"Oh, man, I'm completely soaked!" Tess complained. For having just come out of the Rim Runner waterfall ride, the thought ran through my mind, she wasn't nearly soaked enough - but I didn't say so out loud. Six of us had gone in this group, and nobody was really drenched head to toe, though Maria probably had the best and wettest wet t-shirt out of herself, Liz, and Tess. (Of course, Tess wasn't wearing a t-shirt at all, so maybe I should say 'wettest top.') Part of Tess' tie-dyed tank top was definitely splashed out enough to show a bit of a cling factor, (especially on the right side, as it happened,) but other parts were still almost completely dry. Her hair was closer to qualifying as 'soaked', and maybe that was what she was thinking of - I know I tend to think of myself as wetter when my hair is wet, and I don't have nearly as much hair to wet as she does. I do like the way her face looks when her hair is all wet - did I mention that already? And then, her shorts and legs seemed to be past 'damp' and into 'dripping', which was exciting in a completely different way... "What are you staring at?"

"Umm... the most beautiful bride in all of Vegas?" I said, hoping that between the vagueness and the flattery I'd be able to pre-empt any trouble. It seemed to work - though Tess did have a wicked glint in her eye as she nestled close and pushed her wetter half against some of my dryer spots - like I really cared so much about getting myself further wet when wet Tess Harding was pressing herself against me. "Umm... anyone up for going on the Canyon Blaster ride right now?"

"No, not right now," Tess decided. "Leave it as something to look forward to a bit later. Besides, I think the lines are still pretty long."

"I wouldn't bet that the lines are going to get any shorter, Tess," Michael countered. He probably had a point. That ride was possibly the Vegas Adventuredome's biggest draw - a loop-the-loop roller coaster that was advertised as running up to 55 miles per hour.

"I want to wait around here for Isabel and Alex to get off the Rim Runner," Liz suggested. Okay, that sounded good enough for me... and not just because getting a glimpse of Isabel in a wet t-shirt would be something to see, no matter how fiercely devoted I was to my new wife of something like sixteen hours. Alex would probably suggest something that none of us had thought of and would turn out to be a complete blast - he had had his nose stuck in the brochure since we got in, (well, not that that was such a long time, just long enough to find the Rim Runner, wait in line for it... and he did come out long enough to pay a little attention to Izzie now and then.) So I gotta figure that's going to pay off for us at some point - maybe now.

So we hung around and chatted about something that matters so little I can't even remember it, and then Alex and Isabel showed up - once again, Isabel's t-shirt was damp and splashed but not drenched. Were the alien girls using their powers to keep us guys from getting too good of a peek? Even Liz got well doused - not that she's terribly big in the chest, but still, there were some nice lines there. Oh well. I guess all of this obsessing with wet tops was starting to get a little bit immature, even by my standards, and I tried to put it out of my mind at this point.

So Max asked Alex what he thought would be a good ride to try next - Alex mentioned the sling-shot tower, and the flip-speeder, but it was the whirling wheel of Chaos that attracted the most attention from the rest of us. After that Max and Liz, Michael and Maria wanted to go off and play the mini-golf, (yawn,) while Tess led me to the bumper cars, and Alex and Isabel followed along behind us. We went through once and started waiting through the line for a second go, but apparently there was some sort of technical difficulties that brought the ram-slamming action to a standstill. With no particular indication about how long the delay might be, and too many people waiting behind us to make a quick or easy exit, Isabel turned to dialog as an escape from the boredom. "So, Tess... what are you gonna tell Mister Valenti when you get back home?"

I watched Tess' face carefully. Would she confess that she wasn't sure if our marriage would still be much of an issue by the time we got home? If so, it would be hard to keep the news from spreading far, and she knew it. Myself, I kind of wanted her to keep up the play acting, so I had to force myself to breathe. Finally, Tess giggled softly. "Come on... he's Kyle's dad. I don't have to tell him anything, I'll just leave that to my brave and kind husband." Alex chuckled at that.

"Why did you guys disappear so quickly, anyway?" Alex asked. "And... come on, you can tell us a little bit more of that story with the consequences. We won't spill it to the other guys - I promise."

Tess looked around. "No, I don't think you would - but frankly I don't think it's something I should be going on about in these kind of circumstances." Alex scanned the area himself, realizing that there were strangers standing close all about us. All probably bored, and probably a number of them were listening to strangers' conversations as a way of amusing themselves.

But Alex's eyes twinkled with something that, if it wasn't a kind of mischievous glee, was certainly close. "Okay then," he said softly. "Whisper it in my ear, so that nobody else could possibly hear."

Tess considered that for just a moment. "You're gonna have to bend way over, boy," she pointed out. "Otherwise I'd never be able to reach your ear." This was self-evidently true. Alex had probably almost a foot's height advantage over Tess... she's always said that she's 'five foot two and eyes of blue', just like in the song, and Alex is probably between six foot and six foot two. (Tess wasn't wearing any heels today, which just made all of that disparity more evident, rather than cheating a little bit of it away.) So Alex looked around, and instead of bending over, he sat down against one of the little half-walls that they used to corral the line into a rectangular holding area. Tess considered a moment and squatted down next to him, whispering in his ear for a fairly long time.

