Y1K

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An Article from a London Newspaper (circa 999 A.D.) Canterbury, England.

A.D. 999 An atmosphere close to panic prevails today throughout Europe

as the millennial year 1000 approaches, bringing with it the so-called

"Y1K Bug," a menace which, until recently, hardly anyone had ever heard

of. Prophets of doom are warning that the entire fabric of Western

Civilization, based as it now is upon monastic computations, could

collapse, and that there is simply not enough time left to fix the

problem. Just how did this disaster-in-the-making ever arise? Why did no

one anticipate that a change from a three-digit to a four-digit year

would throw into total disarray all liturgical chants and all metrical

verse in which any date is mentioned? Every formulaic hymn, prayer,

ceremony, and incantation dealing with dated events will have to be

re-written to accommodate three extra syllables. All tabular

chronologies with three-space year columns, maintained for generations

by scribes using carefully hand-ruled lines on vellum sheets, will now

have to be converted to four-space columns, at enormous cost. In the

meantime, the validity of every official event, from baptisms to

burials, from confirmations to coronations, may be called into question.

"We should have seen it coming ," says Brother Cedric of St. Michael

Abbey, here in Canterbury. "What worries me most is that THOUSAND

contains the word THOU, which occurs in nearly all our prayers, and of

course always refers to God. Using it now in the name of the year will

seem almost blasphemous, and is bound to cause terrible confusion. Of

course, we could always use Latin, but that might be even worse -- The

Latin word for Thousand is Mille which is the same as the Latin for

mile. We won't know whether we are talking about time or distance!"

Stonemasons are already reported threatening to demand a proportional

pay increase for having to carve an extra numeral in all dates on

tombstones, cornerstones and monuments. Together with its inevitable

ripple effects, this alone could plunge the hitherto-stable medieval

economy into chaos. A conference of clerics has been called at

Winchester to discuss the entire issue, but doomsayers are convinced

that the matter is now one of personal survival. Many families, in

expectation of the worst, are stocking up on holy water and indulgences.