Infinite Lives

Every morning, my mom hops onto her twelve-year old Hewlett-Packard PC and reads the news.

Specifically, she reads MSN. She only visits websites and articles that have been linked to from MSN.

The twelve-year old computer sits on my childhood desk in my childhood bedroom. When she reads the news, I am usually still asleep in my childhood bed. She likes to read the news aloud.

“The Ten Greatest PC Games Ever,” she read aloud.

“Oh, cool,” I said sleepily, “read them to me.” I sat up to put on my glasses, then lay back down. “Let’s see if we can guess them in advance. Uh, Doom or Quake. Diablo or Starcraft. OK, go.”

Midway through the list, my mom hesitated. “Number six. Um. ...Rogue?”

“Really! Who wrote that,” I said, sitting up in bed.

A long pause. “Benj …Edwards,” my mom said.

I snapped my fingers. “Of course!”