--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…
--Chapter Nine
Fatal Error was
just about through with pressing buttons. Everything in the entire monitor was
separated into two categories: those on the screen, and those behind the
screen. The only door left open was the door between the Expert Board Flag
Squadron and the Minesweeper board because, after all, that was the one door
Fatal’s palm pilot couldn’t close while the program was open. And of course,
all of the passageways inside the monitor, not linked to the screen, were still
open.
This being done,
the rogue int hurried back out the door from which he had entered the Beginner
Squadron’s lair, and proceeded to try and find the communications center of the
monitor so that he could see what was happening on the screen.
“Hmm, let’s
see,” he said, “the communications center is usually right behind the screen.
I’ll go up one level, and start searching the halls for the right chip.”
Just then he
heard a voice coming from all around him, as if it were on a loudspeaker. The
voice belonged to none other than Angus DeFrag.
“Okay, Brenda,
can you hear me?” he asked, “Nod your head if you can.”
On the screen, a
miniscule figure nodded rapidly.
“Brenda, I’m in
the communications center of the monitor, so I’m going to help you through
this, alright?”
Another nod.
“I’ve just been
tapping into the computer’s audio system like I always do, and a guy named Hal
answered on the other side of the line. He says he can help you clear this
board. First, though, Brenda, I have to ask you, is there any way you can jump
on the big X in the corner and close this program?”
Brenda tried,
but found that her motion was restricted to the minefield. She couldn’t hit the
X just as she couldn’t hit the File button to close the game—or at least select
the Beginner level.
Angus sighed.
“Okay, don’t worry, Brenda, I’ll put Hal on the line for you. Take it away,
Hal.”
Hal the land
mine picked up the microphone attached to his MP3 player; Angus had told him to
get the nearest one in the music shop and use it to communicate with him.
“Um, hello?”
said Hal, “I’m not sure if you can hear me, but I’m a bom—er, that is to say,
I’m a resident of the Minesweeper board, and I just realized that if you step
on a land mine on the board, well, many of my friends and I will die in a
massive explosion, so I’m helping you out. I can tell you how to clear the
Minesweeper board. Are you listening? Um, good. Here goes: start at the bottom
of the board and count three spaces from the left and four spaces up. You got
that? Then jump on the square.”
Angus
interrupted, “Alright, Hal, just wait a minute until she does all that.”
Brenda did
exactly as she was told, moving three steps right, four steps up, and jumping.
The tile under her body gave way to reveal nothing but a blank space. Several
other tiles cleared, as well.
“Okay, Hal,
she’s got it. What next?”
Suddenly, Hal
was cut off. So was Angus. Fatal Error stood in a corner of the monitor’s
communication center, twirling a pair of scissors in his hand.
“Looks like your
connection just got cut, buddy,” Fatal said, chuckling as smoke came out
through his teeth.
--
“Oh no! Don’t
tell me I’ve just been cut off! The clock is down to 800 seconds, and I have no
clue how to play this game. I’m doomed!”
“No you’re not.”
“Who said that?”
“Up here, above
the board.”
Brenda looked
up. To her astonishment, the smiley face was talking to her in ventriloquist-like
fashion, keeping the same old smile while speaking.
“Hi, my name’s
Gus. You can call me ‘Smiley.’ I might not know exactly which spaces are safe
and which aren’t, but I can help you with playing the game.”
“Good, ‘cause I
need some help right now.”
“Basically,
there are spaces with numbers on them all over the board. Each number indicates
how many land mines are next to that space. You don’t want to step on a land
mine, by the way.”
“I figured that
much.”
“Good. If you
see a space that you know is a bomb, just jump on it with your right
foot, but not your left. That will deactivate that bomb. The game ends
when all 99 bombs are deactivated… or you die.”
Brenda gulped.
“I’ll take the first option, thank you.” She was genuinely nervous, but in a
way she was grateful for Smiley’s help.
“So, let me see
here: this space has a one on it, and it’s only touching one space that hasn’t
been revealed yet. So, that space must be a bomb…”
--
In the Inthole,
the land mine known as “Big Oliver” had been assigned to take out the two ints
that were trying to carry the sign to the monitor earlier. At last he had
cornered them—not an easy task for a guy named “Big Oliver” against two fast
little ints. But here he was, closing in on them after they had reached a dead
end.
