“Ready,” he said, his voice muffled a bit by the helmet.

The computer was set for remote activation. Once I started the simulation program everything went automatically. I looked down at the armrests of my chair and leaned on the button that turned on the sim program. Then I slid my visor down over my eyes.

The computer’s voice sounded in my helmet earphones, “Simulation will begin in ten seconds . . . nine . . . eight. . .”

I couldn’t see a thing with the visor over my eyes. What if I goofed the programming? I suddenly thought, I should’ve gone to the bathroom before—

Abruptly the rattling roar of a 220-horsepower Hispano-Suiza engine shook my molars, and I was wedged into the cockpit of a Spad XIII bouncing along in the wake of three other Spads up ahead of me. The wind was blowing fiercely in my face. The altimeter on my rudimentary control panel flopped around between 4,000 and 4,200 feet. It should’ve been in meters, I know, but I had programmed it so I could understand it without dividing by 0.3048 every time I wanted to know how high I was.

The noise was shattering, and the engine was spitting a thin spray of castor oil over my windscreen and into my face. I wiped at my goggles with a gloved hand. The sim program couldn’t handle odors; good thing, the smell of castor oil would’ve started me retching, most likely.

I looked up over my left shoulder; the sky was clear blue and empty up there. Twisting in the other direction, my heart did a double-thump. There were eight Fokker triplanes above me, diving at us from out of the sun, led by one painted fire-engine red. Kelso.

I started waving frantically to the Spads up ahead of me, but they plowed on like lambs to the slaughter. No radio, of course. So I yanked back on the stick and pulled my nimble little fighter into a steep climb, rushing headfirst into the diving triplanes.

Their first pass wiped out my squadronmates. As I looped over and started diving, I could see all three of them spinning toward the shell-pocked ground, trailing smoke and flame. I was alone against Kelso and his whole squadron.

The other triplanes flew off; the Red Baron and I were alone in the sky. One on one. Mano a mano. I got on his tail, but before I could open up with my Vickers machine guns Kelso stood that goddam triplane on its tail and climbed toward heaven like a homesick angel. When I tried to climb after him it was like I was carrying an elephant on the Spad’s back.

Kelso flipped the triplane into an inside loop, and I lost him in the sun’s glare. I leveled off and kept squinting all around to spot him again. And there he was! Diving down behind me. I nosed over and dived away; the triplane could climb better than I could, but when it tried to dive it just sort of floated downward. My Spad went down like a stone with an anvil tied to it.

But I couldn’t dive forever, and when I pulled up, Kelso got right on my tail, shooting my plane to shreds. I twisted, banked, turned left and then right. He stayed right behind me, blazing away. My Spad was starting to look like Swiss cheese. That’s when I nosed over again and accidentally flipped the plane into a spin. And upchucked.

I couldn’t pull the Spad out of its spin. I was going to crash and burn, and it was all my own fault. Kelso didn’t have to shoot me down, I was going to screw myself into the ground. No parachute, either: the Royal Flying Corps wasn’t allowed to use them.

So I did the only thing I could think of. I twisted my body back toward where Kelso’s red triplane was circling above me, and I put my right hand to my brow. I who am about to die salute you.

I crashed. I burned. I died.

And just like that I was back in the sim chamber, with a gutful of stinking vomit smeared inside my helmet and dripping down my shirt. I almost upchucked again.

Kelso got up from his chair with a grin bright enough to light up Greater Los Angeles. He strode out of the chamber to the cheers of the geek squad waiting outside in the control room. Me, I pulled off the smelly helmet and looked around for something to clean up the mess I’d made.

It took quite a while to clean up. By the time I was finished the VR lab was dark and quiet. Good thing, too. I didn’t need anybody there to jeer at what a complete catastrophe I’d created for myself.

“Do you need some help?”

Lorraine’s voice! I turned and there she was, at the entrance to the sim chamber, with a mop and pail in her hands.

I just gaped at her. When I finally found my voice I asked her, “Where’s Kelso?”

She made a face. “Down at the nearest bar with the rest of the guys, celebrating his great victory.”

“You didn’t go with him?”

“I’m more interested in you,” she said.

In me!

Then she added, “This dueling idea of yours. Could you turn it into a package that could be sold retail?”

I blinked. “Yeah, I guess so. But—”

She smiled at me. “We could market this, Tom. We could sell millions of them.”

“We?”

“We’ll have to raise some capital, form our own company. I know a few people who could help us.”

“Leave Kelso Electronics?”

“Of course. We’re going to get rich, Tom. You and me.”

I told you she was smart, as well as beautiful. We never did get to Aspen that weekend. We were too busy creating VR Duels, Inc.

But there were lots of other weekends, later on.

BLOODLESS VICTORY

Exploring the frontier of virtual reality a little further, suppose VR systems got so good that people could fight duels to the death in them, without being harmed in the slightest?

Instead of taking someone to court over a dispute and waiting while the wheels of justice grind away (and the lawyers’ fees mount up), fight a duel against the person you’re at odds with. Swords, pistols, fighter planes, flamethrowers, custard pies—whatever the two parties agree on.

It would be much more satisfying than dragging a suit through the courts, even if you lose. At least it would be quick.

But how could you get a state legislature to agree to allow VR duels to be legally binding? After all, most of those legislators are lawyers themselves, aren’t they? To say nothing of the members of Congress.

How, indeed.

Four lawyers sat huddled around a table in the Men’s Bar of the Carleton Club.

Actually, one of them was a state supreme court justice, another a former psychologist, the third a patent attorney—which the judge disdained despite the man’s lofty assertion that he dealt with “intellectual properties.”

“Do you think it’s wise?” asked John Nottingham, the only man at the table whom the judge deemed to be a real lawyer; Nottingham practiced criminal law, dressed in properly conservative dark suits, and affected a bored Oxford accent.

“Fight a duel in a virtual reality machine,” mused Rick Gorton, the patent lawyer, “and have its results count just the same as a decision by a court of law.” Intellectual properties or not, Gorton shook his head in disbelief and took another gulp of his scotch. Gorton always wore a boyish grin on his round, florid face. And his suits always looked as if he’d slept in them.