doubleZero

doubleZero

After all the hype, New Year's 2000 has come and gone without a hitch. Well, almost: while Fix was working on a Y2K solution for a Canadian bank, he accidentally released a bug that gave his bank account 2000 years' worth of interest.

Now he's infinitely rich, but he's on the run with his best friend Julie, framed for having stolen the money. As they're chased from town to town by a mysterious couple in a white van, the bug starts to leak. Money will become worthless if everyone is suddenly rich. Then what?

That's just what Fix has to decide…

Paperback ISBN: 0-9685533-0-3

doubleZero is no longer available in print. You can, however, still read it as an electronic book.

"Thrilling. Smart. A little bit wicked. Built for speed, and to last. It's fitting: the first interesting new Canadian novel about Y2K is by one of the first interesting new Canadian writers for 2K..."
- Michael Holmes, literary editor, ECW Press

"A page-turner that also reveals how arbitrary our systems of wealth are..."
- Jim Munroe, author, Flyboy Action Hero Comes with Gasmask

"Amid the dystopic clamour, a thoughtful, light, original and—just for a change—utopian look at the beginning of the new millennium."
- Bert Archer, books editor, Now magazine

Fix (short for Felix) and Julie are computer programmers working to make the software of the fictional megalopoly, First Dominion Bank, Y2K compliant... Ugh! Not another Y2K book.

Wait, before, I lose you, this one's different. So, the clock strikes midnight plus one and the virus spreads through all the bank's software, and Fix becomes unbelievably rich. Fix and the rest of the world. Money loses all value.

It's my kind of book, I tell you. Julie looks like a boy, but she kinda loves Fix. Fix meets Jeff while they're on the run from the bankers, and it's all over for Julie. Have I lost you yet?

Emerging writer Hamish Macdonald has created a fast-as-light book where computers are as they should be: inanimate objects used as tools by programmers with a bit more on their minds than money. There's sex, mystery, action and even a revolution of sorts.

Here's the best part of the whole book: it's self-published. And it's done so well. I kept flipping it over and over to see who'd put it together. HarperCollins, surely? MacDonald should win a huge prize for his courage, or something.

Very much a Y2K story, MacDonald's jaunty novella, published this week, is the least ambitious and most fun of the three [reviewed in this issue]. It's a lot more about story, characters and relationships than the overtly philosophical and at least modestly ideological Plato Papers or Silence Descends, and, as a novel, it's at least as successful -- except maybe for its too precipitous ending.

Looking just a few months into the future, Double Zero speculates on the effect a few engineered computer-banking glitches might have on the very nature of currency. A team of young Toronto troubleshooters accidentally set themselves up with a bank account containing an amount of money equivalent to 2,000 years' worth of compounded interest on $150 -- which, to save you whipping out your calculator, is just a little over a gajillion dollars.

After escaping to New York and being tailed by some suspicious-looking agents, our heroes take the world's monetary system to the brink of collapse in the face of pretty much infinite wealth, and in the months immediately following the turn of the millennium, a couple of alternatives present themselves with the help of a billionaire with a heart of platinum.

It's nothing Paul Martin would approve of, but its questioning of one of the most basic elements of any culture makes Double Zero pretty decent thought-fodder.