“Got killed, huh?” Vik called, from where he was still fighting his Nazi ninja.
“Looks like it.” Tom tried to sit up, but even though he could move his arms, they kept collapsing beneath him.
“Don’t bother trying to sit up,” Vik said, noticing his efforts. “You’re supposed to stay where you were killed until the next phase of the workout. You can move your upper body, but you can’t bear your own weight or drag yourself anywhere.”
Tom gave up on moving and linked his fingers together behind his head. “Why don’t people get killed all the time if relaxing is the big punishment?” he said idly.
“Because,” Vik answered breathlessly, flashing him a grin before turning back to his duel, “it’s about pride.”
Pride.
Tom resolved not to get killed again. For now, though, he contented himself with relaxing beneath the smoky Stalingrad sky, the clank of swords, the rattle of bullets, and the roars of explosions thundering in his ears.
HIS MUSCLES WERE still aching from the exercise after lunch, but his mood was soaring thanks to acing all of his subjects for the second time in his life in the civilian classes. Elliot spent the first twenty minutes of Applied Sims giving a speech about the power of positive thinking, and then they all hooked into the program for the afternoon.
Tom snapped into the character of Gawain, a knight of the Round Table from the Camelot legend. A castle fizzed into existence around them. Elliot mounted his throne, playing King Arthur, and announced that the first thing they were going to do was a ritual of fealty.
Tom watched the other plebes—all playing various knights of the Round Table—kneel down before Elliot, kiss his hand, and receive his sword pats to their shoulders. It made Tom’s skin crawl. They were practically groveling.
Elliot held out a hand for Tom to kiss, and Tom didn’t move a step closer. He wasn’t going to kneel down and kiss Elliot Ramirez’s hand. He just wasn’t.
“You’re not swearing fealty to me, Tom?” Elliot asked him.
“You want my fealty, I’ll swear it. Without kneeling and kissing your hand. Sir.”
“This ritual fosters team cohesion.”
“I just don’t want to bow, okay? It feels un-American to me. Sorry.”
Elliot sighed. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry you don’t understand the value of working with others. But if you really don’t want to play along like everyone else, I suppose I can give you a role in the sim other than Gawain.”
Tom’s hopes soared. Maybe Elliot would assign him to play a Saxon barbarian. He’d love that.
Elliot raised his hand skyward, modifying the sim.
Tom’s body shifted into Guinevere’s.
He stood there, frozen, gaping down at his floor-length dress, the wavy brown hair flowing down to his waist, and, well, his boobs. He was still gaping down at those when the company of knights trundled to the courtyard for the ride out to fight the Saxons. Tom stumbled over his skirt, following them, confused by the way his legs felt like they were slanting at a strange angle.
“Wait,” Tom called. His voice came out so high, so girly to his ears, that he jumped. It took him a moment to recover from that shock and remember what he was going to say. “My armor disappeared!”
“No, Gawain’s armor disappeared,” Elliot said. “As my beloved wife, Guinevere doesn’t fight in the sim. She provides moral support. She waves us good-bye and waits for our return.”
“I don’t get to fight?” Tom blurted.
“Only people who swear fealty get to fight.”
Elliot raised an eyebrow, waiting. Tom knew what he wanted: for Tom to apologize, crawl over, and kiss his hand. But he couldn’t. He didn’t crawl to people or bow to them, and he didn’t kiss hands.
“Fine.”
“Fine.” There was suppressed laughter in Elliot’s voice. “We’ll tell you how the battle went.”
Tom stood there in the courtyard, listening to the hoofbeats thump away. Then he felt a tentative tug at his sleeve. One of the queen’s attendants spoke: “Your Highness, we were embroidering. Will you join us?”
The instructions for embroidering wove into his brain. Guinevere liked embroidering. Since Tom was Guinevere, he also liked …
He shook it off, aghast. “I don’t embroider!” he cried, and bolted away from the virtual woman.
Wild thoughts about what he could do for the next three hours and twenty-eight minutes of the sim ran through his head. He decided to head out anyway, on foot, and fight as Guinevere. But as it turned out, he couldn’t even cross the drawbridge. The simulation informed him, No parameters in place for this action.
The Guinevere character was restricted to the castle. And her fingers were itching with the need to embroider something. Tom found it all very horrifying. He was not going to let Elliot come back after some awesome battle and find him doing embroidery.
So he decided to be proactive. He wielded candlesticks and challenged random guards to duels. The guards just shook their heads and declined to do anything so unchivalrous as fight a lady, which about drove him to madness. So he bashed them over the heads anyway, and they shouted at him that he’d gone mad. Despite this, none dared raise a hand to their psychotic queen.
That gave him a brilliant idea.
He relayed some orders to the castle’s guard and dispatched a messenger boy. Then it became a matter of biding his time. Tom avoided the embroidering ladies by exploring the castle’s corridors. He found a heavy ceremonial sword the Guinevere character could barely lift, but it was better than nothing. The metal scraped over the stone floors as he hoisted it down the flickering, torchlit corridors, searching for a good, defensible spot.
He wandered into a vast library and beheld an armed knight looming over a stack of scrolls. Perfect. He’d kill this guy, and take his armor and sword.
“Avast, ye scurvy knave!” Tom cried, getting into character and hoisting up his ceremonial sword. “Prepare to meet yer maker!”
The knight sighed, then turned around and folded his arms over his broad chest.
It was Wyatt’s character, Lancelot.
“This is Arthurian England, Tom,” she reproved, the note of irritation the only familiar thing about her now-manly voice. “It’s not a pirate ship.”
“Codswallop,” Tom cursed, lowering the sword, the blade clanging on the ground. “What are you doing here, anyway? Lancelot is supposed to be riding out with Arthur to fight the Saxons.”
“I told Elliot I wanted to defend the castle in case they got around us, and he thought it was a good idea.”
“Yeah, you’re defending it, all right,” Tom said, nodding to her scrolls. “Are you reading?”
“I’m playing a more erudite Lancelot who prefers to sit here and defend it with his mind.”
“He’s not supposed to defend stuff with his mind like he’s Yoda or something. He’s supposed to be Lancelot. He’s a knight. He fights barbarians. It’s fun.”
“Feel free to go fight them yourself, then. I’m not stopping you.”
“The sim’s stopping me. I’m stuck in the castle.”
“Well, feel free to just go somewhere else, then.”
Tom ignored her and hoisted himself up onto the table. It was a bit tricky, since he wasn’t used to Guinevere’s body, the way the hips seemed unbalanced, the weight pressed down at different spots than he was used to.