Vortex

  Tom kicked against the wall as Vik pushed off, and they smashed against each other as hard as possible. They both rebounded and sailed violently in separate directions. Vik hit a wall first, which gave him a huge advantage to propel himself at Tom. Just as Tom reached his wall, Vik checked him, hard, hockey style. Then Vik reeled back, flipping over and over again, hands raised above his head in fists. “Gooooaaaall!”

  But he wasn’t victorious for long. Tom shoved at the wall as hard as he could and zoomed straight at him. Vik saw him coming, but he was stuck flipping backward in lazy circles. He began waving his arms and legs frantically, like he could swim through the air, trying to change his course. It was no use. Tom slammed him in passing.

  “Touchdowwwwwn!” Tom proclaimed.

  Then there was a knock on the door. Tom and Vik remembered themselves, and Vik made loud puking sounds.

  “Oh God, it’s everywhere!” Tom shouted. “All the puke is making me puke now!” Then he made a puking sound.

  But then the door began to open anyway, and Tom and Vik realized their jig was up.

  Luckily, it was Wyatt and Yuri. She was fake vomiting, too. “I knew it. I knew you guys were faking. What are you going to do when there isn’t puke everywhere?”

  “Tubes of soup,” Vik answered. “I’ve flown in suborbitals with my folks, and they’ve always got some rations stored in the aft cabin. I’ll squeeze them out before we land. You were playing along, earlier, huh?” He sounded impressed.

  “You think I don’t know you guys by now?” Wyatt said. She gave a satisfied nod. “The entire cabin hears the vomiting noises. I told everyone you drank the tap water at Epicenter.”

  Vik was not pleased. “But I’m from India. I’d have to be an idiot to be Indian and drink tap water in Epicenter’s region of India. Everyone in my country knows better.”

  She smiled. “That’s why I said I have food poisoning and made sure no one thought I drank tap water the way you did. I didn’t want people to think I’m stupid.”

  “Evil Wench,” Vik breathed, impressed.

  Wyatt made a loud vomiting noise.

  “Aah, it is dreadful!” Yuri bellowed happily.

  Vik launched himself over to Wyatt and tore her from Yuri’s arms.

  “What are you doing?” Wyatt whispered fiercely, squirming in his grip.

  “You smeared my reputation. Now we’re playing human keep away,” Vik declared, then hurled her toward Tom.

  Fright blazed over Wyatt’s face, since she wasn’t used to free floating in the microgravity yet, and she began pinwheeling her arms urgently. Tom caught her, and the impact sent them spinning back toward the far wall.

  “Okay?” he asked her as they bounced off.

  She laughed. That was answer enough. He spun her around in good conscience as Yuri shoved toward him, trying to rescue her. Tom kicked the ceiling to knock them out of the way and tossed Wyatt back to Vik. Yuri smashed Tom against the wall, then propelled away again. Vik tried to throw Wyatt, but he was too late, because Yuri was determined now.

  “Not this time,” he declared, and caught her leg. Then pulled her into his arms. They spun like that, Wyatt’s long hair whirling around like a cloud about them, both of them floating past the window overlooking the curvature of the Earth.

  Then as they drifted away, Yuri caught the ceiling to halt them. He dipped his head and kissed her. Wyatt’s hair floated like a mermaid’s, blocking their faces from view. Tom felt his shoulder bump Vik’s as they observed it all.

  “I don’t think Yuri’s tossing her back,” Vik observed. “What do we do now?”

  “Not that,” Tom told him.

  “I need a girlfriend,” Vik complained. “Hey, what do you think of Lyla Martin?”

  “She’s frightening,” Tom answered.

  “And blond.” Vik sounded pleased about both things. “I’m not going to lie to you, Tom: while we were getting eaten by a shark together, I think we had a moment.”

  Yuri drew back from Wyatt, and they both looked over at Tom and Vik where they were floating there, watching them.

  “Go on,” Tom blurted.

  “Yeah, we don’t mind.” Vik waved for them to carry on. “You only get one crack at this in zero-g.”

  Wyatt sighed.

  Yuri pointed between them, something faintly menacing on his face. “Turn around and look out that window. Both of you.”

  “Oh. Right. Privacy.” Tom and Vik wouldn’t get to watch. They dutifully turned toward the other window.

