Peter, who managed the office, tried not to roll his eyes. His boss
never had got a grip on time, living `outside' it as he did.
"Y-2-K", he said slowly. "Year Two Thousand".
Still his boss looked
blank.
"The year Two Thousand?" he repeated. "That was... billions of
years ago. Not long after the Big Bang."
"No, no, no," said Peter. "Two
thousand years after Jesus was born on earth."
"Oh! But didn't that
happen in - what did they call it - 1996?"
"Probably."
"So what's
the big deal?"
"Well, the Year Two Thousand - which, you're right, is
actually 2,004 years after Jesus' birth - is really bugging people down
there," Peter explained, glad to be getting his boss back on the
subject.
"How so?"
"Well, they're worried their computers are going
to foul up - there's a glitch programmed into a lot of them".
"The
people?" his boss asked, alarmed.
"No, not the people, the
computers".
"Well, why did they do something that silly?"
Peter just
looked at his boss. Surely it was just a rhetorical question. His boss
caught the look.
"I guess you're right," he acknowledged. "They have a
unique proclivity in all my creation for doing stupid
things."
"Anyhow," Peter continued, "this glitch - they're calling it a
`bug' - could throw all their computer-managed systems into chaos: lights
going out, planes falling out of the sky, bank records destroyed - even
televisions may go on the blink."
"Then it sounds really
serious."
"Potentially it is."
"So, what's our problem?"
"Well,
we may not be Y2K compliant," Peter explained. "You see, if things go
really wrong down there, we could be seeing a lot more people lining up at
the gates."
"Pearly or Bill?" the boss asked, enjoying his divine sense
of humour.
Peter ignored the joke but made a note to fire his boss's
latest gag writer.
"And if things only go a little bit wrong, we're
going to have a lot more angry people down there."
"So, tell me some
good news," the boss sighed.
"Sorry. It gets worse. There are people
down there speaking for you who are using Y2K to proclaim the end of the
world."
The boss was aghast. "Again? You're joking?"
Peter shook his
head. "They're making a fortune in books, tapes and seminars. The whole
thing's a great money spinner. Some of them, apparently, even believe what
they're saying."
"And they're attaching my name to it?" Peter
nodded.
"These same people do understand that I de-bugged the human
condition - when was it?" the boss asked, lost again in the limitation of
time.
"About 2,000 years ago," Peter confirmed.
"Why aren't they
pushing that message?" the boss demanded.
"Well, the marketing types
saw this as a bit of a window and, well, there's a natural human tendency
to look at the numbers... "
"You mean like Lotto?"
"Well, that too,"
Peter agreed, "but I was thinking more of years: remember the turn of the
last century?" "Not off the top of my head," the boss
admitted.
"Technology wasn't even a word, but people were sure the
Bible was predicting the end."
"I do remember the 990s AD," the boss
said. "That was madness! Where do they get these ideas from?"
"Well,
they say they get it from the Bible."
The boss's face turned purple.
Peter held up his hands defensively.
"I know, I know," he said. "We
know it's not true. We debugged it very carefully."
"So it's Y2K
compliant?"
"Absolutely. It survived Y1K, remember?"
