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73 <UL>
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76 </P>
78 the Author</A> </FONT>
79 </P>
81 </FONT>
82 </P>
83 </UL>
84 </DIV>
87 <P>He sparkles! He fizzes! He does backflips and breaks the
88 furniture! Science fiction needs Cory Doctorow!</P>
91 <P>In the true spirit of Walt Disney, Doctorow has ripped a part of
92 our common culture, mixed it with a brilliant story, and burned into
93 our culture a new set of memes that will be with us for a generation
94 at least.</P>
97 <P>Cory Doctorow doesn't just write about the future – I think he lives there. Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom isn't
98 just a really good read, it's also, like the best kind
99 of fiction, a kind of guide book. See the Tomorrowland of Tomorrow
100 today, and while you're there, why not drop by
101 Frontierland, and the Haunted Mansion as well? (It's the
102 Mansion that's the haunted heart of this book.) Cory
103 makes me feel nostalgic for the future – a dizzying, yet rather pleasant sensation, as if I'm
104 spiraling down the tracks of Space Mountain over and over again.
105 Visit the Magic Kingdom and live forever!</P>
108 <P>Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is the most entertaining and
109 exciting science fiction story I've read in the last few
110 years. I love page-turners, especially when they are as unusual as
111 this novel. I predict big things for Down and Out—it
112 could easily become a breakout genre-buster.</P>
115 <P>Imagine you woke up one day and Walt Disney had taken over the
116 world. Not only that, but money's been abolished and
117 somebody's developed the Cure for Death. Welcome to the
119 strapped in tight, because it's going to be a wild ride.
120 In a world where everyone's wishes can come true, one
121 man returns to the original, crumbling city of dreams—Disney
122 World. Here in the spiritual center of the Bitchun Society he
123 struggles to find and preserve the original, human face of the Magic
124 Kingdom against the young, post-human and increasingly alien
125 inheritors of the Earth. Now that any experience can be simulated,
126 human relationships become ever more fragile; and to Julius, the
127 corny, mechanical ghosts of the Haunted Mansion have come to seem
128 like a precious link to a past when we could tell the real from the
129 simulated, the true from the false.</P>
131 ultimate Early Adopter—uses language with the reckless
132 confidence of the Beat poets. Yet behind the dazzling prose and
133 vibrant characters lie ideas we should all pay heed to. The future
134 rushes on like a plummeting roller coaster, and it's
135 hard to see where we're going. But at least with this
136 book Doctorow has given us a map of the park.</P>
140 come across in years. He starts out at the point where older SF
142 pleasure to give him some Whuffie.</P>
145 <P>Cory Doctorow rocks! I check his blog about ten times a day,
146 because he's always one of the first to notice a major
147 incursion from the social-technological-pop-cultural future, and his
148 voice is a compelling vehicle for news from the future. Down and Out
149 in The Magic Kingdom is about a world that is visible in its
150 outlines today, if you know where to look, from reputation systems
151 to peer-to-peer adhocracies. Doctorow knows where to look, and how
152 to word-paint the rest of us into the picture.</P>
155 <P>Doctorow is more than just a sick mind looking to twist the
156 perceptions of those whose realities remain uncorrupted - though
157 that should be enough recommendation to read his work. <EM>Down and
158 Out in the Magic Kingdom</EM> is black comedic, sci-fi prophecy on
159 the dangers of surrendering our consensual hallucination to the
160 regime. Fun to read, but difficult to sleep afterwards.</P>
164 reputation economy, and Ray Kurzweil's transhuman
165 future. As much fun as Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, and
166 as packed with mind bending ideas about social changes cascading
170 <P>Doctorow has created a rich and exciting vision of the future,
171 and then wrote a page-turner of a story in it. I couldn't
172 put the book down.</P>
175 <P>Cory Doctorow is one of our best new writers: smart, daring,
176 savvy, entertaining, ambitious, plugged-in, and as good a guide to
177 the wired world of the twenty-first century that stretches out
182 Kingdom” tells a gripping,
183 fast-paced story that hinges on thought-provoking extrapolation from
184 today's technical realities. This is the sort of book
185 that captures and defines the spirit of a turning point in human
186 history when our tools remake ourselves and our world.</P>
189 </DIV>
192 <P>As you will see, when you read the text beneath this section, I
193 released this book a little over a year ago under the terms of a
194 Creative Commons license that allowed my readers to freely
195 redistribute the text without needing any further permission from
196 me. In this fashion, I enlisted my readers in the service of a grand
197 experiment, to see how my book could find its way into cultural
198 relevance and commercial success. The experiment worked out very
199 satisfactorily.</P>
200 <P>When I originally licensed the book under the terms set out in
201 the next section, I did so in the most conservative fashion
202 possible, using CC's most restrictive license. I wanted to dip my
203 toe in before taking a plunge. I wanted to see if the sky would
204 fall: you see writers are routinely schooled by their peers that
205 maximal copyright is the only thing that stands between us and
206 penury, and so ingrained was this lesson in me that even though I
208 regime would serve me well, I still couldn't shake the atavistic
209 fear that I was about to do something very foolish indeed.</P>
210 <P>It wasn't foolish. I've since released a short story collection
213 Standard Tribe</A>) in this fashion, and my career is turning over
214 like a goddamned locomotive engine. I am thrilled beyond words (an
215 extraordinary circumstance for a writer!) at the way that this has
216 all worked out.</P>
218 Today, in coincidence with my talk at the O'Reilly Emerging
219 Technology Conference (<A HREF="http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/et2004/view/e_sess/4693">Ebooks:
221 <P>I am re-licensing this book under a far less restrictive Creative
222 Commons license, the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.
223 This is a license that allows you, the reader, to noncommercially
225 translations, radio and film adaptations, sequels, fan fiction,
226 missing chapters, machine remixes, you name it. A number of you
227 assumed that you had my blessing to do this in the first place, and
228 I can't say that I've been at all put out by the delightful and
229 creative derivative works created from this book, but now you have
230 my explicit blessing, and I hope you'll use it.</P>
232 <P><A HREF="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/1.0/">http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/1.0/</A></P>
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249 <BLOCKQUOTE>Your fair use and other rights are in no way affected by
250 the above.</BLOCKQUOTE>
252 <PRE STYLE="margin-left: 0.39in; margin-right: 0.39in"> Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 1.0
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537 </DIV>
540 <P>“Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom” is my first novel. It's an actual, no-foolin'
541 words-on-paper book, published by the good people at Tor Books in
542 New York City. You can buy this book in stores or online, by
543 following links like this one:</P>
544 <P><A HREF="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0765304368/downandoutint-20">http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0765304368/downandoutint-20</A></P>
546 </P>
548 freely redistributable e-book. You can download it, put it on a P2P
549 net, put it on your site, email it to a friend, and, if you're
550 addicted to dead trees, you can even print it.
551 </P>
553 but to shorten it up: first-time novelists have a tough row to hoe.
554 Our publishers don't have a lot of promotional budget to
555 throw at unknown factors like us. Mostly, we rise and fall based on
556 word-of-mouth. I'm not bad at word-of-mouth. I have a
558 of word-of-mouthing. I compulsively tell friends and strangers about
559 things that I like.
560 </P>
564 the books, music and movies ever released are not available for
565 sale, anywhere in the world. In the brief time that P2P nets have
566 flourished, the ad-hoc masses of the Internet have managed to put
568 they've done it for cheaper than any other
569 archiving/revival effort ever. I'm a stone infovore and
570 this kinda Internet mishegas gives me a serious frisson of
571 futurosity.
572 </P>
574 figure out how people are gonna make money doing it. Yeah, there is
575 a lot of social upheaval and a serious threat to innovation,
576 freedom, business, and whatnot. It's your basic
577 end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it scenario, and as a science fiction
578 writer, end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it scenaria are my
579 stock-in-trade.</P>
582 editor, Patrick Nielsen Hayden
584 for being hep enough to let me try out this experiment.</P>
586 releasing this book under a license developed by the Creative
588 This is a project that lets people like me roll our own license
589 agreements for the distribution of our creative work under terms
590 similar to those employed by the Free/Open Source Software movement.
592 part of it.
