Tom laughed softly and shook his head. “You didn’t get me in trouble. This is just Ms. Falmouth letting me know how much she missed me.”

His gloves vibrated, signaling that someone was making physical contact with his avatar. Tom glanced down, startled, and saw her hand resting on his arm. Her voice was a breathy whisper. “You sure?”

Tom stared at her as Ms. Falmouth’s voice carried on: “… exported conflicts serve several purposes …”

“I’m sure,” he told her, so keenly aware of her touch she might as well have been next to him touching him in real life, too.

Heather’s hand trailed down his arm and then slipped away. She nestled it back on her desktop. Tom found himself wondering what she actually looked like. Her avatar didn’t even look like a ninth grader. Was she older than him?

“With the weaponry we use nowadays,” Ms. Falmouth said beside the board, “we could destroy the ionosphere, irradiate the planet, vaporize the oceans. By exporting our wars and engaging Russia and China on, say, Saturn instead of on Earth, we can hash out our disagreements over resource allocation without the devastating consequences of traditional warfare, as Heather explained just now. In ages past, people believed that World War III would end all civilization. A famous quote by Albert Einstein: ‘I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.’ But we’re in the middle of World War III, and we’re far from ending civilization.”

Ms. Falmouth twitched her finger and the chalkboard morphed into a screen. “Now, I’d like to focus upon the current Intrasolar Forces. I want you to turn your thoughts to the teenagers who are out there deciding the future of your country. We’ll play a short video clip.”

Tom sat up straighter, watching the screen resolve into an outdoor view of the Pentagon and the tall tower jutting from the middle—the Pentagonal Spire—and then to a newsroom where a familiar teenage boy sat with a reporter.

It was Elliot Ramirez.

Tom slumped back down in his seat. Behind him, Serge Leon actually cried out in dismay, “Not Dorkmirez!”

Elliot Ramirez was everywhere. Everyone knew him—the handsome, smiling, all-American seventeen-year-old who represented the future of Indo-American supremacy in the solar system. He was in commercials, on bulletin boards, his bright grin flashing and dark eyes twinkling on cereal boxes, on vitamin bottles, on T-shirts. Whenever a new Indo-American victory was announced on the news, Elliot was trotted out to give an interview and to talk about how America was sure to win now! And of course, Elliot was front and center in Nobridis, Inc.’s public service announcements because they sponsored him. He was one of the young trainees who controlled American machines in outer space, one of the Americans dedicated to taking down the Russo-Chinese alliance and claiming the solar system for the Indo-American allies.

“How did you get the call sign Ares?” the reporter asked Elliot. “That’s the Greek god of war, I understand. It says a lot about your battlefield prowess.”

Elliot’s chuckle flashed his white teeth. “I didn’t choose ‘Ares’ for myself, but I guess my fellow soldiers thought it should be my call sign. They pleaded with me to take it. I couldn’t refuse the appeals of my brothers-in-arms.”

Tom laughed. He couldn’t help it. Several female avatars whirled around to shush him.

The image on the screen flickered briefly to a battle in space, where a vessel digitally labeled “Ares” was flying toward a dispersed mass of ships. At the bottom of the screen, the caption read “The Battle of Titan.” The reporter’s voice carried on over the image: “… great deal of attention these last few years, Mr. Ramirez. How do you feel about the public’s fascination with you?”

“To tell you the truth, I don’t see myself as a great hero the way so many people do. It’s the machines that do all the fighting in space. I just control them. You could say”—and here the image flipped back to Elliot just as he threw a wink at the camera—“I’m just a kid who likes to play with robots.”

Tom kept remembering the only interview of Elliot Ramirez he’d ever sat through before this one. His father was in the hotel room with him, and he’d insisted on watching the entire thing several times because he was convinced that the famed Elliot Ramirez wasn’t a real person. He refused to change the channel until Tom was convinced of it, too.

“That’s not a boy. That’s a computer simulation,” Neil had declared.

“People have seen him in person, Dad.”

“No human being acts like that! Look how he blinks every fifteen seconds on the dot. Time it. And then look at his eyebrows. He raises them to the exact same height every single time. That smile, too. Always the same width. That’s a computer-generated simulation of a human. I guarantee it.”

“Who’s the reporter talking to, then?”

“She’s in on it, too. Who owns the mainstream media? Corporations. That’s who.”

“Right. So I guess cereal companies are putting a fake kid on their boxes, and Elliot’s big sponsor, Nobridis Inc., is also parading around a guy they’ve never met? Oh, and don’t forget all those people on the internet who say they’ve gotten his autograph.... They’re all in on it, too, right?”

Neil’s spit began flying. “Tom, I am telling you, this Elliot kid is not a real person. This is how the corporate oligarchy works. They want a pretty face to make their agenda look good for the masses. A real human being is unpredictable. Create a computer-generated human to be the representation of your organization? Then you control everything about that representation. He’s no different from a logo, an action figure, a piece of insignia.”

“And you’re the only one in the world who’s picked up on this.”

“What, you think the American sheeple are going to question the corporatocracy? They’re too busy doing their patriotic duty, gutting their own country to fund a war over which Coalition CEO gets the biggest yacht this year. Wake up, Tom! I don’t want any son of mine buying into the establishment propaganda.”

“I don’t. I don’t,” Tom had protested.

He wanted his dad to be right. He really did. Even now, he studied Elliot and tried to see something fake and computer simulated about him, but he just saw a cheesy kid madly in love with himself who laughed at his own jokes way too much.

“What message would you like to leave viewers with tonight, Mr. Ramirez?”

“I want them to know, we kids at the Pentagonal Spire aren’t making the big sacrifice. Saving the country’s pretty fun! It’s you, the American taxpayers, who keep the fight for our nation going strong. And thanks to Nobridis, Inc., the Indo-American alliance is more—”

“Saving. The. Country.” Ms. Falmouth flipped off the video segment as Elliot launched into promoting Nobridis. “The next time you think you have too much homework, I want you to consider the burden on this young man’s shoulders. Elliot Ramirez is out there forging a future for our nation, securing the solar system’s resources for us, and you don’t hear him complaining, do you?”

The bell filled the sim. Ms. Falmouth didn’t even get a chance to dismiss them. Students began fizzling away.