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.
“I think it’s the wave of the future,” said Herb Franklin, the ex-psychologist who was now an assistant district attorney.
Randolph Halpern was the judge, and he had always thought that Franklin had taken his law degree and passed the bar exam merely so that he could be accepted into the Carleton Club.
The Carleton was the capital city’s poshest and most exclusive of private clubs. Only lawyers and political officeholders were allowed membership. Since virtually every political officeholder also possessed a law degree, only the occasional outsider gained membership to the Carleton, and he was almost always encouraged to resign by subtle yet effective snubs and discourtesies.
Franklin was one of those outsiders, in Halpern’s view, and the judge was inwardly incensed that the man could sit beside him in the dark mahogany paneling of the Men’s Bar just as if he truly belonged here. Franklin was a round, jolly fellow with a snow-white beard that made him look like Santa Claus. But Justice Halpern still could not accept Franklin as an equal. The man was an outsider and always would be, in the judge’s view. A psychologist! And now he was advocating this ridiculous idea of letting virtual reality duels serve as valid legal suits!
“It’s never been done before!” protested Justice Halpern. “There’s no precedent for it. Absolutely none.”
Randolph Halpern was slim as a saber, his head shaved totally bald, although he wore the same pencil-thin moustache he had sported since his college days. His suit was impeccably tailored, dark gray. A solid maroon tie was knotted perfectly at his lean, wattled throat.
Gorton rubbed his reddish nose and said, “Well, by golly, it sounds like a fun idea to me.” He signaled to the Hispanic waiter for a refill of his scotch.
“Fun,” Halpern sneered, thinking, Of course an intellectual properties lawyer would favor this kind of gadgetry. And Franklin, sitting next to him and smiling like a benevolent Father Christmas. Psychologist. A lawyer should be a serious man, filled with gravitas. Yet Franklin sat there with that maddening grin on his bearded, chubby face and a mug of ale in his fist.
“I’ll grant you it could be exciting, Rick,” Franklin said to the patent attorney. “But it’s more serious than that. Court calendars all over the state are jammed so badly that it takes months, sometimes years, for a case to be heard. That’s a long time to wait for justice.”
“Lucrative, though,” observed Nottingham laconically. Halpern nodded at the man. He’s a real lawyer. He knows billable hours from balderdash.