593 </P>
595 license:</P>
596 <P><A HREF="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd-nc/1.0">http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd-nc/1.0</A></P>
597 <P>Attribution. The licensor permits others to copy, distribute,
598 display, and perform the work. In return, licensees must give the
599 original author credit.</P>
600 <P>No Derivative Works. The licensor permits others to copy,
601 distribute, display and perform only unaltered copies of the
603 <P>Noncommercial. The licensor permits others to copy, distribute,
604 display, and perform the work. In return, licensees may not use the
605 work for commercial purposes—unless they get the
608 <P><A HREF="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd-nc/1.0-legalcode">http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd-nc/1.0-legalcode</A></P>
609 </DIV>
612 <P>I lived long enough to see the cure for death; to see the rise of
613 the Bitchun Society, to learn ten languages; to compose three
614 symphonies; to realize my boyhood dream of taking up residence in
615 Disney World; to see the death of the workplace and of work.</P>
617 A-Movin' Dan would decide to deadhead until the heat
618 death of the Universe.</P>
619 <P>Dan was in his second or third blush of youth when I first met
620 him, sometime late-XXI. He was a rangy cowpoke, apparent 25 or so,
621 all rawhide squint-lines and sunburned neck, boots worn thin and
622 infinitely comfortable. I was in the middle of my Chem thesis, my
623 fourth Doctorate, and he was taking a break from Saving the World,
624 chilling on campus in Toronto and core-dumping for some poor Anthro
626 GSU, or Gazoo for those who knew—on a busy Friday night,
627 summer-ish. I was fighting a coral-slow battle for a stool at the
628 scratched bar, inching my way closer every time the press of bodies
629 shifted, and he had one of the few seats, surrounded by a litter of
630 cigarette junk and empties, clearly encamped.</P>
631 <P>Some duration into my foray, he cocked his head at me and raised
632 a sun-bleached eyebrow. “You get any closer, son, and
634 <P>I was apparent forty or so, and I thought about bridling at being
635 called son, but I looked into his eyes and decided that he had
636 enough realtime that he could call me son anytime he wanted. I
637 backed off a little and apologized.</P>
638 <P>He struck a cig and blew a pungent, strong plume over the
640 about it. I'm probably a little over accustomed to
643 heard anyone on-world talk about personal space. With the mortality
644 rate at zero and the birth-rate at non-zero, the world was
645 inexorably accreting a dense carpet of people, even with the
648 eyes were too sharp for him to have missed an instant's
649 experience to deadheading.</P>
651 kind of macho shitheadery that you only come across on-world.
653 <P>I took a moment to conjure a HUD with his Whuffie score on it. I
654 had to resize the window—he had too many zeroes to fit
655 on my standard display. I tried to act cool, but he caught the
656 upwards flick of my eyes and then their involuntary widening. He
657 tried a little aw-shucksery, gave it up and let a prideful grin
658 show.</P>
661 seen my eyes flick up again, to pull his Whuffie history. “Wait,
663 you about it, you really got to know.</P>
668 those fringe-dwellers who act as emissary from the Bitchun Society
669 to the benighted corners of the world where, for whatever reasons,
670 they want to die, starve, and choke on petrochem waste. It's
671 amazing that these communities survive more than a generation; in
672 the Bitchun Society proper, we usually outlive our detractors. The
674 have to be awfully convincing to get through to a culture that's
675 already successfully resisted nearly a century's worth
676 of propaganda—but when you convert a whole village, you
677 accrue all the Whuffie they have to give. More often, missionaries
678 end up getting refreshed from a backup after they aren't
679 heard from for a decade or so. I'd never met one in the
680 flesh before.</P>
683 my fifth in twenty years—counterrevolutionaries hidden
684 out in the old Cheyenne Mountain NORAD site, still there a
685 generation later.” He sandpapered
686 his whiskers with his fingertips. “Their parents went to
687 ground after their life's savings vanished, and they had
688 no use for tech any more advanced than a rifle. Plenty of those,
690 <P>He spun a fascinating yarn then, how he slowly gained the
691 acceptance of the mountain-dwellers, and then their trust, and then
692 betrayed it in subtle, beneficent ways: introducing Free Energy to
693 their greenhouses, then a gengineered crop or two, then curing a
694 couple deaths, slowly inching them toward the Bitchun Society, until
696 wanted to be a part of it from the start. Now they were mostly
697 off-world, exploring toy frontiers with unlimited energy and
698 unlimited supplies and deadheading through the dull times en route.</P>
700 them to stay on-world. They think of us as the enemy, you
701 know—they had all kinds of plans drawn up for when we
702 invaded them and took them away; hollow suicide teeth, booby-traps,
703 fall-back-and-rendezvous points for the survivors. They just can't
704 get over hating us, even though we don't even know they
705 exist. Off-world, they can pretend that they're still
706 living rough and hard.” He rubbed
707 his chin again, his hard calluses grating over his whiskers. “But
708 for me, the real rough life is right here, on-world. The little
709 enclaves, each one is like an alternate history of humanity—what
710 if we'd taken the Free Energy, but not deadheading? What
711 if we'd taken deadheading, but only for the critically
712 ill, not for people who didn't want to be bored on long
713 bus-rides? Or no hyperlinks, no ad-hocracy, no Whuffie? Each one is
715 <P>I have a stupid habit of arguing for the sake of, and I found
716 myself saying, “Wonderful? Oh sure, nothing finer than,
717 oh, let's see, dying, starving, freezing, broiling,
718 killing, cruelty and ignorance and pain and misery. I know I sure
726 remember how sharp everything was, how the pain made the joy
727 sweeter. We can't remember what it was like to work to
729 that we might get sick or get hit by a bus. We don't
730 remember what it was like to take chances, and we sure as shit
731 don't remember what it felt like to have them pay
733 <P>He had a point. Here I was, only in my second or third adulthood,
736 admit it. “So you say. I say, I take a chance when I
737 strike up a conversation in a bar, when I fall in love… and what about the deadheads? Two people I know, they just went
738 deadhead for ten thousand years! Tell me that's not
739 taking a chance!” Truth be told,
740 almost everyone I'd known in my eighty-some years were
745 when it comes time to reanimate. In case you haven't
747 <P>I made pish-tosh sounds and wiped off my forehead with a
748 bar-napkin—the Gazoo was beastly hot on summer nights.
749 “Uh-huh, just like the world was getting a little crowded
750 a hundred years ago, before Free Energy. Like it was getting too
751 greenhousey, too nukey, too hot or too cold. We fixed it then,
753 gonna be here in ten thousand years, you damn betcha, but I think
755 <P>He cocked his head again, and gave it some thought. If it had
756 been any of the other grad students, I'd have assumed he
757 was grepping for some bolstering factoids to support his next sally.
758 But with him, I just knew he was thinking about it, the
759 old-fashioned way.</P>
761 thousand years, I'm going to be crazy as hell. Ten
762 thousand years, pal! Ten thousand years ago, the state-of-the-art
763 was a goat. You really think you're going to be anything
764 recognizably human in a hundred centuries? Me, I'm not
765 interested in being a post-person. I'm going to wake up
769 <P>I had seen where he was going with this, and I had stopped paying
770 attention while I readied my response. I probably should have paid
771 more attention. “But why? Why not just deadhead for a few
772 centuries, see if there's anything that takes your
773 fancy, and if not, back to sleep for a few more? Why do anything so
775 <P>He embarrassed me by making a show of thinking it over again,
776 making me feel like I was just a half-pissed glib poltroon. “I
778 always known that someday, I was going to stop moving, stop seeking,
779 stop kicking, and have done with it. There'll come a day
781 <HR>
782 </DIV>
784 of his cowboy vibe and because of his lifestyle, and he somehow grew
785 to take over every conversation I had for the next six months. I
786 pinged his Whuffie a few times, and noticed that it was climbing
787 steadily upward as he accumulated more esteem from the people he met.</P>
789 the savings from the symphonies and the first three theses—drinking
790 myself stupid at the Gazoo, hogging library terminals, pestering
791 profs, until I'd expended all the respect anyone had ever
792 afforded me. All except Dan, who, for some reason, stood me to
793 regular beers and meals and movies.</P>
795 everyone had a chum as exotic as Keep-A-Movin' Dan, the
796 legendary missionary who visited the only places left that were
797 closed to the Bitchun Society. I can't say for sure why
798 he hung around with me. He mentioned once or twice that he'd
799 liked my symphonies, and he'd read my Ergonomics thesis
800 on applying theme-park crowd-control techniques in urban settings,
801 and liked what I had to say there. But I think it came down to us
802 having a good time needling each other.</P>
804 unrolling before us, of the certainty that we would encounter alien
805 intelligences some day, of the unimaginable frontiers open to each of
806 us. He'd tell me that deadheading was a strong indicator
807 that one's personal reservoir of introspection and
808 creativity was dry; and that without struggle, there is no real
809 victory.</P>
810 <P>This was a good fight, one we could have a thousand times without
811 resolving. I'd get him to concede that Whuffie recaptured
812 the true essence of money: in the old days, if you were broke but
813 respected, you wouldn't starve; contrariwise, if you were
814 rich and hated, no sum could buy you security and peace. By measuring
815 the thing that money really represented—your personal
816 capital with your friends and neighbors—you more
817 accurately gauged your success.</P>
819 trail that led to my allowing that while, yes, we might someday
820 encounter alien species with wild and fabulous ways, that right now,
821 there was a slightly depressing homogeneity to the world.</P>
822 <P>On a fine spring day, I defended my thesis to two embodied humans
823 and one prof whose body was out for an overhaul, whose consciousness
824 was present via speakerphone from the computer where it was resting.
