MISSILE

It seemed I had written--or perhaps received--something dangerous or compromising on my lap top computer. I felt obliged to alert the military. I was instructed to place it in the middle of the floor of the motel room where we happened to be staying.

In the middle of the night I paid a visit to the bathroom, and while I was there the bomber arrived. I heard the swoosh, the crash of penetration, the neat explosion.Back in the bedroom I found the laptop skewered to the floor, a missile still protruding from it. (For you Freudians: don't laugh. Sometimes a guided missile is just a guided missile).

I had heard of precision weapons that could "see through" roofs and walls, but this was amazing. There was a neat hole in the ceiling where it had penetrated, and the laptop had been nailed perfectly to the floor.

When Ellie woke in the morning and went to the bathroom herself, she seemed unfazed. And I myself was not unduly worried. I had been sure to back up all the information and the documents on my other laptop, and the military would surely send me a new one to replace the one they had destroyed. Would they also, I wondered, send someone to repair the hole in the motel ceiling?