“No,” he whispered.
Leo didn’t chant. He watched the system clock in the corner of the screen. 11:59:50. 11:59:55. 11:59:59.
For thirteen-year-old Leo Mendez, the Y2K bug wasn’t an abstract threat to banking systems or power grids. It was a personal one. His world, his entire universe of meaning, was contained in a 20-pound plastic brick: a beige Compaq Presario 5600 with a 480p monitor. The resolution was 640x480, a fuzzy window into a world of Geocities webrings, AOL chatrooms, and, most importantly, the sacred archives of The Lone Gunmen: Digital Knights .
At 11:58, he sat in front of the monitor, his finger hovering over the power button. Sofia stood behind him. The family upstairs began chanting: “Ten… nine… eight…”