After the first mortar explosion, we didn’t bother with the slow crawl across the muddy ground any longer.

As the mortar shells kept on dropping around us, the nearer hits throwing huge explosions of dirt up into the air to rain down on us like stinging hail, we all rose up to our feet and ran, a ragged charge across the battlefield.  There was no time to think of strategy, of keeping a low profile, of anything.  All we knew was that there was danger, that we were on the brink of death-

-and our only shot at safety was in the trenches that lay ahead of us.

We were lucky.  One of our own shells had hit the nearest machine gun nest, and one of the German mortars had misfired and taken out another.  Ahead of us, we could hear cries of surprise and fear, but only our bullets whizzed through the air.

But that didn’t last long.

With a loud staccato roar, like a car rolling over a pile of sticks, a nearby machine gun opened up on us.  Ahead of me and half a dozen paces to my left, I saw Johnny, my bunk mate, stagger and convulse as half a dozen lead hornets ripped through his body.  Tears stung at my eyes, but I couldn’t stop.  I had to keep going forward.

The enemy trench was just ahead of us.  I could see it.  But I didn’t think I was going to make it.

A head popped up over the trench, the face going slack with surprise as it saw us.  I managed to pull my rifle around as I ran and pulled the trigger, the metal slippery beneath my fingers.  The expression of surprise on the head in front of me froze as its forehead exploded.

Behind me, I could hear more cries, but I was so close.  I threw myself forward, feeling my feet lose purchase below me in the slippery mud.  I tumbled – and kept on tumbling, dropping down into the trench.

I rolled up, scrambling to my feet, covered from head to toe in the mud – and found myself face to face with two more Krauts.

I dropped the useless rifle.  I wouldn’t be able to get it up in time.  I instead grabbed for my Webley at my waist.  For once, the holster didn’t catch, and I pulled the trigger feverishly.

Both of the men dropped to the ground, only one of them even managing to make a gurgle.  I straightened up into a crouch, holding the revolver in front of me, my heart pounding like a jackrabbit’s in my chest.

Which way?  I was totally lost and disoriented.  But I couldn’t stand still.   I had to move.  I picked a direction – but paused as I heard a sound behind me.

Slowly, I turned, back to the two fallen German soldiers.  I looked down at them, the gun held out in front of me at arm’s length like a wand.

The man who had fallen on top was definitely dead.  The .455 had blown out most of his chest cavity, scattering gore in a circle around him.

But the man beneath was still alive.  I could see his face sticking out from beneath his fallen companion, eyes wide with shock and fear.

I forced my eyes to not stare back at his, instead looking at the rest of him.  My shot had grazed his arm, I saw, but he looked to be otherwise unharmed.  The bullet had cut a tendon or something, forcing his right arm to go straight, like he was reaching out for something.

I lowered the gun, pointing it at the scared, bloodless face sticking out from beneath his companion.  I could feel my hand trembling, making the Webley’s barrel shake.  In my ears, I could hear the roaring of machine guns, the shouts and cries of my companions as they fought and died.

My index finger felt the trigger resisting beneath it.  I should shoot – the man had been prepared to do the same to me.

But I couldn’t do it.

“Don’t you bloody try anything, or I swear to god I’ll shoot you,” I told the man angrily, even though I doubted he could understand.  “I mean it, I swear.”

The man just stared back at me, blinking but uncomprehending.  I sighed, trying to stop the shaking in my limbs.  I managed to re-holster the Webley on the third attempt – and then reached down, hauling the corpse of his companion off of the German.

I half expected the man to leap up, to make some heroic attempt to fight back.  But he didn’t move, even once he was in the clear – he just stared up at me.  Only when I held out my own hand did he accept my help, letting me pull him over into a sitting position leaning against the side of the trench.  I could see the grimace on his face at the pain of his injured arm bumping against the ground, but I couldn’t do much about that.

Around me, I could hear the sounds of battle growing fainter.  Maybe the rest of my squad had taken the trench – or maybe I was the last one left alive.  But right now, I didn’t want to think about that.

I reached up and patted the pocket of my jacket, feeling the crumpled rectangular packet inside.  I fished it out, pulling out one of the treasured white tubes.  After a minute’s consideration, I also grabbed a second, offering it to the Kraut beside me.

