The computer is turned on, and everyone in the waiting room tenses up. Start, programs, accessories, games, minesweeper. We issue into the glass room looking out over the minefield, but a safe distance away. Beginner. The first unlucky sweeper is chosen. But which, I cannot help asking myself, is really worse. To be sent out to risk life and limb, or to sit here, day after day, watching as one's friends are blown into oblivion. 1, 1, space, flag, 2, mine. Another sweeper dead. Not a personal friend this time, but I'd seen him around. I can hear the soft moaning of his family from across the room.

Another sweeper to be chosen. The dead one's mother, I think it is, is wailing. She wants to be next, she cries. Fate does not so easily bend to the wishes of we mortals. I am chosen.

I am on the field, every muscle tense, waiting, waiting to be told what to do, where to go. I can only hope vainly that this round we will be lucky, that I will live to see another day. 1, 1, space, flag, 1, 2, flag, flag, 4, 1, 2. The face beams down at me, looking appropriately anxious at every fresh step I am told to make. Oh, that I were like him. A little dust in the eyes now and then, but no real danger. Only to look down on those he does not care anything about and wish them well. Flag, 1, 1, 1, 2, flag, flag, 2, 2, space, flag, 2. I am so anxious, so fearful. Drops of sweat are building on my brow, and my mouth feels so dry. 2, flag, 2, flag, 2, 1, 1, 1.

Now, one flag left to plant, one mine left unflagged. Two choices. A four, surrounded by three, could make either place its fourth. A two could use either for its second. I can feel the hand waver in indecisivness. "Please," I wisper to this unknown controller, "Be careful in your choice." My orders come. 1, flag. The game is won! I can breath again.

The landscape changes, becomes bigger. Intermediate. A harder field, I again the obedient sweeper. 2, 2, 2, space, flag, 1, space, flag, flag, 1, 2, 2, flag, flag, flag, flag, flag, 2, 2, 3, flag, flag, 3, flag, 2, 2, 2. My anxiety is building again. This person brought us through Beginner, but who knows if they're capable enough for Intermediate? And if we do win this round, what then? Will they press on, into Expert? I don't think they're anywhere near experienced enough for Expert.

The next order is given. I calm my nerves as much as I am able. Flag, 1, space, 2, flag, flag, 4, flag, 2. The next space is just a step ahead. Only 25 mines left out of 40. They got us this far, they can get us to the end.

I step into the next space, and know that the wrong move has been made. Pain, searing pain, up my legs and into my body. Smoke and flames, everywhere. 25 mines gone off together, and I in the thick of it. I begin to feel the pain a little less, I must be dying. I am forced to my knees. Through the haze I can see the yellow face, his eyes screwed up into little X's. He is frowning, looking correctly sad, but I know that he does not really care. I think for a moment of those I am leaving behind. I am sorry for them, but I have no time for that now. I am sorrier for me, and I have not much time left even for that.

I can support myself no longer, and fall face down onto the jagged, disrupted soil. It has to be this way, I groggily remember someone in my past saying--perhaps my mother was the one. It has to be this way, because that is what the computer designers decree. I lie here, feeling the life seep out of me, and I curse the computer designers with all of my heart and with my last breath.