Midmorning, he trod out of his office to answer a call about a jammed printer in Reinhardt Hall. In the computer lab, a stocky man with a shaved head greeted him. With a class starting soon, he needed to print a dozen copies of a document. The man wore a black T-shirt that screamed out, Don’t Mess with Me — I’m from Detroit. He could have been more badass if he wore the hard-core version. While Gholam labored on the jam, the man introduced himself as Michael T., a visiting lecturer. The college had put him up in this residence hall that housed graduate students. He said he was fine with it, which meant he wasn’t.
“I’ll let you work,” he said, as he walked to the living room. Gholam heard the television go on and soon Michael T. broke out into full-throated laughter, chased by snorts and chuckles.
The printer fixed, Gholam walked over to Michael T. The visiting lecturer pointed to the television screen. “Dude, ever see anything like this? I’d totally forgotten you had this here in Oakland. I used to catch them late night in Detroit. They called it Soulbeat Oakland Detroit.”
“You really from Detroit?”
“Went to college near there, and grad school. I’m finishing my dissertation.”
So he attended Michigan, lived in Ann Arbor, and went slumming into Detroit. Maybe he didn’t even do that, satisfying that urge by watching WGPR-TV 62. Gholam knew the channel — it specialized in music videos, religious programming, late-night Italian B-movies, a dance show imitating Soul Train, and yes, late in the night, there had been a Soulbeat slot. It usually featured folks jabbering away outside a sun-soaked mansion that must have been in the Oakland Hills.
Learning that Gholam had lived in Detroit, Michael T. asked if he would hang around while he finished printing. They talked about Gholam’s Detroit days, and Michael said Gholam might find his “manifesto” interesting.
“I need to get back.”
“I can e-mail you a copy. The contents are delicate. You use PGP?”
“Sure.”
“I could tell you’re one of us.” He winked while ripping one of the mangled sheets of paper in two. They exchanged e-mail addresses and PGP encryption keys.
It ended up being a busy day: more printer jams, virus infestations, and one hard drive crash.
At home Gholam finished dinner and checked his e-mail. Michael T.’s document had arrived. Gholam had acted as if he used PGP all the time but it had been years since he’d needed to encrypt or decrypt anything.
The title read, Y2K: Time to Throw Down. The document aimed to provoke discussion about preparing for a social collapse. It was now September 1999, only months short of the end of the century. Decades prior, government and corporations had chosen to code years in two digits instead of four — 70 instead of 1970 — citing the expense of computer memory. It had since become clear, however, that this shortcut was spectacularly shortsighted. When the calendar advanced to the year 2000, the two-digit coding could make systems assume it was now January 1, 1900.
The corporations and state were dithering. T’s manifesto boldly predicted that at midnight on New Year’s Eve, computer systems would fail, power grids would come down, ATMs would lock up, planes might crash, and nuclear plants could face meltdowns. Without money, heat, or power, people would resort to looting and mayhem. The state would respond with force.
The population needed to prepare, although it might already be too late. Michael T.’s document proposed that his class work to develop an “action plan” appropriate for Oakland.
The manifesto slammed Gholam back some ten to twenty years. When the revolution broke out in Iran, he had been an engineering student at Wayne State. In his free time he devoted himself to “revolutionary work” — writing articles, engaging in debates, communicating with comrades back home. Their student federation shattered into factions, each believing the mullahs’ seizure of power would not last and that soon it would be their comrades’ turn.
It wasn’t just Iranians. When the 1980s began, many believed Something Big was about to happen. Gholam remembered a poster that went up everywhere: The ’80s will make the ’30s look like a picnic. In multiple tongues — English, Spanish, Farsi, Arabic, Amharic — pamphlets spoke of “sharpened contradictions.” And what did the world end up with? In the US and UK, Reagan and Thatcher. In Iran, Khomeini.
Still, some held out. If you were desperate to believe, you could always find signs auguring Something Big. Otherwise, disillusionment seeped in. Some counseled that people needed to become better students of history. Despite casualties, most managed to cope. Gholam embraced this one piece of advice: he began studying ancient worlds, and learned to measure history, not in years or decades, but in centuries. In the meantime he had to make a living. He wasn’t going anywhere as an engineer, but he had learned his way around computers. When the Internet age dawned, he headed for the promised land, the Bay Area, and secured a job on this Oakland campus.
It took him four years to settle down, though it had brought him to Keisha, another refugee from the Midwest. She was fleeing a family she could no longer be near without doing harm to her spirit. She worked a couple of part-time retail jobs while finishing up a BA in liberal studies. She was smart, her dimpled smile could light up a room, and she was fierce the way you’d expect someone to be if they grew up in the heart of Cleveland. The campus drew in folks like her. Until he met her, Gholam’s life — sex, camaraderie, friendship — had been rather empty. With her, he felt recharged.
He replied to Michael T.’s e-maiclass="underline" You really believe this shit? Or is this an academic exercise?
Gholam never received a reply.
A few days later when he went to eat lunch in the plaza behind the student union café, he found his regular table occupied by Michael T. and a couple of students.
“My savior!” Michael T. shouted, beckoning him over. “Join us.” He introduced Gholam as the guy who’d helped him impress his class on the first day. The two others with him were from the class, Tracy and Rachel.
As Gholam chewed his hamburger, popping fries into his mouth, he listened to their conversation. Michael T. was describing his dissertation topic. He was studying humanity’s responses to apocalyptic moments, like stock market crashes, bank runs, massive disasters, and revolutions. He pointed toward Gholam. “He’s lived through such a moment but doesn’t believe in the Y2K crisis.”
The spotlight made him uncomfortable, but Gholam had to respond. “Things don’t always turn out the way you think.” He described the aftermath of the Iranian revolution.
Tracy asked, “So you give up?”
“I’m not 100 percent sure about Y2K, but surely there’s sense in being prepared.”
Tracy said, “A handful of us being aware isn’t enough. Those with resources may be okay, but what about the poor people in East Oakland, right outside our hallowed gates? Everyone’s supercharged by the dot-com boom, but it’s precisely when your expectations are high and then there’s a collapse that you could have revolutionary implications. Here we are in Oakland, home to the Panthers. This shit could sink deep roots here.”
Michael T. nodded. “This is what I love about being here. I did a semester in Kansas and I could hardly get a conversation going. The other day at a coffee shop downtown, I sat next to someone who moved here from the boonies because of the Panthers. Another time I met a woman at a bar who campaigned against apartheid in high school. Random encounters, but both were loaded with so much meaning.”