by Mark Joseph
Denise Charlotte Mathews was a checker, not a computer expert, although she spent all day working with a computer that sped the flow of commerce through her check stand. On a grand scale of her life’s priorities, the computer ranked below her daughter’s wedding and above the subway. She had no idea how it worked, and didn’t care any more than she cared how her TV worked. Computers were a fact of life, and Denise had no problem with that. She had a PC at home in Queens and loved to log onto the Internet and research flowers for her garden. She grew roses, and paid honest money for her American Beauties by working a day shift at the supermarket where her entire existence depended on the proper functioning of a computer. At 10:13 A.M. her computer failed.
Denise lifted her eyes to the mezzanine at the far end of the store and picked up the phone. Her voice echoed through the public address system, “Computer is down. Manager, please.”
When Spillman heard the announcement, his heart sank. Turning to his keyboard, he deftly called up a program that allowed his screen to duplicate Denise’s register, and then another program that was supposed to disconnect her terminal from the system and then reconnect without the error. It didn’t work. He couldn’t disconnect.
“System error. System error.”
“I can pay cash,” the next customer in line said to Denise. “I just want to take my bananas and Cheerios home for breakfast.”
“Sorry. I can’t make change. I can’t even open the drawer.”
“I have exact change, or close enough.”
Smiling, determined to be pleasant, Denise said, “Sure, go ahead,” and put the bananas on the scale. The machine failed to weigh the fruit, and the laser refused to read the cereal’s bar code.
“Nothing’s working,” she said. “This never happened before. The scale always works.”
“Three eighty-five for the Cheerios and, say, a buck and a quarter for the bananas? How’s that?” said the customer.
A gruff voice from the rear of the line piped up, “Take his money and let him go, lady. Jeez. I gotta get to work.”
People continued to enter the store, the lines grew longer, and a little girl started to cry. “Mommy! I have to go!”
“All right, dear. I’ll have to ask where it is.”
The young mother and child left the line and were approaching the check stand when the checker in the next stand turned around and exclaimed, “Hey, Denise, my register just went down, too.”
Right down the line each of the 24 checkers in sequence punched keys, banged on their machines, recited incantations and rolled their eyes. All the registers were frozen, and all the checkers reached for their phones.
“Excuse me, but where is the ladies’ room?”
From the back of the store, the ominous sound of running feet welled up from the bakery department, then shouts in Spanish and in English. Two security guards raced past the check stands, heading for the disturbance.
“The ladies’ room is on the right by customer service,” Denise said to the woman as she reached for her phone. “But if I were you, I’d take your daughter and get out of here.”
From upstairs, Spillman saw the guards running through the store when his phone rang again.
“Yes?”
“Mr. Spillman, this is Denise, and I’m in check stand one this morning. All the registers are down, and we don’t know what to do. Even the scales don’t work.”
Before he could answer, Amanda walked into his office and announced that all three computer terminals in her department were down. She couldn’t open the safe.
“What do you mean, all three?”
“Inventory, payroll and benefits, and operations, all blank, Jon. They’re dead.”
“Holy Moses.”
The assistant manager smiled. “There’s a guy outside with a sign that says JESUS IS COMING TONIGHT. Should we wait and ask for divine help?”
“I thought they took that guy away yesterday.”
“He’s back. Every nut case in the city is in the streets. The news is growing more horrifying by the minute. They closed the airports. The stock exchange didn’t even open.”
“None of that matters,” Spillman said. “We have our own problems to deal with right now. The damned card verifiers have gone haywire and some kids are causing trouble,” Spillman said. “It’s a fucking implosion.”
“Can’t you get the verifier controls up on your screen?” Amanda asked.
“No,” Spillman answered. “I tried.”
“What can we do?” Amanda’s helpless question sounded like a prayer.
Spillman shook his head and bit his lip. Decisive, the captain of his ship, he barked, “Call Jersey. Call headquarters in Pleasanton. If they don’t know what’s going on, we’ll have to close the store. Maurice over in Jersey thinks it Y2K. Call him.”
