Vortex (8 page)

Tom slouched in his seat a bit, remembering thinking to Vik over net-send,
How do steak boobs function?
He wasn’t very good with thought interfaces. He had stuck to net-sending with his forearm keyboard ever since.

“Plus, net-send has a lag time—microseconds, but that might as well be hours during space combat. These decagons, however, facilitate instantaneous group communication, and the messages sent are the dominant concerns in your head at any one time. There is no lag time. Before you do your fly-alongs with us, you need to gain some basic mental discipline so you can communicate the way we do during combat, and do so in an effective manner. Today, we’re going to have two to three CamCos at each decagon. You guys pair up, and let’s try this out together.”

Tom and Wyatt paired up. The first decagon they reached was the one in front of Heather and Elliot. Tom’s stomach contracted as he watched Karl come over to join them.

“Ready?” Elliot said, pulling out a neural wire. Then Heather raised her eyebrows, and he smiled. “Oh. Of course. Sorry, H. I know you need to take the lead.”

“Why, thank you, Elliot.” Heather turned to Tom and Wyatt. “Stick your neural wires into the ports on the decagon, sit down, then hook in like you would to any other machine.”

Tom dropped into one of the cushy chairs, aware of Karl still standing, glowering at him. He stuck his neural wire into a port on the decagon, then plugged the other end into the back of his neck, and the world grew utterly dark around him.

I’m blind!
He tried to say it, but his voice didn’t come out. Tom flailed out his arms to alert someone, terrible suspicions flying through his brain that this was some plot of Karl’s or even . . .

Footsteps drew toward him, and Tom jumped when hands grabbed his shoulders.

“Relax, Tom.” Heather’s breath tickled his ear. He felt her hands brush the back of his neck, sending goose bumps down his skin. He was disappointed when her fingers slid away. “We’ve programmed it to disable your eyesight and vocal cords while you’re hooked in. It’s to help focus your concentration these first few times. . . . Enslow, you look upset.” Her voice grew vaguely threatening, “Do you want to join Tom or would you rather sit this one out?”

“I’ll do it,” Wyatt snapped, and Tom could see her name listed against the darkness in his vision.

After another moment or two, Heather’s name appeared.

Is this on?
Tom and Wyatt both thought, and the words appeared right there before his eyes.

Then Heather thought,
I wonder which one of them will think something embarrassing first?
The words scrolled across Tom’s vision.

Don’t think about Heather’s boobs,
Tom thought to himself, and to his mortification, the words appeared there.

Yay, it wasn’t me!
Wyatt thought. Then after the words appeared, she thought,
Sorry, Tom.

Tom. Wyatt. Try to focus,
Heather thought.
You can control your thoughts.

Boobs,
Wyatt thought
. Aah! Where did that come from?

It’s called word contagion, and it’s normal,
Heather thought.
You can break it by occupying your thoughts with something else. Try times tables.

2 x 2 = 4, 4 x 4 = 16, 11 x 11 = 121 . . .
Wyatt thought.
This works. Send. I’m surprised she had good advice.

Excuse me?
Heather thought.

Elliot’s name appeared in the IRC.
Hello, everyone! Don’t worry, I’m here now! Just some technical difficulties. What did I miss?

Riding in to save the day,
Heather thought.

Tom thought,
Hi, Elliot. Send. Elliot’s an okay guy.

At least Elliot won’t think about . . . Wait, I’m thinking this,
Heather thought.

Can someone tell us what we’re supposed to think about? Send,
Wyatt thought.

Looks like there’s a leadership deficit,
Elliot thought.
I came just in time.

Ugh,
Heather thought.

So what now? Send,
Tom thought.

Yes, why won’t someone tell me what to think about? Send,
Wyatt thought.

You guys don’t need to think send,
Heather thought.
I want you all to stop thinking send.

Send,
Tom thought. He couldn’t help it.

Just then, Karl’s name appeared in the IRC.
Stupid Fido.

I hate Karl. Die horribly, Karl,
Tom thought. Then, feeling a malicious glee,
Send.

I want to jam a gun barrel down Raines’s throat and see him choke on it,
Karl thought.

God, Karl,
Heather thought.
Issues?

