‘Happy to take your word for it, Mr. Emerson. Now, our next guest — ‘
Possibly because the interview had taken place in London, where the works of the New England transcendentalist were not everyday reading, Emerson’s host had failed to make the connection with his famous namesake (no relation, as far as he knew). No American interviewer, of course, missed the opportunity of complimenting Roy on inventing the apocryphal Better Mousetrap. The automobile industry had indeed beaten a path to his door; within a few years, almost all the world’s millions of metronoming blades had been replaced by the Sonic Wave Windshield Wiper. Even more important, thousands of accidents had been averted, with the improvement of visibility in bad-weather driving.
It was while testing the latest model of his invention that Roy Emerson made his next breakthrough — and, once again, he was very lucky that no one else had thought of it first.
His ’04 Mercedes Hydro was cruising in benign silence down Park Avenue, living up to its celebrated slogan ‘You can drink your exhaust!’ Midtown seemed to have been hit by a monsoon: conditions were perfect for testing the Mark V Wave Wiper. Emerson was sitting beside his chauffeur — he no longer drove himself, of course — quietly dictating notes as he adjusted the electronics.
The car seemed to be sliding between the rain-washed walls of a glass canyon. Emerson had driven this way a hundred times before, but only now did the blindingly obvious hit him with paralyzing force.
Then he recovered his breath, and said to the carcom: ‘Get me Joe Wickram.’
His lawyer, sunning himself on a yacht off the Great Barrier Reef, was a little surprised by the call.
‘This is going to cost you, Roy. I was just about to gaff a marlin.’
Emerson was in no mood for such trivialities.
‘Tell me, Joe — does the patent cover all applications — not just car windshields?’
Joe was hurt at the implied criticism.
‘Of course. That’s why I put in the clause about adaptive circuits, so it could automatically adjust to any shape and size. Thinking of a new line in sunglasses?’
‘Why not? But I’ve got something slightly bigger in mind. Remember that the Wave Wiper doesn’t merely keep off water — it shakes off any dirt that’s already there. Do you remember when you last saw a car with a really dirty windshield?’
‘Not now you mention it.’
‘Thanks. That’s all I wanted to know. Good luck with the fishing.’
Roy Emerson leaned back in his seat and did some mental calculation. He wondered if all the windshields of all the cars in the city of New York could match the area of glass in the single building he was now driving past.
He was about to destroy an entire profession; armies of window cleaners would soon be looking for other jobs.
Until now, Roy Emerson had been merely a millionaire. Soon he would be rich.
And bored. . . .
4 THE CENTURY SYNDROME
When the clocks struck midnight on Friday, 31 December 1999, there could have been few educated people who did not realize that the twenty-first century would not begin for another year. For weeks, all the media had been explaining that because the Western calendar started with Year 1, not Year 0, the twentieth century still had twelve months to go.
It made no difference; the psychological effect of those three zeros was too powerful, the fin de siècle ambience too overwhelming. This was the weekend that counted; 1 January 2001 would be an anticlimax, except to a few movie buffs.
There was also a very practical reason why 1 January 2000 was the date that really mattered, and it was a reason that would never have occurred to anyone a mere forty years earlier. Since the 1960s, more and more of the world’s accounting had been taken over by computers, and the process was now essentially complete. Millions of optical and electronic memories held in their stores trillions of transactions — virtually all the business of the planet.
And, of course, most of these entries bore a date. As the last decade of the century opened, something like a shock wave passed through the financial world. It was suddenly, and belatedly, realized that most of those dates lacked a vital component.
The human bank clerks and accountants who did what was still called ‘bookkeeping’ had very seldom bothered to write in the ’19’ before the two digits they had entered. These were taken for granted; it was a matter of common sense. And common sense, unfortunately, was what computers so conspicuously lacked. Come the first dawn of ’00, myriads of electronic morons would say to themselves ’00 is smaller than 99. Therefore today is earlier than yesterday — by exactly 99 years. Recalculate all mortgages, overdrafts, interest-bearing accounts on this basis. . . .’ The results would be international chaos on a scale never witnessed before; it would eclipse all earlier achievements of artificial stupidity — even Black Monday, 5 June 1995, when a faulty chip in Zurich had set the bank rate at 150 percent instead of 15 percent.
There were not enough programmers in the world to check all the billions of financial statements that existed, and to add the magic ’19’ prefix wherever necessary. The only solution was to design special software that could perform the task, by being injected — like a benign virus — into all the programs involved.
During the closing years of the century, most of the world’s star-class programmers were engaged in the race to develop a ‘Vaccine ’99’; it had become a kind of Holy Grail. Several faulty versions were issued as early as 1997 — and wiped out any purchasers who hastened to test them before making adequate backups. The lawyers did very well out of the ensuing suits and countersuits.
Edith Craig belonged to the small pantheon of famous women programmers that began with Byron’s tragic daughter Ada, Lady Lovelace, continued through Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, and culminated with Dr. Susan Calvin. With the help of only a dozen assistants and one SuperCray, she had designed the quarter million lines of code of the DOUBLEZERO program that would prepare any well-organized financial system to face the twenty-first century. It could even deal with badly organized ones, inserting the computer equivalent of red flags at danger points where human intervention might still be necessary.
It was just as well that 1 January 2000 was a Saturday; most of the world had a full weekend to recover from its hangover — and to prepare for the moment of truth on Monday morning.
The following week saw a record number of bankruptcies among firms whose accounts receivable had been turned into instant garbage. Those who had been wise enough to invest in DOUBLEZERO survived, and Edith Craig was rich, famous . . . and happy.
Only the wealth and the fame would last.
5 EMPIRE OF GLASS
Roy Emerson had never expected to be rich, so he was not adequately prepared for the ordeal. At first he had naively imagined that he could hire experts to look after his rapidly accumulating wealth, leaving him to do exactly what he pleased with his time. He had soon discovered that this was only partly true: money could provide freedom, but it also brought responsibility. There were countless decisions that he alone could make, and a depressing number of hours had to be spent with lawyers and accountants.
Halfway to his first billion, he found himself chairman of the board. The company had only five directors — his mother, his older brother, his younger sister, Joe Wickram, and himself.
‘Why not Diana?’ he had asked Joe.
Emerson’s attorney looked at him over the spectacles which, he fondly believed, gave him an air of distinction in this age of ten-minute corrective eye surgery.
‘Parents and siblings are forever,’ he said. ‘Wives come and go — you should know that. Not, of course, that I’m suggesting . . .’
Joe was right; Diana had indeed gone, like Gladys before her. It had been a fairly amicable, though expensive, departure, and when the last documents had been signed, Emerson disappeared into his workshop for several months. When he emerged (without any new inventions, because he had been too engrossed in discovering how to operate his wonderful new equipment to actually use it) Joe was waiting for him with a new surprise.
‘It won’t take much of your time,’ he said, ‘and it’s a great honor: Parkinson’s are one of the most distinguished firms in England, established over two hundred years ago. And it’s the first time they’ve ever taken a director from outside the family — let alone a foreigner.’
‘Ha! I suppose they need more capital.’
‘Of course. But it’s to your mutual interest — and they really respect you. You know what you’ve done to the glass business, worldwide.’
‘Will I have to wear a top hat and — what do they call them — spats?’