Int A: Aaaah!
No! We’re trapped, Joey!
Int B: I can see
that, but there’s nothing I can do about it!
Oliver: (walking
ever closer) You’re going down!
Int A: No!
Please have mercy, Mr. Land Mine, sir. We never did anything to deserve any
punishment!
Int B: Here, I
have some sandwich material in my pocket. Would you like a sandwich?
Oliver: What’s
on it?
Int B: Let’s
see, there’s lettuce, tomato, cheese, ham—all made of silicon, of course, for
that healthy int and land mine diet… yeah. All land mines love silicon, right?
Heh heh.
Oliver: Does it
have Miracle Whip on it?
Int B: I don’t
think so.
Oliver: In that
case, you’re dead!
Int B: Darn
those truth-telling Miracle Whip commercials!
Oliver
advances on the ints, but is all of a sudden stopped in his tracks. He is
fading out.
Oliver: Wha-what’s happening? I’m being
deactivated! No! (his speech
and movements become jerky motions, as if he is resisting some sort of unseen
force) Dynamite… neutralized… Fuse link to game board…
cut off… Bomb-like intimidating character and mojo… going… going… gone.
Oliver falls
to the floor, unconscious.
Int A: Do you think he had a heart attack?
Int B: There’s only one way to find out.
Int A: What’s that?
Int B: Well, I saw on a Charlie Brown
cartoon that you have to pound him on the nose.
Int A: Does this guy have a nose?
Int B: Good question. I say we just leave
him here.
Int A: Agreed.
They are about
to walk away when Oliver gets up and smiles at the ints congenially.
Int A: AAAAH! HE’S BACK! DEAD MINE WALKING!
DEAD MINE WALKING!
Oliver: Hello, my little int friends. It’s
so nice to see you today. Would you please tell me what all you are yelling
about?
Int A: (blank expression on his face) What did he say?
Int B: I think he’s gone mad.
Oliver: No, I’m not mad. I’m me again.
Normally, land mines such as myself are nice, gentle creatures. But whenever
we’re hooked up to the Minesweeper game, we get angry. I just got deactivated,
which means I’m nice again now.
Int A: You don’t say.
Int B: So, do you want that sandwich now?
Oliver: Does it have mayonnaise on it?
Int B: It’s really more of a Dijon sauce.
Oliver: Grey Poupon?
Int B: No.
Oliver: WHAT?! That’s it, ya little squirt,
you’re dead!
The ints run
past Oliver out into the open. Oliver chases them, chanting “No Miracle Whip
and no Grey Poupon make Oliver an angry bomb” à la The Shining.
Int A: (to Int B) You know, you really ought to
use some higher quality condiments on your food. That’s the second time this
week someone’s attacked you for not having Grey Poupon.
Int B: Hey, that’s not true! The first time
it was because I went to that Palamer house for a formal dinner and, in a
western accent, asked the hostess to “please pass the jelly.”
--
Brenda was getting the hang of this
Minesweeper game. But now she was struck with a dilemma: there were only nine
spaces left, forming a perfect square in the box, but all of the outer ones
seemed to be bombs.
“Hmm, what do you think I should do, Gus?
There are eight bombs remaining, and nine spaces. And because of the formation
of numbers, I know that all of the ones attached to a number on the screen are
land mines. Which one of the remaining four spaces should I choose?”
Gus shrugged at this question, that is to
say, he would have if he had shoulders.
“I don’t know,” said Gus, “Maybe you should
wait and see if your friend in the communication center can get back the phone
line. Then he could tell you which space is safe.”
“Oh, I hope he hurries,” said Brenda, “There
are only 100 seconds left!”
99, 98, 97…
And now, the
moment we’ve all been waiting for:
--Chapter Ten
“It’s all over,
Angus DeFrag. You and your entire race will be wiped out in a few short
seconds.”
“Not exactly,”
said Angus to Fatal Error, who still stood in the doorway with the pair of
scissors, “96 of the land mines have been deactivated. So only relatively minor
damage will be done.”
Fatal laughed.
“Not so, my byte-brained adversary.” Tired of standing, Fatal leaned against
one of the machines in the communications center. He was completely unaware of
the fact that when he did this, he pressed the Emergency Broadcast System
button at the same time. Now his voice could be heard throughout the Monitor,
Inthole, and other devices as he laid out his plan for Angus.
