You never really go anywhere; you're in your swivel chair and out of energy. You don't consciously notice anything different as you bang out line after line of code. To an outsider, you have become the absorbed drone of monotony, an aberration of nature that can stand long periods of physical dormancy and computer screen glare. You hunch towards your monitor for a moment, and already humanity has disowned you as the idiot savant of an earlier evolutionary stage. All they hear from your office is the incessant banging of a much-abused keyboard.

If only they how much noise is really here; indeed, the recommended 3 feet of distance from the monitor is the No Man's Land of an enormous battlefield. The lines advance down the screen, inexorable, like rapids after a spring thaw. My mind runs with them, leading them into the void of white infinity that dominates. We advance, we retreat, we are surrounded, we are pinned down - my mind races in the rush of the moment. The banging of the keyboard is our battledrum, our marching song. This isn't work; it is a game of wits and cunning, of the bravery to advance and the wisdom to plan ahead.

What do we fight, you ask? The computer? No, we can no more fight the computer than we could the land and sea. Our enemies are disorder, chaos, helplessness, and fear. If design be law, we keep the peace.

And when the day is over, the wounded warrior leaves the field for a time, satisfied that good has been done this day.

You see a programmer; I see a knight.