Ha-ha-ha-ha,
appeared as Tom’s text, since the laughter wasn’t coming from his lips.

Hate him, hate him, gonna kill him . . .
Karl thought.

Hates me so much and yet he can’t pull off a single threat,
Tom thought gleefully.
Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha . . .

A string of swearwords was Karl’s response, and for a moment they drowned out all the other text in the IRC. Tom laughed harder and harder as they went on and on, and soon Karl’s swearing kept getting punctured by random “ha’s.”

This is degenerating into chaos,
Heather thought.

Elliott thought,
I need to talk to Karl later. I find this rather disturbing.

I’m not a little kid,
Karl thought.
Elliot acts like we’re all five.

Karl’s frequent, noisome farts,
Tom thought.

That launched another long string of profanity, interspersed only by Wyatt’s idle thought:
I made that program work,
and Tom’s,
Ha-ha-ha-ha.

Lieutenant Blackburn patted me on the back when he saw it,
Wyatt thought.
He said I’m smart. My parents never say nice things to me.

How sad and pathetic,
Heather thought.

Bash his smug face, break his teeth out. Blood dripping out instead of that big, self-satisfied grin,
Karl thought.

But I said you looked pretty that time you wore makeup, Karl,
Tom thought.

More swearing from Karl.

And then Elliot:
Tom must know he’s provoking him. Clever kid but I swear he’d prod a sleeping bear with a stick.

Elliot thinks I’m clever,
Tom thought, surprised.
Or stupid.

High-spirited, but needs guidance and some table manners,
Elliot thought.
Sorry, Tom, musing here. Ignore me.

Table manners?
Tom wondered.

Karl really hates Tom. He doesn’t get Tom. Tom’s a lot deeper than he seems,
Wyatt thought.
Wait. Don’t think about Tom. Tom. Tom. Why isn’t there a send button so I can choose not to press send?

Send,
Tom thought again. He still couldn’t help it.
What are you thinking about me?

Stop it. Stop it. You’re not allowed to do that,
Wyatt sent.
Don’t send. Don’t send. Don’t send.

Send,
Elliot thought.

1 . . . 1 . . . 2 . . . 3 . . . 5 . . .
Wyatt thought.

Very clever focusing her thoughts on the Fibonacci sequence,
Elliot thought.

I hate her,
Heather thought.

I want Raines to die and stop being here,
Karl thought.

Just needs guidance to channel some of that restless energy into something productive,
Elliot thought.
So much potential but he sabotages himself.

Nigel was right. He always said Elliot acts like a day camp counselor,
Heather thought.

34 . . . 55 . . .
Wyatt thought.
Boobs. No!

Boobs,
Tom thought.

Raines choking,
Karl thought.

Jesus, Karl,
Elliot thought.

These people are wasting my time,
Heather thought.

She ended the connection abruptly. Tom felt a moment of shock when his vision flooded with light again and he could see the others blinking around him, pulling out the neural wires connecting them to the decagon. Wyatt ducked her head and made herself as small as possible. Karl was flushed bright red. Only Elliot was smiling gamely. Heather threw them all a look of utter contempt but managed a stiff nod. “Okay, looks like you guys got the basics of it.”

The rest of the hour, they rotated across the room to the other three decagons with CamCos stationed at them. Wyatt’s number sequences grew more intricate, and Tom, for his part, started learning a lot about the CamCos he hadn’t known before.

At the next decagon, Yosef Saide was pondering whether Tom would’ve succeeded in killing him if he hadn’t been yanked out of the shark scenario, and he was eager to face him in a samurai scenario next time. Cadence Grey had a creepily silent mind, and only the occasional “om” betrayed the fact that she was actively meditating. Emefa Austerley was impatient with this whole exercise, since she imagined herself as a Spartan-warrior type, not a teacher to a bunch of annoying younger trainees—and when were Combatants going to be treated like the serious national assets they were?

At the third decagon, Snowden Gainey wondered what people thought of him, and Tom let him know by pondering at length the stupidity of the simulation from Applied Scrimmages. Mason Meekins desperately needed to use the bathroom. Britt Schmeiser kept thinking about a girl he met on the publicity tour, which made Wyatt get the word “boobs” in her head again.