The man looked over at me, but then shakily reached up with his good hand and accepted the offer.  He stuck it between his lips, and then reached down to his own belt.  I watched with caution, but he pulled out a lighter, offering it to me first.

“Well, this is bloody awful,” I commented, after I had managed to light my cigarette.  I glanced over at the Kraut, who still looked like he couldn’t understand a word I said.  “Wilfred,” I said clearly, patting my chest.  “Wilfred Owen.”

After I repeated this gesture again, the man finally seemed to understand.  “Adolf,” he responded, tapping his own chest.  “Hitler.  Adolf Hitler.”

“Well, nice to meet you, Adolf,” I said, taking a puff on my cigarette and leaning back against the mud behind my head.  “I guess you’re my prisoner – or, if it turns out that all my buddies are dead, I’ll happily be yours.  Either way, beats getting up again.”

Next to me, Adolf’s eyes were closed, but his chest rose and fell as he puffed on his cigarette.  I kept one hand on my revolver’s butt, but I did the same.  For just a moment, as I closed my eyes, I could believe that I wasn’t in the midst of Hell.

I glared down at the bank of TV monitors in front of me, despising my own existence.  God, I didn’t want to be here, I said to myself in a depressingly common line of thought.

Outside my little walled-off cubicle, I knew that all these idiots were wandering around the expanse of the mall, staring dumbly into the window displays, their wallets growing lighter as the bags in their hands grew correspondingly heavier.  The flow of customers seemed never-ending, all of them with that same stupid, poleaxed look on their faces.

I glanced over at the clock, begging for it to go faster.  I knew that I was only supposed to go on patrol once every half hour.  The mall administrator had explained it to me, using that patronizing, condescending tone that made me want to slam my fist right into his smug little face.

“See, we don’t want to make the shoppers feel like they’re being policed,” he had said to me, spreading his hands wide as if trying to say, ‘what can I do, I’m just another working stiff like you’.  “And your presence can be intimidating.”

I looked down at myself.  My uniform was baggy.  I had already managed to shed ten pounds, working towards completing my New Year’s resolution, but the cheapskates refused to give me a new uniform.  So now I was stuck in the shell of my old clothes, feeling them hang off my shoulders and sag around my reduced belly.

At my waist hung my belt of tools – but no guns, oh no.  That wasn’t suitable for mall security.  The most dangerous thing I had there was a snap-out baton, flimsy and slightly rusty.  It was balanced by a can of pepper spray that was probably a decade old.  The cheapskates refused to understand the idea of pepper spray “going bad” and refused to pay for a replacement.

It had only been eighteen minutes since my last patrol.  I still had another ten minutes to spend here in front of the monitors, staring as the fat little images of people moved from one screen to another.

But I couldn’t bear it any longer.

I jumped up, the noise making Frank, my partner, turn and glance at me.  “Going on patrol,” I told him.

“Seems soon,” Frank remarked, but I knew that he didn’t care.  Hell, the man probably preferred that I do it.  Frank was a big fan of hitting up the mall’s Krispy Kreme store for their duds and leftovers, and it showed on his waist and big hips.  Hell, he was part of my motivation to lose weight in the first place.

“Yeah, whatever.  Let’s see them fire me for it,” I shot back, and headed out of our little booth.

I liked being on my feet, but sometimes, out among the slowly wandering slabs of night meat, I still felt trapped.  They were all so big, mindless wandering cows.  They existed only to mindlessly consume, munching on greasy mall pizza and sipping from oversized cups of Jamba Juice.  I sometimes felt like I was watching over the urban version of a farm.

Yes, that’s what I was.  The urban farmer, patrolling my meat beasts, watching for the occasional coyote or fox that tried to cause trouble.  I was just there to keep order, to keep the cows happy and mindless.

One of the slabs had come to a stop in front of me, his cottage-cheese bulk blocking most of the walkway.  “Excuse me sir,” I spoke up as he stared, his jaw slack, into one of the lit window displays.

Mister Night Meat didn’t respond.  Behind me, I could feel the other cows moving their feet, starting to get anxious.  Why were they being blocked?