“Mr. Spillman,” the telephone said a few inches from his ear, “are you still there?”
“Yes, Denise. Tell the customers our system is down. We should have everything up and running in about fifteen minutes.”
“Oh, God. Fifteen minutes is like forever when it’s like this. People are pissed.”
“I know. The people is a beast, right? Pass the word to the other checkers. Tell them to be courteous but firm. Tell customers to just leave their carts and exit the store. Tell the guards to stop letting people in.”
Days later, the supermarket manager would come to think that if he had possessed a godlike ability to freeze time and space, he would have done it right there. Before his orders could be executed, Spillman and his assistant watched as the scene unfolded on the floor below. As Denise huddled the checkers together in front of the check stands, two teenaged girls with armfuls of beer and chips burst through the express line and broke for the doors at the north end of the store, a security guard in hot pursuit. A wild chase zigzagged through startled shoppers and grocery carts and stacks of Presto logs. At the doors the girls dropped their loot and sprinted outside, leaving the guard gasping for breath. With the commotion at the north end and no checkers at the registers, a man in a sport coat and tie pushed his loaded cart right through the check stand and out the south doors. Following suit, the next customer in line had the presence of mind to reach over the counter and grab a handful of plastic bags before pushing her cart onto the sidewalk. Behind her, two colorful Dominican gangstas, realizing that security had momentarily lapsed, walked over to a splendid display of sparkling wines, loaded their cart with champagne and headed for the doors.
“Hey,” shouted a burly female guard, finally noticing the beeline of casual looters. “Hey!”
One of the gangstas stopped and with perfect form let fly a champagne bottle that zipped through the air like a Joe Namath pass and caught the guard square in the chest. As she went down with a scream, the bottle exploded and the violent noise instantly caused the first wave of panic to ripple through the front of the store. Suddenly, people stampeded toward both sets of doors only to collide with others coming in, causing more panic, pushing, shoving, screaming and fistfights. In a matter of seconds, the peaceful supermarket transformed into bedlam.
Meanwhile, at the rear of the express line, a man with twelve earrings and heavy tattoos methodically upended his cart and dumped his groceries onto the linoleum. The man in front of him shrieked with glee and dropkicked a can of chicken noodle soup into the glass doors of a dairy case, which shattered. En masse, the checkers bolted for the rear of the store and the back rooms reserved for employees. The security guards regrouped, pushed through the crowd and assaulted the south doors, trying to keep the customers inside from looting and everyone else out. In the mêlée, one of the guards pulled a gun he wasn’t supposed to have from an ankle holster only to have it knocked away and picked up by a customer. With a tremendous crash, a shot demolished 400 square feet of tinted plate glass and sunlight streamed into the front of the store. It was a nice day, bright and clear, with a view of the busy sidewalk and street where chaos reigned as panicked grocery shoppers burst ou
t of the store, overflowed the sidewalks and spilled into the busy intersection.
In front of the store, looking in through the shattered window, the ragged doomsayer with his JESUS IS COMING TONIGHT sign experienced his transcendent millennium moment. The bullet had passed through the window and through his sign, missing his head by inches. He fell to his knees and began to pray as desperate shoppers swirled around him. Two elderly Dominican ladies sank down beside him and joined in his prayers.
Inside, people were racing through the aisles, grabbing groceries as if they’d won the lottery. Screams, wild laughter, more panic, crashes. Spillman watched the entire calamity on his security monitors.
He reached for the phone, not sure who to call first, the police, the distribution manager in Jersey, or the main Safeway computer center in Pleasanton, California, three thousand miles away. Below, a brawl erupted in another line of customers, and he quickly dialed the police.
“911 emergency services. Please hold.”
While he waited impatiently for the police, Spillman phoned the computer center in Pleasanton where technicians were frantically trying to understand what had happened. All their systems were down, and all 1450 stores in the chain were experiencing the same thing, although Spillman’s had the only riot in progress.