825 They all liked it. I collected my sheepskin and went out hunting for
826 Dan in the sweet, flower-stinking streets.</P>
828 torturing with his war-stories said that they'd wrapped
829 up that morning, and he'd headed to the walled city of
830 Tijuana, to take his shot with the descendants of a platoon of US
831 Marines who'd settled there and cut themselves off from
832 the Bitchun Society.</P>
834 <P>In deference to Dan, I took the flight in realtime, in the
835 minuscule cabin reserved for those of us who stubbornly refused to be
836 frozen and stacked like cordwood for the two hour flight. I was the
837 only one taking the trip in realtime, but a flight attendant
838 dutifully served me a urine-sample-sized orange juice and a rubbery,
839 pungent, cheese omelet. I stared out the windows at the infinite
840 clouds while the autopilot banked around the turbulence, and wondered
845 enough that it bugged me. Her name was Lil, and she was
846 second-generation Disney World, her parents being among the original
847 ad-hocracy that took over the management of Liberty Square and Tom
848 Sawyer Island. She was, quite literally, raised in Walt Disney World
849 and it showed.</P>
850 <P>It showed. She was neat and efficient in her every little thing,
851 from her shining red hair to her careful accounting of each gear and
852 cog in the animatronics that were in her charge. Her folks were in
853 canopic jars in Kissimmee, deadheading for a few centuries.</P>
854 <P>On a muggy Wednesday, we dangled our feet over the edge of the
855 Liberty Belle's riverboat pier, watching the listless
856 Confederate flag over Fort Langhorn on Tom Sawyer Island by
857 moonlight. The Magic Kingdom was all closed up and every last guest
858 had been chased out the gate underneath the Main Street train
859 station, and we were able to breathe a heavy sigh of relief, shuck
860 parts of our costumes, and relax together while the cicadas sang.</P>
861 <P>I was more than a century old, but there was still a kind of
862 magic in having my arm around the warm, fine shoulders of a girl by
863 moonlight, hidden from the hustle of the cleaning teams by the
864 turnstiles, breathing the warm, moist air. Lil plumped her head
865 against my shoulder and gave me a butterfly kiss under my jaw.</P>
867 sang, gently.</P>
871 They'd been old news in my youth, after all. But her
872 parents had given her a thorough—if
874 <P>“Want to do a walk-through?” she asked. It was one of her favorite duties, exploring every
875 inch of the rides in her care with the lights on, after the horde of
876 tourists had gone. We both liked to see the underpinnings of the
877 magic. Maybe that was why I kept picking at the relationship.</P>
881 man.” She reached up and gently
882 tweaked my nipple, and I gave a satisfying little jump. I think the
883 age difference bothered her, too, though she teased me for letting
884 it get to me.
885 </P>
887 through the Haunted Mansion, if you just give me a moment to rest my
888 bursitis.” I felt her smile against
889 my shirt. She loved the Mansion; loved to turn on the ballroom
890 ghosts and dance their waltz with them on the dusty floor, loved to
891 try and stare down the marble busts in the library that followed
892 your gaze as you passed.</P>
893 <P>I liked it too, but I really liked just sitting there with her,
894 watching the water and the trees. I was just getting ready to go
895 when I heard a soft <EM>ping</EM> inside my cochlea. “Damn,” I said. “I've got a call.”</P>
901 <P>I knew a thousand Dans, but I recognized the voice immediately,
902 though it'd been ten years since we last got drunk at
903 the Gazoo together. I muted the subvocal and said, “Lil,
905 <P>“Oh, <EM>no</EM>, not at all,” she sarcased at me. She sat up and pulled out her crack pipe
906 and lit up.</P>
911 can I help?” she said, softly but
912 swiftly. I waved her off and switched the phone to full-vocal mode.
913 My voice sounded unnaturally loud in the cricket-punctuated calm.</P>
915 asked.</P>
920 upstairs on the couch by the door. I'll be there
921 in—” I shot a look at
922 Lil, who knew the castmember-only roads better than I. She flashed
926 voice back under control. I switched off.</P>
928 asked.</P>
931 <P>Lil pointed a finger at me and made a trigger-squeezing gesture.
935 <P>I set off for the utilidor entrance near the Hall of Presidents
936 and booted down the stairs to the hum of the underground
937 tunnel-system. I took the slidewalk to cast parking and zipped my
938 little cart out to Pleasure Island.</P>
939 <HR>
940 <P>I found Dan sitting on the L-shaped couch underneath rows of
941 faked-up trophy shots with humorous captions. Downstairs,
942 castmembers were working the animatronic masks and idols, chattering
943 with the guests.</P>
944 <P>Dan was apparent fifty plus, a little paunchy and stubbled. He
945 had raccoon-mask bags under his eyes and he slumped listlessly. As I
946 approached, I pinged his Whuffie and was startled to see that it had
947 dropped to nearly zero.</P>
950 <P>He nodded. “Appearances can be deceptive,” he said. “But in this case, they're
954 every night at midnight; I think that'd be a little too
956 <P>I led him out to my cart and cruised back to the place I shared
957 with Lil, out in Kissimmee. He smoked eight cigarettes on the twenty
958 minute ride, hammering one after another into his mouth, filling my
959 runabout with stinging clouds. I kept glancing at him in the
960 rear-view. He had his eyes closed, and in repose he looked dead. I
961 could hardly believe that this was my vibrant action-hero pal of
962 yore.</P>
964 bringing him home,” I subvocalized.
967 <P>“I'll make up the couch,” she said. “And get some coffee together. Love
970 said.</P>
971 <P>As we approached the tacky little swaybacked ranch-house, he
972 opened his eyes. “You're a pal, Jules.” I waved him off. “No, really. I tried to think of
973 who I could call, and you were the only one. I've missed
975 <P>“Lil said she'd put some coffee on,” I said. “You sound like you need it.”</P>
976 <P>Lil was waiting on the sofa, a folded blanket and an extra pillow
977 on the side table, a pot of coffee and some Disneyland Beijing mugs
982 <P>I knew she was pinging his Whuffie and I caught her look of
983 surprised disapproval. Us oldsters who predate Whuffie know that
986 watched her recover quickly, smile, and surreptitiously wipe her
989 and slumped on the sofa.</P>
990 <P>She poured him a cup and set it on a coaster on the coffee table.
994 help if I could talk to someone… younger,
996 <P>She set her face in the look of chirpy helpfulness that all the
997 second-gen castmembers have at their instant disposal and settled
998 into an armchair. She pulled out her pipe and lit a rock. I went
999 through my crack period before she was born, just after they made it
1000 decaf, and I always felt old when I saw her and her friends light
1001 up. Dan surprised me by holding out a hand to her and taking the
1002 pipe. He toked heavily, then passed it back.</P>
1003 <P>Dan closed his eyes again, then ground his fists into them,
1004 sipped his coffee. It was clear he was trying to figure out where to
1005 start.</P>
1009 said.</P>
1011 I'd run out of things to do, things to see. I knew that
1012 I'd finish some day. You remember, we used to argue
1013 about it. I swore I'd be done, and that would be the end
1014 of it. And now I am. There isn't a single place left
1015 on-world that isn't part of the Bitchun Society. There
1017 <P>“So deadhead for a few centuries,” I said. “Put the decision off.”</P>
1022 <P>“I <EM>can't</EM>,” he sobbed, and buried his face in his hands. He cried like a
1023 baby, in great, snoring sobs that shook his whole body. Lil went
1024 into the kitchen and got some tissue, and passed it to me. I sat
1025 alongside him and awkwardly patted his back.</P>
1029 quietly.</P>
1030 <P>He sat up and took the tissue, wiped off his face and hands.