I reached out and tapped the man on the shoulder.  He started, turning to look at me as if confused about who he was.  “Yuh?” he said, the sound deep and guttural.

“Sir, you can’t stand in the middle of the path and stare,” I told him, trying to keep most of the disgust out of my voice.  I didn’t need another official reprimand.  “Step to the side, or keep moving, please.”

The man gawked at me, but stepped over towards the window.  A moment later, the display once again captivated his attention, and he stopped – but at least now he was out of the way.

I kept on walking along the halls of the mall, my thoughts almost as dark as the night outside.

I stared at the screen in front of me, watching the green text scroll by on the black background.  Lines and lines of information, most of it moving by too quickly for me to read.

Of course, I knew that I didn’t have to strain my eyes to capture those fleeting words.  Everything was logged, was being saved and preserved.

All I had to do was wait for my program to finish.

I leaned back in my chair, interlaced my fingers behind my head, closed my eyes…

…and then opened them in annoyance as the computer beeped.

It wasn’t supposed to finish that fast.  And sure enough, as I looked at the bottom of my screen, I saw an error.  Some inane code, followed by a bunch of gobbledygook that doesn’t make sense to anyone except the programmer who wrote the thing a decade ago or more.

My program was still sitting there, confused, waiting on me like a dog that doesn’t know how to proceed when faced with a new obstacle.

I grimaced, and then killed the program.

Killing programs… it sounds so vicious!  Like an act of violence, not simply the press of a button.  Yet although it’s just a couple of key strokes, the act does have an almost satisfying finality to it.  The click of the keys, and the program vanishes, aborted before it can reach its normal conclusion.

I’ve seen some programmers that exult in this savagery.  Although they can’t kill the alpha males that walk around the building, bragging about their sales numbers and effortlessly scoring women hotter than the programmer can ever hope to bed, these quiet and introverted individuals can kill their programs, at least exerting their control over something.

Some programmers even force their creations to kill each other.  I remember reading over the code of one especially bloodthirsty colleague, notorious for creating subroutines basically only to slaughter them en masse a dozen lines later.  Even I felt a twinge of squeamishness at the sight of that writing.

Opening and closing files is done all the time, of course.  There’s no real violence there, no more than hanging up a phone call.  But programs are alive, are in motion, and premature termination prevents them from reaching the conclusion they strive to achieve.

Of course, most of the time it’s necessary.  Now, for example.  My program isn’t running right.  I killed it, but only to open it up and perform surgery, after which I will breathe new life into it as I try the commands again.  It is not a true death, but merely a nap, a temporary spell of non-existence.

And, paradoxically, the more I kill a program, the more I appreciate it, come to love it.  Some of my programs have been terminated hundreds of times, but each termination leads to new growth and improvement.  I kill it, but bring it back each time to be stronger than it was before.

I am not like some of my colleagues, I tell myself, as I open up the code to search for the source of the error.  I love my creations, and want for them to succeed.

But still, I cannot completely purge myself of that desire to shatter the programs I write, to cut it apart and dissect it into single-line fragments.

If I could speak to my program, if I was forced to tell the truth, I know what I would say.

“I love you, but I can’t wait to kill you.”

The big box in my arms was heavy as well as just a little too big for me to hold comfortably, and I could feel the damn thing slipping out of my hands.  I tried to tighten my fingers as best I could, even as I began to lose sensation.  I was so close!

At least, I was close to the front of the line.  In terms of absolutes, however, I was still far, far away from clawing my way back up to equal…

I scanned the line of harried looking employees just ahead of me, each one of them almost cowering in their bunkers back behind the counters.  Insulated from the customers by that two-foot barrier, they held a disturbing level of power over us.

I just needed a single chink in their armor, enough to break through.  Enough to get this damn boxed-up television sitting at my feet out of my life for good!

I cast my eyes along the row of employees and their paired angry customers, looking for an opening.  Of course, I couldn’t stop my eyes from lingering on one young woman, waving her arms in exasperation as she glared daggers across the counter at the middle-aged balding man who appeared helpless in the face of her onslaught.

“Listen, you muppet!” I heard the girl yell out in impotent anger.  “The thing’s screen was showing nothing but cracks from the moment I took it out of the box, and I’m not paying any damn ‘restocking fee’!”

