An old buddy called the other day with a great idea. Being a very old fellow whose memory still works sometimes, I remembered the idea from years gone by. So, from my perch of vast experience, I told him his idea was current eons ago and, therefore, probably useless today. "Get with the times," I told him.
Then I remembered a story that's been floating around more recently. It's about this Cobol programmer, Charlie, whose talents bore the brunt of lots of kidding. The Common Business Oriented Language began to fall into disuse, Java programmers told him, when dinosaurs were flourishing. "Cobol was yesterday. Java is today."
Then something marvelous started taking place, something totally unexpected. The world began to face the specter of the year-2000 bug. And Cobol programmers, a dying breed, were worth their weight in Microsoft stock. Charlie found himself working 30-hour days, day after day, with no letup. At first, he welcomed the business and the big-pay assignments all over the world. And he loved the respect he was getting. He was a success at last.
But after a while, it was wearing him down. Money wasn't everything; it didn't bring him peace. All he could think about was the year 2000. He had Y2k nightmares. He trembled at the thought that all his fixes might not work. He couldn't bear the suspense. It was all too much. He wanted to run away.
Suddenly he had a great idea: He found a cryogenics lab and had himself frozen to a point of suspended animation. A newly developed timer was to revive him on January 2, 2000.
It worked-or seemed to. He found himself slowly waking from a very deep sleep. But why were all these excited and important-looking people and strange cameras focusing on him? When he felt sufficiently recovered, he asked, "Is 2000 already here? Are all the parties over? How are all the computers behaving? Why is everybody staring at me?"
A spokesman from the group stepped forward and introduced the president of Earth, a man who looked a lot like Bill Gates. The president told Charlie not to be upset. These were great times. There was universal peace; there was no more discrimination; there was no more starvation; all politicians always spoke the truth, and none of them had sex, by any definition, with anybody other than a spouse.
Then he added, "There was a small problem with the timer on your cryogenic receptacle. It shouldn't matter now, and you'll be OK.
"But we need your help. We see on your record that you are a Cobol programmer. And the year 10,000 is almost here."
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