I shrugged. “Well, it was an idea, anyway.”

“A good idea,” said Kelso.

“Whattaya mean?”

He gave me a narrow-eyed look. “This is between you and me, Zepopolis.”

“But Lorraine—”

“You and me,” Kelso repeated. “We fight our duel and the loser swears he won’t go after Lorraine ever again.”

“But she—”

“Lorraine won’t know anything about it. And even if she does, what can she do? I’ll whip you in the duel and you stop bothering her. Got it?”

“Got it,” I muttered. But I thought that maybe—just maybe—I’d beat Kelso’s smug backside and he’d be the one to stop sniffing after Lorraine.

So that night, after even the most gung-ho of the techies had finally gone home, Kelso and I went down to the VR lab and started programming the system there for our duel. I knew the lab pretty well; I used it all the time to check out the cockpit simulations we created for the Air Force and Navy. It wouldn’t take much to modify one of the sims for our duel, I thought.

The lab was kind of eerie that late at night: only a couple of desk lights on, pools of shadows everywhere else. The big simulations chamber was like an empty metal cave, except for the wired-up six-degree chairs in its middle.

Kelso and I talked over half a dozen ideas for scenarios—a medieval joust with lances and broadswords, an old-fashioned pistol duel aboard a Mississippi steamboat, jungle warfare with assault rifles and hand grenades, even a gladiatorial fight in ancient Rome.

I slyly suggested an aerial dogfight, World War I style. I didn’t tell Kelso that I’d spent hours and hours playing WWI air battle computer games.

“You mean, like the Red Baron and Snoopy?” he asked, breaking into a wolfish grin.

“Right.”

“Okay. I’ll be the Red Baron.”

I tried to hide my enthusiasm. “That makes me Snoopy, I guess.”

“Flying a doghouse!” Kelso laughed.

“No,” I replied as innocently as I could muster. “I’ll fly a Spad XIII.”

“Okay with me.” Kelso agreed too easily, but I didn’t pay any attention to it at the time.

“We’ll start with an actual scenario out of history,” I suggested, “a battle between the Red Baron’s squadron and a British squadron, over the Somme sector in—”

“A duel in the Somme!” Kelso punned. “Get it? Like that old movie, Duel in the Sun.” He laughed heartily at his own witticism.

Me, I smiled weakly, disguising my elation. I had him where I wanted him. I had a chance to beat him, a damned good chance. So I thought.

It wasn’t cosmically difficult to plug the WWI scenario I had used so often into the VR circuitry. I got the specs on the Spad XIII and the Fokker Dr. 1 triplane easily enough through the Web. The tough part was to get the VR system to accept two inputs from two users at the same time without shorting itself into a catatonic crash. I spent all night working on it. Kelso quit around midnight.

“I’ve got to get my sleep and be rested for the weekend’s exertions,” he said as he left. “With Lorraine.”

He went home. I continued programming, but my mind filled with a beautiful fantasy of Lorraine and me together in the ski lodge, snuggling under a colorful warm quilt.

That was before I found out that Kelso flew real airplanes and was a member of a local stunt flying organization. Good thing I didn’t know it then; I’d have slit my throat and gotten it over with.

So the next night, after a quick takeout salad (with low-cal dressing), I headed down to the VR lab. I bumped into Kelso, also heading for the sim chamber. With Lorraine! They had eaten dinner together, he informed me with a vicious smile. And there were almost a dozen techies trailing along behind them.

“But I thought—”

“You thought I didn’t know,” Lorraine said to me. “Like anybody can keep a secret in this jungle gym for nerds.”

That hurt.

“I still think you two are acting like a couple of macho creeps,” she said. “But if you’re going to go through with this duel the least I can do is watch you making Looney Tunes of yourselves.”

The geek squad behind her and Kelso got a laugh out of that as they followed after us down to the VR lab. The word about our duel had well and truly leaked out.

“We’re going to have a great time in Aspen,” Kelso said to Lorraine.

She didn’t reply.

He was walking down the corridor at her side. I was on her other side, all three of us striding toward the VR lab like soldiers on parade. The rest of the onlookers shambled along behind us. I mean, techies aren’t the slickest-looking people. They looked like a collection of pudgy unwashed refugees and smelled like stale pepperoni pizza.

Lorraine finally spoke. “Just because you two heroes have decided to fight this duel over me doesn’t mean that I’ll go anywhere with either of you.”

My heart clutched beneath my ribs. She’s found out about the duel! If she backs out of this, what’s the sense of fighting it?

“You’ve got to!” I blurted.

“No I don’t,” she insisted. “This duel is between the two of you. You guys and your macho fantasies. Don’t include me in it.”

Kelso isn’t the sharpest pencil in the box, but he quickly said, “You’re right, Lorraine. This is between the Greek geek and me. The loser stops bothering you.” He looked down at me. “Right, Zepopolis?”

I looked at Lorraine. The expression on her face was unfathomable. I mean, she looked sort of irritated, intrigued, sad, and excited all at the same time. I can handle computer programming at its most arcane, but I couldn’t figure out what was going through Lorraine’s mind. I mean, if she didn’t want to have anything to do with our duel, why’d she come down to the VR lab with us?

Well, we got to the lab. While the rest of the guys leaned over my shoulder and made seventeen zillion suggestions on how to do it better, I powered up the simulation program and checked it out. Kelso stood off in a shadowy corner with Lorraine. No touchy games between them; she was watching me intently while Kelso fidgeted beside her.

It was time to enter the simulations chamber. Kelso marched in like a conquering hero and picked up the helmet waiting on his chair.

“Gloves first,” I said.

“Yeah. Right.”

So we wormed our hands into the sim gloves. Their insides were studded with sensors, and a slim optical fiber line trailed from them to the connectors built into the chamber wall. They felt fuzzy, tingly.

Then I pulled the helmet over my head, but kept the visor up. The helmet had its own power batteries and linked to the computer wirelessly.

I sat down. Kelso sat down. In a few minutes, I knew, we’d be seeing and feeling World War I fighter planes in combat over the Somme. I licked my lips. Nervous anticipation, big time.

“You ready?” I asked Kelso, raising my voice to hide the tremor that was quivering inside me.