I looked around, catching Isabel's eye, wondering if she seemed nervous or uncomfortable about being let out of the secrets that my wife was telling her boyfriend, but Isabel had sat down perching on top of the opposite wall and was watching with an amused smile on her perfectly chiseled face. Everybody had mostly dried out by now after the water ride, and Isabel Evans looked like about as cool and suave a lady as you might ever meet... rich dark golden blonde hair loose and straight, falling well past her shoulders, her signature designer blue jeans and black high-heel leather boots, and a black t-shirt with Bugsy Siegel's face and name blazoned on the front of it.

Finally, just as I was nearly going crazy wondering exactly how much Tess was telling Alex, she stopped sharing. Alex grinned once, just for a moment, and got up. "Okay, umm. Well, that was - interesting. Oh, hey, something's happening." Sure enough. there was some sort of commotion in the middle of the bumper car park - a guy climbing up on a ladder, possibly on his way to examine some part of the electrical system that the cars ran off of. "I hope they've turned off all the juice first," I muttered without thinking about it.

"They probably know that much, Kyle," Isabel shot back.

"Hey, don't talk to my husband that way," Tess replied. I had almost got my grateful look put together for her when, "Now it's my job to come in first with the witty comeback." Oh well. If she wanted to claim that as one of the perquisites of being my wife - of course I wouldn't refuse it her.

"Speaking of husbands and wives," Isabel said, turning to Tess. "Have you given any thought yet to the name thing?"

"Umm... what name thing?" Tess asked, but her dumb-play wasn't terribly convincing.

"Oh, come on, you know," Alex said, getting into it. "Personally, I think that Tess Valenti has a ring to it. Or Tess Harding-Valenti maybe." He thought about it. "Do you have a middle name, Tess?"

"Christine," I said absently. "Tess Christine Valenti. Doesn't sound horrible." Tess shot me a nasty look, and I wasn't sure if it was more for giving away her middle name to the others or for adding my two cent's worth to the discussion of her taking my last name, but... well, it was worth it anyway.

Just then, though, the line started moving again, and there was enough hubbub and noise from everyone else who'd been waiting the whole time that the topic of conversation got lost. We were in the second group to go after the long delay, and when we came out Michael and Maria were waiting for us outside the bumper cars exit.

"Hey, that wasn't long for eighteen holes," Alex remarked with a wink.

"Michael made me give up after eight," Maria sighed. "Sore loser. Max and Liz are completing the course."

"I'm sorry," Michael said with a sigh. "Just don't see why I should have to stick with something that I'm not doing well with and not having fun at." He kissed Maria. "And I didn't make you do anything. I said that I'd appreciate your company, but nothing more. If you really wanted to stick with Max and Liz, then I wouldn't have minded much."

"Yeah, and been the third wheel? No thanks." Maria sighed. "So, come on, anybody else got good ideas?"

"Umm, I could do with some lunch," Alex remarked.

"Oh, none for me thanks," Tess said. "Still stuffed from breakfast... well, nearly stuffed enough that I can wait another hour or so." Isabel ended up accompanying Alex in search of food, and Michael and Maria, Tess and I started wandering around the park looking for the next fun thing to do. We ended up settling on a 'movie ride' - a big enclosed cart with three rows of seats, that was set up to move and tremble as directed by a computer, precisely synchronized to the three-walled Imax screen that surrounded it. Really gave me the feeling of being in a kind of tour bus that had been harpooned and was being dragged and crashed through an enormous computer-animated world. (I think the ride was based off some Canadian cartoon show that I was at best vaguely familiar with. Still - big fun.)

After that, Michael and Maria went off alone, and Tess said that she wanted to sit down and rest just a little. So I found a bench, and as it just happened, we were near enough to look at some of the kiddie rides - the frog hoppers were just ahead and to the left, and further away on our right was the coal bin rider.

"Do... do you remember that flash that you told me about last night?" I suddenly blurted out. "About... about us having a son, and his first Christmas?"

Tess made out a kind of strangled squeal. "Yes, yes baby, of - of course I do." She sighed very loudly. "If... if I said that I wanted to get started on a divorce before we left Nevada, would - would that split us up forever, or for a long time?" I couldn't reply immediately. "I... I do love you, Kyle, and I want to be with you. I'm just... I'm really not sure I'm ready to be married."

"Well, okay, let's see." I took a deep breath. "I... I love you to, and yes, I'd want to be your boyfriend regardless of... well, if we hadn't gotten married yesterday, I'd definitely want to be your boyfriend... now or when we go back to Roswell, whenever." Slight moan. "But... but I can't deny that divorce is a big thing for me, mostly because of my Mom leaving me. I... I don't want to have to go through it, and... and if we get divorced, I don't know if I'd really be okay with just 'dialing back' to dating. I... I hate to admit that, but it's probably true. Not... not because I'd hold any of this against you, just - having to deal with my own hangups."

