California and the West : A Big Clockwork Raspberry for the 9999 and Y2K Bugs

Did we survive 9/9/99?

I am afraid to look outside. Did our computers go haywire? Did we lose water and power? Did the traffic lights go dark? Did everybody’s bank account go to $0.00? Did the automatic locks at the jail fail? Did a nuclear reactor begin a 24-hour doomsday countdown, like one of those bombs in a James Bond film?

Thursday was Y2K warmup day. It was 9/9/99 on the calendar, a digital test-case day for every business on Earth that uses a computer. (This includes every business except a lemonade stand.)

I don’t personally understand what relationship 9/9/99 has to Y2K, which is an acronym of a sort for “Year 2000.”

(This is worth pointing out because the last time I mentioned Y2K, at least a dozen readers made it clear that they didn’t know Y2K from H2O.)

It has been explained to me that “9999”--as in 8,000 years from now--is programmed in many four-digit computers as an expiration date. And that microchips might be unable to separate 9999 from 9/9/99.

Boy, are microchips dumb.

Far more scary is Dec. 31 at midnight, when computerized time clocks will flip over to 1/1/00. A computer might not be able to distinguish 2000 from 1900.

This could mean that all systems will be stop, rather than go. Information will be wiped out. Your birth record might indicate that you were born in 1868. Your Visa bill may say you owe $100,000 for purchases made at the Gap 100 years ago.

We’ll all end up paying again for our past lives. Shirley MacLaine was right.

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I thought about calling a psychic, to ask if Y2K warmup day would go off OK. After all, everything I’d been reading about 9/9/99 had been making me quite anxious. I expected my personal computer Thursday to laugh in my face.

“Welcome to the year 9999,” it would say. “You are now bankrupt and your safe deposit box cannot be opened until the year 10000. Have a nice day.”

Nervous times such as these are when you can use a psychic most. If you can consult your personal psychic, you can find out whether 9/9/99 is going to be a good day for you or if you’re going to meet a tall, attractive stranger who’s going to stick a gun in your back at your ATM.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a psychic.

The same cannot be said for a 39-year-old woman who was found guilty a few days ago in Superior Court, here in the psychic-infested city of Los Angeles.

This woman must have been very nervous about 9/9/99 and 1/1/00, because she sure did spend a great deal of time consulting her own psychic.

So much time that a judge just sentenced her to 30 days’ time of her own--in jail.

Not to mention also ordering her to pay back money that she spent calling up her psychic on the phone.

(Which surprises me, since I don’t see why a psychic would need to be called on a phone. Shouldn’t a psychic know you need to talk, and therefore phone you?)

The woman in question is named Cheryl--her surname is a matter of public record, but no sense dragging it out again here--and she lives in Antelope Valley.

Her psychic does not live in Antelope Valley. In fact, I’m not even sure that Antelope Valley has a psychic. Antelope Valley strikes me as a place where the people are down to earth and get their spiritual guidance at a church, not from a woman named Zelda who lives in a trailer with 97 cats.

Cheryl, on the other hand, is someone who got hooked on one of those “psychic hotlines” you hear so much about. For a fee, you can call a hotline and be told something personal, like that your great-grandmother once wore a yellow dress.

Cheryl reportedly called 2,500 times.

It wouldn’t have mattered, but those calls between June 1997 and November 1998 were made from an L.A. County office building where she worked, without permission. Four or five calls a day, sometimes.

To the Dominican Republic.

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Well, knowing the future can be a strong urge. Poor Cheryl needed it so much that a judge is making her pay back a whopping $97,972.97 in phone charges.

I feel this way about Y2K.

What’s to become of us? What if every computer fails? What if nothing works? What if I get a phone bill for $97,972.97?

As I write this, no 9/9/99-related emergencies have yet been reported. I’ve been hoping that every psychic hotline would break down.

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Mike Downey’s column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Write to him at Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles 90053. E-mail: mike.downey@latimes.com