Many Are Invited

By: Dennis Cuesta

Narrated by: Philip Church

A housewarming party ends in tragedy....

Steve Galanos, a native Midwesterner, reflects on his time in Northern California during the 1990s, a time when the two-digit year emerged as the Y2K problem, the burgeoning Internet fueled the expansion of the New Economy, the dot-com bubble created unseen prosperity and real estate frenzies. Yet it’s a housewarming party, held in late 1999, that affects him the most. At the request of John Goertz, a group of technology managers and executives gather in a conference room.

Listening to the presentation is Steve Galanos, who is suspicious of Goertz’s approach and the dramatic way he describes the problem. Goertz tries to convince his audience that a disaster awaits them unless they immediately address the two-digit year in the company’s distributed systems and compiled code. It’s 1994, well before anyone has heard of the term, Y2K. A promotion to run the newly-created year 2000 compliance program earns John more skepticism and envy from Steve, yet the two have much in common and soon become good friends. A few years later, John leaves for a startup and their lives trend in different directions. By the time John cashes out from a successful IPO, gets married, and buys a house in Los Gatos, his friendship with Steve has waned. It’s at John’s housewarming party where latent animosity and lingering distrust finally come to a head.

©2022 Dennis Cuesta (P)2022 Dennis Cuesta

Thought provoking

It was interesting thinking back 20+ years to the furor over Y2K and the disaster that did not happen around the world, but could have. The novel points out the disaster that greed, lust, etc. happened in several intertwined lives. Our dependence on that almighty computer working perfectly insures that lives are happy…right? Or does the same greed, lust, envy, continue unabated? Where are we going?