So all of the 99
land mines heard their leader as he said, “You see, Mr. DeFrag, I’ve wired all
of the land mines up so that even after deactivation, they can still explode.
That way, I can make sure there aren’t any surviving mines to annoy me later. I
gotta tell you, those mines were starting to get on my nerves. They’re all
idiots! No good for anything except exploding and making a huge blast of it,
too. Then the only ones left alive will be that girlfriend of yours, Brenda,
and myself. Yes, Brenda will make a lovely Femme Fatale, don’t you think?
Hahaha! She’ll never guess that the right space on the board is in the middle
of the nine squares left! And as for you, janitor, I think it’s now time I
showed you why I’m called Fatal.” Fatal pulled out a syringe. “It’s my latest
virus,” he said, “And it’s waiting for you.”
Angus walked
backwards as the Rogue Int advanced on him, until DeFrag found himself
cornered. Angus had never dealt with a guy like Fatal before; that type of job
was usually left for the soldier ints of the inthole. But Angus did know a
thing or two about hand to hand combat; he remembered the days when he’d
pretend his broom was a karate bo staff as he tapped into the music department
to listen to “Kung Fu Fighting.”
The janitor
adeptly batted the virus from Fatal’s grasp, at which point Angus turned the
tables on our villain, so to speak.
“Take that! And
that! And one of these, too!”
--
“Hmm, the space
in the middle. Thanks, whoever said that!” Brenda had heard Fatal’s speech,
even though she couldn’t recognize the voice for whatever reason. She now
jumped on the space in the middle. When she didn’t hear an explosion, she
looked down. She saw a giant black 8 on the space. “YES! WOOHOO! I did it! Hey,
Smiley, I did it! All of the other bombs are flagged. We won!”
Smiley looked at
her coolly through his sunglasses. “Believe me, I know. Wow, these are nice
glasses. Won’t see these again for a while. Hey, thanks, little int friend.”
Brenda imitated
Gus’s smile on her own face. “Don’t mention it,” she said. “Now, who was that
on the loudspeaker calling me a ‘Femme Fatale?’”
--
Angus and Fatal
were currently rolling about the floor in an all-out struggle, each with his
hands around the other’s throat. As they rolled out of the room and down some
stairs, Fatal’s palm pilot fell from his trenchcoat pocket. The
micro-micro-computer smashed into pieces on the floor below, and all of the
locks on the monitor were suddenly removed.
Then Fatal
pulled a dirty trick—after all, is there a time when he doesn’t pull a
dirty trick?—and flung Angus over him and down the stairs. Fatal got up to
finish the job, when ninety-nine landmines came up the stairs the other way. On
instinct, Fatal ran back into the communication center to try and escape the
army of mines. Then he found out, much to his dismay, that there was only one
door leading in and out of the room; he was doomed.
“Only one exit?”
Fatal yelled, dropping his cigarette for the last time in a long time, “That
doesn’t meet fire code! This Monitor is a deathtrap! Who in the world would
design such a place?”
The author of
this story, that’s who.
“Oh, you shut
up, Human.”
The name’s
Aetre, and I don’t appreciate you telling me to shut up, thank you very much.
Now I’m afraid I’m gonna have to kill you.
The bombs
entered through the doorway, Big Oliver leading the group, his hand-like
features in fists.
“Let’s get him!”
he yelled.
Fatal shivered
at the thought of being beaten by an angry mob of land mines. He knew he had
lost, and he knew that this time, it was permanent. Determined to end it all
painlessly, he reached for the syringe he had brought into the building.
“Well, I hope
this virus works as quickly as I designed it to,” he said. But because this is
my story, and because I want to end the fic on a comical note, the virus didn’t
work. Nor did the land mines kill him.
Angus DeFrag
saved Fatal’s life from the mob of mines and the fanfiction author by yelling
“STOP!” just as Oliver was about to do his thing. All of the mines looked at
the janitor as he made his way to the front of the crowd.
Angus faced the
entire army and shouted out, “Sure, we could kill him, but I’ve got a
better idea…”
--
Ints A and B
sit at stools in The Motherboard. Once again, Int B is eating a sandwich.
