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A Monstrous Y2K Bug By Solveig Singleton February 3, 1999
It's New Year's Eve 2000 and the news crews are reporting live from downtown. "Welcome to the millenium and CBC Toronto's new Live Satellite Eye on the Megacity. This is reporter Greg Manson. For those viewers whose power has just been restored, the scene we are featuring at the moment is the city Y2K Command Centre on Dundas Street," begins Gary Morton's Y2K-ill You 1650-word short story. Then the fun begins. A strange critter tries to take over the command post. It's half-human, half-amphibian, and all attitude. It's the Y2K bug gone real-life, and it starts by (you expected this, right?) chomping up the partygoers. As short fiction goes, I've read worse -- and there's little down side from reading it, not only because it's short. Is this first piece of Y2K science fiction just for fun, or is it a clever self-parody? For instance, we learn that the monster "does not appear to be of high intelligence, but its path across town to city hall could indicate that it is heading for the centre of government, perhaps to make demands of some sort." Of some sort? Perhaps it's headed to the Small Business Administration
to demand a loan for a Y2K fix, or a cap on its liability for Y2K
disclosures, or off to court to sue a software company. Somebody please
stop it. Y2k has spawned monsters indeed -- a sickening new breed of lawyer-lobbyist.
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