5 STEALING JULIET

5 STEALING JULIET Lunar day 217 After breakfast I had expected to find myself on a bizarre virtual planet, fighting some sort of terrifying aliens. The last time I'd jacked into a game with Roddy, I'd been transported to a moon made of broken glass, where I'd battled beings who looked like giant, angry blobs of snot. But this time, I actually found myself on earth. We were in a charming little Italian village, and our enemies appeared to be completely normal humans. Angry and deadly humans, but humans nonetheless. The only odd thing about them was their clothing, which was straight out of the Renaissance: puffy white shirts, leather pants, and

floppy feathered hats. Their weapons were simple swords, rather than ray guns or photon blasters. It was so disorienting, it took me a few seconds to get my bearings. This was a few seconds too long for Roddy. "Don't just sit there!" he yelled. "Help me kill these guys before they kill us!" I spun around to find Roddy's avatar beside me. While real Roddy was short, flabby, and pear- shaped, virtual Roddy appeared to have stepped out of a comic book. He was nearly seven feet tall and every inch of him bulged with muscles. He was also dressed in a puffy shirt and a floppy hat. Normally, Roddy's avatar wore high-tech body armor, with multiple guns strapped to his chest. Now he looked like a member of a juggling troupe. His only weapon was a sword with an extremely thin blade. I had never bothered to modify my avatar, so it looked exactly like me—though the game automatically outfitted me. I found myself in medieval clothes and armed with a sword as well. I raised it as one of the enemy attacked, deflecting his blade. Even though the contact was completely imaginary, it felt unsettlingly real. My sensogloves gave me the feeling of our swords clanging together,

while speakers embedded in the hologoggles made the sound ring in my ears. "Why do these guys want to kill us?" I shouted, fending off another attack. "Because I kissed their cousin!" Roddy shouted back. While I was fighting only one guy, he was taking on three at the same time. "That's it?" I ducked to the side of a fruit cart as my opponent lunged at me. He missed me and cleaved a watermelon in half. "Yeah," Roddy replied. "They're Capulets, we're Montagues, and our families hate each other." "Hold on," I said. "This is Romeo and Juliet?" "Duh." Roddy calmly speared one of his opponents through the chest. "You've never played it before?" "I didn't even know there was a veeyar version of it." Roddy looked at me as though I'd just said I'd never drunk water. "How could you not know that? William Shakespeare was one of the world's greatest game creators." "Shakespeare didn't create games," I told him. "He was a playwright." Roddy laughed disdainfully, like I was an idiot.

"Please. I know what I'm talking about. He created a ton of games: Macbeth's Battle for Scotland, Revenge of Hamlet, Shrew-Tamer... I've played them all." I would have argued the issue, but it would have been pointless. Once Roddy thought he knew something, there was no talking him out of it. Besides, I needed to save my breath. I didn't have a lot of practice sword-fighting and my opponent was awfully determined to lop my virtual head off. I was deflecting his attacks as well as I could, but they kept coming. I quickly found myself backed against a wall with nowhere to run. "Die, Montague scum!" the enemy screamed, raising his sword above his head. At which point, Roddy came to my rescue, slicing him in half. From head to toe. Both halves thudded to the cobblestones in front of me. Thankfully, no blood or internal organs spilled out; Roddy must have had the game's violence settings set to Teen. He'd taken care of his opponents in a similar way. The three of them were now in a dozen large pieces scattered about the plaza. The dead bodies faded away and were replaced by the words EXCEPTIONAL SWORDPLAY! LEVEL ONE HATH BEEN COMPLETED.

"C'mon," Roddy said, leading me down a narrow alley. "The Capulets are a big family. More of them will be coming for us soon. We have to get to Juliet." "So you can marry her?" I asked, trailing after him. "Marry her?" Roddy's avatar stuck out his tongue in disgust, which meant that real Roddy had done the same thing. "Dude, she's only, like, thirteen." "I know, but in the play..." "It's a game, dimbulb. The whole point is just to kiss the girl. She's crazy beautiful. And then her cousins try to kill you and your family. But if you defeat them all, you get to kiss her again. For, like, thirty whole seconds." "You can kiss a virtual girl?" Virtual Roddy shot me another you're-an-idiot look. "Yeah. It's cosmic. And good practice for when Kira and I start making out in real life." I shuddered just thinking about this. Roddy truly believed that he was a great catch and the only reason Kira hadn't succumbed to his charms yet was that her father didn't want her dating anyone at the moon base. In truth, the reason was that Kira thought Roddy was a weirdo and a creep. Learning that he'd been making out with virtual Shakespeare

characters wasn't going to improve her opinion of him. We appeared to have settled into an exploration mode in the game, slinking about Verona in search of Juliet while trying to elude angry Capulets. Even though it was completely fake and ridiculous, being on virtual earth felt fantastic. It was easy to imagine I was wandering through one of the thousands of real Italian country towns, breathing fresh air and feeling the sun on my face. Yes, it was only a matter of time before sword-wielding hooligans tried to kill us, but for the moment, it was a welcome break from the dull, sterile surroundings of Moon Base Alpha. In the lull between attacks, I asked, "Did you do anything to get Patton and Lily angry at you last night?" Virtual Roddy shot a wary glance at me. "Sort of." We came upon a large, open-air market and wove through the maze of stalls and merchants. All around us, imaginary people were selling imaginary cheese, fruit, and goats. "What'd you do?" I asked. "I was spying on them." "Why?" "Because they were obviously up to no good. I