"I... I see," Tess remarked, a bit sadly, and then there was... well, not real silence, though neither of us was saying anything. The kids on the hoppers were making too much noise for anything to be quiet.

"I... I didn't tell you about my own flash, did I?" I asked. "About you and me, and our family."

"No, I guess you didn't," she remarked, and suddenly I was blurting all of it out - the summer mountain cabin or whatever, seeing her walk up to me and hug me, carrying a little child in pink - two boys running around and chasing each other. I probably got a lot of the order mixed up, just because I was so excited. Tess face became more and more a study in contrasts, upset and smiling at the same time somehow. "I... I'm not sure you're not just making this more difficult for me," she finally said once I was done.

"Maybe... maybe I'm making it harder for you to take the easy way out of this marriage," I said. "I can live with that."

"Yeah, I'll just bet that you can." Tess sighed. "Okay, come on - let's see if Max and Liz are finished with their putt-putt."

#

Tess and I waited around a little while Max and Liz finished the last three holes on the mini-golf course. Then we rode the slingshot tower ride together, and Tess insisted we go to the snack bar for lunch, because she was finally hungry enough to eat again. Michael and Maria were there when we arrived, and apparently we'd only just missed Alex and Isabel, though that must have been a very long lunch that they'd had. Pretty soon Michael kissed Maria goodbye and headed off on his lonesome - not quite sure why he was in such a hurry to get away from the grub, but... well, it doesn't really matter that much, now does it?

"You have to give me some of your lunch if I ask," Tess argued with effort and chutzpah. "It's common law or something now."

Hmm... Now, just how much should I let my dear darling bride get away with on those grounds? Certainly more than this, and I took the untouched half of my roast beef sandwich and put it on her place. Then I took a few of her chicken nuggets back to mine. "Fair's fair. Common law cuts both ways."

"You didn't even ask," Tess argued. "Without that, it's theft."

"Okay - darling Tess, could I have some of those tasty pieces of poultry in exchange?" She hesitated a moment, then nodded a silent and regal assent.

"I have to admit, watching you guys go back and forth with it like that," Maria remarked. "You look... in fact - a toast to the happy couple!" She lifted up her plastic cup of soda. "I can't believe that we forgot to do this part at the reception,"

"Umm - I appreciate the thought and everything - I really do," Tess put in. "But - um, shouldn't you wait with that until everybody is here?"

"Yeah, alright. So... so you guys actually did it," Liz suddenly said, not really apropos of anything. "You got married in Vegas."

"Umm, yeah," Tess said, looking at her oddly. "Probably wouldn't have had the patience to get married anywhere else, or... well, you know what I mean, just possibly." She sighed, took a small bite of my sandwich, and looked oddly at Liz. "Why is that an 'it', anyway? I mean... it's not like you were expecting us to pull something like this, were you?"

"Umm..." Liz didn't say anything, and Tess cut a hunk out of the sandwich away from where she'd bitten into it and carefully moved that part back over to me. I wasn't sure if she wasn't favorably impressed with it... no, if she didn't like the sandwich, she could have given more back than that. Maybe just didn't think she was that hungry? Well, it was appreciated anyway. "I... know, I guess I didn't expect that you guys would get married here."

At first, I didn't really pay any attention to the way she'd put that. But Maria turned to stare over at Liz, and that managed to attract my attention. Had... had Liz thought that somebody else would run away to get married in Vegas? Michael and Maria? Herself and Max? Hmm... well, I guess it didn't really matter that much. I tried eating a bit of sandwhich and a bit of chicken at the same time - it didn't really work out that well, from a taste blending perspective.

"Well, I do wish you guys all the best," Max said, smiling pleasantly. Somehow I didn't have any trouble interpreting that. 'Yes, Kyle, by all means, stay married to Tess, and keep her romantically occupied so that I don't have to ever be slightly worried that she'll come after me one more time and torpedo my relationship with my true soulmate.' I'm trying, Evans buddy, I'm trying as hard as I can, but it's not as easy as it looks. Anything constructive that you can do to help would be appreciated, but I didn't know what that wa... oh, hey now!

The biggest problem here was that Tess wasn't really being too serious when she acted married to me - she was playing the part happily enough, but only in a 'showboating for the crowd' sense. If... if Max, particularly, started to condescend to her on the subject of our marriage, pretending that it was some really foolish stunt that she was pulling and that she wasn't capable of treating her relationship with me seriously - then, would Tess start to invest more seriously in the idea just as a way of counter-reacting? A form of reverse psychology, in a way?

Well, Tess is sometimes the sort of person that reverse psychology works on, but this was one time that I couldn't use it - she couldn't know I had anything to do with the ploy, or it would backfire horribly. Would I be able to pull it off on those terms? I tried to push the idea aside for now without letting myself completely forget it.

