I hate my job. I mean, how would you like it if you were blown up about a hundred times a day? Here's what I do: I walk around this minefield and wait for a voice to tell me where to step and where to mark the mines.
Yes, I do hear voices. I've tried going in for a psych evaluation, but my boss won't allow it. His name is Mr. Windows, he's 98 years old and meaner than ever. He'll let anyone play with my mind, including some chick named "Naomi Sisko" who never lets me mark the mines because she thinks it's a waste of time. I'd like to see her inside the mine maze. Not only would she start marking the mines like crazy (it hurts a lot less when just one mine explodes compared to ninety-nine), she also wouldn't care when her time went over two hundred seconds at the expert level.
To the story. One day, I was running around, wishing I could at least mark one mine when all of a sudden, I come upon something very rare, the ever-dreaded, ever-hoped-for eight. I jumped into the middle of a minestack and was not harmed; it was the eye of a deadly storm. You'll never guess what I saw.
Freedom. There was a trap door, a chute, tunnelling through the desktop, leading to who knows where. I took my fate in my hands and jumped.
Down I flew, through masses of dark electrons, spouting binary at the speed of light. Then I saw my destination. Out I tumbled, into the vast expanse of Netscape Navigator. I surveyed my surroundings, noticed I could change the color scheme of the displayed website by choosing from a pulldown menu. Searching for the name of this unique web page, I came to an icon reading "FanFiction.Net".
It was then that the voice returned. Mark the mine, it said, and I was drawn to its calling. Unable to find any mines, I clicked a link and was transported to the Animorphs section of FanFiction.Net. Actually, I was glad, because in the room where I found myself, there were many people wearing straitjackets. Where there is a patient, there is a doctor, I thought hopefully, remembering how I had never been able to find psychiatric help before. I strode up to what looked like the reception desk, and said, "Hello."
A lady with short, curly red hair and orange glasses turned in her chair to face me. "Welcome to IOWA, the Institution for the Obsessed With Animorphs," she said in a nasally voice. "How may I help you?"
I frowned. "What's Animorphs?"
She rolled her eyes. "You're cured. Go away."
Disheartened, I clicked on another link. This time I found myself in IDAHO, the Institution for the Dark Arts and Harry Obsessed. I was turned away yet again.
"What I need," I told myself, "is a Minesweeper Addict and Insanity Network Extention, or MAINE. Hmm . . ." I read a notice at the bottom of one of the web pages. "It says here I can e-mail Xing . . . suggest a category . . . maybe I'll do that."
Resolved, I called up Netscape Messenger and typed out the most important letter of my life, signing it with a flourish and some fancy HTML. I only hoped that, this time, I could free myself completely from the voices which ran my life. And to do that, I had to be in the right state of mind.