1033 have. I've spent the last eight years in Istanbul,
1034 writing papers on my missions, about the communities. I did some
1035 followup studies, interviews. No one was interested. Not even me. I
1036 smoked a lot of hash. It didn't help. So, one morning I
1037 woke up and went to the bazaar and said good bye to the friends
1038 I'd made there. Then I went to a pharmacy and had the
1039 man make me up a lethal injection. He wished me good luck and I went
1040 back to my rooms. I sat there with the hypo all afternoon, then I
1041 decided to sleep on it, and I got up the next morning and did it all
1042 over again. I looked inside myself, and I saw that I didn't
1044 stared down the barrels of a hundred guns, had a thousand knives
1045 pressed up against my throat, but I didn't have the guts
1048 said.</P>
1051 pathetic. If you killed yourself right now, you'd just
1053 done it ten years earlier, you would've been going out
1054 on top—a champion, retiring permanently.” She set her mug down with a harder-than-necessary clunk.</P>
1055 <P>Sometimes, Lil and I are right on the same wavelength. Sometimes,
1057 could do was sit there, horrified, and she was happy to discuss the
1059 <P>But she was right. Dan nodded heavily, and I saw that he knew it,
1060 too.</P>
1062 <P>“Well, don't just sit there,” she said. “You know what you've got to
1065 involuntarily irritated by her tone.</P>
1067 got to get back on top. Cleaned up, dried out, into some productive
1071 though, was cocking an eyebrow at her and thinking hard. “How
1072 old did you say you were?” he
1073 asked.</P>
1075 said.</P>
1077 twenty-three,” he said, and heaved
1078 a sigh, straightening up. “Can I stay here while I get
1080 <P>I looked askance at Lil, who considered for a moment, then
1081 nodded.</P>
1086 said.</P>
1087 </DIV>
1091 had taken over the running of Liberty Square with a group of other
1092 interested, compatible souls. They did a fine job, racked up gobs of
1093 Whuffie, and anyone who came around and tried to take it over would
1094 be so reviled by the guests they wouldn't find a pot to
1095 piss in. Or they'd have such a wicked, radical approach
1097 pals, and do a better job.</P>
1098 <P>It can break down, though. There were pretenders to the
1100 original ad-hocracy and then had moved off to other pursuits—some
1101 of them had gone to school, some of them had made movies, written
1102 books, or gone off to Disneyland Beijing to help start things up. A
1103 few had deadheaded for a couple decades.</P>
1104 <P>They came back to Liberty Square with a message: update the
1105 attractions. The Liberty Square ad-hocs were the staunchest
1106 conservatives in the Magic Kingdom, preserving the wheezing
1107 technology in the face of a Park that changed almost daily. The
1108 newcomer/old-timers were on-side with the rest of the Park, had
1109 their support, and looked like they might make a successful go of
1110 it.</P>
1111 <P>So it fell to Lil to make sure that there were no bugs in the
1112 meager attractions of Liberty Square: the Hall of the Presidents,
1113 the Liberty Belle riverboat, and the glorious Haunted Mansion,
1114 arguably the coolest attraction to come from the fevered minds of
1115 the old-time Disney Imagineers.</P>
1116 <P>I caught her backstage at the Hall of the Presidents, tinkering
1117 with Lincoln II, the backup animatronic. Lil tried to keep two of
1118 everything running at speed, just in case. She could swap out a dead
1119 bot for a backup in five minutes flat, which is all that
1120 crowd-control would permit.</P>
1122 I'd barely seen him in that time, his presence was vivid
1123 in our lives. Our little ranch-house had a new smell, not
1124 unpleasant, of rejuve and hope and loss, something barely noticeable
1125 over the tropical flowers nodding in front of our porch. My phone
1126 rang three or four times a day, Dan checking in from his rounds of
1127 the Park, seeking out some way to accumulate personal capital. His
1128 excitement and dedication to the task were inspiring, pulling me
1129 into his over-the-top-and-damn-the-torpedoes mode of being.</P>
1131 said. She had her head in Lincoln's chest, working with
1132 an autosolder and a magnifier. Bent over, red hair tied back in a
1133 neat bun, sweat sheening her wiry freckled arms, smelling of
1134 girl-sweat and machine lubricant, she made me wish there were a
1135 mattress somewhere backstage. I settled for patting her behind
1139 remembered him. He was rawboned and leathery, but still had the
1140 defeated stoop that had startled me when I saw him at the
1145 parents. She'd spent a decade in Disneyland Beijing,
1146 coding sim-rides. If she had her way, we'd tear down
1147 every marvelous rube goldberg in the Park and replace them with
1148 pristine white sim boxes on giant, articulated servos.</P>
1150 Her Great Movie Ride rehab at MGM was breathtaking—the
1151 Star Wars sequence had already inspired a hundred fan-sites that
1152 fielded millions of hits.</P>
1154 Adventureland ad-hocs to rehab the Pirates of the Caribbean, and
1155 their backstage areas were piled high with reference: treasure
1156 chests and cutlasses and bowsprits. It was terrifying to walk
1157 through; the Pirates was the last ride Walt personally supervised,
1158 and we'd thought it was sacrosanct. But Debra had built
1159 a Pirates sim in Beijing, based on Chend I Sao, the XIXth century
1160 Chinese pirate queen, which was credited with rescuing the Park from
1161 obscurity and ruin. The Florida iteration would incorporate the best
1162 aspects of its Chinese cousin—the AI-driven sims that
1163 communicated with each other and with the guests, greeting them by
1164 name each time they rode and spinning age-appropriate tales of
1165 piracy on the high seas; the spectacular fly-through of the aquatic
1166 necropolis of rotting junks on the sea-floor; the thrilling pitch
1167 and yaw of the sim as it weathered a violent, breath-taking
1168 storm—but with Western themes: wafts of Jamaican pepper
1169 sauce crackling through the air; liquid Afro-Caribbean accents; and
1170 swordfights conducted in the manner of the pirates who plied the
1171 blue waters of the New World. Identical sims would stack like
1172 cordwood in the space currently occupied by the bulky ride-apparatus
1173 and dioramas, quintupling capacity and halving load-time.</P>
1177 rehabbing the Pirates—and doing an incredible job.
1179 net-buzz, the focus groups are cumming themselves.” The comedy went out of her expression, baring genuine worry.</P>
1180 <P>She turned away and closed up Honest Abe, then fired her finger
1181 at him. Smoothly, he began to run through his spiel, silent but for
1182 the soft hum and whine of his servos. Lil mimed twiddling a knob and
1183 his audiotrack kicked in low: “All the armies of Europe,
1185 on the Blue Ridge, nor take a drink from the Ohio. If destruction be
1186 our lot, then we ourselves must be its author—and its
1187 finisher.” She mimed turning down
1188 the gain and he fell silent again.</P>
1189 <P>“You said it, Mr. President,” she said, and fired her finger at him again, powering him
1190 down. She bent and adjusted his hand-sewn period topcoat, then
1191 carefully wound and set the turnip-watch in his vest-pocket.</P>
1193 doing all you can—and it's good work,” I said. I'd fallen into the easy castmember mode
1194 of speaking, voicing bland affirmations. Hearing the words, I felt a
1195 flush of embarrassment. I pulled her into a long, hard hug and
1196 fumbled for better reassurance. Finding no words that would do, I
1197 gave her a final squeeze and let her go.</P>
1200 mean, the worst possible scenario is that Debra will do her job
1201 very, very well, and make things even better than they are now.
1205 more than a century without learning when to point out that sort of
1206 thing and when not to.</P>
1207 <P>My cochlea struck twelve noon and a HUD appeared with my weekly
1208 backup reminder. Lil was maneuvering Ben Franklin II out of his
1209 niche. I waved good-bye at her back and walked away, to an uplink
1210 terminal. Once I was close enough for secure broadband
1211 communications, I got ready to back up. My cochlea chimed again and
1212 I answered it.</P>
1214 subvocalized, impatiently. I hated getting distracted from a
1216 forget the backup altogether and leave myself vulnerable for an
1217 entire week until the next reminder. I'd lost the knack
1218 of getting into habits in my adolescence, giving in completely to
1219 machine-generated reminders over conscious choice.</P>
1222 laughter; bright, recorded animatronic spiels; the tromp of
1223 thousands of feet. “Can you meet me at the Tiki Room?
1226 asked.</P>
1228 <P>I rung off and initiated the backup. A status-bar zipped across a
1229 HUD, dumping the parts of my memory that were purely digital; then
1230 it finished and started in on organic memory. My eyes rolled back in
1231 my head and my life flashed before my eyes.</P>
1232 </DIV>
1235 <P>The Bitchun Society has had much experience with restores from
1236 backup—in the era of the cure for death, people live
1237 pretty recklessly. Some people get refreshed a couple dozen times a
1238 year.</P>
1240 participate in it. Everyone who had serious philosophical conundra
1242 The Bitchun Society didn't need to convert its
1243 detractors, just outlive them.</P>
1244 <P>The first time I died, it was not long after my sixtieth
1245 birthday. I was SCUBA diving at Playa Coral, near Veradero, Cuba. Of
1246 course, I don't remember the incident, but knowing my
1247 habits at that particular dive-site and having read the dive-logs of
1249 <P>I was eeling my way through the lobster-caves, with a borrowed
1250 bottle and mask. I'd also borrowed a wetsuit, but I
1252 was balm, and I hated erecting barriers between it and my skin. The
1253 caves were made of coral and rocks, and they coiled and twisted like
1254 intestines. Through each hole and around each corner, there was a
1255 hollow, rough sphere of surpassing, alien beauty. Giant lobsters
1256 skittered over the walls and through the holes. Schools of fish as
1257 bright as jewels darted and executed breath-taking precision
1258 maneuvers as I disturbed their busy days. I do some of my best
1259 thinking under water, and I'm often slipping off into
1260 dangerous reverie at depth. Normally, my diving buddies ensure that
1261 I don't hurt myself, but this time I got away from them,
1262 spidering forward into a tiny hole.</P>
1264 <P>My diving buddies were behind me, and I rapped on my bottle with
1265 the hilt of my knife until one of them put a hand on my shoulder. My
1266 buddies saw what was up, and attempted to pull me loose, but my
1267 bottle and buoyancy-control vest were firmly wedged. The others
1268 exchanged hand signals, silently debating the best way to get me
1269 loose. Suddenly, I was thrashing and kicking, and then I disappeared
1270 into the cave, minus my vest and bottle. I'd apparently
1271 attempted to cut through my vest's straps and managed to
1272 sever the tube of my regulator. After inhaling a jolt of sea water,
1273 I'd thrashed free into the cave, rolling into a
1274 monstrous patch of spindly fire-coral. I'd inhaled
1275 another lungful of water and kicked madly for a tiny hole in the
1276 cave's ceiling, whence my buddies retrieved me shortly
1277 thereafter, drowned-blue except for the patchy red welts from the
1278 stinging coral.</P>
1279 <P>In those days, making a backup was a lot more complicated; the
1280 procedure took most of a day, and had to be undertaken at a special
1281 clinic. Luckily, I'd had one made just before I left for
1282 Cuba, a few weeks earlier. My next-most-recent backup was three
1283 years old, dating from the completion of my second symphony.</P>
1284 <P>They recovered me from backup and into a force-grown clone at
1285 Toronto General. As far as I knew, I'd laid down in the
1286 backup clinic one moment and arisen the next. It took most of a year
1287 to get over the feeling that the whole world was putting a monstrous
1288 joke over on me, that the drowned corpse I'd seen was
1289 indeed my own. In my mind, the rebirth was figurative as well as
1290 literal—the missing time was enough that I found myself
1291 hard-pressed to socialize with my pre-death friends.
