One Might Almost Say: There Will Be No More Events

Enjolras leaned back in his chair, sleeves rolled up past his elbows, hands behind his head. The eerie glow of his computer screen lit up his face. It was a bit past two in the morning, so the computer glow competed with the much softer light from the moon outside his window.  A soft chime sounded, and he smiled and checked his messages. Combeferre.

“You should be asleep,” Combeferre had written. His icon was a white exclamation point on a black background. Enjolras found it funny.

“I see you’re still up,” he typed into AIM. His own icon popped up when he sent the message, a simple red square. “Working?”

“Still trying to chase down the last of this Y2K stuff,” Combeferre said. “It’s slow going.”

“There’s not that much time left.” It was, in fact, the 23rd of December.

“I’ll get it done. brb” There was a long pause in the conversation, and Enjolras switched back to what he had been working on, which was updating his personal webpage.

“Got any plans for the holiday/new year?” Combeferre asked when he returned.

“I believe I will have to visit my family for Christmas,” Enjolras said. “No way of getting around that. But no plans for the new year yet. What about you?”

“I know for sure that somebody’s going to call me up at some ungodly hour of the night on the 29th or 30th and ask me to fix their system. Change their mind about Y2K being a real issue for them. I feel like people are suddenly going to be struck by prophetic dreams (nightmares).”

“And you’re going to take the job?”

“What else can I do?”

“Seems like it’s a shame to spend the end of this century hashing out bugs in someone else’s program.”

“Technically it’s not the end of the century for another year.”

“Nobody’s going to be celebrating 2001,” Enjolras typed. “It’s the will of the people that we celebrate on a nice round number.”

“Sure. What are you doing up so late? You’re not working working, are you?”

“Not right now. I’m just writing.”

“What?”

“My thoughts on the turn of the millennium,” Enjolras said. “I feel like I should do something to mark the occasion.”

“Putting those on your website?”

“Of course.”

“You should get something better than GeoCities,” Combeferre said. “You’ll look more professional.”

“I don’t need to look professional,” Enjolras said. “My work speaks for itself in the professional sphere. GeoCities is just for the public.”

“You’re just being a cheapskate.”

Enjolras did not respond for a minute, which left Combeferre to pick up the conversation again. “Can I see what you’re writing?”

“Yeah. It’s live now.” He pasted the link and sent it to Combeferre.

His GeoCities website was much cleaner than most others– its html was orderly, the use of flashing .gifs was kept to a minimum, all the links worked, his guestbook was functional, his webring was full, and it was easy to navigate right to his most recent writing. It was mostly freeform text about politics and culture, but people seemed to appreciate it, at least based on the comments in his guestbook and the emails he received in reply. He was happy to talk to anyone who stumbled upon his page, as they tended to come from a completely different worldview than his “professional” contacts.

He admired the block of text for a second, and he imagined that Combeferre, somewhere far away, was doing the same.

“Netizens, the second millennium was great, but the third millennium will be happy…”