"c61" - читать интересную книгу автора (Burt Andrew - Noontide Night)

8:30 P.M., Saturday, January 1, 2000
Manukau, New Zealand

Rome was burning. The fire suppression system in the Sistine Chapel thought it had been turned off for maintenance. The note the firebomber taped to the Holy Door in St. Peter's Basilica said he was the Son of Kaczynski. None of this, his brief manifesto said—citing the shootings of looters in police-crippled Mexico City, the train collision in Berne, the Israeli-Palestinian bloodbath in Jerusalem—none of this would have happened if the Church had not set up a web page on the Internet. But the Church, he said, had aligned itself with the anti-Christ, the Internet. It all must be swept away, he said. The scythe had swept past San Francisco only half an hour before, but the intermittent blackouts and brownouts had been hitting for hours, as the U.S.'s regional grids struggled to cope with the dropouts of entire suppliers because of failed turbine control systems, confused distribution software opening remote transmission breakers, coal conveyor systems that shut themselves down, and the resulting cascade of failures as suppliers struggled to obtain power from neighbors. On top of the high demand from cold weather, some 15% of national capacity was off-line—most of it serving the East coast—because many nuclear plants had been shut down, either for failing to provide the Nuclear Regulatory Commission with the required Y2K certification, or simply to be safe. There were no electrons to spare. Power companies blamed many failures on solar flares. Albeit at the peak of the eleven-year solar cycle, the timing rendered the statements ridiculous. People chose to believe them anyway. Older PCs rebooted to dates of 1980, and, perversely, 1984. Elevators nationwide thought they were out of their maintenance window; they shut down at their first floors. Fire and burglar alarms went off, swamping their communication centers, who couldn't tell real alarms from Y2K shadows. The full effects wouldn't be seen until morning, or even Monday, the radio voice said evenly. Morgan eased away from the group in the hall huddled about the radio and returned bedside to Desiree. "London's under martial law," he said quietly, rubbing at his stubble. "I wish I could talk to Mom and Dad. Have you heard anything about Miami?" Morgan shook his head. "I feel like we're in a war or something," Desiree said. "Like we should be really quiet so the bad guys don't hear us." "Dad used to tell us stories like this about Palermo. When Patton and Montgomery invaded Sicily. Except back then everyone knew who their enemy was, who to hate. They could grab something, grab that hate. Of course, Dad hated that he was stuck on the side who were supposed to hate Patton and the U.S... I hope folks don't start hating programmers." The maternity room was momentarily free from bustling noise or swinging torches. It felt as if their small slice of the world had sighed in relief, having survived a battle, but were resting, uncertain about the rest of the war. Desiree silently patted Morgan's hand. Outside, Manukau was dark again. A few sparkles of light lay scattered across the velvety black—those buildings fortunate enough to have generators, or ships at sea. Which were ships and which were buildings was indistinguishable to the eye. "You know, all that black and white footage of World War Two, or that smudgy color stuff from Vietnam?" Morgan asked. "They always show hustle and action and pain. But I feel like this could be then. That they had peaceful, quiet, almost eerie moments like this. Montgomery could be waiting to land the Eighth Army, right out there," Morgan pointed out the window, toward the coast. "Morgan, how did this happen? You're a programmer. You promised me it would be ok." Morgan shoved his hands deep into his pockets. "I... I guess we buried our heads in the sand, like Lai said last night. I guess we programmers didn't take things seriously enough, didn't give it more than lip service. Nobody wanted to believe this could happen." Morgan shook his head as if to clear out cobwebs. Desiree was leading him down the path to depression. Post-partum blues, of course! He'd almost been suckered in. "But look—it's only been one day, and we're acting like it's game over! This is only a short-term thing. Few days, tops. C'mon, cheer up!" Desiree rolled her eyes. "Oooh! You just won't—" A plump, haggard nurse arrived with a tray of food. They'd somehow managed to include an extra sandwich for Morgan, as word of his heroic generator salvage apparently spread. "You're the mate who fixed the generator, aren't ya?" "Well, I had help, but..." "Sir Howard wants to know if you know anything about steam boilers?" "Sorry, no, I'm really just a programmer." "A programmer! Oh my, I think they need you in the computer room! You've got to come with me immediately!" She grasped his hands and tugged him from the chair. "Hurry." Morgan threw a "what can I do?" shrug