midnight
-LSB- Illustration : _ The gaping mouth jerked forward . _ -RSB- The blood-red glow of a slanting sun bathed the towers of New York 's serrated skyline , then dropped into a molten sea beyond the winter horizon . Friday , the last day of Jupiter , the thirteenth month of the earth 's new calendar , had drawn to a close . In a few hours the year of 1999 would end -- at midnight , to be exact . Far below the towers stretched well lighted canyons teeming with humanity . At an upper level where once the elevated trains had roared and rumbled in an antiquated period long past , an orderly mass of workers and shoppers was borne at an incredible speed from lower Manhattan to towering apartments that stretched northward to Peekskill . The northbound traffic was heaviest at this hour and the moving sidewalk bands were jammed to their capacity .