Game

'''Barthelme, Donald. "Game.'''" 1968. Conveniently anthologized in The Best of Modern Humor. Mordecai Richler, ed. New York: Knopf, 1983.

A pre-Apocalypse story about two USAF officers trapped in the rigorously planned, high-tech environment of their missile silo "for one hundred and thirty-three days owing to an oversight" (352-53 and, significantly, passim). The unnamed narrator says correctly of himself, "I am not well," and of his partner, "Shotwell is not himself" (353); "Shotwell plays jacks and I write descriptions of natural forms on the walls" (351). It takes two people to launch the missile; Shotwell wants to launch the missile—and the narrator really wants those jacks. . ..