to Desiree as the nurse shooed him out the door like a dog. The nurse led Morgan to a close, paper-stacked, windowless office, smelling of stale coffee. A typical computer-geek's burrow. "This is Ralph Stungton, our night-shift computer mate. Mr. Hyland here's a programmer," the nurse said confidingly. "I'll let you two be, so you can fix our wee Koallaby." Morgan wondered what something with the terminally cute name of Koallaby—presumably a cross between a Koala and a Wallaby—had to do with software. He was afraid he'd find out. Stungton was a florid, round faced man. He looked at present like a startled hog. "I, ah, didn't think anyone would find a programmer just lurking about. What luck! Our admissions and medication tracking system is a piece of software by Koallaby. Have you heard of them? They're out of Melbourne." Morgan shook his head. "Sorry." He tried to hide the disgusted smile. Stungton represented that sort of computer geek that came from, as it were, the other side of the tracks. Morgan was the mostly fit, trim-bearded, button-down-collar type. Stungton represented the twinkie-stuffed, clean-shaven but greasy-haired type, who would wear a dirty t-shirt if not required to wear an ill-fitting suit. He probably listed "security guard" on his resume too. From his first words and body language, Morgan instantly knew Stungton was the kind of pathetic wannabe faker who knew less about computers than most users, looked down on them as the Unwashed Masses, and bullshitted his way through people with trivial, nonsensical technobabble. Just like the idiot he'd spent two hours on the phone with tech support last week. How one wrote or fixed programs was as mysterious to them as to the "lusers" they lorded it over like high priests of the buzz word. Despite airs of knowing it all, they had little knowledge how to actually do anything themselves, and simply pestered other companies' tech support lines until someone else gave them an answer; then they collected the credit—and paycheck—with tales of how difficult it was. People very much like Stungton were the ones who gave out worthless "Y2K certification" papers saying all would be well, and, like the snake-oil doctors of the frontier west, jumped trains just ahead of lynch mobs. "No matter," Stungton said, with a sanctimonious smile that confirmed Morgan's opinion. "It's a great package, does In Patient, Out Patient, Blood Bank, Diagnostic, Pharmacy, Operation Theater. Scheduling and what, you know? The works. Only, well, I can't get it to run. It keeps saying '1/1/00 is an invalid date' and won't start. I know what you're thinking—but I've checked to make sure all the cables are tight and I've tried starting it a dozen times. Won't go. Think you can repair it?" Morgan strangled a laugh with a blush of embarrassment. "Excuse me. I, uh..." Perhaps he was misjudging the man. Either that, or he could embarrass this yoyo back to his hole in the wall. "Maybe. What's it written in? Where's the source code?" Stungton shrugged. "Here, have a seat." He stood and offered Morgan the chair. "Everything we have is in this directory." Morgan listed the contents of the directory. Data files, executable programs, configuration files. But, as Morgan had been 99% sure, no source code. "I don't see any source code here. You know, the human-readable version of the program, written in some language like COBOL, BASIC, C++. You don't have that." "Yeah, yeah," Stungton said, nodding. "I wrote a BASIC program once in school. You need source then?" He looked indignant, as if he wanted a real programmer. "Pretty much so," Morgan said, meaning "of course, you idiot" without saying so. As was the case in most industries, twenty percent of the people did eighty percent of the work. Morgan sometimes added, when in an especially cynical mood, that eighty percent of the work was messed up by a different twenty percent of the people. Stungton was in this latter group. Morgan had wondered at first whether bringing up this software was the most important thing Stungton could do for the hospital. He decided it was: It kept the moron out of the way. "You can't just, I dunno, fiddle some file a bit? I heard all's was needed was adding a '19' or a '20' in front of the numbers that need them." Morgan clenched his fist under the desk. He was as bad as the people who thought this was a "virus" that had "invaded" their programs, or held onto the idiotic notion that programmers could just write one program that would go out and fix all the Y2K bugs in one fell swoop, despite the fact that such super-human artificial intelligence was well over a hundred years away. No, Stungton was worse; he should know better. "It's not that simple. You have to have the source code for the program, and the compiler used to translate it to machine code, and whatever other files the programmers' use, which is stuff they don't give to customers. You can't just magically add a couple digits." "Oh." Stungton looked disappointed in Morgan. Morgan