Their youthful energy reminded Gholam of his younger self, but, he reminded himself, there’s history and then there’s myth. One needed to appreciate the difference.
Tracy said, “Getting the message out has to be our priority.”
Pointing to Michael T., Gholam laughed. “He should get a slot on Soulbeat.”
Tracy lit up. “Why do you think that’s funny? It might be low-budget, but it’s African American — owned and provides both entertainment and enlightenment.”
“I think that’s a terrific idea. We need media access,” Michael T. said with a smirk.
Rachel turned to Gholam. “We’re going to host lectures and a rally. You should come.”
“The voice of a skeptic — we need that too,” pointed out Michael T.
Gholam sighed. “I’d like to believe you all. I work enough with computers to know there is a problem. But there is an army of programmers out there working on Y2K. Some things here and there might fail, but it’ll be a blip. On the other hand, I’ll make sure to have a full tank of gas and take out some cash before the New Year.”
“Such faith in the corporate elite,” Tracy scoffed. “You’ll take care of your own self. What about the rest?”
Gholam rose to leave but couldn’t resist a parting remark. “I imagine you folks can take care of the others. Best of luck.”
In a few weeks, Gholam discovered that Michael T. had managed a weekly spot on Soulbeat. It pissed him off. They had joked about the channel, and now he’d wormed his way in there. Gholam wasn’t going to engage with these people any longer. A campus could be a bizarre place sometimes.
Gholam’s life settled into a routine. During the week he saw Keisha in passing, but on weekends they usually spent one night together. Sometimes he visited her at the huge Victorian behind Highland Hospital she shared with a couple of roommates, but mostly they spent their nights together at his apartment.
His mother’s condition had stabilized, and they’d spoken a few times. Through a travel agent he purchased a consolidator ticket to Tehran via Frankfurt. The only ticket he could find at a reasonable price had him flying out on New Year’s Eve.
The afternoon he booked the ticket, he returned from a service call to find Keisha waiting outside his office. She said she’d stopped by just for a minute. “I got my thesis proposal approved. Dr. Browning loved my ideas.”
“That’s wonderful, I didn’t have any doubts.”
“I needed the affirmation.”
“I have some news too. I just bought my ticket.” He showed her the printout.
She slammed her backpack on his desk and shouted, “How could you do this?”
“What?”
“You’re flying out on December 31? You’ll be in the air when it turns January 1. Do you have a death wish?”
Y2K had never come up in their conversations, but apparently a few days ago Keisha had attended one of the lunchtime meetings. She was usually a grounded person, but there was a side of her drawn to the beyond-rational. Like many in California she readily took to the “spiritual not religious” tag. That meant layering her Baptist upbringing with flakes of Buddhism and Hinduism, some references to Islam, and an added coating of radicalism. Something about how she blended her philosophies fascinated Gholam. Normally it was all talk, but now something seemed to be shifting.
“Walk with me to my car.”
Gholam agreed, and while they headed to the parking lot, Keisha quoted Michael T. as if she’d memorized his manifesto. She sang his praises: how deep he was, how he could break things down to the essentials, how disciplined he was... etcetera, etcetera. It nauseated Gholam to see her fall under his spell.
Once they reached her Honda Civic, she popped open her trunk to show that she meant business. She had made a trip to Grocery Outlet to stock up on bags of rice and pasta, bottled water, beans of a dozen kinds, crackers, cereal, and a mountain of canned goods.
“When the new year comes, I’ll be ready, and I’ll be damned if I let you fly out the day before. You’ll have to change your ticket.”
“It’s not changeable.”
“You... we... will have to find a way.”
He shook his head. “I don’t think much will happen. Sure, there could be a few glitches, but there are enough people working on the problem that widespread disruption is unlikely.”
“That’s just your opinion. How closely have you studied the subject?”
“I read a few articles.”
“Michael T. has studied the problem in depth.”
“Why don’t we get dinner somewhere and talk it over?”
“There’s a lecture at the Greek Theater at five thirty. Why don’t you come?”
He thought for a moment. It no longer seemed possible to ignore the Y2K crowd. “Okay, but I have to get back to work now. I’ll see you there.”
When Gholam arrived, the event had just begun. The discussion focused on Octavia Butler’s novel The Parable of the Sower. The organizers couldn’t bring in Butler but had lucked out with a PhD student from Berkeley who was researching her fiction.
About thirty students came. Most sat at the bottom of the theater and others moved down after being asked to come nearer. The speaker didn’t refer to Y2K; she merely talked about how Butler had written this novel set in the immediate future based on an assessment of current trends: gated communities, homelessness, and drugs.
Michael T. followed by summarizing points from his manifesto. Then Tracy took the platform. She said the power of Butler’s work was that she could project where things were headed. In the book, Lauren Olamina coped by creating her philosophy, but otherwise she was unprepared. Wouldn’t it be better if the Laurens of the world were better prepared when chaos breaks out? That was the purpose of the Y2K Campaign: preparedness. Survival kits with cash, water, food, fuel, stoves, tents, sleeping bags, and other essentials needed to be assembled.
Rachel spoke about broadening their outreach. They had distributed flyers around the city, Michael T. had a weekly slot on Soulbeat, and the next step would be a postering campaign downtown and in high-traffic areas — Fruitvale, MacArthur BART, Grand Lake. She held up a poster they had designed. On gold paper, in bold red letters, it read:
The poster also called for a rally at the campus student union on November 18.
Rachel appealed for postering team volunteers, and Keisha marched down right away and signed up. As she and Gholam left the meeting and headed toward their cars, he asked, “Is this something you really want to do?”
“I was going to ask — why is this something you don’t want to do?”
He remained silent.
“Yes, this is something I really want to do. I believe in the cause. I should put something on the line.”
“I think something will happen, but I’m not convinced it will be a big thing.”
“On this, we’ll just have to agree to disagree.” She sounded disappointed. “I thought it’d be fun to do something like this together.”
It was an ongoing grievance, and she had a point: they didn’t do much together other than sharing some meals, a few trips to the beach, a movie now and then, and sex. He wished he could go with her on this.