1292 </P>
1293 <P>I told Dan the story during our first friendship, and he
1294 immediately pounced on the fact that I'd gone to Disney
1295 World to spend a week sorting out my feelings, reinventing myself,
1296 moving to space, marrying a crazy lady. He found it very curious
1297 that I always rebooted myself at Disney World. When I told him that
1298 I was going to live there someday, he asked me if that would mean
1299 that I was done reinventing myself. Sometimes, as I ran my fingers
1300 through Lil's sweet red curls, I thought of that remark
1301 and sighed great gusts of contentment and marveled that my friend
1302 Dan had been so prescient.</P>
1304 somewhat. I'd had a massive stroke in my seventy-third
1305 year, collapsing on the ice in the middle of a house-league hockey
1306 game. By the time they cut my helmet away, the hematomae had crushed
1307 my brain into a pulpy, blood-sotted mess. I'd been lax
1308 in backing up, and I lost most of a year. But they woke me gently,
1309 with a computer-generated precis of the events of the missing
1310 interval, and a counselor contacted me daily for a year until I felt
1311 at home again in my skin. Again, my life rebooted, and I found
1312 myself in Disney World, methodically flensing away the relationships
1313 I'd built and starting afresh in Boston, living on the
1314 ocean floor and working the heavy-metal harvesters, a project that
1315 led, eventually, to my Chem thesis at U of T.</P>
1316 <P>After I was shot dead at the Tiki Room, I had the opportunity to
1317 appreciate the great leaps that restores had made in the intervening
1318 ten years. I woke in my own bed, instantly aware of the events that
1319 led up to my third death as seen from various third-party POVs:
1320 security footage from the Adventureland cameras, synthesized
1321 memories extracted from Dan's own backup, and a
1322 computer-generated fly-through of the scene. I woke feeling
1323 preternaturally calm and cheerful, and knowing that I felt that way
1324 because of certain temporary neurotransmitter presets that had been
1325 put in place when I was restored.</P>
1327 face was limned with hairs that had snuck loose of her ponytail. She
1328 took my hand and kissed the smooth knuckles. Dan smiled beneficently
1329 at me and I was seized with a warm, comforting feeling of being
1330 surrounded by people who really loved me. I dug for words
1331 appropriate to the scene, decided to wing it, opened my mouth and
1333 <P>Dan and Lil smiled at each other. I lurched out of the bed,
1334 naked, and thumped to the bathroom. My muscles were wonderfully
1335 limber, with a brand-new spring to them. After I flushed I leaned
1336 over and took hold of my ankles, then pulled my head right to the
1337 floor, feeling the marvelous flexibility of my back and legs and
1338 buttocks. A scar on my knee was missing, as were the many lines that
1339 had crisscrossed my fingers. When I looked in the mirror, I saw that
1340 my nose and earlobes were smaller and perkier. The familiar
1341 crow's-feet and the frown-lines between my eyebrows were
1343 face, pubis, arms, legs. I ran my hands over my body and chuckled at
1344 the ticklish newness of it all. I was briefly tempted to depilate
1345 all over, just to keep this feeling of newness forever, but the
1346 neurotransmitter presets were evaporating and a sense of urgency
1347 over my murder was creeping up on me.</P>
1348 <P>I tied a towel around my waist and made my way back to the
1349 bedroom. The smells of tile-cleaner and flowers and rejuve were
1350 bright in my nose, effervescent as camphor. Dan and Lil stood when I
1351 came into the room and helped me to the bed. “Well, this
1354 utilidors—three quick cuts of security cam footage, one
1355 at the uplink, one in the corridor, and one at the exit in the
1356 underpass between Liberty Square and Adventureland. I seemed bemused
1357 and a little sad as I emerged from the door, and began to weave my
1358 way through the crowd, using a kind of sinuous, darting shuffle that
1359 I'd developed when I was doing field-work on my
1360 crowd-control thesis. I cut rapidly through the lunchtime crowd
1361 toward the long roof of the Tiki Room, thatched with strips of
1362 shimmering aluminum cut and painted to look like long grass.</P>
1364 to him, passing close to a group of teenaged girls with extra elbows
1365 and knees, wearing environmentally controlled cloaks and cowls
1366 covered with Epcot Center logomarks. One of them is wearing a pith
1367 helmet, from the Jungle Traders shop outside of the Jungle Cruise.
1369 entrance, where there is a short queue of older men, then back, just
1370 as the girl with the pith helmet draws a stylish little organic
1371 pistol, like a penis with a tail that coils around her arm.
1372 Casually, grinning, she raises her arm and gestures with the pistol,
1373 exactly like Lil does with her finger when she's
1374 uploading, and the pistol lunges forward. Dan's gaze
1375 flicks back to me. I'm pitching over, my lungs bursting
1376 out of my chest and spreading before me like wings, spinal gristle
1377 and viscera showering the guests before me. A piece of my nametag,
1378 now shrapnel, strikes Dan in the forehead, causing him to blink.
1379 When he looks again, the group of girls is still there, but the girl
1380 with the pistol is long gone.</P>
1381 <P>The fly-through is far less confused. Everyone except me, Dan and
1382 the girl is grayed-out. We're limned in highlighter
1383 yellow, moving in slow-motion. I emerge from the underpass and the
1384 girl moves from the Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse to the group of
1385 her friends. Dan starts to move towards me. The girl raises, arms
1386 and fires her pistol. The self-guiding smart-slug, keyed to my body
1387 chemistry, flies low, near ground level, weaving between the feet of
1388 the crowd, moving just below the speed of sound. When it reaches me,
1389 it screams upwards and into my spine, detonating once it's
1390 entered my chest cavity.</P>
1391 <P>The girl has already made a lot of ground, back toward the
1392 Adventureland/Main Street, USA gateway. The fly-through speeds up,
1393 following her as she merges with the crowds on the street, ducking
1394 and weaving between them, moving toward the breezeway at Sleeping
1395 Beauty Castle. She vanishes, then reappears, forty minutes later, in
1396 Tomorrowland, near the new Space Mountain complex, then disappears
1397 again.</P>
1398 <P>“Has anyone ID'd the girl?” I asked, once I'd finished reliving the events.
1399 The anger was starting to boil within me now. My new fists clenched
1400 for the first time, soft palms and uncallused fingertips.</P>
1402 had ever seen her before. The face was one of the Seven
1404 Seven Sisters were a trendy collection of designer faces. Every
1405 second teenage girl wore one of them.</P>
1409 for six months: only three matched the girl's apparent
1412 finally. In my mind's eye, I saw my lungs bursting out
1413 of my chest, like wings, like jellyfish, vertebrae spraying like
1414 shrapnel. I saw the girl's smile, an almost sexual smirk
1415 as she pulled the trigger on me.</P>
1420 Disney World in the last ten years. That narrowed it down, all
1421 right.</P>
1424 lost her and she never reappeared.” She
1425 sounded hot and angry—she took equipment failures in the
1426 Magic Kingdom personally.</P>
1427 <P>“Who'd want to do this?” I asked, hating the self-pity in my voice. It was the first
1429 be a drama-queen about it.</P>
1431 people do things for reasons that seem perfectly reasonable to them,
1432 that the rest of the world couldn't hope to understand.
1433 I've seen a few assassinations, and they never made
1434 sense afterwards.” He stroked his
1438 <P>Right. All we needed to do was investigate all the psychopaths
1439 who'd visited the Magic Kingdom in ten years. That
1440 narrowed it down considerably. I pulled up a HUD and checked the
1441 time. It had been four days since my murder. I had a shift coming
1442 up, working the turnstiles at the Haunted Mansion. I liked to pull a
1443 couple of those shifts a month, just to keep myself grounded; it
1444 helped to take a reality check while I was churning away in the
1445 rarified climate of my crowd-control simulations.</P>
1450 <P>“You're in no shape to work,” Lil said, tugging at my elbow. I jerked free of her.</P>
1451 <P>“I'm fine—good as new.” I barked a humorless laugh. “I'm not
1454 that there was more than one? But I knew it was true. There was no
1455 way that this was all planned by one person: it had been executed
1456 too precisely, too thoroughly.</P>
1461 decide that,” I said. He stepped
1462 aside.</P>
1465 Whuffie—but it was falling: Dan and Lil were radiating
1467 <P>I got into my runabout and Dan scrambled for the passenger door
1468 as I put it in gear and sped out.
1469 </P>
1470 <P>“Are you sure you're all right?” Dan said as I nearly rolled the runabout taking the corner at
1471 the end of our cul-de-sac.
