 Which mode of exposition affects the story’s plot?
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, May 1962. The many clocks, bedside table size, would have struck a familiar note except that they had little red flags and wheels sprinkled over their faces and they were all in pairs, two clocks to a case. Her last assignment had been to interview the pilot pair riding the first American manned circum-lunar satellite—and the five alternate pairs who hadn't made the flight. Samples: "They say the Machine has been programmed to play nothing but pure Barcza System and Indian Defenses—and the Dragon Formation if anyone pushes the King Pawn." "I heard the Russians have been programmed—with hypnotic cramming and somno-briefing. Sandra's chief difficulty was that she knew absolutely nothing about the game of chess—a point that she had slid over in conferring with the powers at the Space Mirror , but that now had begun to weigh on her. It is a game for lunatics—or else it creates them. You want to know why, if the Machine works at all, it doesn't work perfectly, so that it always wins and there is no contest. What the Machine can do is examine all the likely lines of play for about eight moves ahead—that is, four moves each for White and Black—and then decide which is the best move on the basis of capturing enemy pieces, working toward checkmate, establishing a powerful central position and so on."
 The story uses the Doc character to help paint a portrait of what Sandra cannot understand. Namely, the world of chess.
 The story uses the Doc character to help paint a portrait of what Sandra cannot understand. Namely, the world of chess.  The story uses the chess player characters to help paint a portrait of what Sandra cannot understand. Namely, chess.  The story uses Doc to hide the presence of Dr. Krakatower, the Frenchman responsible for defeating the WBM machines.  The story uses the machine’s astonishing capabilities to distract from the true interest of the story: the human intellect’s ability to conquer computers.