wasn't able to give him anything to steal credit for. Stungton's posture assumed the air of He Who Lordeth over. Morgan bristled. He hated that attitude, even if it was from a dweeb. "I could try setting your date back, to January 1st, 1990, for example. Might run then." Morgan set the date, then had Stungton sit down to run the program. "It's started!" The fellow beamed. "Thanks!" Morgan feared the man might assume all was well without testing. "Everything look right?" Stungton plodded through menus one-fingered. "Hmm. I guess. I don't really know the names of the patients out there," he waved toward the wards. "I'm sure it's fine. Thanks for the help!" "Maybe you should check with the admissions nurse, just to be on the safe side," Morgan prodded. With a shrug Stungton called the desk and asked for the names of people who'd checked in the day before. "Huh-uh. No Muriel Thomas. Umm, nobody named Arkoff. Do you have a patient named Trodget? In for a gallbladder. No?" He looked up at Morgan pleadingly. It wasn't many screens until Morgan pointed at the monitor. "There's your problem. 1990 dates. These are patients from 1990." "Ah. So, you can fix that, right?" "I'd have to fix the dates in your data files. But they're a bunch of binary gibberish to humans, so, no, I can't easily fix them. If I had the source code..." Morgan stopped at a sour face from Stungton. "You might be better off deleting everything and re-entering all your data." Stungton frowned. "That'll be a lot of work. Also, how do we tell it about the approved medication dosing regulations that have changed since 1990?" "It keeps a list of approved medications and dosages?" "Yeah." Morgan's stomach twitched. What if someone gave Desiree or Jeremy the wrong medicine, or wrong amount? "I'm not sure this is a such a good idea. I don't know enough about this program, and to be honest, I don't feel comfortable telling you to use it in this condition." "Jolly well for you to say, but what are the doctors going to do? They depend on this." Well, Morgan hoped they'd be able to fix a broken bone or two without software. He couldn't imagine that medicine was that reliant on software; but, who knew. Morgan nodded toward the printer, looking like the hulk of a burnt out car, looted for its paper. "Pencil and paper?" Morgan made his excuses and edged out the door. He was plagued by doubt. Which was the worse evil, paper and pencil mistakes, or old data and malfunctioning software mistakes?

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Chapter 6.1

8:30 P.M., Saturday, January 1, 2000
Manukau, New Zealand

Rome was burning. The fire suppression system in the Sistine Chapel thought it had been turned off for maintenance. The note the firebomber taped to the Holy Door in St. Peter's Basilica said he was the Son of Kaczynski. None of this, his brief manifesto said—citing the shootings of looters in police-crippled Mexico City, the train collision in Berne, the Israeli-Palestinian bloodbath in Jerusalem—none of this would have happened if the Church had not set up a web page on the Internet. But the Church, he said, had aligned itself with the anti-Christ, the Internet. It all must be swept away, he said. The scythe had swept past San Francisco only half an hour before, but the intermittent blackouts and brownouts had been hitting for hours, as the U.S.'s regional grids struggled to cope with the dropouts of entire suppliers because of failed turbine control systems, confused distribution software opening remote transmission breakers, coal conveyor systems that shut themselves down, and the resulting cascade of failures as suppliers struggled to obtain power from neighbors. On top of the high demand from cold weather, some 15% of national capacity was off-line—most of it serving the East coast—because many nuclear plants had been shut down, either for failing to provide the Nuclear Regulatory Commission with the required Y2K certification, or simply to be safe. There were no electrons to spare. Power companies blamed many failures on solar flares. Albeit at the peak of the eleven-year solar cycle, the timing rendered the statements ridiculous. People chose to believe them anyway. Older PCs rebooted to dates of 1980, and, perversely, 1984. Elevators nationwide thought they were out of their maintenance window; they shut down at their first floors. Fire and burglar alarms went off, swamping their communication centers, who couldn't tell real alarms from Y2K shadows. The full effects wouldn't be seen until morning, or even Monday, the radio voice said evenly. Morgan eased away from the group in the hall huddled about the radio and returned bedside to Desiree. "London's under martial law," he said quietly, rubbing at his stubble. "I wish I could talk to Mom and Dad. Have you heard anything about Miami?" Morgan shook his head. "I feel like we're in a war or something," Desiree said. "Like we should be really quiet so the bad guys don't hear us." "Dad used to tell us stories like