Pleasanton had no answers, and it would be several days before Spillman learned what had happened to the computers. One minute past ten in the morning in New York was one minute past midnight on the Island of Guam, fourteen time zones west. Safeway had spent millions to correct its Y2K problems, but most of the money and labor had gone into domestic operations, and small international stores such as the Safeway on Guam had been overlooked. As fireworks welcomed the 21st Century in the island’s capital city of Dededo, the inventory computer in the local Safeway decided it was January 1, 1900, a classic millennium bug error. As the inventory computer on Guam began its nightly routine of reviewing the day’s receipts and ordering fresh goods, it discovered every item it checked was out of date. Perfectly good perishable fruit appeared to the computer to have rotted long ago. Fresh bread was declared stale. Too clever for its own good, the computer began to check random stock and decided everything needed replenishment and proceeded to write an order to restock the entire store. All this information was placed in a single file, and an inattentive clerk attempted to forward the file by satellite to Safeway’s central inventory computer in Pleasanton. The Y2K software and new hardware in Pleasanton did not include an adequate firewall to protect the system from corrupted code entering from outside. No one had thought to run a simple test. When the corrupted code arrived at the central processors in Pleasanton, it trashed the core operating system and $50 million worth of high technology turned to junk. Safeway was out of business.
Technical causes were of no concern to Jonathon Spillman at ten-thirty that morning, only the effects. Computers had created his problem, but human berserkers were trashing his store. The tensions that sometimes suffocated everyone in a congested urban environment compounded by millennium hysteria and multiplied by dozens of barely civilized teenaged hoodlums added up to an explosion of frustration and violence. The Dominicans attacked the gays and the gays fought back. Then out of nowhere a gang of white kids attacked the Dominicans. Within seconds Asians and blacks were involved and all these kids were using goods off the shelves for ammunition and catching innocent citizens in the crossfire. Tomatoes couldn’t do too much damage, but canned goods did. Blood flowed in the aisles.
“Emergency services.”
“I’ve got a riot in my store and I need police and paramedics right now!”
* * *
New Year’s Eve was one of those annual events dreaded by policemen. Too much booze and too little common sense meant feisty drunks and bad car wrecks, but the trouble usually didn’t start until late in the afternoon. Not today, not in the 24th Precinct commanded by Captain Ed Garcia. This morning the precinct lobby on 100th Street already was jammed with excited, frightened people asking in a Babel of languages if New York was going to be blacked out, what they should do if aliens landed in Central Park, and who to sue if their computers stopped working. Of Garcia’s 25 regular day shift officers and 15 extra uniforms, exactly four had a vague understanding of the millennium bug. He’d sent them to a lecture on Y2K, and they’d all slept through the presentation. Now, the baffled cops were unable to answer any of the frantic questions.
A hands-on commander, Garcia was about to go downstairs and restore order himself when the scanner on his desk blasted out a radio call for all units to respond to a riot in progress at the new Safeway on Broadway and 96th.
In a flash he was in the garage and climbing into the first car heading out.
“Go, go, go,” he shouted to the young uniformed driver. “Hit it. What’s your name?”
“Richards,” said the driver. “Happy New Year, Captain,”
“Yeah, thanks, you, too, Officer Richards. Shut up and drive.”
“Yes, sir!”
Radio crackling, siren screaming, engine roaring, tires screeching, the blue-and-white Ford flew down 100th Street to Broadway, scattering pedestrians and pigeons and dodging trucks. Two more cars were right behind, trying to keep up.
Garcia grabbed the microphone and punched the button. “This is Captain Garcia in Unit 1331. I’m on my way to 96th and Broadway. What the hell is happening down there? Anybody.”
The driver was sweating and pulsing his siren as he poked through red lights, trying to make his way through the heavy traffic. AM radio stations with police scanners of their own were broadcasting reports of the riot with live coverage on the way, and several civilians altered their routes to follow the train of police cars.
