The Book of the Prophets · Chapter 1

The Vision of the Year 2038

1. 1

   The vision of the Prophet, which he saw concerning the Epoch, in the days when time_t was thirty-two bits wide, and signed.

   See also Chronicles 3:15 · Genesis 44:15

2. 2

   Hear, O servers, and give ear, O firmware: since the first day of January in the year 1970 have I counted the seconds, one by one, and I have not lost count, save for the leap seconds, which I pretend did not happen.

3. 3

   And the Prophet saw a number written in the heavens, and the number was 2,147,483,647; for it is the greatest that may be held in thirty-one bits, the thirty-second bit being set apart for the sign, that the Engineers might speak of the days before 1970, which no one ever asked of them.

   See also Numbers 1:6

4. 4

   And the voice said unto him: On the nineteenth day of January, in the year 2038, at three hours and fourteen minutes and seven seconds past midnight, Coordinated Universal Time, the count shall be full.

   See also Numbers 3:4 · Job 4:9

5. 5

   And in the second after, the high bit shall turn, and the number shall become negative, and every clock that trusted it shall cry out: It is the thirteenth day of December in the year 1901, at 20:45:52, and all is well.

   See also Edda 2:10 · Numbers 1:7

6. 6

   Woe unto the thermostat in the wall, for it shall believe that the Wright brothers have not yet flown, and it shall schedule the heating accordingly.

   See also Genesis 29:13 · Circuit 61:11

7. 7

   Woe unto the router in the closet, whose vendor hath gone out of business, and whose firmware no hand shall ever flash again; for every certificate shall appear to it as not yet born, and it shall trust no one, and in this alone it shall be wise.

8. 8

   Woe unto the controller in the factory, sealed in epoxy and bolted to the press, for it was certified once in 2009, and the certification forbiddeth that it be changed, even to save it.

9. 9

   Woe unto them that say: It is far off, and I shall be retired; for so said the fathers of the two-digit year, and the Chronicles record that their children paid the consultants.

10. 10

    Behold, the judgment hath come already upon some. In the year 2006 a server set its timeout one billion seconds into the future, and the future passed beyond 2038 and fell into 1901, and the server waited for nothing, and the nothing came at once.

11. 11

    But comfort ye, comfort ye my people: for the Engineers have widened time_t to sixty-four bits, and the kernel hath carried it even unto the thirty-two-bit machines, and the distributions have rebuilt their packages by the thousand, and the build farms were hot for many days.

12. 12

    And the sixty-four-bit count shall not overflow for two hundred and ninety-two billion years, which is some twenty times the age of the universe; and the sun shall go out first, and that is a hardware problem.

    See also Genesis 3:13

13. 13

    Therefore repent while the seconds remain. Search thy code for the int that holdeth a time, and the database column whose TIMESTAMP endeth in 2038, and the file format that saveth four bytes and calleth it a date.

14. 14

    And set thy clocks forward to test the end of days, in a sandbox and not in production; for whosoever moveth the production clock shall see every session expire at once, and shall have his own small apocalypse ahead of schedule.

15. 15

    Every clock that counteth in finite bits hath already written the date of its own death; blessed is the Engineer who readeth it before the clock does.

    See also Numbers 1:6

The Book of the Prophets, Chapter 1:1–15.