https://marco.org/2007/10/18/i-had-the-sneaking-suspicion-that-somewhere-on
I had the sneaking suspicion that somewhere, on one of the screens on one of the computers in the Hertz office, an old DOS box had booted up with the clock battery burned out, and it was prompting the user to enter a date and time, and if there was just one person working for Hertz who could actually read, that person would have typed in the date on time on that old DOS box, which then would have booted up and the whole system would have come back. Just speculation.