  Vik headed back to the box of military rations, and set about pulling out a tube of gelatinized soup. “Fake vomit, coming up. What do you think, Tom—tomato or cream of chicken?”

  “Whichever.” Tom shoved himself toward the window for his last view of the planet from space, figuring he might never get to see it from the outside again with his own eyes. He stared at the curvature of the Earth against the darkness, and deep in his brain, the realization clicked into place that he wasn’t seeing a photograph or a virtual reality image: he was looking at the real thing.

  With that, Tom’s mind grew strangely quiet, taking in the planet that seemed to beat with life against the vast, star-studded universe beyond it. His eyes moved over the swirling white clouds of a storm, the shadow another pale curtain cast over the intense blue of the ocean. He ran his gaze down the jagged, stark green line of the East Coast of the United States where it cut into the Atlantic.

  “Guys,” Tom said, “we’re actually in outer space.”

  He saw the faint reflections in the window as his friends floated over to see. Vik’s gelatinized soup floated around them in globs as they all gazed at the Earth together.

  “Look at the skyboards.” Wyatt pressed her finger to the window.

  It took Tom a moment to see them. The skyboards below were like tiny fireflies sparking across the planet, sunlight dancing across their solar-paneled backs. It was strange how large and inescapable those images seemed from the Earth, but up here, the boards shrank to such insignificance, he imagined he could flick them away with a finger.

  “Man, those are tiny from up here,” Vik said.

  There was awe in Yuri’s voice. “Everything.”

  And he was right. Everything was. Everything Tom had ever feared seemed to shrink for this instant as the universe expanded for him.

  His heart seemed to swell, and he wished every single person on the planet could have this chance, just once, to see the horizon from above the skyboards rather than from below them. Maybe they’d all see that the universe didn’t end at the boundaries of the Coalition of Multinationals but rather that this incredible, infinite stretch of possibilities existed beyond them.

  No wonder the sky had to be blotted out by advertisements. The stars drowned with lights. If everyone could see beyond Coalition horizons, perhaps they’d begin to see the titans of humanity for what they were: tiny creatures, smaller than insects, and in the scale of things, every bit as insignificant.

  Maybe more people would be willing to look a thief like Reuben Lloyd in the eye and laugh right in his face.

  CHAPTER NINE

  SHORTLY AFTER THE meet and greets, things began malfunctioning around the Spire. Tom and Vik experienced their first malfunction the day Snowden’s group faced off with Karl’s. Karl chose the Battle of Bosworth Field. He was playing Richard III of England, and his army was ravaging Snowden’s forces—or at least, the future king Henry VII’s forces. Snowden hadn’t bothered to animate the Henry Tudor avatar, so Tom and Vik were free to do as they wanted.

  Tom killed one of Karl’s troops and donned his livery, pulling the helmet low over his face. He and Vik proceeded to mock fight their way across the field, always warning each other of incoming dangers, hoping enemy soldiers would see them battling and leave them to it. When Vik spotted Karl, he gave Tom the signal, then Tom whipped his horse around and charged toward Karl.

  Several of Karl’s trainees seemed to recognize him—Tom was sure of it—but they did
n’t shout out any warning to Karl as Tom galloped up behind him.

  Karl was too busy bellowing at his trainees to notice, his crown crooked on his head. “Are you worms paying attention? I said hunt down Snowden’s trainees. Get moving! Oh, but don’t kill Raines! Get him alive and bring him here. He’s mine, got it? Raines lives until I kill him.”

  Tom laughed from behind him. “You got one part of that right.”

  Karl whipped his head around—and got a face full of pikestaff.

  “The part about ‘Raines lives,’” Tom explained to Karl’s corpse, tugging his pikestaff back out. He wiped it on Karl’s tunic before Karl’s body slumped off the side of the horse. “That’s the part I meant.”

  Vik rode up to him, and together they discovered Karl’s crown where it had tumbled into a hedge. “Grab that and put it on Snowden, Tom. This can be like how Richard III died at Bosworth Field.”

  But Tom wasn’t interested in that. “Yoink.” He plopped the crown on his own head. “I declare myself King Thomas the First of England.”

