't handle a problem when it arose, that he
should prevent every possible problem, as if he were a clumsy oaf.
That's what rankled. She knew he could fix damn near anything.
She'd argued, what, that Morgan was in denial? Morgan couldn't
quite remember. Or understand. What would he be in denial
about—the baby coming? He was bursting with joy about that.
The year 2000? How did baby clothes fit into that? She'd sniped
something about him never planning. He'd gently argued that
he'd already set the clock so precisely he hated to fiddle with it.
The VCR was only symbolic, after all. Why did she act like the fate
of the world hinged on it? Probably a pregnancy thing. He
shrugged. She'd relented: Okay, have your adventure! Wait to see
if it'll blink. He knew that wasn't the end of it, but it felt good to
take her words at face value, so he could enjoy the day. They'd
sort things out tomorrow. If she still had any issues to sort out.
With now less than five minutes of 1999 to go, he reveled in the
eager tingle.
"Morgan? Morgan, sweetie, what time do you want to open
the champagne? It's almost midnight." Desiree called out from a
throng on the balcony. A wedge of the city of Manukau spread out
below them in a sea of shimmering lights on a warm, magnolia-scented summer breeze. Sitting on a chaise lounge to rest her back,
she looked to Morgan like a vision in a painting; Woman in White
Dress on Park Bench, Brushing Honey Blond Hair out of Kind,
Gray Eyes. Well, maybe that was a bit long for a title. In the
distance toward Auckland, lights of small party yachts and
powerboats glistened on Manukau Harbor, haven to the same gay
laughter and giddy anticipation. The sky was clear and starry, and
free of the planes they could usually see taking off or landing so
that even the airport seemed to hold its breath. "Sweetie?"
"Got it covered, hon." Morgan returned to his conversation.
He rolled his eyes by way of apology to his guests, feeling as if she
had inadvertently exposed a weakness in him, and thus, in their
hospitality. "She's getting her mothering hormones." Morgan
winked to the clump of guests around him, smug in the knowledge
that—he'd computed earlier in the day, to appease Desiree's
unease about his lack of planning—he could wait until 11:57 before
uncorking the champagne. Ensuring maximal freshness, all that.
He'd get out an old, wheeled TV stand from the closet and place
the glasses on it like open-mouthed baby chicks waiting to be fed.
He could then wheel through the crowd at the dramatic moment,
a master champagne deliverer.
Morgan looked at Desiree out of the corner of his eye. She'd
been crabby all day, unusual for her; and aloof at the party.
Morgan chalked it up to wanting to avoid Jennifer La Duca.
Axton's entire team was here at the party, on so-called Millennium
Watch in case they were beepered for Y2K problems (of which
Morgan was certain there would be none, and had lobbied to have
everyone assemble at his party instead of at the office; fixing
software that controlled shipping manifests could wait until
Monday, surely). Jennifer La Duca, with her Sinead O'Connor
look, unfortunately reminded Desiree of a girl she'd known who'd
died of cancer in junior high. Desiree had never forgiven herself
for listening to the rumors that the girl had a communicable
disease that made your hair fall out; she'd stood idly by as other
girls had roughed her up. Storm Lake, Iowa in the 70s had not
been an enlightened town. Only later, when the girl was on her
deathbed, as Desiree told the story, had they become friends.
Morgan sighed. Nothing he could do about it. He hoped Desiree
would find some way to enjoy the party.
"So, you guys don't seem to have much baby stuff around.
Isn't the baby due soon?" Riki asked.
"February 29th, if you can believe it," Morgan said. "And
yeah, we have to get on the stick about clothes and all that. First
we thought we'd be back in San Francisco, so we didn't rush,
'cause, you know, we'd just have to lug it all home. Then my
contract got extended a year, but we figured, Let's pretend we're
not pregnant until after the New Year's party. One last blast of
freedom, so to speak. And here we are."
"Truth be told, I'm surprised you didn't invite us all to South
Island to climb Mt. Cook or something. A party at your flat is so...
normal. Not losing your edge, are you, old man?"
Everyone laughed, and Morgan circulated, restlessly. He was
antsy for midnight. Desiree liked the planning, enjoyed the
waiting, but not Morgan. Climbing Mt. Cook! Now there was
something he'd have to do before they left New Zealand. But
climbing it wasn't enough. Morgan liked to wring the sponge of
life dry for all it held. He envisioned adventures on the way. He
daydreamed they'd claw to the top, unpack a tin of baked beans,
and find—they'd forgotten the can opener! He'd have to
improvise, chipping away at a rock outcropping to make a crude
axe. No, they'd already have picks. Do something unique, then,
group oriented. Save a member of the expedition who'd fallen in
a ravine by forming a human ladder, that's it. "America's about
teamwork," his father always said. He would thank his father
when they interviewed him for his heroism and quick thinking.
