How did I get myself into this duel? All because of Lorraine, that’s how. Well, that’s not really true. I can’t blame her. I went into it with my eyes wide open. I even thought this would be my best chance to beat Kelso.

Yeah. Fat chance.

I mean, it was all weird from the beginning.

There I was, taking the biggest risk I’d ever taken, sitting at my workstation and using my BlackBerry to text message sweet Lorraine: GOT RSRVS FR ASPEN COMING WKND. JOIN ME? EL ZORRO.

I mean, everybody in the company was after Lorraine. She was beautiful, smart, elegant, kind, beautiful, sweet, independent, and beautiful.

Me, I was just one of the nerds in the advanced projects department, a geekboy stuck in one of those cubicles like Dilbert. Not that I was repulsive or tongue-tied. I mean, I wasn’t as slick and handsome as Kelso, but I didn’t crack mirrors or frighten babies with my looks. Lorraine always smiled at me whenever we passed each other in the corridor. I sat with her in the cafeteria a few times and we had very pleasant conversations.

She even called me Tom. Not Thomas. Tom. I mean, even in school everybody called me by my last name, Zepopolis. The few friends I had called me Zep. When I first started working at the company guys like Kelso called me Zeppelin, but one glance from Lorraine and I started dieting. She even complimented me on how I was slimming down. Talk about incentive!

But I didn’t have the nerve to sign my real name to the invitation I sent her. I thought it might add an air of mystery to the invite, maybe get her thinking romantic thoughts and wondering who her secret admirer might be. Zorro, the masked swordsman. The dashing hero. Yeah, right.

Kelso saw right through me in a microsecond.

“Zepopolis,” he snapped, leaning over the top of my cubicle wall. He was tall enough to stand head and shoulders above the cubicle’s flimsy partition.

I jumped like I’d been shot. Dropped my no-fat doughnut on the floor, nearly sloshed the coffee out of my Star Wars insulated mug.

“Yes, sir!” I blurted, leaping to my feet as I swiveled my chair around to face him. Kelso was the department head, a position he’d obtained by hard work, intelligence, and a powerful personality. Plus the fact that his father was founder, CEO, and board chairman of Kelso Electronics, Inc.

See, Kelso was after Lorraine, major league. Flowers, gifts, taking her out dancing, to the theater—he even sat through an entire opera with her, according to the office rumor mill. So far, she had been pleasant to him, polite and friendly, but that’s as far as it went. Again, according the office vibes.

I figured she might welcome a little competition, a little mystery and romance. I figured I might even have a chance with her. Kelso figured otherwise.

He looked me over with a jaundiced eye. “You the hump who sent that weird invitation to Lorraine?” he demanded.

I could have denied it and that would be the end of it. I could have admitted it and apologized and that would be the end of it.

Instead I drew myself up to my full five-nine and said, “That’s right. I’m waiting for her answer.”

“Her answer is no,” Kelso said, with some heat.

I heard myself say, “I’ll have to hear that from her.” I mean, I talked back to him!

Kelso just stared at me for about half a minute (seemed like half a year), his fingers gripping the partition so hard they left permanent dents. Kelso was big enough to snap me in half; he played handball every lunch hour (for him, lunch was two hours, of course). He took boxing lessons at a downtown gym. He even played polo, for crying out loud.

His voice went murderously low, “I’m telling you, Greek geek, Lorraine isn’t going on any ski weekend with you or Zorro or anybody else except me.”

“Don’t I have something to say about that?”

We both turned at the sound of her voice, and there was Lorraine, like a vision of an angel dressed in hip-hugging jeans and a blouse that clung to her like Saran Wrap. She was standing in the entrance of my cubicle, her beautiful face set in a very soulful expression.

I sputtered at the sight of her. “Lorraine, I—”

“Are you El Zorro?” she asked, a slight smile breaking out.

“He’s El Deado if he’s not careful,” Kelso growled.

Lorraine arched her brows and asked, “Are you two fighting over me?”

“It wouldn’t be much of a fight,” Kelso sneered. “Two blows struck: I hit Zorro and he hits the floor.”

“Neanderthal,” I heard myself say. That’s stupid! I told myself. Don’t get him sore enough to start punching!

“Geek,” he replied.

Lorraine said, “I won’t have you fighting. I’m not a prize to be awarded to the winner. Besides, it’s no way to settle this.”

That’s when the Great Idea hit me.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “What if we fight a duel? An actual duel, like they did in the old days?”

“A duel?” she asked.

Kelso grouched, “Dueling’s been outlawed for two hundred years. More.”

I pulled out my trump card. “But what if we fight a duel in a virtual reality simulation?”

“Virtual reality?” Lorraine echoed.

“Simulation?” Kelso’s heavy brows knit together. “Like we use to train pilots?”

“Yeah. We’ve got VR systems that give the user a complete three-dimensional simulation: you see, touch, hear a world that exists only in the computer’s chips.”

“And it’s interactive, isn’t it? You can manipulate that world while you’re in it,” Lorraine chimed in. I told you she was smart as well as gorgeous.

“That’s right,” I said enthusiastically. “You can move in the simulated environment and make changes in it.”

Kelso was frowning puzzledly. “You mean we could fight a duel in a virtual reality setting. . .?”

“Right,” I said. “Share a VR world, whack the hell out of each other, and nobody gets really hurt.”

A slow smile crept across his devilishly handsome face. “Whack the hell out of each other. Yeah.”

I didn’t like the sound of that.

“Winner takes all?” Kelso asked.

I nodded.

“Oh no you don’t,” Lorraine snapped. “I’m not some prize you win in a video game. I don’t want anything to do with this macho bullflop!”

And she flounced off without a backward look at us, her long dark hair bouncing off her shoulders. We both stared at her as she just about stomped down the corridor.

Rats, I thought. Here I wanted her to fall for the romance of it all, and all she did was get sore. Double rats.