We continued eating and chatting and enjoyed some yogurt cones for desert, and then, just as all five of us were leaving the snack bar, Michael Guerin just kinduv pops up out of nowhere. "Laser draft," he said, pressing a little card into Maria's hands. "Laser draft, laser draft..." he kept the moronic chant up while serving each of us. By the time he got to me, Maria had been staring at her 'draft card' for a good ten seconds or so.

"Michael, what the hell is this?"

"Well, hmm." Michael paused a long moment before deciding how to begin. "The Adventuredome happens to boast of a fine Laser war battleground."

"Yes," Maria said. "I told you when we were waiting outside in the entrance line that I would not be playing laser tag under any circumstances, and these charmingly crude 'draft slips' are no exception."

"It's not laser tag," Michael protested. "It's not any kind of tag, it's..." Apparently he figured out that arguing over such a trivial point was not the best way to winning his temperamental girlfriend over. "Come on, we have to fight for Roswell honor - for New Mexico honor, even. I've been challenged to a grudge match by this bunch of California frat boys, and we can totally take them - if we all work together."

"These frat boys, Michael," Liz asked casually from the sidelines. "Were you running your mouth off in front of them, trash talking, and practically begging them for a challenge?"

"Well, maybe I jived a little," Michael said. "But that was after they'd already started in on the 'Cali's so great, everywhere else sucks' routine. One of them asked Izzy where she was from, and then all of them joined in with totally making fun of Roswell."

"Even Roswell makes fun of Roswell," Max said. "Come on, we've made an industry out of having a sense of humor about ourselves."

"This was different," Alex volunteered. "There's friendly joking, and then there's serious insults. That holds true for places as well as people. I'm with Michael on this one - time to teach a few frat boys a lesson." I suddenly wondered if there'd been more to this encounter between Isabel and the frat boys than Roswell-mocking. Had they tried crude come-ons, or insulted her specifically? Had Alex tried to interfere and not have it go as well as he'd have liked?

"Well, I'm always up for some laser war," I said. "What'd you think, dear?"

Tess smiled a mean smile. "Nobody picks on Roswell around here but me."

Good enough. "Max?" Michael asked, and reluctantly, he nodded slightly.

"I'll... I'll go if you go, Liz... or if you, umm... if you don't mind my signing up for the cause."

Liz laughed. "What the heck, it sounds like a larf, though I'm not sure I'll be that much good in a firefight. Never been that much of a... of a gun person, you know."

"Oh, god, baby, I didn't even think of that," Max said, but Liz shhshed him down. Obviously, if she'd still had that much gun trauma from the shooting, she would never have agreed to join our squad. That left only Maria - if she stood by her oath about not going into the arena, (metaphorical or literal, I wasn't sure,) then she'd be the only one.

"Okay, if you guys really want me to make it unanimous, then I'll come," she muttered with bad grace. Liz, Isabel, Alex, and Tess immediately cheered her on, and Max and I mumbled a few enthusiastic things. (Michael didn't comment one way or another - probably he felt it would have been overkill.) So we all went off to wait for the appointed time, meet our enemies, suit up, and so on.

One thing that I'm surprised neither Michael nor Alex, (the people who had met the frat boys already,) had mentioned about them was how very sexist they seemed... maybe they hadn't known. But when Maria pointed out that there were only seven of them, one laughed and said that since four of our team were girls, then that tipped the balance back in their favor, as if the female of the species was only worth half of a man at best. Some of the other 'brothers' started arguing about how big of a handicap they should give us in recognition of these circumstances. The notion really didn't go over well with Tess or Maria, and even Liz seemed peeved off. (Isabel seemed icily dismissive of the college guys through this whole exchange.) Somehow I suspected that Tess and Maria would be more dangerous than any man once the fighting started.

The laser war attendant gave us our rifles and helped us into our special laser-sensitive vests, and explained some of the rules and circumstances of the fighting. Combat would take place in a kind of labyrinth, with neither side sure of the right route to take to get from their HQ to the enemies' position. Shooting an enemy soldier could 'wound' him temporarily or kill him permanently, but resulted in minimum points. (Participating inappropriately when you were wounded or dead could be an automatic disqualification for your side, a fact I filed away for strategic use later. If I could manage to kill one of the enemy and them taunt him into attacking me physically, say with a punch, then we could win the whole match right there.)

Shooting various 'strategic targets' on the enemy side of the maze was worth medium points, but the big scores were reserved for capturing the other side's "prize" and bringing it back out of their territory - a little bit like capture the flag. I was a little worried about this maze thing too - had the other side played this thing before? The attendant said that the maze was never the same twice, but still, they might have some overall familiarity about the kinds of ways it usually went, which would translate into a big terrain disadvantage for us. There was only so many ways that you could change an attraction like this, when you were running groups through it all day.

Still, everybody was reasonably confident when the buzzer sounded, and we rushed out into green HQ through a door from the staging area, which closed once all eight of us were through. "Okay, first thing is that we need to explore the nearby extent of the maze," Michael said, taking charge at once. "Find our strategic targets so that we can plan to defend them. Figure out which passages are dead ends - we can try to herd enemy into them and trap them there - and which are loops, and which lead out towards enemy territory."

