Party Like It’s 999 Scientists discover a time capsule that illuminates life at the end of the last Millennium. by Mark Jordan From one of our far-flung correspondents comes extraordinary news of the discovery in England of a buried vessel containing artifacts more than 1,000 years old. The “time capsule,” as scientists call the buried vessel, is dated December 31, 999, and is believed to have been buried by the chieftain of a local Scottish clan at the end of the last Millennium. “This is an exciting and completely spurious discovery,” says Dr. Ben Dover of the Institute for Silly Sciences. “It’s provided us with a window into the primitive culture that existed at the end of the last millennium, and has done much to make us feel vastly superior to the poor cretins that lived in such squalor and to the French, who have never found anything nearly this cool.” Archaeologists in the north of England discovered the “time capsule” by accident as they ran around a field performing wacky antics to the tune of “Yakety Sax,” a British custom Americans are no doubt familiar with from the Benny Hill Show. Included in the “time capsule” was a letter from the leader of the clan, an inventory of the vessel’s contents, and a laundry ticket for a tunic and two codpieces. The letter reads: We the clan of Runamok have decided to stay home on this the last day of the first 1,000 years and likely the last day of the world, in order to spend the few remaining hours with our families. As the Burgundian monk Ralph Glaber predicted in 989 when he saw that bright light flash through the sky [ED: Halley’s comet to us], it is clear that the end is nigh. And thank goodness. After all, we live as serfs, are subject to frequent raids from Vikings, rarely survive beyond 30, bathe very infrequently, have an infant mortality rate that is something like 40 percent, and we mostly eat grain and fetid, cured meat. My God, man, we don’t even have forks. Still, just in case some peoples survive the imminent apocalypse and the ensuing rapture, we’ve decided to leave this record of what our lives were like. In this box we’ve included: * A lock of hair from one of our clan’s oldest members, who just turned an astonishing 45 years old. Sadly, though we love this old man dearly, we have not adequately prepared for an aging population and he has become a drain on our resources. To deal with this situation, most likely we will up the retirement age, work him to within a breath of his last days, and then give him inadequate life insurance and a pittance to see him through. * A copy of Beowulf, perhaps the most popular story of our time, full of thrilling scenes of fighting and killing. Some members of our clan have expressed concerns that such tales are encouraging violent behavior among our children, but we’ve killed most of those whiners right off. * An abacus, but then I’m sure I don’t have to explain what that is to you. This miraculous calculating machine — invented by the Arabs and heavily promoted by our current pope, Sylvester II, an ambitious-but-humane man unjustly picked on because, well, his name is Sylvester — is, we’re sure, still in use, making commerce and science zoom along at lightning speeds, a tribute to the abiding permanence of technology. Of course, there have been undoubtedly many updates. This model runs abacus beads 995 and has the new four-digit-year patch to make it Y1K compliant. * I’ve included my old horse harness, a flimsy Roman leather strap that tended to strangle my horses. I can afford to bury this important item because the Missus just bought me one of those new horse harnesses, a real beaut, with two running, interlocking boards and wool padding in the collar. Oh, it’s great. I’m the envy of all the other guys, and I’m just flying through the fields now at an astonishing 3 feet per second. * A campaign battle ax used by our current king in his last “election.” Though hotly contested, he won the race by more than 15 crushed skulls. Perhaps someday leaders will learn to accrue power by lying, cheating, and backstabbing, and then we will all be much better off. * And finally, we’ve included a baby blanket belonging to little Macbeth, the newborn son of one of the Scottish chieftains. Great things are expected from this lad, as from his cousin Duncan. We imagine you’ll be reading about them for centuries to come. Sorry, there seems to be a little blood on the blanket, but it just wouldn’t come off.