I recently received a call from a Public Relations Officer in the US military inviting me down to NORAD headquarters deep under a mountain in Colorado. He told me I'd been selected to help test the simulator that will be used to train operators, for President Bush's Star Wars missile interception program.

I explained to the Officer that I didn't think I was qualified. When it comes to computer games I'm a total washout. I can't even make it past level one in Pac Man. The odd time I do get challenged to a game, by someone's 8 year old, I'm automatically assigned the user name Game Over.

The polite young man from NORAD assured me that those qualifications were exactly what they were looking for in their testers. It seems that because of cost overruns in projects, like the liberation of Iraq, the military was planning to subcontract daily operations of Star Wars to a private employment agency. They thought if I could learn to run the thing any minimum wage day-worker could.

Once through the four foot thick steel door at NORAD our group of volunteers was led down a corridor cut through mountain rock, to a room were we were processed in. We were photographed and fingerprinted. They recorded the sound of our voices, heartbeat and breathing-scanned our irises, took handwriting samples, DNA, blood, fingernails, bodily functions, earwax, and body odor.

Then we were taken me down to the training room and introduced to General Shwartznot and his technical staff. We spent the morning learning how to operate the simulator- interpreting intelligence reports and remote sensing information, assessing threats, and using the different weapons systems to blow things up. By the end of the session my blood was up and I was ready to kill something.

My first assignment was to monitor earth, from the point of view of an orbiting satellite, watching for any sign of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. The General stood by my side and reminded me to keep a close eye on the various pop up boxes, which would update me on threat assessments, from ground based information sources.

The first few hours were pretty quiet, as it probably would be in real life. By late afternoon I was jacked up on caffeine and novice excitement with nothing to do with my pent-up enthusiasm but watch weather patterns slowly drift across the continents.

I was watching a cloud formation that looked like the face of Bin Laden when the threat-warning buzzer activated and dozens of status boxes suddenly leapt on to my screen. I grabbed my control unit and zoomed in visuals on the spot were the warning arrows were converging.

Suddenly a long cylindrical object trailing fire and smoke broke out of the cloud cover and started rising. I swung into action-checked my lasers and photon torpedoes. Telemetry from the rising rocket flashed across the screen. I could feel the General leaning tensely over my shoulder, the smell of Old Spice making my eyes water.

I had the sucker in my sights. My weapons were locked on the enemy's missile-I couldn't miss. When I pressed the big red fire button a shaft of blue laser light hit the nose cone and the sucker exploded in a ball of fire.

I had a big grin when I turned to the General and was disappointed to see a sad look on his face. "Now look here son," he said pointing to one of my status boxes. "What's that say?" I looked were he was pointing. It was a report from NASA indicating that their manned flight to Mars had just exploded as it rose up out of the atmosphere.

My next exercise involved tracking a suspected terrorist. My satellite view focused on New York City, with little red dots for each of the millions of people the computer was tracking. The database had access to information on charge card usage, bank machine activity, business security cameras, telephone and Internet intercepts, and secret DNA sniffers surreptitiously located throughout the city. Once a suspect was located he could be electronically followed and if need be eliminated using our space based weapons.

The General had been very understanding about the Mars thing, and I wanted to make it up to him. So when I noticed an individual in a security camera, loitering around a public building, carrying a suspicious package, I went to red alert status. I quickly ran his picture through photo recognition and got back a positive criminal record assessment, although the exact nature of his criminal record was unavailable.

I locked my laser on him and when he attempted to stuff the possible biological weapon through a slot in the building's door, I zapped him, toasting him and the deadly package.

"Nice shooting son!" the General said. "Maybe that will be a warning to the rest of his friends." The tone of sarcasm in his voice was unmistakable. I looked up at the threat assessment box. Conviction Summary it said. Suspect currently has one library book overdue. Outstanding fine of $4.75. Whoops!