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.
“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.