1472 </P>
1476 <P>I groaned. “Not this argument again,” I said. “I feel like me and no one else is making
1477 that claim. Who cares if I've been restored from a
1482 <P>I knew what he was doing, distracting me with one of our old
1483 fights, but I couldn't resist the bait, and as I
1484 marshalled my arguments, it actually helped calm me down some. Dan
1485 was that kind of friend, a person who knew you better than you knew
1487 obliterated and then recreated, atom-for-atom, that you wouldn't
1496 not really an atom-for-atom copy. You're a clone, with a
1502 <HR>
1504 solicitous. Each of them made a point of coming around and touching
1505 the stiff, starched shoulder of my butler's costume,
1506 letting me know that if there was anything they could do for me… I gave them all a fixed smile and tried to concentrate on the guests,
1507 how they waited, when they arrived, how they dispersed through the
1508 exit gate. Dan hovered nearby, occasionally taking the eight minute,
1509 twenty-two second ride-through, running interference for me with the
1510 other castmembers.</P>
1511 <P>He was nearby when my break came up. I changed into civvies and
1512 we walked over the cobbled streets, past the Hall of the Presidents,
1513 noting as I rounded the corner that there was something different
1514 about the queue-area. Dan groaned. “They did it
1516 <P>I looked closer. The turnstiles were blocked by a sandwich board:
1517 Mickey in a Ben Franklin wig and bifocals, holding a trowel.
1522 sign, a self-satisfied smile on his face. He'd started
1523 off life as a squat, northern Chinese, but had had his bones
1524 lengthened and his cheekbones raised so that he looked almost elfin.
1525 I took one look at his smile and understood—Debra had
1526 established a toehold in Liberty Square.</P>
1528 committee an hour after you got shot. The committee loved the plans;
1529 so did the net. They're promising not to touch the
1533 timing was bad, but there's no indication that they
1534 arranged for the shooter. Everyone's got an alibi;
1535 furthermore, they've all offered to submit their backups
1540 after I got shot, when all our ad-hocs were busy worrying about me.
1544 the sort of person who keeps a lot of plans standing by, just in
1545 case. But that just makes her a well-prepared opportunist, not a
1547 <P>I felt nauseated and exhausted. I was enough of a castmember that
1548 I sought out a utilidor before I collapsed against a wall, head
1549 down. Defeat seeped through me, saturating me.</P>
1550 <P>Dan crouched down beside me. I looked over at him. He was
1552 said, “for the moment, that Debra really did do this
1554 <P>I smiled, in spite of myself. This was his explaining act, the
1555 thing he would do whenever I fell into one of his rhetorical tricks
1559 one of the real old-timers; two, go after the Hall of Presidents
1560 instead of Tom Sawyer Island or even the Mansion; and three, follow
1564 enough to be disruptive but not so important as to rate a full
1565 investigation. Two: Tom Sawyer Island is too visible, you can't
1566 rehab it without people seeing the dust from shore. Three, Debra's
1567 coming off of a decade in Beijing, where subtlety isn't
1571 an answering salvo, and while I was thinking up my answer, he helped
1572 me to my feet and walked me out to my runabout, arguing all the way,
1573 so that by the time I noticed we weren't at the Park
1574 anymore, I was home and in bed.</P>
1575 <HR>
1577 duration, Lil had more time on her hands than she knew what to do
1578 with. She hung around the little bungalow, the two of us in the
1579 living room, staring blankly at the windows, breathing shallowly in
1580 the claustrophobic, superheated Florida air. I had my working notes
1581 on queue management for the Mansion, and I pecked at them aimlessly.
1582 Sometimes, Lil mirrored my HUD so she could watch me work, and made
1583 suggestions based on her long experience.</P>
1584 <P>It was a delicate process, this business of increasing throughput
1585 without harming the guest experience. But for every second I could
1586 shave off of the queue-to-exit time, I could put another sixty
1587 guests through and lop thirty seconds off total wait-time. And the
1588 more guests who got to experience the Mansion, the more of a
1589 Whuffie-hit Debra's people would suffer if they made a
1590 move on it. So I dutifully pecked at my notes, and found three
1591 seconds I could shave off the graveyard sequence by swiveling the
1592 Doom Buggy carriages stage-left as they descended from the attic
1593 window: by expanding their fields-of-vision, I could expose the
1594 guests to all the scenes more quickly.</P>
1595 <P>I ran the change in fly-through, then implemented it after
1596 closing and invited the other Liberty Square ad-hocs to come and
1597 test it out.</P>
1598 <P>It was another muggy winter evening, prematurely dark. The
1599 ad-hocs had enough friends and family with them that we were able to
1600 simulate an off-peak queue-time, and we all stood and sweated in the
1601 preshow area, waiting for the doors to swing open, listening to the
1602 wolf-cries and assorted boo-spookery from the hidden speakers.</P>
1604 uniform, her eyes lined with black, her skin powdered to a deathly
1605 pallor. She gave us a cold, considering glare, then intoned,
1607 <P>As we crowded into the cool, musty gloom of the parlor, Lil
1608 contrived to give my ass an affectionate squeeze. I turned to return
1609 the favor, and saw Debra's elfin comrade looming over
1611 <P>The man locked eyes with me for a moment, and I saw something in
1612 there—some admixture of cruelty and worry that I
1613 didn't know what to make of. He looked away immediately.
1614 I'd known that Debra would have spies in the crowd, of
1615 course, but with elf-boy watching, I resolved to make this the best
1616 show I knew how.</P>
1618 from within. Lil had already slid aside the paneled wall that led to
1619 stretch-room number two, the most recently serviced one. Once the
1620 crowd had moved inside, I tried to lead their eyes by adjusting my
1621 body language to poses of subtle attention directed at the new
1622 spotlights. When the newly remastered soundtrack came from behind
1623 the sconce-bearing gargoyles at the corners of the octagonal room, I
1624 leaned my body slightly in the direction of the moving stereo-image.
1625 And an instant before the lights snapped out, I ostentatiously cast
1626 my eyes up into the scrim ceiling, noting that others had taken my
1627 cue, so they were watching when the UV-lit corpse dropped from the
1628 pitch-dark ceiling, jerking against the noose at its neck.</P>
1629 <P>The crowd filed into the second queue area, where they boarded
1630 the Doom Buggies. There was a low buzz of marveling conversation as
1631 we made our way onto the moving sidewalk. I boarded my Doom Buggy
1632 and an instant later, someone slid in beside me. It was the elf.</P>
1633 <P>He made a point of not making eye contact with me, but I sensed
1634 his sidelong glances at me as we rode through past the floating
1635 chandelier and into the corridor where the portraits'
1636 eyes watched us. Two years before, I'd accelerated this
1637 sequence and added some random swivel to the Doom Buggies, shaving
1639 to 2600. It was the proof-of-concept that led to all the other
1640 seconds I'd shaved away since. The violent pitching of
1641 the Buggy brought me and the elf into inadvertent contact with one
1642 another, and when I brushed his hand as I reached for the safety
1643 bar, I felt that it was cold and sweaty.</P>
1645 have to be nervous about? I was the one who'd been
1646 murdered—maybe he was nervous because he was supposed to
1647 finish the job. I cast my own sidelong looks at him, trying to see
1648 suspicious bulges in his tight clothes, but the Doom Buggy's
1649 pebbled black plastic interior was too dim. Dan was in the Buggy
1650 behind us, with one of the Mansion's regular
1651 castmembers. I rang his cochlea and subvocalized: “Get
1652 ready to jump out on my signal.” Anyone
1653 leaving their Buggy would interrupt an infrared beam and stop the
1654 ride system. I knew I could rely on Dan to trust me without a lot of
1655 explaining, which meant that I could keep a close watch on Debra's
1656 crony.</P>
1657 <P>We went past the hallway of mirrors and into the hallway of
1658 doors, where monstrous hands peeked out around the sills, straining
1659 against the hinges, recorded groans mixed in with pounding. I
1660 thought about it—if I wanted to kill someone on the
1661 Mansion, what would be the best place to do it? The attic
1662 staircase-- the next sequence—seemed like a good bet. A
1663 cold clarity washed over me. The elf would kill me in the gloom of
1664 the staircase, dump me out over the edge at the blind turn toward
1665 the graveyard, and that would be it. Would he be able to do it if I
1666 were staring straight at him? He seemed terribly nervous as it was.
