As the clock ticked over to 2000 all systems were working as usual and it seemed that tthere was almost a sense of disapointment as it became apparent that there wasn't going to be any unusual events that night. All computer systems hummed contentedly along.. not a guage faltered.. no warning lights blinked. Bm Chemical had some reason to worry. Not only had they not had time to test their remediated code,they had assured everyone that they were compliant. They were "ready", but not compliant. TThe president of BM had been on a local talk show one month previous. Along with a bank president andand a Federal Gov. IT expert, they calmed he fears of most of the residents of this city of 75,000. It was apparent that hey knew whereof they spoke and they agreed that it was a shame that fear-mongers and hucksters were taking advantage of the people of the Nation. It all sounded very logical and comforting to hear these respected and learned men. After all they were not a bunch of paranoid doomsayers. . as a matter of fact, they convinced many of the "doomers" in the audience that they really had nothing to fear. Many of the "doomers" now felt rather foolish that they had mentioned their concerns to co-wokers and family. After all, most y2k problems had been fixed..right? it was in all the papers. And yet there was that 10 tto 15% statistical error rate for fixed code and of course there would be a few embedded chips that would fail.But all in all people such as Jaun Kaffine ( y2k Czar) and FFA chief Bill Buttlich were rather smugly patting themselves on the back. BM Chemical produces a new paint additive for auto makers that resists UV damage and fading. It is quite a feather in the cap of BM R&D labs and it promises to earn millions for BM. But it is a very complex process and even the techs don' quite understand the reason it reacts to their catalytic conversion chamber the way it does. 12:01 and all is well at BM Chemical industries. 12:02..the lights flicker momentarily and then go out! Butt before the generators can kick in, the lights come back on and everything is back to normal. But,at rollover, an embedded chip that was assumed to be compliantbecame'confused' and allowed the alternating heat/cool cycle cycle to lock in heat only mode. This by itself didn't really cause much of a problem to the product, but it did change the composition of the waste gasses which were drawn off to a tall smoke stack and released into the atmosphere. On the way to the smoke stack an injector releases a neutralizer into the gasses to further cleansethem of pollutants.A reall ygood state of the art procedure that works perfectly. Amazingly, the only y2k problem that BM had was the one chip that locked into heat mode. Well,.. that wasn't the only problem.The guage that should indicate any heat variation also stayed stuck at its last reading. As far as the techs knew every thing was Jake. Latter it was found that mistakenly higher temperature gasses that that passed through the C converter had made a molecular change that, when combined witth the injected neutralizer created a very deadly toxic gas. And on that cold morning in the year 2000, a gentle breeze carried this toxic cloud over the city causing 12,053 deaths. After a few hours the chemical started to break down and became totally harmless. IT was just pure bad luck that the wind was blowing in that direction that night.

-- Kelly Meek (romper1@aol.com), July 11, 1999

Answers

Sorry about format and spelling...I hurridly typed this in as I thought of it.

-- kelly meek (romper1@aol.com), July 11, 1999.

Does BM stand for Bowel Movement? How long did it take for you to crap out a useless story like this?

How about a story about aliens next time.

-- Bob Buttlich (Bill's brother) (stinky@poop.com), July 11, 1999.

Don't let old Bob-the-grouch discourage you, Kelly. He had enough trouble typing three complete sentences (and then forgot his question mark).

It's a fine little story. And I think you should try some more. Next time, lay it out in a word-processing program, then paste it here. Format is not religion, but more people would take the time to read your stuff if it is presented cleanly.

I liked it. More, please.

Hallyx

"Those that can, do. Those that can't, supervise."

-- (Hallyx@aol.com), July 11, 1999.

.. or they criticize....

-- Living in (the@real.world), July 11, 1999.

What about that toxic breeze? Well, it just happened to drift right over PP Chemical, BM's fierce competitor. PP Chemical's entire plant and maintenance housing were contaminated, and their retirement community was wiped out. Too bad.

What blows around, comes aground.

-- Randolph (dinosaur@williams-net.com), July 11, 1999.