--Chapter Eight

Gus "Smiley" Yellow was getting tired of the white fabric over his eyes. "If I could only see what was going on," he thought, although he couldn't finish that sentence.

But what Smiley couldn't see, he could hear. And what he heard was a little "tappity, tappity, clickity, tap" that could only be one particular mouse scurrying along. Arrow ran and with its mouth lifted the cloth from Smiley's face.

"Arrow! It's so good to see you. You won't believe what happened to me today."

Arrow squeaked in a way that suggested he could believe anything at this point, and then looked around. Horror instantly struck the albino mouse as he saw none other than the Rogue Int, climbing up on top of the top-left space on the minesweeper board. Arrow quickly stomped on Gus's face as hard as he possibly could.

"OWW!!! Arrow, that hurt! What's the big idea?"

Arrow ignored his master's comment for the moment, and watched on as Fatal Error jumped on the space in the top-left corner.

--

Outside The Motherboard, two mysterious and very fat figures in oversized coats nodded and snickered to each other.

"Hee hee hee, Bubba, this gonna get some major screams."

Bubba giggled back. "I always wanted to try this."

"Okay, you go in, on three. I'll get the restaurant down the street if yours turns out successfully."

"And if it doesn't?"

"Then I got your back, Bubba. I'll be out here until I see it work out."

Bubba nodded and said, "Ready, Hal?"

Hal nodded back. "Ready. One…two…three!"

Bubba burst in through the front door of the joint so loudly that it grabbed everybody's attention. He put his hand-like features on his coat and prepared to open it.

"Nobody move!" he yelled, "I… am a BOMB!" Then he opened his coat to reveal his land mine-like appearance. Everybody in The Motherboard screamed. Bubba looked back out the window, smiled, and nodded to Hal. Hal smiled back and went down the street to try the same thing in another restaurant… or maybe another department.

"Yes," thought Hal, "Another department would do much better. And because I'm on Main Street, I have access to every department on the computer. Let's see which ones haven't been taken by my other land mine friends already: the Central Intel Agency? No, Bertha has that one. The Video Department? No, that's Raul's job. Hey, there's one I don't think anybody has taken yet: the Audio Department!"

Hal marched through the door and into The Sound Card Music Shop. Inside, he found four ints, all wearing headphones and listening to music.

"Nobody move!" shouted Hal, "I… am a BOMB!" Some of the people looked up, but only briefly, as Hal opened his coat. But the people didn't scream. One int came up to him from behind the counter. He had a Grateful Dead shirt on and wore his hair in a pony tail that was half the length of his beard.

This int looked Hal over, but he didn't take off his headphones. "Wow, what have we got here? Some guy just comes walking into the store, and he wants to flash everybody. Let me guess: you're here for the latest Michael Jackson album, right?"

"No, I'm a BOMB!" Hal tried to sound impressive, but the store clerk still couldn't hear him over his music.

"Oh, you want the 'bomb.' Mariah Carey's in the second aisle. Just look for the bin that reads 'Sale: $4.99.'"

Hal was confused more than he was infuriated. The int actually thought that Hal was one of its own. Hal buttoned his coat back up and tried to act like a real customer. Hal didn't have any money for buying music, but maybe he could try some stuff out while he was here.

"You don't have some extra headphones lying around, do you?" yelled Hal. This time, the int heard him.

"Sure," he said, taking off his own headphones and offering them to Hal, "go ahead and try out anything you like. Just don't blow me up." The int smiled and winked at the land mine.

So he had heard the bomb the first time! Pretty clever guy, that music salesman. Hal smiled back. He adjusted the headphones to fit his giant head, and put them on. The song the clerk had been listening to was still playing on the MP3 player: "War! Huh! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing! Sing it again, y'all!"

--

Fatal Error laughed out loud as he stomped on the space. The tile gave way under him, so he waited to hear a giant explosion coming from the inthole. But he heard nothing. Fatal looked down at the tile: it wasn't a bomb! Fatal must have been mistaken or something. Nonetheless, the space had a big red 3 printed on it. So all he had to do was to step on one of the adjacent ones, and—

Arrow the mouse ran full speed into Fatal's side, tackling him and taking him off the game board and onto the desktop. When Fatal was able to get free, he ran toward the Minesweeper board. Arrow was slightly faster than the rogue int, so Fatal didn't have time to jump on a tile. Instead, he squirmed between the spaces, as he had earlier, going where the mouse was too big to fit in.

Fatal went downstairs, one floor, than another, than another. When he had reached the bottom, he was in the Beginner Flag Squadron's room. Brenda Presario shrieked as she saw him run through the doorway.

Fatal saw her standing on the other side of the room. "YOU!" he shouted, "How did you get free?" the evil int advanced on Brenda, but the ten flags stood in his way.

Bottleneck looked back to Brenda and said, "Run! We'll hold him off."

Brenda ran through another doorway, up another stairway, and didn't stop running. When she had climbed up the last flight of stairs, she found herself on top of the Minesweeper board.

Back in the basement, Fatal Error got an idea. He took out from his trench coat a miniature palm pilot and pressed a sequence of buttons. Instantly, the Minesweeper board was closed off from the rest of the monitor. Arrow the mouse was still on the desktop, so the little int was all alone where she was, except for Gus Yellow, who sat at the top of the board with his usual smile.

She couldn't go back down, and she couldn't escape to the desktop. As scary as this was, it was nothing compared to what happened next.

Brenda heard a beeping sound, and then noticed something out of the corner of her eye: the timer in the corner of the board, which had already been moving, reset itself. But it didn't reset to zero… it reset to 999, and started counting down.

To anybody who has ever played Minesweeper at the expert level, 999 might not seem like such a hard time to shoot for. But this was the first time Brenda had ever played the game. And now, if she made even one mistake, it would be Game Over for good.

998, 997, 996, 995…

--End chapter eight--