That pretty much made sense to me. There were two exits from HQ, with one of them splitting fairly soon, so we broke up into three groups - Maria joined Tess and me, Michael went with Alex and Isabel, and Max and Liz were group three. Pretty soon Max and Liz called up that that their split was a dead-end, with one of our targets contained inside.

"Alright," Tess suggested... or maybe it was more like giving orders. Hard to tell for sure in a situation like that. "Stick close, defend our HQ, and try to find any other nearby targets. We're going to keep on with this split and see if it leads us into enemy territory. Kay?"

"Um, okay Tess," Liz said after a moment. I wondered what she was thinking, if it was still hard for her to go along with what Tess was saying. But this tactic did seem to make a lot of sense. The corridor that we were following continued straight for a while, and then emerged into an area from which there were four other passageways, the first two of which turned out to be pretty clearly dead-ends. All of a sudden, I saw the green beam of a laser gun's target-finder shining from the remaining left corridor to hit the wall above Tess.

"Get down!" I hissed, and when she didn't seem to react, I hurried over and pulled her out of danger about as gently as I could.

"Wait a second," Maria muttered. "I... I think that that's friendly fire. They said that the other guns would have a slightly different color beams that we did." And before I could warn her to be careful even so, she called off in the direction that the light had come from. (It was gone now.) "Spaceboy?"

"Umm, yeah he's here," Isabel's reply came back. "I... I guess that our branches met up."

"Yeah," Tess replied, straightening up again and giving me an odd look for my over-eager protectiveness. "Is this the only way that your exit led to?"

Alex and Isabel came into view, with Michael enthusiastically guarding their rear approach. "Not really. We found two dead ends, one of which had a strategic target, and one left-wise passage that we didn't get a chance to explore yet."

"Okay, so that's two passages yet," Maria said. "Either of which could easily split into several , the way that this maze is going. And we haven't seen any of the college boys yet. What's our next move?"

"Shhh!" Isabel went, and everybody went silent. Sure enough, I could just about hear quiet footfalls up the front-right way from our five-cross. This was it - our first tactical contact with the enemy. Was it good luck or bad that six of us were here? Do we charge ahead, make a stand, or fall back?

Isabel made a series of gestures that I couldn't immediately make anything of, especially in the dimness of the maze, and Tess grabbed my arm and led me out of the open. By watching, some of the details of the alleged plan became clear... Michael and Alex were heading back to the other intersection that they had come from, in case the enemy might circle around and come into our territory that way. (And just how large was our territory, anyway? Was there a third strategic target that we hadn't even found yet? Maybe the others would find it first.) Meanwhile, Tess and I, Maria, and Isabel were all taking cover at different points around the five-cross, hoping that our opponents would blunder into it and we'd have a chance to crossfire them, or at the very least that one of us would be able to catch some of them by surprise.

That was how it was supposed to work, at least. But what I hadn't expected was that one forward scout came into the area by himself, trying to check around him as he went, but there was no way that he was going to spot any of us really in time. I didn't want to zap him too soon and warn the others coming behind, if possible, but it just wasn't possible - he moved close enough that he'd have spotted the two of us any instant, and then Tess fired - Bam! Right in the chestplate, and he went down. I noticed Isabel firing from her own hiding place, making sure that the scout was thoroughly tagged enough that his suit would lock up and 'kill' him, instead of merely forcing him to go back to his HQ to get his gun working again - that way, he'd be able to report to the others. And so we waited, wondering what the rest of the enemy squad would do. Would they have heard a body hit the floor? The scout - I think that he had made one soft strangled cry as he was shot, but he wasn't screaming a warning now - you weren't supposed to after you went into lockup, that was the 'play dead' condition. (I wasn't sure if his team would have been penalized if he'd broken the rule, or not.) But they'd probably notice that he wasn't still leading the way.

We waited, but there were no signs of any enemy following, and then - more fighting a little ways away. Maybe they had circled round, alert to the possibility of a trap here, and had gone Michael and Alex's route. Isabel immediately charged over there, and Maria came over to join Tess and me. In a series of very soft whispers it was decided that we would go on ahead and try to make it to the enemy HQ, while the other teams worried about defense back here. We'd taken down one enemy man already, and this was probably pretty close to enemy territory, or even inside it. There would be possible danger on the road ahead, but it was worth a try.

Taking a trick from our rivals, I volunteered to go ahead as a forward scout - it was a dangerous job, obviously, but one man putting himself in danger here could easily save two of his fellow soldiers, and maybe win the game that way. So I crept on ahead, trying to explore new expanses of the maze as silently and safely as possible. There was a kind of a loop around a U shaped structure, like a cubicle of maze walls, and several new ways to go. I hung back just long enough for Tess to catch up, not sure. She touched my free hand with hers and I got a bracing bolt of flash-communication. 'That one, right up ahead, and careful. If we've been moving from our HQ out into enemy territory, then that is where the enemy HQ should be. Careful, they probably have guards right around the bend.'