1667 I swiveled in my seat and looked him straight in the eye.</P>
1668 <P>He quirked half a smile at me and nodded a greeting. I kept on
1669 staring at him, my hands balled into fists, ready for anything. We
1670 rode down the staircase, facing up, listening to the clamour of
1671 voices from the cemetery and the squawk of the red-eyed raven. I
1672 caught sight of the quaking groundkeeper animatronic from the corner
1673 of my eye and startled. I let out a subvocal squeal and was pitched
1674 forward as the ride system shuddered to a stop.</P>
1678 leapt clear of the Buggy, stopping the ride. The elf was looking at
1679 me with a mixture of surprise and pity.</P>
1681 right. False alarm.” I paged Lil
1682 and subvocalized to her, telling her to start up the ride ASAP, it
1683 was all right.</P>
1684 <P>I rode the rest of the way with my hands on the safety bar, my
1685 eyes fixed ahead of me, steadfastly ignoring the elf. I checked the
1687 of shaving off three seconds, I'd added thirty. I wanted
1688 to cry.</P>
1689 <HR>
1690 <P>I debarked the Buggy and stalked quickly out of the exit queue,
1691 leaning heavily against the fence, staring blindly at the pet
1692 cemetery. My head swam: I was out of control, jumping at shadows. I
1693 was spooked.</P>
1695 but what had it cost me? A few days of “unconsciousness” while they decanted my backup into my new body, a merciful
1696 gap in memory from my departure at the backup terminal up until my
1697 death. I wasn't one of those nuts who took death
1700 </P>
1702 dug Lil's grave a little deeper, endangered the
1703 ad-hocracy and, worst of all, the Mansion. I'd acted
1704 like an idiot. I tasted my dinner, a wolfed-down hamburger, and
1705 swallowed hard, forcing down the knob of nausea.</P>
1706 <P>I sensed someone at my elbow, and thinking it was Lil, come to
1707 ask me what had gone on, I turned with a sheepish grin and found
1708 myself facing the elf.</P>
1709 <P>He stuck his hand out and spoke in the flat no-accent of someone
1711 been introduced, but I wanted to tell you how much I enjoy your
1713 <P>I pumped his hand, which was still cold and particularly clammy
1714 in the close heat of the Florida night. “Julius,” I said, startled at how much like a bark it sounded. <EM>Careful</EM>,
1716 kind of you to say that. I like what you-all have done with the
1719 just been given high praise from one of his heroes. “Really?
1721 around you get a lot of chances to refine things, really clarify the
1722 vision. Beijing—well, it was exciting, but it was
1723 rushed, you know? I mean, we were really struggling. Every day,
1724 there was another pack of squatters who wanted to tear the Park
1725 down. Debra used to send me out to give the children piggyback
1726 rides, just to keep our Whuffie up while she was evicting the
1727 squatters. It was good to have the opportunity to refine the
1730 struggle for the ad-hocs who built it. Lots of them had been killed,
1731 many times over. Debra herself had been killed every day for a week
1732 and restored to a series of prepared clones, beta-testing one of the
1733 ride systems. It was faster than revising the CAD simulations. Debra
1734 had a reputation for pursuing expedience.</P>
1736 work under pressure,” I said, and
1737 nodded significantly at the Mansion. I was gratified to see him look
1738 embarrassed, then horrified.</P>
1739 <P>“We would <EM>never</EM> touch the Mansion,” he said. “It's <EM>perfect</EM>!”</P>
1740 <P>Dan and Lil sauntered up as I was preparing a riposte. They both
1742 both seemed incredibly concerned about me since the day I was
1743 revived.</P>
1745 Lil for support. They looked like a couple. An irrational sear of
1746 jealousy jetted through me. I was an emotional wreck. Still, I took
1747 Lil's big, scarred hand in mine as soon as she was in
1748 reach, then cuddled her to me protectively. She had changed out of
1749 her maid's uniform into civvies: smart coveralls whose
1750 micropore fabric breathed in time with her own respiration.</P>
1755 <P>It occurred to me to turn on some Whuffie monitors. It was
1756 normally an instantaneous reaction to meeting someone, but I was
1757 still disoriented. I pinged the elf. He had a lot of left-handed
1758 Whuffie; respect garnered from people who shared very few of my
1759 opinions. I expected that. What I didn't expect was that
1760 his weighted Whuffie score, the one that lent extra credence to the
1761 rankings of people I respected, was also high—higher
1762 than my own. I regretted my nonlinear behavior even more. Respect
1764 Tim—would carry a lot of weight in every camp that
1765 mattered.</P>
1767 had a rotten profile. He had accrued a good deal of left-handed
1768 Whuffie, and I curiously backtraced it to the occasion of my murder,
1769 when Debra's people had accorded him a generous dollop
1770 of props for the levelheaded way he had scraped up my corpse and
1771 moved it offstage, minimizing the disturbance in front of their
1772 wondrous Pirates.</P>
1773 <P>I was fugueing, wandering off on the kind of mediated reverie
1774 that got me killed on the reef at Playa Coral, and I came out of it
1775 with a start, realizing that the other three were politely ignoring
1776 my blown buffer. I could have run backwards through my short-term
1777 memory to get the gist of the conversation, but that would have
1781 to Debra's ad-hocs, that being the only way to avoid the
1782 appearance of childish disattention to the almighty Whuffie. Now she
1783 had to keep up the fiction of good-natured cooperation—that
1784 meant not shoulder-surfing Debra, looking for excuses to pounce on
1785 her work.</P>
1787 On his smooth, pointed features, it looked almost irredeemably cute.
1789 had her eye on the Hall for years, back in the old days, before she
1790 went to China. We're replacing the whole thing with
1791 broadband uplinks of gestalts from each of the Presidents'
1792 lives: newspaper headlines, speeches, distilled biographies,
1793 personal papers. It'll be like having each President
1796 your mind!” His eyes glittered in
1797 the twilight.</P>
1798 <P>Having only recently experienced my own cerebral flash-baking,
1799 Tim's description struck a chord in me. My personality
1800 seemed to be rattling around a little in my mind, as though it had
1801 been improperly fitted. It made the idea of having the gestalt of
1804 “That sounds wild. What do you have in mind for physical
1805 plant?” The Hall as it stood had a
1806 quiet, patriotic dignity cribbed from a hundred official buildings
1807 of the dead USA. Messing with it would be like redesigning the
1808 stars-and-bars.</P>
1810 could have one of the designers squirt some plans at you, if you
1813 said, taking my elbow. “I think we should be heading
1814 home, now, though.” She began to
1815 tug me away. Dan took my other elbow. Behind her, the Liberty Belle
1816 glowed like a ghostly wedding cake in the twilight.</P>
1820 <P>The idea seized hold of me. I would go into the camp of the
1821 enemy, sit by their fire, learn their secrets. “That
1823 too loudly. My head was buzzing slightly. Lil's hands
1824 fell away.</P>
1827 got a shift at eight, and I'm running into town for
1828 groceries.” She was lying, but she
1829 was telling me that this wasn't her idea of a smart
1830 move. But my faith was unshakeable.</P>
1832 be right here when it starts. I'll just grab a shower at
1833 the Contemporary in the morning and catch the monorail back in time
1836 dinner at Cinderella's Royal Table, remember? I made
1843 he's going to be a nut, one of us really should stay
1845 the lion in his den!</P>
1848 <HR>
1849 <P>On the walk to the Hall, Dan kept ringing my cochlea and I kept
1850 sending him straight to voicemail. All the while, I kept up a patter
1851 of small-talk with him and Tim. I was determined to make up for my
1852 debacle in the Mansion with Tim, win him over.</P>
1854 onstage, the animatronic presidents stacked in neat piles in the
1855 wings. Debra was sprawled in Lincoln's armchair, her
1856 head cocked lazily, her legs extended before her. The Hall's
1857 normal smells of ozone and cleanliness were overridden by sweat and
1858 machine-oil, the stink of an ad-hoc pulling an all-nighter. The Hall
1859 took fifteen years to research and execute, and a couple of days to
1860 tear down.</P>
1862 born with, albeit one that had been regenerated dozens of times
1863 after her deaths. It was patrician, waxy, long, with a nose that was
1864 made for staring down. She was at least as old as I was, though she
1865 was only apparent 22. I got the sense that she picked this age
1866 because it was one that afforded boundless reserves of energy.</P>
1868 nod languorously at me. The other ad-hocs had been split into little
1869 clusters, hunched over terminals. They all had the raccoon-eyed,
1870 sleep-deprived look of fanatics, even Debra, who managed to look
1871 lazy and excited simultaneously.</P>
1873 After all, she'd been killed dozens, if not hundreds of
1874 times. It might not be such a big deal for her.</P>
1876 brightly. “Tim offered to show us around! You know Dan,
1882 He'd been hanging out with them since Lil had briefed
1883 him on the peril to the Mansion, trying to gather some intelligence
1884 for us to use. They knew what he was up to, of course, but Dan was a
1885 fairly charming guy and he worked like a mule, so they tolerated
1886 him. But it seemed like he'd violated a boundary by
1887 accompanying me, as though the polite fiction that he was more a
1889 shattered by my presence.</P>
1893 <P>Tim hustled us backstage, where Lil and I used to sweat over the
1894 animatronics and cop surreptitious feels. Everything had been torn
1895 loose, packed up, stacked. They hadn't wasted a
1897 show that had run for more than a century. The scrim that the
1898 projected portions of the show normally screened on was ground into
1899 the floor, spotted with grime, footprints and oil.</P>
1900 <P>Tim showed me to a half-assembled backup terminal. Its housing
1901 was off, and any number of wireless keyboards, pointers and gloves
1902 lay strewn about it. It had the look of a prototype.</P>
1904 got a demo app running on it: Lincoln's old speech,
1905 along with the civil-war montage. Just switch on guest access and
1907 <P>I pulled up my HUD and switched on guest access. Tim pointed a
1908 finger at the terminal and my brain was suffused with the essence of
1909 Lincoln: every nuance of his speech, the painstakingly researched
1910 movement tics, his warts and beard and topcoat. It almost felt like
1912 could still taste the lingering coppery flavor of cannon-fire and
1913 chewing tobacco.</P>
1914 <P>I staggered backwards. My head swam with flash-baked
1915 sense-impressions, rich and detailed. I knew on the spot that
1917 <P>Dan took a shot off the uplink, too. Tim and I watched him as his
1918 expression shifted from skepticism to delight. Tim looked
1919 expectantly at me.</P>
1920 <P>“That's really fine,” I said. “Really, really fine. Moving.”</P>
1924 sauntered over while Dan was getting his jolt. “I got the
1925 idea in Beijing, when I was dying a lot. There's
1926 something wonderful about having memories implanted, like you're
1927 really working your brain. I love the synthetic clarity of it
1929 <P>Tim sniffed. “Not synthetic at all,” he said, turning to me. “It's nice and
1931 <P>I sensed deep political shoals and was composing my reply when
1932 Debra said: “Tim keeps trying to make it all more
1933 impressionistic, less computer-y. He's wrong, of course.