Wait a minute.  That young woman’s complaint sounded familiar.  I pulled my eyes away from her bottom, even though it looked quite fetching in her tight, well-fitted jeans.

Instead, my eyes tracked upwards, settling on the large box sitting on the counter beside her.  I was right!  It was the same product!

Even though there still wasn’t another open position, I hefted the box in my own arms one last time, and moved forward to slam the box down on the counter next to the young woman’s item.  She glanced over at me in surprise, but I did my best to give her a reassuring nod.

“I had exactly the same problem!” I called out to the middle-aged man, patting my box on the counter – which happened to be an exact twin to the young woman’s returned item.  “As soon as I took it out of the box, I saw that it was covered in a spiderweb of cracks!”

The woman looked as though she was about to bite my head off for interrupting at first, but she was quick on the uptake.  She soon ascertained that I was an ally, not a threat.  “See?  It’s a problem with this whole line of televisions – I read about it online!” she added, leaning forward to glare over the counter at the man behind it.

Gosh, when she leaned forward like that, her fitted jacket rose up to really show off that cute little rear I had been checking out earlier.  The man in front of us in his blue polo shirt, however, couldn’t see that rear – and I doubted that he’d care much even if he could see.

“Look miss,” he tried to protest.  His eyes tracked over to me, and he hastily amended his comment.  “Er, sir, as well.  Once you’ve opened the item, we’re happy to return it still – but we have to charge a fee to put the item back on the shelves!  It’s standard!”

“But we got it broken!” we both yelled at exactly the same time.

Perhaps, if just one of us had been protesting, the man could have managed to hold his bureaucratic bulwark against us.  But when faced with a  dual onslaught, he just couldn’t throw up enough paper walls to hold off our twin fiery glares.  He crumbled before us.

“Look, I suppose that I could waive the fee if you’re willing to take store credit,” he offered, holding up his hands as if to shield us off.  “If you’re buying another television, well, you can go pick out a working one now?”

For a minute longer, we both glared at him, but his offer did make sense.  “Well, all right,” I gave in, dropping my gaze slightly.

“Yeah, I can live with that,” the woman admitted a breath later.

As the man let out a very big sigh of relief and turned to bustle away, dealing with the return of the two broken televisions, I glanced at the young woman.  I hadn’t gotten to see her face without the angry scowl on it, but now that her features had softened, I saw that she was actually quite cute.  Chestnut brown tresses framed a round face in soft waves, and her eyes looked sharp and alert.  If I had seen her at a coffee shop, I would have considered offering to pay for her cup.

“Hey, I’m Joe,” I spoke up, grinning at her as best I could manage after spending so long in line.

“Abigail,” she returns, managing to put on a quick smile.

“Nice to meet you,” I said, as the man behind the counter returned and handed us each a gift card.  “Can I join you in checking out some TVs?”

Abigail looked at me up and down for a second, but then that smile bloomed on her face again.  “Sure,” she said, and I saw a little dimple in her cheek as she slid her hand through the crook of my arm.

And then, hand in hand, we strolled through the store towards the television section.

When I flopped back onto the pillow, just before my eyes sagged shut, I glanced over at the clock.

11:57 PM, the red numbers read in the darkness.

I was feeling pretty good with the day already, feeling pretty accomplished.  Man, I thought to myself, I got a lot done!  But I still felt as though I was forgetting something…

Oh, wait!  I had to send that email to Harken!  Quickly, I grabbed at my bedside table for my phone.  Fortunately, the message to pass on was short, and it only took a few keystrokes before it was ready.  With a sigh of relief, I pushed my thumb down firmly on the text at the top of the screen marked “Send.”

With a little whoosh, the email darted off through my wireless into cyberspace, and I set the phone back down on the little night table.  11:59, read the clock – just in time!  Day complete!

I was very proud of what I’d accomplished.

So proud, in fact, that when the words “100% ACHIEVED” swam into visibility on the blackness of the ceiling, the letters glowing bright green, it didn’t even seem odd-

-at first.

I wasn’t, however, prepared for what came next.