I moved towards the passage that she had indicated, and heard something, surely enough - faint human breathing. It would be hard to storm their HQ with just the three of us if they were guarding carefully, and anyway - there was more to this situation than there seemed. I tried hard to concentrate, aware of the possibility of an enemy laser strike taking me out at any moment, but things started to fall into place. First... if that was their HQ just beyond that wall, then there would be more than one approach to it, just like there had been to ours - probably the other route was accessible by the next passageway over to the left. Also - also they had to have minor strategic targets hidden in dead-ends somewhere around here, and I'm not sure how well they'd be guarded. It made sense to try to find those first... but I wasn't sure how to convey that to the girls without getting us discovered.

Maria, though, seemed to have the second part of that brainwave already. She made another strange gesture to Tess, headed off to the far right passage. I considered following her or going to the leftish, but I was thinking of the bad guys... (well, they probably weren't really evil guys, just annoying fratsters,) who would be guarding the enemy base. If Tess was alone around here, would they come out and try to shoot her down? She'd probably get mad at me for thinking that I had to protect her in any way, but... well, I wanted to anyway.

Sure enough, someone poked around a corner - I couldn't get a good shot off, and he didn't hit either of us either, and backed off when he realized that there were two rifles out here. Soon Maria had come back, giving us a thumbs up, and I felt confident enough to try a raid on enemy HQ.

But how? I had thought of one idea, but I couldn't pull it off myself and wasn't sure if my darling bride would go for it. So I turned to Tess and tapped my forehead as meaningfully as I could with the laser war helmet on. She thought for a moment and smiled. Maria took a moment to direct the traffic with hand gestures, that for once I was able to read, and we put the plan into action. I slipped up the 'back way' to enemy HQ, while the girls guarded the other way in, and we all silently counted to sixty as a crude way of synchronizing the timing.

I'm not clear on exactly what did happen when the sixty seconds were up - maybe the mindwarp that Tess was casting had slopped over a little bit. But by the end of it, three guards were 'dead' on the floor, out around the U loop, and Maria had the enemy prize tucked into her laser war suit. Very roughly, the plan had been for me to come up and provide a diversion, at the same time as Tess laid the mindwarp down with the hope of panicking them, chasing the guards into a venus trap. I think it pretty much worked.

"Okay, I don't think there's likely any other guards around here," Tess muttered, a smile plastered over her face. "We probably missed a few strategic targets, but they aren't as important as that." (With a gesture to point at what was concealed by Maria's pants in the vicinity of her hip.) "We need to bring it back - and if the enemy has managed to capture our prize by now, we need to make sure that they don't get it back here, right?"

"Yeah, that sounds about right," I said. "Do we take the same route back, or go another way?"

The girls exchanged looks. "You remember the way back?" Maria asked.

"Umm, yeah."

"Then you take this, and get back," she said. "We'll find the other route." And she tossed me the little electric red candy cane that was the enemy prize.

"Are... are you sure that splitting up makes sense?" I asked.

"No," Tess admitted. "But it seems better than staying together." And all of a sudden she threw herself at me and kissed me - or at least tried to. Our helmets made it hard to do anything but brush our lips very lightly together, and rub noses eskimo style. But the thought still knocked my socks off, that she'd tried to kiss me. Was that a deliberate attempt to get me to do what I was told? (If we only stayed married, somehow I could picture Tess using that sort of tactics to try and get her way a lot, and I probably wouldn't mind letting them work.) And so, this time, I shut up and started to run.

I took one wrong turning - the maze didn't look quite the same flipped around as it had coming, though I'd tried to check back the way I'd come to memorize the route as we went. However, I didn't lose much time because I figured out that something was wrong right away and doubled back. When I returned to the green HQ, Liz's was waiting around, her rifle almost powered back up. She must have been hit. but not 'killed' Max lay unmoving on the ground near her. "Uh-oh. What happened?" I asked, as I took the candy cane back out of my vest and stuck it into the spot where our prize had been torn out.

"We... we tried our best, but they were good," Liz muttered. "Max and Michael didn't want to use their powers if they didn't have to, and then it was too late. I think we only left one or two of them alive, but they got the prize, most of our strategics, and..." Liz shushed suddenly, as the sound of scuffling and laser fire broke out from elsewhere in the maze. When it died down... the maze door opened back up, and the maze partition walls started to slide aside, up, or down, revealing most of the rectangular room that served as the game field.

"Game is over," an attendant announced over the loudspeakers, and Max quickly sat up. "All players please exit by the nearest HQ. Team Green are the winners. Good game, all."

So the three of us went through the door, and as it happened all of the rest of our team and a lot of the frat boys were nearer to our HQ than theirs, so we waited up to chat and figure out what else had happened in the game.

#

"You, you should have seen her, Michael," Tess was saying as we waited in the extremely long lineup for the big roller-coaster.

