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'I am perplexed,' said Big Bob.

'i think you're doing very well,' said the second voice. 'most men would be babbling mad by now.'

'I am not as most men,' said Big Bob. 'As you will shortly learn to your cost.'

'brave words,' said the first voice, 'so let the game begin.'

Smack! A great big hand came out of nowhere and smacked Big Bob right slap in the head.

'Ow!' went Big Bob. 'Ow!' and 'Oh!' and 'Where am I now? What's happening?'

'Always the joker, Cowan,' said a jolly voice. 'Fallen asleep over your workstation again. You could at least stay awake to see the new century in.'

'What, I?' Big Bob looked up. A pretty girl looked down.

'Sorry, Cowan,' she said. 'I shouldn't have slapped you so hard, but you should wake up for the party.'

'Party?' said Big Bob Cowan (?).

'Oh, dear, you're well out of it. Can you remember •where you are?'

'No,' said Big Bob. And he looked all around and about. He was in a tiny cramped office, more of a cubicle really. The walls were covered in shelves and the shelves were covered in boxed computer games. He sat at an advanced-looking computer workstation. Its advanced look told him that it was a late-twentieth-century model, pre-miniaturization, which was in turn pre-big-old-fashioned comfortable-looking. The screen was blank and Big Bob caught a glimpse of his reflection. It wasn't his reflection. It was the reflection of someone called Cowan. The assistant, apparently, of someone called Remington Mute. This much Big Bob knew and suddenly he realized that he knew a lot more.

His name was Cowan Phillips and he was the chief designer of computer-game software for a company called Mute Corp, run and owned by Remington Mute, zillionaire recluse who had made his zillions from the computer games that he, Cowan Phillips, designed. And yes, he, Cowan Phillips, was more than a little miffed about this. And oh so very very very much more than this.

Big Bob now knew all about Cowan Phillips. About his life. His wife. His children. His gay lover. Big Bob shuddered at this. And he knew where he was. In the headquarters of Mute Corp in London's West End. And it was just three hours before midnight on the thirty-first of December in the year 1999.

And Big Bob knew something more. Something dreadful. Something that he and Remington Mute had been responsible for. Something that would have unthinkable repercussions for the whole of mankind.

And now he knew it all. He had the complete picture. He knew what had happened to him, as Big Bob Charker just before the tour bus crashed. And what the terrible voices were and why the entities from whom the voices came were doing this to him.

'Great God on high,' cried out Big Bob. 'Stoppest thou this horror before it can begin.'

'Calm down, Cowan,' said the beautiful young woman. Kathryn her name was, Kathryn Hurstpierpoint. 'Don't go all Old Testament on us. I know it's the millennium, but it's only a date.'

'Zero bc,' said Big Bob.

'bc?' said Kathryn.

'Before Computer,' said Big Bob. 'That's what the voices meant.'

'Oh dear, have you been having the voices? All those months going through our systems scanning for the Millennium Bug have finally addled your brain.'

'I know the truth,' said Big Bob. 'I know what Cowan did.'

'You're Cowan,' said Kathryn. 'And clearly you're already drunk.'

‘I’m Cowan,' said Big Bob slowly. 'Yes, I am. And I can stop this from happening.'

'Come to the party, Cowan, the old man is going to be there.'

'Remington Mute?'

'What other old man is there?'

'Listen,' said Big Bob. 'I have to tell thee. Let me tell thee everything. Just in case something happens to me. I only have three hours.'

'Some terminal illness you've been keeping a secret?' Kathryn laughed and pointed to Cowan's computer. 'Caught off your terminal, get it? Caught 'The Bug'?'

'Laughest thou not,' said Big Bob. 'Please be silent, whilst I speak unto you.'

'Ooh,' said Kathryn, feigning fear. 'The Games Master speaks, so I must listen. Tell me, oh great one. What is this secret of yours?'

'The Bug,' said Big Bob. 'The Millennium Bug. It doesn't exist. It never existed. It was all a lie. All a conspiracy.'

'Oh dear,' said Kathryn. 'Another conspiracy.'

'We weren't debugging anything,' said Big Bob. 'That was just a scare story. To raise millions of pounds from the Government and businesses so that we could infiltrate systems everywhere and install Mute- chips.'

'Slow down,' said Kathryn. 'What are you talking about, Cowan?'

'Computer games,' said Big Bob. 'That's what I'm talking about.'

'Well, you'd know about those, you designed all the best ones.'

'No,' said Big Bob. 'Cowan, I mean me, designed some of the first ones. But Remington Mute designed the Mute-chip. I just designed the environments for it to play in.'

'Please explain,' said Kathryn, sitting herself down on Cowan's desk.

'Don't sit on my desk,' said Cowan Phillips.

'Sorry,' said Kathryn, jumping up.

'No, I'm sorry. I'm sorry,' said Big Bob. 'I don't know why I said that.'

'Just go on with what you were saying. About the Mute-chip?'

'It started with computer chess,' said Big Bob. 'In the Sixties computer scientists said that it would be a logical impossibility for a computer ever to play chess. That would require thought. But of course it didn't, it simply required advanced programming.'

'Everyone knows that,' said Kathryn.

'Yes,' said Big Bob. 'Because everyone was fooled. Computers can play chess because computers have been taught the moves and they've learnt how to play. For themselves. The Mute-chip gives computers the ability to think for themselves. Make informed decisions.'

'That's absurd,' said Kathryn. 'Are you telling me that chess-playing computers are alive?'

'No, but they think for themselves. But only about chess. That's all they know.'

'Science fiction,' said Kathryn.

'Science Fiction is only future Science Fact.'

'So all these games you've designed. They think too, do they?'

'They're highly competitive,' said Big Bob. 'But only within given parameters. Up until now, that is. But after midnight it will all be different. After midnight all the other systems, the non-game-playing systems, that now have Mute-chips installed in them by bogus Millennium Bug debuggers, they will all link up across the World Wide Web and create a single thinking entity. A computer network capable of making decisions on a worldwide scale. And I have let it happen. Remington Mute and I caused it to happen.'

'Say I believed this,' said Kathryn. 'It doesn't explain anything. You're saying that this Mute-chip is a thinking chip. Are you saying that computers are sentient? What is inside the Mute-chip? What lets it think?'

'Human DNA,' said Big Bob. 'Remington Mute's DNA. The man is a genius beyond human genius. He broke the human genome code back in the 1970s. And then he digitized his DNA, into a chip. From this one original chip he electronically cloned millions of others.'

'That is impossible, surely?'

'Think about it. It's not.'