Axton's quip about Armageddon gnawed at Morgan. He tried
to dismiss it, dismiss Axton himself really, but it required
conscious effort. The government never said there was a problem,
so all will be well, he reassured himself. I'm not being naive, he
thought; pound for pound, the U.S. government is the best form of
government now or ever. If there were about to be major chaos in
less than five minutes, they would only keep it quiet for good
reason. They'd have planned for it. Not to mention, New Zealand
said they were even more well prepared than the U.S. Morgan felt
better.
Snatches of conversation wafted on the air.
"...two thousand years..."
"This is the future?"
"...lots of water and canned food..."
"As a kid in 1975..."
"...heard Hezbollah terrorists will take advantage of the
chaos..."
"...technically it's 2001..."
All the while, the guests stole looks at the VCR as if their
probing eyes could tell whether, instead of keeping perfect time at
the stroke of the new millennium, it would lose its mind and blink
12:00... 12:00... 12:00...
"Morgan!" It was Desiree.
He looked at his watch. 11:58. "Ooh, right!" Morgan wheeled
around Angeline and snagged the first bottle of Dom Perignon
from the platoon of bottles standing at attention by the microwave.
He tore the foil with his thumbnail, cranked off the wire with a
jerk, started to ease out the cork and pop! Dom geysered, foamed
over the lip. "Whoa, look at that! Where are the glasses!"
"Don't waste it!" Lai said. "Here, I'll pour, you open another."
Morgan undressed the next Dom, and the next. He handed
open bottles, production-line, to Lai. She continued her
conversation with Angeline Lansdale while she poured. "I agree,
there are a lot of chips out there, but most aren't date-sensitive.
That's not the real problem. It's all the custom software that's a
problem. It's kind of a dirty little secret in the business, but a lot
of companies have lost the source code—the human readable,
master copies of the programs they need in order to make changes.
Or they're so old they won't build correctly because the other
software around them has changed. People say 'we'll be ready' but
there've been so many heads in the sand that..."
Morgan's attention drifted away. He'd be so glad to see all the
doomsayers proved wrong.
Desiree called again. "Morgan?"
"Blast." 11:59. "Coming!" Then: "Can you scoot that cart
around the room, Tom? Thanks a bunch." Morgan scooped up a
glass of Dom and a Dom-lite, as he called the alcohol-free
sparkling grape juice.
"That's the fake stuff, right?" Desiree double-checked with a
motherly smile as he joined her on the balcony. She sat on the
edge of a lounge chair, seven months of their son warm in her
belly.
"Of course! I'm not that daft," Morgan joked. He helped her
up, so they could toast and watch the VCR flick over the new
millennium. Morgan waved his hand for the crowd's attention.
"Champagne is—" he announced, then quickly located the cart
where Tom had wheeled and abandoned it—"over there."
"Hey mate," Chuck Guthrie called out in Georgia drawl faking
an Australian accent. "Whyn't ye have Times Square on the telly?
Dick Clark, the descending apple... They're supposed to have
twenty-four screens, one for each time zone... Why are y'all
looking at me like that?"
"Who's running the contest for most clueless American?"
Macky Drew said with a laugh. "Time Square won't get to see the
future for another seventeen hours... mate. Do the words
International Date Line ring a bell? You flew over it a hair before
you landed. 'First into Tomorrow,' that's some Kiwi company's
motto."
"Okay, everyone!" Morgan announced, holding up his watch.
"Almost time. In twenty seconds." He and Desiree intertwined
arms and glasses. "Ten... Nine..."
Couples jockeyed into position, readying for kisses, toasts, and
best views of the VCR's symbolic clock. "To the Twenty-frist
Millennium!" someone shouted, sounding pleasantly soused.
"Two... One... Happy New Year!"
Amidst a cacophony of shouts, honking noisemakers, clinking
glasses, kissing, tossed confetti, car horns below and other
oddments of celebration, the VCR quietly and uneventfully did not
blink.
And there it was. Morgan let out the breath he didn't know he
was holding. The world didn't explode. Civilization still twinkled
beyond the balcony. He thought back to how ridiculous his
argument with Desiree had been. It hadn't hurt to wait to get baby
clothes.
After more minutes of clinking and hugging and handshaking,
Morgan worked his way to the shoebox of "survives" predictors.
The VCR meekly displayed 12:03. "Okay, okay, everyone! The
winner of our little contest is..." He averted his eyes and
rummaged amongst the papers like a rat scritching in a box.
"Stir 'em up good. No fair picking from the top!" Riki
shouted.
"The winner is..." He held the folded paper up tantalizingly.
The lights blinked out.
Below them, Manukau went dark.
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