this about Palermo. When Patton and Montgomery invaded Sicily. Except back then everyone knew who their enemy was, who to hate. They could grab something, grab that hate. Of course, Dad hated that he was stuck on the side who were supposed to hate Patton and the U.S... I hope folks don't start hating programmers." The maternity room was momentarily free from bustling noise or swinging torches. It felt as if their small slice of the world had sighed in relief, having survived a battle, but were resting, uncertain about the rest of the war. Desiree silently patted Morgan's hand. Outside, Manukau was dark again. A few sparkles of light lay scattered across the velvety black—those buildings fortunate enough to have generators, or ships at sea. Which were ships and which were buildings was indistinguishable to the eye. "You know, all that black and white footage of World War Two, or that smudgy color stuff from Vietnam?" Morgan asked. "They always show hustle and action and pain. But I feel like this could be then. That they had peaceful, quiet, almost eerie moments like this. Montgomery could be waiting to land the Eighth Army, right out there," Morgan pointed out the window, toward the coast. "Morgan, how did this happen? You're a programmer. You promised me it would be ok." Morgan shoved his hands deep into his pockets. "I... I guess we buried our heads in the sand, like Lai said last night. I guess we programmers didn't take things seriously enough, didn't give it more than lip service. Nobody wanted to believe this could happen." Morgan shook his head as if to clear out cobwebs. Desiree was leading him down the path to depression. Post-partum blues, of course! He'd almost been suckered in. "But look—it's only been one day, and we're acting like it's game over! This is only a short-term thing. Few days, tops. C'mon, cheer up!" Desiree rolled her eyes. "Oooh! You just won't—" A plump, haggard nurse arrived with a tray of food. They'd somehow managed to include an extra sandwich for Morgan, as word of his heroic generator salvage apparently spread. "You're the mate who fixed the generator, aren't ya?" "Well, I had help, but..." "Sir Howard wants to know if you know anything about steam boilers?" "Sorry, no, I'm really just a programmer." "A programmer! Oh my, I think they need you in the computer room! You've got to come with me immediately!" She grasped his hands and tugged him from the chair. "Hurry." Morgan threw a "what can I do?" shrug to Desiree as the nurse shooed him out the door like a dog. The nurse led Morgan to a close, paper-stacked, windowless office, smelling of stale coffee. A typical computer-geek's burrow. "This is Ralph Stungton, our night-shift computer mate. Mr. Hyland here's a programmer," the nurse said confidingly. "I'll let you two be, so you can fix our wee Koallaby." Morgan wondered what something with the terminally cute name of Koallaby—presumably a cross between a Koala and a Wallaby—had to do with software. He was afraid he'd find out. Stungton was a florid, round faced man. He looked at present like a startled hog. "I, ah, didn't think anyone would find a programmer just lurking about. What luck! Our admissions and medication tracking system is a piece of software by Koallaby. Have you heard of them? They're out of Melbourne." Morgan shook his head. "Sorry." He tried to hide the disgusted smile. Stungton represented that sort of computer geek that came from, as it were, the other side of the tracks. Morgan was the mostly fit, trim-bearded, button-down-collar type. Stungton represented the twinkie-stuffed, clean-shaven but greasy-haired type, who would wear a dirty t-shirt if not required to wear an ill-fitting suit. He probably listed "security guard" on his resume too. From his first words and body language, Morgan instantly knew Stungton was the kind of pathetic wannabe faker who knew less about computers than most users, looked down on them as the Unwashed Masses, and bullshitted his way through people with trivial, nonsensical technobabble. Just like the idiot he'd spent two hours on the phone with tech support last week. How one wrote or fixed programs was as mysterious to them as to the "lusers" they lorded it over like high priests of the buzz word. Despite airs of knowing it all, they had little knowledge how to actually do anything themselves, and simply pestered other companies' tech support lines until someone else gave them an answer; then they collected the credit—and paycheck—with tales of how difficult it was. People very much like Stungton were the ones who gave out worthless "Y2K certification" papers saying all would be well, and, like the snake-oil doctors of the frontier west, jumped trains just ahead of lynch mobs. "No matter," Stungton said, with a sanctimonious smile that confirmed Morgan's opinion. "It's a great package, does In Patient, Out Patient, Blood Bank, Diagnostic, Pharmacy, Operation Theater. Scheduling and what, you know? The works. Only, well, I can't get it to