Ever so slowly, our turns widened. I stayed on the Host’s back, wiping sweat from my brow. Other Mappers marched by on either side, scanning the ground at their feet, the awful boreholes directed just to the sides of my legs. The slightest misstep would alert the Host in front of me or put me into the path of another.

It felt like playing Frogger on the old-time arcade game at the One Cup Cafe, trying to zigzag between cars without getting squashed.

Walk, turn, walk.

A swinging arm whistled by to my right, a massive Mapper stomping past, sending off a waft of body odor.

Walk, turn, walk.

Painstakingly, we spiraled our way out of the inner sanctum of the cemetery.

Walk, turn, walk.

A half hour passed at this excruciating pace. Another. The Host in front of me halted, and I nearly stumbled into him, my splayed fingers brushing the back of his jacket. He did not turn. Instead he tilted his head up to the sky. A bluish white glow framed the boreholes and the edge of his head as he uploaded his data to the heavens and whatever resided up there. A clicking sound emerged, maybe from his throat, maybe from somewhere else. Staring through the rear boreholes as if they were binoculars, I watched the mapped terrain scroll across his front eye membranes.

The clicking stopped, the glow faded, the head tilted down, and he continued on. Gathering myself, I followed as carefully as before.

Walk, turn, walk.

We ambled over plots, threaded between tombstones, carved around grave markers. It was slow-motion insanity, my life hanging on every tiny motion. I was following the already dead out of the cemetery, like some mythological hero trying to escape the underworld.

At last the fence came within reach. I fought down a panicked urge to spring onto the wrought-iron bars and scale them. We did a final, endless rotation just inside the perimeter and, after what seemed like forever, walked out through an open rear gate. I followed the Host to freedom. Several Mappers remained in view, dispersing across the rolling hills.

I stayed on the Host’s heels until there were no other Mappers in sight.

Then I simply stopped walking. I let him drift on in a straight line through the woods. Way up ahead he turned ninety degrees and disappeared through a veil of branches.

I briefly remained as I’d been, clenched and tense.

And then the pent-up terror of the past few hours shuddered out of me. On cue my muscles cramped. I had to consciously unlock my shoulders, draw them down and away from my head.

Bathed by the moonlight, I breathed and shook out my knotted neck. Exhaling long and slow, I continued on my course.