"You weren't so bad yourself, Tess," Maria replied softly, but my wife didn't pay any attention.

"We had just figured out which way led back to our side of the maze, and then all of a sudden there they were. My first instinct was to dive for cover, but not Maria DeLuca. She knew that even if she had to give up her 'life', she had to stop them from getting our prize back to the enemy HQ, so in she charged. Bam and one of them was down. Bam-Bam and she got winged on the arm..."

"And that's when Tess dived out and shot the other guy in both legs," Maria reported. "He got me in the head just as he was collapsing, but that was it. I guess that they decided that the red team didn't have any reasonable chance left of taking our prize home, and that we had therefore won."

"Not bad," Isabel said, clapping Maria and Tess on the back. "Oh, and congrats to you too, Kyle."

"Yeah," I said. "I just got their prize back home to HQ."

"Without facing any enemy soldiers along the way," Maria shot back, but she was smiling, willing enough for the credit of victory to be shared. All three of us were heroes, I figured, and even the heroic defense of team Green HQ, though not entirely successful, had made for a thrilling tale. Now, most of the day had gotten away from us, and the general feeling was that hitting the big roller coaster was the last thing that we needed to do before leaving AdventureDome and heading back out onto the strip. Probably everybody else would want to head back to the hotel, maybe grab something to eat and crash. I felt... well, I wasn't sure how I felt. It had been a good day, and also kind of tiring, but still I felt buzzed and wasn't sure I wanted to go to sleep anytime soon...

"Hey." Tess stepped close to me with a little wave - and I mean close. Considering the line that we were jammed into, staying close was probably the only way of having any kind of privacy. But Tess pressing so close to me just made me think of other things. "I... I'm sorry if I've been the queen of the land of the two faced today, I just... I'm not sure how to react to this situation that we've gotten ourselves into, Kyle. If... if I did, then I wouldn't have a problem going along with it. But I'm really sorry if that's made your day more difficult."

Huh. Well, chalk one more up in the list of ways Tess was surprising me. How was it that I never realized how little I knew about her until we got married... and yet somehow that seemed like a good thing. She had spoken very softly, almost just breathing the words, and I tried my best to reply in kind so that our friends wouldn't clue in to exactly what was going on. "Well... I do understand your doubts, and the idea of feeling like you're not sure where to take our marriage." A pause. "Would it be possible, though, for both of us to just ride the current, as it were, and pretend that we're in this for keeps until it's time to go home? Would that be so wrong? I... I just want to enjoy our vacation, and there are aspects of being married to you that are very fun. Maybe, maybe everything will look different once we go back to Roswell, and my dad and the rest of senior year and the prospect of college. If you want a divorce then, or an annulment or whatever, then fine." I was starting to worry that I wasn't being quiet enough, that some of the others could hear, but somehow couldn't stop my big whisper-iloquy. "I won't fight you on whatever you want, if... if you just give us this much of a chance. Is... is that okay?"

"Whatever I want," Tess replied softly. "And... and if what I want is for both of us to go our own ways, and not even see each other after it's all done?"

My throat tightened. "I... I'm not sure." The prospect of losing the love that I'd discovered with Tess so completely was a shocker. "If... if you're really sure that that's what you want, then I suppose it doesn't make that much sense to force my love onto you... but I'd definitely try very hard to make sure that that's your desire, and not just a decision you were making because you were scared, or mad at me, or something else that doesn't really matter."

Tess smiled, and giggled softly. "That's the right answer." Hmm... so she was testing me, huh? "And... and you've got a deal. I... I guess I'm worried, though, that... that if I really throw myself into this marriage thing, then I'll fall hard, as it were, and maybe get my heart hurt."

"I... I'll do whatever I can to catch you," I replied. "That, that may not be enough, but..."

"Hey, c'mon guys, move it!" Michael suddenly exclaimed. I tried to turn around and lost my balance for a second or two, because the press of the crowd that had been at my back suddenly wasn't there to offset the press of Tess, and through her, the rest of the gang crowding behind. The line was moving, and we'd been too caught up in what we were so softly saying to notice. Tess reached out and caught me, and we walked side by side the few feet to where the rest of the line left off, but somehow a moment was lost, and when we began talking again it was to join into a conversation about some reality game show that was going to start airing in a few weeks.

So, let's see. We rode the coaster - a pretty good one considering the space constraints, and did the swinging sand pirate ship, and then Max and Liz, Isabel, Alex, and Maria did all want to go back to the hotel. I considered staying in the dome with Michael and Tess, but Maria started to whisper something in Michael's ear, and... well, we all went back out onto the strip, headed in the vicinity of our hotel, found what looked like a pretty good Texas fusion restaurant along the way there and piled in there to wait for a dinner table. The restaurant was attached to one of the smaller motels, actually, and had a vinyl jukebox loaded up with all kinds of weird hip-hop and world music singles. There was a stage where people from the dinner tables were coming up - at first I thought it was karaoke, but apparently they were doing open-mike free verse, sometimes spoken over the songs. Jeez, only in Vegas, man.