Slowly, almost shimmering into existence, three more lines of text appeared, underneath this “100% ACHIEVED” banner.  They read, in order:

“LOG OUT”

“CONTINUE: FREE ROAM”

“NEW GAME+”

This was odd, I thought to myself, but I didn’t feel quite like I was in a panic.  Lying there in the softness of my blankets and pillows on my bed, it was tough to be scared or surprised.  Instead, I just gazed up, trying to get my fuzzy thoughts to line up.

Sure, I’d played a few video games in my time; I had some idea of what these options meant.  But I wasn’t used to trying to apply them to my own life, and so some of the options weren’t quite making sense.

Clearly, I’d achieved some sort of success in life.  I mean, I had my credit cards all paid off, a comfortable job, and had even finally managed to talk to that cute barista that kept on drawing little hearts on my morning coffee cups.  Was that a hundred percent?  It didn’t seem quite right.

So what to do next?

LOG OUT?  I didn’t think so!  I’d worked hard to reach this point, and I wasn’t starting over now!

CONTINUE: FREE ROAM?  If I remembered, that would mean that I could wrap up current objectives.  Not bad, not bad.  On one hand, I wouldn’t advance any further, but I wouldn’t lose all my current progress.

NEW GAME+… now, that was the most intriguing.  The opportunity to start a new life, possibly with something carrying over?  Wow, that would be nice.

Briefly, I wondered whether that was how so many people became rich and powerful.  Did they score 100% completion on a day, and then bring all of their accumulated money and knowledge into their next life, starting with a leg up?

The temptation to join them was very strong.

But on the other hand… I had only just scored that cute girl’s number, and I was really looking forward to our first date.  How hard could it really be to get another 100% complete day, now that I knew what to work towards?

And so I blinked a few more times, until the text on the ceiling faded away, and drifted gently off to sleep.

The little man whistled as he trotted up the stairs, a tuneless little ditty of discordant notes.  He kept his lips pursed as he blew through them mainly as something to keep himself occupied.  He never really remembered any music; it was just something to do.

The case in his hand felt heavier than he remembered, but wasn’t it always heavier on the way up?  On the way down, of course, it would feel lighter.

Funny how such a small little bit of weight could influence the feel of the case so much…

Even though the case bounced off the little man’s knee as he took the stairs, there was no sound from inside.  The foam kept the parts from rattling, from bouncing against each other.  The little man had spent a significant amount of time shaping the holes in the foam interior, shaking the case around to make sure that it produced no noise.

Although there were quite a lot of stairs, the little man managed quite easily to keep up his whistling.  Cardio, he thought to himself, suppressing a little chuckle.  It was such an important skill, applicable in so many different areas of life.

The man’s other hand rose up to pat at his belly, protruding slightly even through his thick black pea coat.  He had been partaking in too much rich food, as of late.  Not enough visits to the gym – what with all his flights, scheduled for the oddest hours of the day, it was difficult to find the time to climb onto a treadmill.

He glanced up.  He was finally starting to reach the top of the building, after a good seven (or was it eight?) flights of stairs.  The little man paused long enough to suck in one last breath, and then pushed on to the top.

The door at the top of the stairs was locked, but that was only a second’s hassle to the ring of clever little steel implements that the man withdrew from one of his coat pockets.  As soon as the tumblers clicked back, giving up their brief denial, the little man was through, stepping out into the gray gloom of an overcast sky.

The wind blew even at this height, howling across the roof, and the little man turned up the lapels of his coat.  He didn’t shiver – at least his extra little layer of fat insulated him from this cold – but he didn’t enjoy the cold.  He moved quickly across the roof, finding his chosen location and getting to work.

The case was set down, the clasps pushed back.  There were fancier models of briefcase out there, ones with clever combination locks built into the handles, but the little man never really saw the need to upgrade.  This case had served him well for years, and he almost felt attached to it.  It was a silly, sentimental feeling, but sometimes these things happen, reason be damned.

The case open, the little man pulled piece after piece from the foam cutouts within, carefully slotting and screwing them together.  Like any craftsman, he savored his work, enjoying how they all fit together just so.  His thin black gloves helped assure his grip, even in the cold.

Finally, his tool was assembled.  The little man took a breath of cold air, hoisted his long instrument up onto the edge of the roof, and put his eye down against its metal body.  Already, it was cold to the touch, cold against his cheek.

