Seize The Last Day

December 31, 1999.

12:00 P.M.

Half a day left of normality, peace, and the planes staying in the sky. Yet, it seemed, no one knew this but Alicia Upshaw.

The “Millenium Bug” had been the only thing on her mind since the end of summer. A third-year Harvard computer science major, Alicia was uniquely knowledgeable in just how interwoven her field of study had become in the fabric of modern civilization, and just how screwed humanity would be if the Y2K panic was even partially accurate. No matter how much her roommate, professors, or family reassured her about the billions of dollars invested in preventing the glitch, Alicia was utterly convinced that they were all missing something. Night after night, she spent hours in the Computation Lab, churning out line after line of code that made sense to no one else but her. By the start of the winter break, whatever Alicia was working on was nowhere near completed to her satisfaction, but it was time to return home. 

12:01 P.M. 

Alicia stood stolidly at her window, looking out at nothing in particular. The passing neighbors, having grown familiar with the sight over the past two weeks, deliberately avoided gazing back into that existential abyss that emanated from the left upstairs window of the Upshaw residence. Abruptly, her nostrils clenched as a pungent odor broke Alicia out of the fog. Seventy-two hours had passed since her last shower, and the closest corner of her room exhibited an anguished accumulation of half-empty pizza boxes and Chinese takeout containers. The writing was not on the wall; it hand branded onto her frontal lobe with a high-powered laser.

*

“I don’t care,” Alicia spoke from the fifth step of the living room staircase.

Her parents were laid back on the middle couch, watching a Jeopardy rerun from 1975. Deidre Upshaw hesitated before asking, “About what, Ally?”

Hearing her childhood nickname (that her family refused to retire) made Alicia cringe in her guts, but she resolved to maintain an external projection of composure. “I don’t care about the bug.”

Her father took a nasally breath, gritting his teeth as he did. As soon as Alicia could speak, Professor Brian Upshaw realized his daughter had inherited her grandmother’s catastrophic patterns of thinking and came to rely on his wife to calm Alicia down from her elevated panic spirals. From the first on-air speculations of the Y2K panic, no conversation between father and daughter could progress more than a few words before she started down a rabbit hole of crashing planes and exploding factories. He looked at his Mrs. Upshaw, hoping she would take things from here again, but she returned a pair of scolding eyes on her husband.

“I’m serious,” Alicia said. “There’s nothing I can do. There’s nothing you can do. There’s nothing anyone can do. We are all pieces of God’s chessboard, and if the plan is to flip the whole table over, who are we to judge?” 

With each word, her face stretched from numb resignation to maniacal liberation, an ear-to-ear grin that her parents tepidly reflected. “That’s nice, honey,” her father said. “How do you-”

“I’m going out!” 

This announcement was the most confusing yet for her folks. “Out?” her mother inquisitively repeated while her father weighed the pros and cons of faking a heart attack. “You never go out.”

“No time like that present,” Alicia said.

“Okay, where to then?”

*

The sun was bright, warm, and oddly comforting for a perpetual homebody like Alicia. Her parents had acclimated to her sudden change in demeanor, embracing their little unscheduled sojourn through their quiet neighborhood. They barely had time to grab their coats before Alicia bolted down the steps and out the door. Both were pushing fifty years and had already been winding down their physical activities, but they also intuitively understood their daughter should not be alone during…. whatever this was. The Latin phrase Carpe Diem came to Brian’s mind. If Alicia thought this was going to be her last day, maybe she was determined to seize it.

After forty minutes of walking, the trio stopped right before a crosswalk. Alicia pointed forward and said, “There.” It was Hatch Grove Mall, familiar to Deidre and Brian but uncharted territory for Alicia. Alas, judgment was approaching, as far as she was concerned, and whatever was left of humanity would not find her corpse dressed in a stained green hoodie, worn-out gray sweatpants, and the cheapest pair of Skechers her father could find at Walmart.

“It’s New Year's Eve, you know,” the Upsahw matriarch said.

“Probably crowded,” her husband added.

“So?” Alicia asked.

Deidre rested on her daughter’s shoulder. “I don’t want you to get overwhelmed.”

“I won’t, Mom. I promise.”

Upon entering Hatch Grove, Mr. Upshaw’s speculation was proven true, as scores of shoppers covered every corner of the mall while flowing in and out of the department stores. Alicia took a deep breath before leading her parents into the main walkway and dipping into the flow of people. Their first stop was at Gap, where they spent the next hour trying on clothes. At least, Alica tried on clothes while her parents quietly cheered her on. For her final purchase, she settled on a sleeveless black top, a blue jean skirt, tan boots, and a purple push-up bra. After circling back to the dressing room, Alicia was “ready”.

Ready for what? she asked herself.

The Gap location was only a dozen meters from the food court, so her parents decided to get some lunch and agreed to meet up with Alicia later at the arcade (her father’s idea). They were still worried about her, but her impromptu makeover had reassured them that she could safely spend some time by herself. Before leaving, she consciously decided she was not going to “walk”, but would “instead” strut from step to step. Unfortunately, this yielded a blatantly unnatural gait that signaled to passing shoppers that a weirdo was on the loose and they should probably keep their distance. 

Alicia had not dragged her parents to the mall on a friend-making mission, but the uncomfortable faces looking her way were uncomfortably familiar. Other people had always vexed the young woman, floating through life on a spinning blue rock hurdling through space in a way Alicia still had not figured out how to replicate. 

The panic remained, and it probably always would. But, the urge to retreat into herself was weaker than ever. Today woke her up to a smelly room, tomorrow might wake her to the post-apocalypse, and at this minute, 1:41 PM on December 31, Alicia stood in a crowded mall, afraid of nothing in particular.