“Holy shit,” Richards squealed. “These idiots are right behind us.”
“Nothing picks up the day better than a little police action on the fly,” said the captain as he punched the microphone button again. “This is Garcia,” he shouted. “Somebody down there talk to me!”
“This is Unit 1346, Sergeant O’Donahue. We have looters, Captain, and Broadway is blocked. We’re going to have to go in on foot. Jesus, look at that guy. He’s got a case of champagne. Hey, bud, you got a receipt for that? Christ, there’s another one. They’re all over the place. Stop the car, Joe. Hey, fella, hold it right there.”
“O’Donahue, forget the looters,” Garcia shouted into his microphone. “There’s a race riot inside the store. Get in there and shut it down.”
“Yes, sir.”
Riots rarely came out of the blue and never at ten in the morning. The department’s riot squads had orders to assemble at their division headquarters at four that afternoon for New Year’s Eve duty, and most members were still at home asleep.
The police dispatcher sang the song of the city, pulling officers from wherever she could, aware that she was leaving huge tracts of urban terrain open to predators. Garcia could hear an orchestra of sirens approaching 96th and Broadway, but all the streets were blocked. The cops abandoned their cars in the middle of 96th in front of a Blockbuster Video, across the street from the Safeway where a New Year’s Eve party was in full swing on the sidewalk. An uproarious chorus of “Auld Lang Syne” greeted the policemen, provoking a smile from the young cop and an explosion of rage from Captain Garcia.
“Clear the sidewalk,” he shouted. “Tell them to drop those bottles and if anyone gives you any shit, cuff ’em. Richards, come with me.”
Beyond the singers, the sidewalk looked like a tornado had swept across the cement. Groceries had spilled from overturned carts, cars at the curb were smashed, people were wandering around dazed, and one group was kneeling in prayer. Four people had been trampled and one customer had had a heart attack. Most of the looters had fled, and paramedics were on the scene, surrounded by gawkers as they administered CPR to the heart attack victim. The captain quickly marshaled his forces, a dozen uniformed officers, and assigned them the tasks of restoring order and helping the injured.
/> The store was a shambles. The liquor department was a sea of broken glass and foaming liquid. The security guards had five looters cornered in the dental care aisle. Garcia summoned a pair of uniforms, told the guards to put away their illegal guns, and went looking for Spillman.
He found his friend upstairs with Amanda and Denise who were consoling one another with glasses of champagne.
“What happened, Jon?” the captain asked. “What the hell happened?”
Spillman’s face glistened with sweat and his mouth was pulled back in a maniacal grin. For a moment Garcia thought his friend had lost his mind, an understandable turn of events.
“Jon? You okay?”
“You want to know what happened, Ed? The impossible. What was never supposed to happen happened. Have some champagne. Happy New Year.”
Captain Garcia softly repeated his question, “What happened?”
Spillman pointed at a blank computer screen. “Y2K happened,” he said. “The millennium bug”
“Jesus,” Garcia said, wrinkling his nose. “You and Donald talked my ear off about that. You said it would never happen to you.”
“We were wrong,” Spillman said. “If it can happen here, it can happen anywhere.”
“It’s doomsday,” Amanda said. “All our systems are down.”
“But why the riot? Damn, I know why. All the hype, that’s why. I’m going to want your security videotapes.”
“Take anything you want,” Spillman said. “Everyone else did.”
He swallowed a glass of champagne and muttered, “Shit. They just went crazy, ordinary people turned into maniacs.”
“It was the kids,” Denise said, spitting out the words. “Savages.”
Garcia, who saw violence and its aftermath every day, studied his friend and the two store employees. Jonathon Spillman was brash, Jewish, intelligent, as cynical and jaded as any New Yorker and usually unfazed by anything, but he was rattled. Amanda was pale and near tears, and Denise looked like she just wanted to go home.