  “Fine. Forget history,” Vik said. Then the pommel of his sword crashed across the top of Tom’s skull. Tom’s legs buckled, and he found himself kneeling on the field, his brain whirling.

  Vik placed the crown on his own head. “I declare myself King Vikram the . . .”

  A loud roaring noise drowned out Vik’s words, shadows blotting out the sky. Tom threw back his head and saw a fleet of Nazi planes soaring overhead.

  Tom rubbed his head. “Did that happen at the Battle of Bosworth Field?”

  “No,” Vik said, “there were no Nazi blitzkriegs in medieval times.”

  But even as the Nazi blitzkrieg attack began, Julius Caesar arrived with an army of Roman centurions, ready for battle. On the other side of the field, Napoleon Bonaparte’s army closed in to meet him. A loud splintering sound filled Tom’s ears. He and Vik dove for cover just before Captain Hook’s ship ran aground on Bosworth Field.

  In the meantime, schools of sharks fell from the sky and began flailing about on the field, teeth gnashing at passing soldiers. A giant squid tumbled down next and latched on to the pirate ship, while Captain Hook swiped madly at it with his hooked hand.

  More and more elements from other simulation programs bled into theirs. Blinding light flooded the horizon as a hydrogen bomb detonated in the distance, and Klingon warriors began appearing all over the field. By the time the Death Star filled the sky and blotted out the sun, Tom had put his pikestaff away and Vik had sheathed his sword. They both sat and enjoyed, then began placing bets on various fighters. Tom put ten bucks on the Tyrannosaurus rex, and Vik bet on the Terminator. They both shouted in dismay when the T-rex charged off to tear apart one of the dying sharks, abandoning the battle altogether.

  Vik elbowed Tom. “Really takes your mind off the meet and greets, doesn’t it?”

  “What meet and greets?” Tom said, playing along. But his mood dampened instantly.

  TOM DIDN’T PAY much attention to the malfunctions that kept popping up in the Calisthenics feed, in the Applied Scrimmages system. Some groups had a terrible time with the malfunctions. In one scenario, the Turks were chucking plague-ridden victims over the walls of Constantinople, and the trainees were inside. The trainees discovered only after they started dying of the simulated Black Death that the pain receptors were on full, and they couldn’t escape until they’d all died horribly.

  Wyatt’s group had a great malfunction. An Amazonian warrior scenario became accidentally X-rated as Cadence’s group fought Elliot’s. Since Wyatt was in Elliot’s group, she saw everything, and she walked around all the next day in a sort of daze. Tom and Vik got enough details to cross their fingers and hope for a good malfunction the next few times they hooked in, but it never happened again.

  Tom saw Blackburn and Wyatt working together more and more. They always seemed stressed out and frustrated, trying to pinpoint the source of the system faults. Tom didn’t dwell on it, though, because he had problems of his own. A month after the meet and greets, the Middles all woke up to their evaluations from the companies.

  Tom lay on his bed awhile with his verdict sitting in his net-send, then he gave in and opened it. There were no specific comments in the evaluations, just two simple options: Would like / would not like this trainee to return.

  Simple options, but they meant everything. People like Nigel Harrison, who managed to score return invites but failed to charm, could condemn themselves at this stage of their career to having no sponsor down the road when they aimed to make Camelot Company.

  Tom, unlike Nigel, had openly alienated every single one of the companies. Stomach churning, he flipped open his eval. His eyes moved over the five “would nots” checked next to the company names. It was no surprise at all, but he still felt like someone had punched him in the stomach, driving the air out of him. He stared at those words, suspended in front of his vision center, wondering how to feel about the official confirmation that he’d destroyed his own future.

  Tom shut off the program. He couldn’t really sort himself out. So he forwarded his eval sheet to Vik, labeling it “Do I win something?” Then he waited, his stomach hurting.

  Within a minute, Vik came dashing into his bunk, breathless. He proclaimed, “You are officially the most accomplished Doctor of Gormless Cretinism this world has ever seen!”

  Tom decided this was the right response. He hopped out of the bed. “I know, right? Five out of five! Ka-pow.” He mock punched something.

  “It must be a record,” Vik marveled. “That has to be a first, man. I don’t think anyone’s done that before. Five in one day. Has anyone else ever, ever, in the history of the Spire, pulled that off?”

