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Year
2000 Called Off (Washington, D.C., Sept. 29, 1999) -- The arrival of the new millennium will be delayed by at least a year in this country through an executive order issued today by President Bill Clinton. The order directs that all of America, on Oct. 31, 1999, along with turning back clocks by an hour to mark the annual end of daylight savings time, reset all devices recognizing dates to Oct. 30, 1998. The order applies to individuals, businesses, organizations, corporations and "any other entities within the national boundaries of, including possessions of, the United States of America." "If we can fool ourselves twice each year into thinking that we have gone forward or backward in time by an hour," observed John Koskinen, chairman of the President's Council on Year 2000 (Y2K) Conversion, "we stand a good chance that we can fool our computers, especially iMacs, into 'thinking' that we've gone back in time by a year." The problem is a digital America built on six-number time references -- two each for the day, month and year. For the past 40 to 50 years, the "19" was not needed in the two digits representing the year. When the new millennium arrives, the absent numbers will be missed in a big way by microchips embedded in everything from coffeepots to industrial control systems. Many of these confused devices, suddenly untethered in time, will opt to shut down. "The country simply won't be ready when the clock strikes twelve on Dec. 31, 1999, and we can ill afford to have an 'America offline' situation for even a short period of time," Koskinen continued. "We'll still know what year it is, of course. We just want to keep that information from our computers for a while." A delayed cup of coffee on Jan. 1, 2000, may, at most, produce minor irritability in a hungover homeowner on a New Year's morning quest for a caffeine fix. An electrical power system suddenly told by its date-aware chips that scheduled maintenance has not been performed for approximately a century is going to become very, very upset. "In all likelihood, any mission-critical equipment unprepared for Y2K will simply take itself offline," said a reliable source familiar with the national power utility system. Electrical power generating facilities are regionally linked. When one goes down, the others are signaled to increase their output. If enough plants fail, those that remain may be taken out by the resulting overload. America could face a blackout on a scale never before experienced. Citizens throughout the country could begin the new millennium in homes without heat, light, and most tragically, without reruns of Seinfeld. The prospect of a country deprived of electrical power for an indefinite period has turned many otherwise normal computer industry professionals into wild-eyed survivalists. Some programmers hired to upgrade aging systems for Y2K, became so alarmed that they began building and stocking shelters in remote areas of the country to ride out the expected chaos. "We hope the President's plan to lie our computers works better than some of his other deceptions, but we're staying in the bunkers until at least Oh-one, oh-two, oh-oh," declared Clark Watson, a self-described COBOL tweaker, from his camouflaged and heavily fortified retreat located somewhere in the southern California desert. The President defended the strategy, noting that a "little white lie" is justified if it is told for the greater good of all Americans. He denied that his executive order is merely a ploy to gain another year in the Oval Office. "No one will ever find every embedded microchip, every line of code that needs to be rewritten," noted President Clinton. "If we act properly, we won't look back on this as a headache, sort of the last failed challenge of the 20th century. It will be the first challenge of the 21st century successfully met. That is the American way, and together we can do it." "This isn't going real well, Mike. We need a diversion. Any ideas?" "Well, Mr. President, we still need to address the issue of media terrorists." (SEE FOLLOWING RELATED STORY) Missile
Strikes Aimed (Washington, D.C., Oct. 3, 1999) -- President Bill Clinton, lashing back at the journalists who tormented him throughout his years as chief executive, today launched surprise missile attacks against suspected "media terrorist" strongholds here and in Hollywood. Acting on the orders of their commander-in-chief, land and sea forces fired a total of 169 cruise missiles at the offices of the Washington Post and at the Hollywood hotel suspected to be the meeting site of leading media terrorists. "These strikes were authorized in the face of overwhelming evidence that the Post and those individuals gathering in Hollywood played key roles in bringing my personal life to the attention of the American public during the past several years," President Clinton said in announcing the attacks. "Today, I have struck back." "My target was irresponsible journalism," Clinton said. "This has been a longstanding struggle between presidents in office and the national media, upsetting the delicate balance between executive deception and public disclosure." Clinton said the missile strikes destroyed the Washington Post editorial and executive offices. Assessment of the damage done in California was delayed by smog, motorist gunfire exchanges on Interstate 5 and the premier of "Wag the Dog II." Several hundred, including many who were not connected to the newspaper, were killed or critically injured in the Washington attack. Clinton said that he had "credible information from a reliable source in the intelligence community" that Mattsoma bin Drudgeden, head of an Internet terrorist organization, had planned to train others in his particular brand of cybernetic character assassination at the meeting. He denied that bin Drudgeden's Hollywood apartment was the actual target of the missile salvo. The President said that he also had "compelling evidence" that the Washington Post had a leadership role in the conspiracy of prejudice against himself, Hillary, Chelsea and everyone else from Arkansas. "We recognize that these missile strikes will not end the struggle against media terrorism," said Defense Secretary William Cohen. "We just wanted to make it crystal clear that irresponsible reporters who attack this and future presidents will have no safe place to hide." Congressional opponents, while sympathizing with the President's position on media terrorism, questioned the timing of the attack, which came just four days after Clinton issued an poorly received executive order to turn back the clock by a year at the end of this month to delay the computer-related problems associated with the year 2000. Critics have accused the President of attempting to illegally extend his administration by a year under the guise of saving the country from the Millennium Bug. Suspected Alien Device Found (Dexter, New Mexico., Aug. 13, 2343)-- Archeologists sifting through a late 20th century landfill site here near Roswell have discovered possible evidence of a past extraterrestrial presence on earth. "We don't know, at this point, exactly what it might be," said a clearly excited Adolf Bingham, the archeologist in charge of the Dexter dig. "We've never seen anything like it before on earth. Nothing in our records even hints of such a strange mechanism." Well preserved by the arid climate of New Mexico, the gumdrop-shaped device appears to be made of an otherworldly, greenish-blue, plastic-type material, lending further credence to theories of its alien origins. Plastic manufacturing has been banned from this planet for more than three centuries. An insignia of some sort is emblazoned on what finders believe to be the front of the object. The marking resembles a partially-eaten apple, which has left analysts espousing a variety of theories. "Some of us think it might have been a juicer used to process an alien fruit resembling our apples," Bingham ventured. "Others believe it may have been a vacuum cleaner." "We haven't dared to attempt disassembling the device," Bingham added, "but we have noted several small apertures its exterior, indicating that limited attachments were possible. We may know more once we get inside." An obvious handle atop the artifact supports the vacuum cleaner theory. However, the device weighs more than 17 kilos, limiting its portability, unless it had originally been equipped with wheels. "Another theory is that the makers of this device were significantly bigger than humans," Bingham said. "It's entirely possible that this object served as nothing more than a decorative, albeit gaudy, paperweight on some Amazonian alien file clerk's field office desk more than 200 years ago." The paperweight theory is currently the leading contender, according to a reliable source involved in the archeological analysis. [ Home ] |
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