At the fourth decagon, the solemn, dark-haired CamCo Alec Tarsus began thinking right away that Tom was an uneducated simpleton. He also thought Wyatt was too intelligent to function on a normal human level and that was why no one really liked her. This hurt Wyatt’s feelings, which affronted Ralph Bates, who liked her long, beautiful legs. Wyatt thought about how Ralph had given her the initial tour when she arrived at the Spire, and how even back then, he smelled like onions despite the fact that he hadn’t been eating them.

She hurt Ralph’s feelings, so he consoled himself by thinking she had a horseface, which hurt Wyatt’s feelings and made Tom mad enough to think about punching Ralph’s face in. Ralph thought Tom was as deranged as he’d always heard he was, but Wyatt thought about how fantastic it was that Tom threatened people on her behalf. Lea Styron was annoyed by this because she felt that Wyatt shouldn’t be encouraging Tom’s behavior. Chivalry wasn’t charming, it was a weapon of patriarchy, and all in all, this felt like a waste of time to her because she’d already decided she wanted to work with Walton Covner. Tom spent the rest of the time thinking about gnome minions, which unfortunately, confirmed Alec Tarsus’s simpleton theory.

Soon, the entire group broke up, and the veteran CamCos gathered together to laugh over things they’d gleaned from the thoughts of younger trainees.

All except Heather. She stood apart from the group, glared at the rest a moment, then stalked out of the room. Tom remembered what Wyatt had said earlier and nudged her. “So what happened with her?”

Wyatt beckoned for him to walk to the stairwell with her, and even once they were enclosed in there, she spoke in a whisper. “During the CamCo publicity blitzes, someone began leaking rumors about the other CamCos to the tabloids. True stuff the public couldn’t know.”

Tom remembered those internet rumors he’d seen about the CamCos. “Britt Schmeiser’s weekend of debauchery?”

She nodded. “That sort of thing. Alec Tarsus net-sent me over vacation and asked if I could figure out who was doing it. I traced it to Heather. I guess she wanted to give her own image a boost by making the other CamCos look bad. I told General Marsh. She ended up getting yanked from all her PR gigs.”

“Good job.”

“Thanks.” Wyatt ducked her head, her dark hair sliding in front of her face. “Tom, I have to ask you something. It’s very important. Above all, I need you to be completely honest, whatever consequences might ensue. Can you do this for me?”

Perplexed, he said, “Yeah, hit me.”

She twisted her fingers together, resembling a nervous squirrel. “Do I really have a horseface?”

“No, you don’t.”

He expected that to make her feel better. Instead, Wyatt’s scowl deepened. “You don’t have to lie to me!”

And to his bewilderment, she stalked off down the stairs without him.

After dinner, Tom headed to his bunk, and there he discovered that Vik had been busy. At some point in the evening Vik had duplicated most of the bunk template Wyatt had given him, sneaked in, and transformed Tom’s bunk.

Tom turned around and around to take in the full tableau. There were posters on the wall of angry-looking Wyatt scowling at Tom and following him with her eyes. Other images featured freeze-frames of Tom’s greatest embarrassments—Tom as a sheep, Tom styling his hair with gel in front of a mirror with a very prissy look on his face after Dalton Prestwick of Dominion Agra reprogrammed him, Tom eating steak off a knife. And there was a massive Tom statue that resembled Vik’s statue. It opened its mouth and proclaimed: “IT IS 1915 AND THE GORMLESS CRETIN SAYS: DERP!”

Tom took his revenge on Vik later that night when they battled in Samurai Eternity, and Tom ripped Vik’s simulated head off with his bare hands.

“Augh,” Vik cried, tearing off his wired gloves, as the statue boomed, “IT IS 2115 AND THE GORMLESS CRETIN SAYS: DERP!”

“Oh, look at your head, dripping with blood and subcutaneous tissue,” Tom told him, holding the head between his wired gloves. “What is it saying? What is it?” He leaned in closer. “It says, ‘Tom will beat you to death with your own head if that statue doesn’t stop talking.’”

Vik scratched his real head. “Is that what it said? I have this feeling my head is very articulate, but whenever you translate something, all I hear is ‘derp, derp, derp, derp, derp.’ That’s something
you’d
say, Tom.”