Return to
the Library
December 29th, 1999
Members of a fanatical religious group located in South Dakota have walled themselves up in their church, claiming the second coming of Christ, and therefore the end of the world, was near. The group has enough food for three days, and sources say they plan to do no more than eat and pray until midnight on December 31st. Friends and family of the members say that the group had planned months ago . . .
"Are you still reading those old news reports?"
Mary looked up to where her friend was watching her over the partition between her computer and his. "What can I say, they're interesting," she whispered back.
"Interesting or not, the cafeteria is going to close in fifteen minutes. You do want to eat lunch today, don't you?"
"In a minute, in a minute. . . ." Mary logged off the computer and gathered up her book bag. The computer flashed the amount of time she had been logged on across the screen before it went to the "Logon" screen. She wove her way through the isles of partitioned computers and met her friend, Eric, at the door. The lab assistant gave them a bored glance before returning to her homework; Mary's tour guide during freshman orientation had told her that the lab assistants used to have to record the time as each patron entered and left the computer lab. Now that that information was all recorded automatically by each computer, and the information sent to a central computer in the back of the library, the assistant had little to do except make sure no one got rowdy. It must have been such an annoyance, Mary reflected, to have to keep track of each patron.
"You'd think, with every other improvement they claim to have made to this cafeteria in the past few years, they could come up with a way to serve decent food," Eric complained as he poked at a greyish mass that was supposed to be beans.
"Hey, did you go to Shield Day yesterday?"
"Yeah - it wasn't that great. The president kept making such a big deal about our class consisting of those first babies born to the new millennium - or the last born to the last one; he couldn't make up his mind. Born after the great Y2K scare, anyway."
Eric raised his fork - now adorned with a headless spear of asparagus - in a mock salute. "All hail the class of 2022; living proof that the world did not end with the second millennium."
Mary laughed, which was quite unfortunate since she had just taken a mouthful of water. "Don't do that!" she admonished when she could breath again, punctuating her words by launching her wadded up napkin at her friend. Eric ducked the projectile, which landed in the open book bag of the person sitting behind him. This sent both of them into a fit of muffled giggles, causing the group of students seated further down the table to cast them wary looks.
Eventually, the two of them calmed down and managed to shovel a bit more of the tasteless food into their mouths. "Do you have any more classes this today?" Mary asked once they'd finished eating.
"One: Late Twentieth Century History, at two-fifteen."
"Oh, joy," Mary commented dryly. "Hey, I heard the teacher graduated from here."
"He did; class of 2000. He started out teaching high school, I think, but then moved to college history classes after about ten years. So what do you want to do until my class? You don't have any this afternoon, do you?"
Mary shook her head. "Let's look around the old section of the library; there are a few books in there that I want to check out for my art history paper."
The old section of the library held the circulation desk, the periodicals, and all the books acquired before the new section was built in 2009, as well as several study areas and classrooms. The new section, the whole top floor of which was the computer lab, contained all the newer books, the reference computers and librarian, and the meeting hall. The new section was mostly accessed through the old section, since that was still where the books were checked in and out.
"I hope you're not planning to do anything that requires computers," a harried-looking library assistant greeted Mary and Eric as they entered the front part of the library.
"The computer lab was working fine before lunch," Eric said as he shared a puzzled look with Mary.
"That was before this happened." The assistant, a third year student, turned the slim computer screen around so that it faced the outside of circulation desk. The desktop display was in the process of melting, pixel by pixel. Icon labels had been replaced by cryptic messages, such as "the end is near," "be ready for Armageddon," and "are you prepared?"
"We can't get rid of it," the library assistant explained as she wearily rubbed her eyes, "and it's system wide. Not just our system, either; it's hit the whole NCCN."
"The whole National College Computer Network?" Mary asked incredulously.
"At least that's what we heard before the phones went down."
"The phones are down?"
As an answer, the assistant placed one of the phones on the desktop and tried dialing. Nothing but static came from the speaker. The small video display at first showed nothing but electronic snow. Then the pixels coalesced, forming the words "Armageddon is here."
"The message changes every time," the assistant explained. "It's some sort of computer virus. It seems to be in every system and network we have."
The Armageddon Virus, as it was soon dubbed, infected every computer network nation wide. Everything that was controlled by computer went down, including banks, airlines, phones, televisions, gas stations, and - lastly, as if by design - power grids; nearly every aspect of modern life. Any sort of long distance communication was nearly impossible. Consequently, no one knew what action, if any, the government was taking.
"You know, this is what people were afraid Y2K would do," Mary commented glumly to Eric as the two of them sat in her dorm room. Classes had been canceled, but many students - them included - had no way of getting home. No way of contacting their parents at all.
"You think they would have learned," Eric said, just as glumly.
"Well, they made sure all computers were not only Y2K compliant, but Y3K compliant as well, and so on. An arbitrary date would never threaten to bring down society again."
"No, but a computer virus would and did. I would sure like to know who programmed that thing. Somebody has a really sick mind."
"I want to know how whoever it was managed to get it into all the computer networks."
"Until things can get back to normal," the president of the college was saying to the students, faculty and staff assembled in the outdoor amphitheater, "we're going to try to get along as best we can. Classes that can will reconvene Monday morning, and a few new, mandatory, classes have been added to the roster. These are to help everyone cope with the current situation.
"We're doing the best we can to contact everyone's families, but as you know, communications are down. We have been informed, however, that some older forms of communication - manual post office, manual telephones - are being set up. We will certainly make use of these when they become operational. As of yet, we do not know when power will be restored to any of the buildings on campus. . . ."
"My report today is on the cleverest takeover in the history of the United States," the student read from her the palm computer. The teacher nodded, marking the student's name under the date, October 24, 2499, in her own palm computer.
"In mid-September of 2018," the student continued, "a radical militant group implemented a computer virus into every computer network, nation wide. At that time, computer networks controlled nearly every aspect of life, from communication, to money, to food distribution. Since communication was cut, the group quietly sneaked into the government without the public knowing.
"Society slowly recovered, and even reestablished some of their more important systems, using either old-fashioned methods, or computers which were clean due to the fact that they had not been previously hooked up to any network. By this time, however, changes were already taking place, implemented by the new government. At first, the changes were subtle, or done in such a way that no one would notice during the current computer scare.
"Many of the more radical changes were done using college students who, due to the Armageddon virus, were cut off from their families and, often, the rest of society; these students were manipulated through what their colleges often called 'new classes.' . . ."