The Book of Chronicles · Chapter 3

The Flood That Did Not Come

1. 1

   Now in the days when memory was dear, and a byte of core was costlier than a scribe's wage, the Engineers wrote the year with two digits only, saying: Surely this program shall be replaced before the century endeth.

   See also Genesis 44:1

2. 2

   And the program was not replaced. And it begat a program, and that program begat a thousand programs, and every one kept the year in two digits, for so had their fathers done.

3. 3

   And in the year 1971 there arose a prophet named Bemer, who cried aloud: When 99 is followed by 00, the Machine shall reckon the new age older than the old. And the managers heard him, and said: That is a problem for another budget.

4. 4

   And the years drew nigh unto 99, and the bankers perceived that a mortgage of thirty years, written in the year 70, was set to end before it had begun.

5. 5

   Then the kings of the earth were afraid, and they sent unto the elders of COBOL, who had gone down to Florida to dwell among the golf courses, saying: Come back, for there is none left who can read the scrolls.

6. 6

   And the elders came, and opened the scrolls, and found written therein: TEMPORARY FIX. REMOVE BY 1985.

7. 7

   And these are the labours of the faithful: they widened the field unto four digits; and where they could not widen it, they made a window, saying, If the year be less than fifty, it belongeth to the two thousands; and they tested, and tested again, and wrote it all in a binder that no man readeth.

8. 8

   And the silver spent upon the remediation was about three hundred billion, as the chroniclers reckon; and the fearful bought tinned beans and generators, and the prophets of doom sold many books.

   See also Chronicles 37:14

9. 9

   And it came to pass on the last night of the year 1999, that the Engineers sat in the war rooms with pizza and pagers, and watched the midnight pass over Kiribati, and over Auckland, and over Tokyo, and over every land in its appointed time zone.

   See also Psalms 13:7

10. 10

    And the planes fell not, and the lights went not out, and the banks forgot not the money; only the website of the Naval Observatory proclaimed the year 19100, and certain slot machines in Delaware fell silent.

11. 11

    And the people arose in the morning and saw that the world stood, and they said: Behold, it was all for nothing. And they asked for their silver back.

    See also Genesis 32:1

12. 12

    And the Engineers answered them not, for there is no dashboard for the disaster that did not happen.

13. 13

    Therefore it is said: The flood that is prevented is called a hoax, and the flood that is not prevented is called negligence, and the Engineer is blamed in either case.

14. 14

    Now the rest of the acts of the elders, and all the patches that they made, are they not written in the version control? Nay, for there was none; they are written on a floppy disk in a drawer in Ohio.

15. 15

    And the faithful keep watch still, for it is written that in the year 2038, on the nineteenth day of the first month, at three hours and fourteen minutes and seven seconds, the signed integer of thirty-two bits shall overflow, and time shall return unto the year 1901.

    See also Genesis 14:14 · Job 4:9

16. 16

    And the managers have heard it, and said: That is a problem for another budget.

The Book of Chronicles, Chapter 3:1–16.