World’s End

Remember Y2K? It was supposed to be the end of the world despite its predicted imminent Mayan demise twelve years in the future. There always seems to be some reason why the world was/is coming to an end. I’ve been living in the end of days my whole life, it seems. My Great Aunt once showed me some prediction written back in the 1700s that the world was going to end in 1986. It didn’t. Obviously. Nostradamus became all the rage and there was abundant proof that Hissler was Hitler and that the apocalypse was nigh. Was Reagan supposed to be the Antichrist? I don’t know. But the Nostradamus specials were on TV for years and probably still are.

Y2K was only the next and most recent (then) prediction of doom. The computers were going to fail and the bombs would launch and we were all going to die. The sky was falling. Cats living with dogs. Mass hysteria!

Total pandemonium!

Corporations and governments spent billions looking into the possibility of failure and what that might mean. They spent billions on patches and upgrades and new systems. Were the banks going to collapse? Were savings safe? What was to become of all those financial records? We were told not to worry, everything was going to be fine. That set people to worrying even more.

The moment was fast approaching and the world braced itself for the end of days. I prepared to go out to a party. Andrew Marks had rented the Moneta Rec, a little private men’s club, to throw an End of the World Party, and if that failed to happen, then just a New Year’s Party.

I woke on the 31^st and turned on the TV. I watched footage of Auckland taking in the New Year, then Sydney. And Tokyo. Nothing seemed amiss. When Beijing brought in the New Year, I was convinced that mothing was going to happen. The world was not coming to an end. Everything was business as usual. When Moscow failed to cease to exist and launch its missiles, I knew we were safe. If all of the Pacific and the East could weather Y2K without a hitch, we, the West, who’d spent far more on preparing for the inevitable would be fine.

That did not stop Hydro from sending operators out to each and every power plant, just to be on the safe side.

The night fell, I put on my coat, and I walked over to Dawson and Lena’s house to share a cab to the Moneta Rec. It was cold. New Years was always cold. The temperature always plunged from fifteen below to thirty below between Christmas and New Year’s. I flipped my collar, put on my ear muffs and pressed my gloved fists deep into my pockets. The pre-party was in full swing when I arrived. It can be a challenge to decide just when to call for a cab when people are drinking. No one drinks at the same pace. Some open another bottle when they discover that the person beside them still has half a beer before them. God forbid someone should forgo drinking for thirty minutes. When we finally got everyone mobile, the gathered piled into the waiting cabs and before long we were plunging into the heat and music escaping for the Moneta Rec’s atrium.

“Coats downstairs,” Andrew told us, directing us to the stairs right next to us. “The bar is downstairs. No drinks upstairs,” he said, duty bound to inform us of the rules of the club. We all ignored them, taking our drinks with us wherever we went, taking care not to spill like teenagers.

The Rec is small, just a small house no more than 1000 square feet. Hardwood floors on ground floor, aged tile in the basement where the bar is. Paneling gave it a warm, homey, 1980s feel. We piled our coats atop the others, got our drinks from the cooler bar set up before the actual bar and made our way upstairs with beverages in hand. I didn’t dance much. I didn’t have a date. Bev and I had only just begun to see one another and we were still early days, so to speak. She had already made plans, and so had I. But I was not lonely. I had most of my friends and acquaintances around me. Drinks flowed. Stories were told. We set one another at ease, telling tales of the survival of Auckland and Sydney and Moscow, telling tales of trips and hopes and dreams and parties past. I didn’t know it then, but that would be the last rowdy New Year’s Eve party I’d ever attend.

Champagne made its rounds before the time. We held them ready. The music stopped. Andrew told us all to be quiet. He said that there was less than a minute to go until it was the year 2000. Did we all have champagne? We did. Those who didn’t rushed to get theirs. Couples drew close, some getting a head start on their kisses.

Someone cried out “Ten!” We picked up the count from there. Nine. Eight. Seven. Insert crowd noises, people talking, people laughing, people crying out, “Six!” Five. Four. Three. Two. One. “Z…..”
The lights went out. It was pitch black. There was a pause as ZERO became a faltering zed, drifting into the eerie silence.

And then we laughed.

The lights came back on. The music began again, the volume rising. Guy Lombardo’s orchestra played their time-honoured “Auld Lang Syne.”

There were kisses and hugs and slow dancing. And the collective voice of the crowd resumed its undulating gaggle.

Bev was celebration across the downtown core at Amigos with her friend Barb.

Their countdown was as enthusiastic as ours. But when they reached the count of zero, the bright lights above the raised dancefloor declared the coming year: 200. The final zero had refused to light, itself a big fat zero.