run. It keeps saying '1/1/00 is an invalid date' and won't start. I know what you're thinking—but I've checked to make sure all the cables are tight and I've tried starting it a dozen times. Won't go. Think you can repair it?" Morgan strangled a laugh with a blush of embarrassment. "Excuse me. I, uh..." Perhaps he was misjudging the man. Either that, or he could embarrass this yoyo back to his hole in the wall. "Maybe. What's it written in? Where's the source code?" Stungton shrugged. "Here, have a seat." He stood and offered Morgan the chair. "Everything we have is in this directory." Morgan listed the contents of the directory. Data files, executable programs, configuration files. But, as Morgan had been 99% sure, no source code. "I don't see any source code here. You know, the human-readable version of the program, written in some language like COBOL, BASIC, C++. You don't have that." "Yeah, yeah," Stungton said, nodding. "I wrote a BASIC program once in school. You need source then?" He looked indignant, as if he wanted a real programmer. "Pretty much so," Morgan said, meaning "of course, you idiot" without saying so. As was the case in most industries, twenty percent of the people did eighty percent of the work. Morgan sometimes added, when in an especially cynical mood, that eighty percent of the work was messed up by a different twenty percent of the people. Stungton was in this latter group. Morgan had wondered at first whether bringing up this software was the most important thing Stungton could do for the hospital. He decided it was: It kept the moron out of the way. "You can't just, I dunno, fiddle some file a bit? I heard all's was needed was adding a '19' or a '20' in front of the numbers that need them." Morgan clenched his fist under the desk. He was as bad as the people who thought this was a "virus" that had "invaded" their programs, or held onto the idiotic notion that programmers could just write one program that would go out and fix all the Y2K bugs in one fell swoop, despite the fact that such super-human artificial intelligence was well over a hundred years away. No, Stungton was worse; he should know better. "It's not that simple. You have to have the source code for the program, and the compiler used to translate it to machine code, and whatever other files the programmers' use, which is stuff they don't give to customers. You can't just magically add a couple digits." "Oh." Stungton looked disappointed in Morgan. Morgan wasn't able to give him anything to steal credit for. Stungton's posture assumed the air of He Who Lordeth over. Morgan bristled. He hated that attitude, even if it was from a dweeb. "I could try setting your date back, to January 1st, 1990, for example. Might run then." Morgan set the date, then had Stungton sit down to run the program. "It's started!" The fellow beamed. "Thanks!" Morgan feared the man might assume all was well without testing. "Everything look right?" Stungton plodded through menus one-fingered. "Hmm. I guess. I don't really know the names of the patients out there," he waved toward the wards. "I'm sure it's fine. Thanks for the help!" "Maybe you should check with the admissions nurse, just to be on the safe side," Morgan prodded. With a shrug Stungton called the desk and asked for the names of people who'd checked in the day before. "Huh-uh. No Muriel Thomas. Umm, nobody named Arkoff. Do you have a patient named Trodget? In for a gallbladder. No?" He looked up at Morgan pleadingly. It wasn't many screens until Morgan pointed at the monitor. "There's your problem. 1990 dates. These are patients from 1990." "Ah. So, you can fix that, right?" "I'd have to fix the dates in your data files. But they're a bunch of binary gibberish to humans, so, no, I can't easily fix them. If I had the source code..." Morgan stopped at a sour face from Stungton. "You might be better off deleting everything and re-entering all your data." Stungton frowned. "That'll be a lot of work. Also, how do we tell it about the approved medication dosing regulations that have changed since 1990?" "It keeps a list of approved medications and dosages?" "Yeah." Morgan's stomach twitched. What if someone gave Desiree or Jeremy the wrong medicine, or wrong amount? "I'm not sure this is a such a good idea. I don't know enough about this program, and to be honest, I don't feel comfortable telling you to use it in this condition." "Jolly well for you to say, but what are the doctors going to do? They depend on this." Well, Morgan hoped they'd be able to fix a broken bone or two without software. He couldn't imagine that medicine was that reliant on software; but, who knew. Morgan nodded toward the printer, looking like the hulk of a burnt out car, looted for its paper. "Pencil and paper?" Morgan made his excuses and edged out the door. He was plagued by doubt. Which was the worse evil, paper and pencil mistakes, or old data and malfunctioning software mistakes?


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