The man didn’t hold his contraption in place for long.  It only took a few seconds, only made a single pop as it sent a small bit of copper-jacketed lead flying away very fast.  The little man waited only to see the results of his shot before turning away.

As he began to reverse his process, dismantling the weapon and refilling those holes in his case, the man whistled again. Perhaps, he considered, this was his own tune, one born of nothing and with no discernible pattern.  The thought suited him.

Sometimes, these things happen, reason be damned.

Hannibal kept his eye on the kid as he waited for the phone to ring through.  Damn connection always took forever.

Sure, the geeks in glasses told him that it was “for increased security,” and that “the protocols needed more time to check the line was secure,” but he didn’t much care about that.  Hannibal knew his job, and that was all that mattered much to him.

But the kid was new.  Just accepted on, still full of piss and vinegar, convinced that he was making the world a better place with each bullet.  He arrived early every morning with the bright-eyed, bushy-tailed cheeriness that made Hannibal wince when he turned away.

Hannibal wondered how long that naivete would last.  He didn’t remember it taking him long to see through the gauzy sheets draped over his eyes, but the kid might not come around as fast.  That was okay.  The longer he felt good when he laid down at night, the better.

Finally, the phone clicked through, and Hannibal heard a voice at the other end.  “Yeah?” it said.  Not curious, not angry, just present.

“47, 23, 15, 16,” Hannibal recited, calling the numbers off of oft-repeated memory.

“Sec.”  For a second, Hannibal caught the clicks of keys.  “Yeah, okay.  What?”

“Got him.”  Hannibal slowly turned, walking over towards the driver’s side of the car a dozen steps away.  He didn’t show any emotion as he ran his eyes over the body of the man slumped just inside the seat, one hand still outstretched as if trying to pull the car door shut.  A long streak of blood ran down the side of the car, marring the powder blue and white paint job.

“Confirmation?”  The voice at the other end of the line didn’t offer any congratulations.  Hannibal didn’t want any.

Instead, he fished around in his jacket pocket, pulling out a folded photograph.  He held it up next to the slack, lifeless face, his eyes flicking back and forth as he compared the two images.  “Visual, but it matches.  Scars in all the right places.”

The kid had finished with the lock on the trunk, and Hannibal caught the click as the hatch popped open.  “Cargo?” the voice on the other end of the line asked.

“Yeah, gimme a sec.”  The kid had gloves on, Hannibal noted approvingly, as he hauled open the trunk.  That was good.  No fingerprints to wipe off.

From inside the trunk of the car, the kid fished out a leather case.  “This looks like it,” he said to Hannibal, his eyes shining with excitement.

Hannibal just waved a hand at it.  “Check and be sure,” he ordered.

The kid carefully set the briefcase down on the ground, flicking the latches.  A quick glance inside revealed the contents.  “Yeah, this is it,” he nodded, quickly pushing it back shut.  “And to think, this guy thought he could just drive away with them in his trunk!  What an idiot!”

At that, Hannibal couldn’t help but shake his head.  “He almost did,” he pointed out, wanting to bring the kid down a couple notches.

Despite his words, the kid still looked jazzed.  “But we got him!  Bam!” he exclaimed, picking up the briefcase.

He still thought he was the true patriot, Hannibal thought to himself.  God.  “Got the cargo,” he told the phone still in his hand.

“Great.”  The voice on the other end of the line didn’t put much inflection into that, but Hannibal didn’t care much for praise any longer.  “Clean up and call it in.”  By the time Hannibal had taken the phone away from his ear, the voice on the other end had already disconnected.

The kid was already returning from stowing the briefcase in their own car.  Hannibal looked sidelong at him.  “No prints to clean?” he asked, just to be sure.

The kid shook his head.  “Nope.  And I already pulled the slug out of the side of the car.  That should take care of everything.”

“Great.”  Hannibal dialed 911 on his phone, but hesitated before pushing the final call button.

“Actually, here,” he told the kid, tossing the phone over.  “It was your job, and you did well.  Call it in, and let’s get outta here before the police show up.”

The kid put the phone up to his ear as the two men in suits strolled back to their car.  “Yeah, I’d like to report a shooting,” he said as they climbed inside.  “I think someone’s dead.”