After dessert at the Texan place, we finally made it back to the hotel, and Max, Liz, Maria, and Michael went up to their rooms, while Isabel, Alex, Tess and I had some coffee at the bar. I honestly couldn't remember by that point if we'd discussed the sleeping arrangements - ie if I was once again back to rooming with Alex, or if somebody would be switching rooms, so that Tess and I would be together, and Alex and Isabel would sort out sleeping in the same room however they might. Thought about asking, but I didn't want to look particularly foolish about it.

We'd only just started on our drinks, though, when this kinda tall blond guy, maybe twenty-five or so, probably out of what I'd usually think of as college age anyway, came up to Alex. "Hey, man... Alex, right? We met at the digital games convention the other day."

Tess blinked. "You're in Vegas, and you go to a digital games convention?"

"Well, why not?" Isabel said, looking at Alex affectionately. "That's his idea of a perfect... I dunno, I was trying for a really good metaphor there, or maybe a simile, but I haven't got it."

"His dream come true," I muttered, and Isabel half-shrugged, accepting that without approving it.

"So who're your friends?" the video game guy asked Alex promptingly.

"Oh, right, umm... this is Isabel Evans, my girlfriend." There was an appropriately impressed reaction from the new guy. "Kyle Valenti, a... a good friend." Somebody who didn't know a lot of the story already wouldn't have noticed the brief pause. "And Kyle's wife Tess." The surprised look on Tess' face at being introduced to somebody new in this way for the first time was great. "They just got married last night in a small wedding chapel - without really inviting any of us."

"Hmm, okay."

Isabel nudged Alex just hard enough to, apparently, make him remember that he'd forgotten one side of the introductions. "Oh, right. Guys, this is, umm... Peter Nae..." he trailed off uncertainly at that start into the last name.

"Navier," Peter finished. "Mind if I pull up a chair?" Tess and Isabel made almost identical 'go-ahead' gestures at the same moment. "So, you guys are all from Roswell huh? I came up from Oakland for the convention. And actually, the reason that I was looking for you, man, is... well, umm..."

"You were looking for me?" Alex exclaimed. "How did you know that we'd be... well, I guess we met here around the lobby here before. Sorry, I forgot that we weren't still over at the Texan place." Peter shot him a look. "It's been a big day."

"Actually, I wasn't looking for you specifically as such, more like the first few I happened to see out of a list of people I met," Peter admitted. "But anyway... I'm trying to round up a few players for this kind of computerized adventure game showcase." He considered. "Of course, if you have other things to do, then I guess I keep looking. I suppose there'd be room for all four of you to play, if you're all interested."

I shot a look over at Tess - she seemed interested but unsure. "What kind of game?" Isabel asked.

"Well, it's sort of a fantasy adventure-warfare thing," He said. "You start off running a small town surrounded by unexplored territory, and you recruit followers and send them out to explore, expand your territory, and fight the followers of other players. Kind of a mix between world of warcraft, stellar crisis, and empire."

Nobody said anything for a long moment. "Well, I'd really love to give that a try," Alex admitted, "and I think it'd be something fun to do together. We can all give it a try, and if anybody doesn't like it, then - umm, we can work out what to do them. Fair enough?" He looked over at Peter, and I realized that whoever was running the game might not be enthusiastic about a bunch of people coming in just to try it out and then leaving again. But Peter nodded, a bit reluctantly, but a smile on his face. Maybe he remembered what it was like to be a gaming newbie and not sure about diving into something so new.

The game was really pretty fun. I was lost for a little while, but managed to get my domain into shape just in time for a bunch of guys in purple to come hammering into me from the West. (Turns out later that Purple was Peter.) Nobody ended up leaving until the final confrontation was fought out between Alex and this grizzled old guy who looked like he should be complaining about computers as newfangled gadgets, not working them like a maestro. I'd gotten eliminated a little past the middle of the game, in a reasonably epic battle, with my golden sorcerers and golden paladins fighting valiantly to defend the last outposts of Kylesland against the dreaded white knights.

So we went back into the bar for one last nightcap, (just virgin drinks for the alien girls,) and up to the rooms. By this time I had remembered about Tess and Alex siwtching rooms, so I put my arm around Tess as we walked up the door and impulsively scooped her into my arms to carry her over the threshold.

"Um, thanks," Tess said. "Even if I was in here this morning, so it kinduv steps on the point." But when I put her down, she kissed me. "So, I guess that this is the second night of our honeymoon or something?"

"Well, yeah." There was a bit of awkwardness in the room. "We, umm, we don't have to do anything that you don't want to..."

"Don't even," Tess shot back, and I blinked in surprise. "Remember, you promised you'd catch me." And she threw herself into my embrace so hard it was almost like a tackle, (though I'd been tackled by people bigger than my hundred-nineteen pound wife.) So I caught her as well as I could, and we fell into the sexy fires of passion together.