Int A: Say,
Joey.
Int B: Yeah,
what?
Int A: Y’know
how all of these new people have been walking around the inthole lately? The
land mines, the flags, and that little smiley face guy named Gus?
Int B: What
about them?
Int A: Well,
y’know, I’ve been thinking about how they’ve all been cut off from the
Minesweeper program and welcomed here as members of our society. And I think to
myself, what happens now if the Human turns on the computer and wants to play
Minesweeper? He can’t very well play it without any bombs or flags or smiley
face, can he?
Int B: That’s a
silly question! Everybody knows that all of the characters have been replaced
by inanimate pixel drawings on the Monitor screen.
Int A: True, but
wouldn’t that ruin the object of the game? What’s the point if there’s no real
character to wear the sunglasses at the end of the game?
Int B: Ah, but
that’s the best part of all: now the objective of the game isn’t to make Smiley
wear the glasses, it’s to blow him up!
Int A: I don’t
understand.
Int B: Y’know
that int in the trench coat, Fatal Error? He’s imprisoned behind the
Minesweeper board, hooked up to ninety-nine electrodes, all attached to land
mines on the screen. So whenever the Human blows up the smiley face, he gives
Fatal Error a painful electric shock. And the Human enjoys doing it very much.
Int A: Oh, I get
it! So that’s why the Human keeps clicking on all those land mines every time
he plays Minesweeper.
Int B: Why, yes
it is. At least, that’s his story and he’s sticking to it.
--End chapter
ten
A message from
the author, Aetre:
And that, my
friends, is why I wrote this story: to explain to the world why I can never
seem to win at Minesweeper. No, seriously, I wrote this because I saw the
category on the website, and I got curious. I hope you enjoyed this fic,
especially because it’s my first article to make it to the Internet in more
than three years.
I have enjoyed
reading all of your reviews, especially since they’ve all been good ones, and
I’d like to thank all of you for having the good sense not to write a flame
review for a PG-rated article.
As to those of
you interested in a sequel, I welcome any fellow-authors to continue the saga
at their own leisure. They may write a sequel, for I most certainly will not.
Sorry, but sooner or later, we all have to admit that there’s more to life than
fanfics on Minesweeper. I’ll be moving on to other things. But before I leave
the imaginary world of the inthole forever, I’ll leave you with this epilogue.
Bye now, and come see me soon!
--Epilogue
Queen Pentium
III, tired after a long session’s work, issued the day’s final orders to
Sergeant McAfee.
“McAfee,” she
called wearily, “I’ve received the order from the Human to shut down for the
day.”
“Yes, your
majesty,” McAfee answered her, “I’ll see to it we shut down properly.”
As he was about
to leave the throne room to issue the orders to the workers, the queen said,
“McAfee, one more thing: what scheduled tasks do we have for the next time the
computer turns on?”
“Why, there’s
nothing on the schedule except the Honors Ceremony for Angus DeFrag and Brenda
Presario, those two worker ints who saved the whole colony.”
“Ah, yes. Now I
remember.”
McAfee smiled
lightly. For a Pentium, the queen sure was a forgetful creature. He added,
“Next week, I understand they’re getting married. We’ve all been invited to the
wedding.”
“Oh, good. I’m
happy for them.” The queen yawned and then said, “Do you think, McAfee, that
there’s a purpose to our work in this computer? Is it all for nothing, or are
we really doing something important, living our little lives day in and day
out?”
McAfee took his
best shot at answering the question. “I don’t know, your majesty, what all of
our work amounts to, but what I do know is that it can amount to more if I just
do what I can on my own. We can live our little lives, as you put it, conscious
of what it does for ourselves and those around us. And when everybody works
together, the society works like a well-oiled machine. And when there’s a
person out there like Fatal Error, trying to destroy that society, that’s all
the more reason to work together to stop him. That’s what I think our work is
done towards: a better machine, and a better way of life.”
The queen had
closed her eyes, and was about to fall asleep. In a sleepy voice, and with a
kind smile on her face, she said, “Thank you. Go issue the command now, McAfee.
Sergeant dismissed.”
McAfee saluted
her and walked out the door. Seconds later, the final message appeared on the
screen, with new meaning now that Fatal Error had been stopped:
“It is now safe
to turn off your computer.”