  Tom laughed. “No way. I’d bet I’m the first. I should frame it and stick on the wall or something. Like a trophy.”

  Vik snapped his fingers and pointed at him. “You can! Tom, you can, man. I’m sure of it. We can add it to your bunk template.”

  Soon, Tom’s giant Gormless Cretin statue held up a triumphant scroll of the message, like it was the Declaration of Independence or something similar. Various trainees began trickling in to admire it and congratulate Tom.

  Of course, they weren’t all impressed. Giuseppe frowned. “Why would you put proof of your abject failure on the wall?”

  Vik sighed tragically. “You just don’t get it, Giuseppe.”

  Tom gave a helpless shrug. “You just don’t.”

  That made Giuseppe angry. “No, this is what I don’t get: why you are both so in love with yourselves, you have giant statues of yourselves in your bunk templates.”

  Vik sighed tragically again. “You just don’t get it, Giuseppe.”

  Tom gave a helpless shrug again. “You just don’t.”

  That drove Giuseppe from the bunk. As soon as he was out of sight, Tom and Vik began cackling. Unfortunately, that didn’t last long, because Yuri and Wyatt didn’t seem to appreciate the display, either. They examined the scroll of failures, and Yuri came over and gripped Tom’s shoulder. “I am very sorry.”

  “Huh? Sorry?” Tom echoed. Yuri was ruining this.

  “He’s okay with it,” Vik insisted. “Really, Yuri.”

  “If I got a report card with all F’s, I wouldn’t put it on a wall,” Wyatt told Tom. “I also wouldn’t show it off to everyone and get people to talk to other people about it.”

  Tom forced a laugh. “This isn’t the same as a report card. I mean, take away their money and power, and who cares about Reuben Lloyd or Sigurdur Vitol or . . .”

  “But no one’s taking away their money or power,” Wyatt pointed out. “Everyone here cares about them.”

  “I believe you are being in denial,” Yuri told him. “This is no good for you, Thomas.”

  Tom’s eyes flipped up to Yuri’s. He was so tempted to say who denial brought to mind.

  Vik didn’t have his self-restraint. “If you want to talk denial, then let’s look at—”

  “Wyatt,” Tom cut i
n. None of them talked to Yuri about his hopeless plight as the eternal plebe, and it wasn’t the time right now.

  Wyatt grew anxious. “What about me? Why am I in denial?”

  “Because. Because . . .” Tom fumbled a moment for a sufficiently distracting excuse. “Uh, you’re from Connecticut, so you think Connecticut is an okay state. But it’s not. It sucks. You know why? Because Snowden’s from Connecticut. Therefore, Connecticut sucks.”

  Wyatt got very distressed over Tom’s impugning her state. So distressed, in fact, that joy filled Vik’s face. “Bless you, Tom, for handing me this glorious new weapon.”

  “Shut up, Vik,” Wyatt said.

  But Vik had already settled on Tom’s bed. He muttered, “Connecticut . . . Connecticut . . . What to do with Connecticut?”

  “I am fully aware of how thoroughly done for I am here,” Tom informed Wyatt, bringing them back to the subject at hand. “There is no denial. It’s acceptance.”

  “Not acceptance,” Vik said, paying attention again. “He is embracing it, Evil Wench. And that’s why you are awesome, Doctor. You are a hero and an inspiration to us all.”

  Tom shrugged modestly. “I do what I can.”

  “It’s easy for you to say!” Wyatt protested, turning on Vik. “You got invited back to all those companies.”

  “Yes,” Yuri added. “You are quite eager to downplay this, but I have been noticing you are not experiencing this issue yourself.”

  “Tom has every right to feel depressed,” Wyatt insisted.

  “Why would Tom be depressed?” Vik said, exasperated. “Yes, he had a setback, but it’s not like he woke up in Connecticut.”

  There was a moment of silence as Wyatt processed his words, then her face grew very grave. “That’s how you’re using the Connecticut thing.”

  “That’s how,” Vik confirmed.

  “Don’t, Vik. It’s terrible.”

  “Terrible? No, Enslow. You’re confusing Tom’s situation with living in Connecticut,” Vik said.

  Wyatt hit his arm and stormed from the bunk.

  Yuri sighed and patted Tom’s back. “Stay strong, my friend.”