1934 We don't want to simulate the experience of watching the
1939 the point of flash-baking a bunch of dry facts on someone's
1941 </DIV>
1945 <OL>
1947 had had me killed, and screw their alibis,
1948 </P>
1950 when the time came for them to make a play for the Haunted Mansion,
1951 </P>
1952 <LI><P>That our only hope for saving the Mansion was a preemptive
1953 strike against them: we had to hit them hard, where it hurt.
1954 </P>
1955 </OL>
1956 <P>Dan and I had been treated to eight hours of insectile precision
1957 in the Hall of Presidents, Debra's people working with
1958 effortless cooperation born of the adversity they'd
1959 faced in Beijing. Debra moved from team to team, making suggestions
1960 with body language as much as with words, leaving bursts of inspired
1961 activity in her wake.</P>
1962 <P>It was that precision that convinced me of point one. Any ad-hoc
1963 this tight could pull off anything if it advanced their agenda.
1964 Ad-hoc? Hell, call them what they were: an army.</P>
1965 <P>Point two came to me when I sampled the Lincoln build that Tim
1966 finished at about three in the morning, after intensive consultation
1967 with Debra. The mark of a great ride is that it gets better the
1968 second time around, as the detail and flourishes start to impinge on
1969 your consciousness. The Mansion was full of little gimcracks and sly
1970 nods that snuck into your experience on each successive ride.</P>
1971 <P>Tim shuffled his feet nervously, bursting with barely restrained
1972 pride as I switched on public access. He dumped the app to my public
1973 directory, and, gingerly, I executed it.</P>
1974 <P>God! God and Lincoln and cannon-fire and oratory and ploughs and
1975 mules and greatcoats! It rolled over me, it punched through me, it
1976 crashed against the inside of my skull and rebounded. The first pass
1977 through, there had been a sense of order, of narrative, but this,
1978 this was gestalt, the whole thing in one undifferentiated ball,
1979 filling me and spilling over. It was panicky for a moment, as the
1980 essence of Lincolness seemed to threaten my own personality, and,
1981 just as it was about to overwhelm me, it receded, leaving behind a
1982 rush of endorphin and adrenaline that made me want to jump.</P>
1985 the Mansion with this! What elegance! Directly imprinting the
1986 experience, without recourse to the stupid, blind eyes; the thick,
1987 deaf ears.</P>
1988 <P>Tim beamed and basked, and Debra nodded solemnly from her throne.
1990 said. I nodded, and staggered back to the theatre seat where Dan
1991 slept, head thrown back, snores softly rattling in his throat.</P>
1992 <P>Incrementally, reason trickled back into my mind, and with it
1993 came ire. How dare they? The wonderful compromises of technology and
1994 expense that had given us the Disney rides—rides that
1995 had entertained the world for two centuries and more—could
1996 never compete head to head with what they were working on.</P>
1998 they do this somewhere else? Why did they have to destroy everything
1999 I loved to realize this? They could build this tech anywhere—they
2000 could distribute it online and people could access it from their
2001 living rooms!</P>
2002 <P>But that would never do. Doing it here was better for the old
2004 hold it, a single ad-hoc where three hundred had flourished before,
2005 smoothly operating a park twice the size of Manhattan.</P>
2006 <P>I stood and stalked out of the theater, out into Liberty Square
2007 and the Park. It had cooled down without drying out, and there was a
2008 damp chill that crawled up my back and made my breath stick in my
2009 throat. I turned to contemplate the Hall of Presidents, staid and
2010 solid as it had been since my boyhood and before, a monument to the
2011 Imagineers who anticipated the Bitchun Society, inspired it.</P>
2012 <P>I called Dan, still snoring back in the theater, and woke him. He
2013 grunted unintelligibly in my cochlea.</P>
2014 <P>“They did it—they killed me.” I knew they had, and I was glad. It made what I had to do
2015 next easier.</P>
2017 offered their backups, remember? They couldn't have done
2020 into the empty night. “Bullshit! They did it, and they
2021 fucked with their backups somehow. They must have. It's
2022 all too neat and tidy. How else could they have gotten so far with
2023 the Hall so fast? They knew it was coming, they planned a
2024 disruption, and they moved in. Tell me that you think they just had
2026 <P>Dan groaned, and I heard his joints popping. He must have been
2027 stretching. The Park breathed around me, the sounds of maintenance
2028 crews scurrying in the night. “I do believe that.
2035 <HR>
2037 were showboating, announcing a special preview of the new Hall to
2038 the other ad-hocs that worked in the Park. It was classic chutzpah,
2039 letting the key influencers in the Park in long before the bugs were
2040 hammered out. A smooth run would garner the kind of impressed
2041 reaction that guaranteed continued support while they finished up; a
2042 failed demo could doom them. There were plenty of people in the Park
2043 who had a sentimental attachment to the Hall of Presidents, and
2044 whatever Debra's people came up with would have to
2045 answer their longing.</P>
2046 <P>“I'm going to do it during the demo,” I told Dan, while I piloted the runabout from home to the
2047 castmember parking. I snuck a look at him to gauge his reaction. He
2048 had his poker face on.</P>
2055 the case that you were working on your own—gone
2057 fair. Dan was here to build up his Whuffie, and if he was implicated
2058 in my dirty scheme, he'd have to start over again. I
2061 good versus evil, Dan. You don't want to be a
2062 post-person. You want to stay human. The rides are human. We each
2063 mediate them through our own experience. We're
2064 physically inside of them, and they talk to us through our senses.
2066 hive-mind shit. Directly implanting thoughts! Jesus! It's
2067 not an experience, it's brainwashing! You gotta know
2068 that.” I was pleading, arguing with
2069 myself as much as with him.</P>
2070 <P>I snuck another look at him as I sped along the Disney
2071 back-roads, lined with sweaty Florida pines and immaculate purple
2072 signage. Dan was looking thoughtful, the way he had back in our old
2073 days in Toronto. Some of my tension dissipated. He was thinking
2076 ideas.” My chest tightened, and he
2077 patted my shoulder. He had the knack of putting me at my ease, even
2078 when he was telling me that I was an idiot. “Even if
2080 not a certainty, we both know that. Even if that's the
2081 case, we've got better means at our disposal. Improving
2082 the Mansion, competing with her head to head, that's
2083 smart. Give it a little while and we can come back at her, take over
2085 piss her off. Hell, if we can prove she was behind the
2086 assassination, we can chase her off right now. Sabotage is not going
2090 <P>We reached castmember parking, I swung the runabout into a slot
2091 and stalked out before it had a chance to extrude its recharger
2092 cock. I heard Dan's door slam behind me and knew that he
2093 was following behind.</P>
2094 <P>We took to the utilidors grimly. I walked past the cameras,
2095 knowing that my image was being archived, my presence logged. I'd
2096 picked the timing of my raid carefully: by arriving at high noon, I
2097 was sticking to my traditional pattern for watching hot-weather
2098 crowd dynamics. I'd made a point of visiting twice
2099 during the previous week at this time, and of dawdling in the
2100 commissary before heading topside. The delay between my arrival in
2101 the runabout and my showing up at the Mansion would not be
2102 discrepant.</P>
2103 <P>Dan dogged my heels as I swung towards the commissary, and then
2104 hugged the wall, in the camera's blindspot. Back in my
2105 early days in the Park, when I was courting Lil, she showed me the
2106 A-Vac, the old pneumatic waste-disposal system, decommissioned in
2107 the 20s. The kids who grew up in the Park had been notorious
2108 explorers of the tubes, which still whiffed faintly of the garbage
2110 property's outskirts, but for a brave, limber kid, the
2111 tubes were a subterranean wonderland to explore when the
2112 hypermediated experiences of the Park lost their luster.</P>
2114 they hadn't killed me and forced me to switch to a new
2115 body, I probably wouldn't be flexible enough to fit
2118 <P>I clambered inside without waiting for a reply, and started
2119 inching my way under the Hall of Presidents.</P>
2120 <HR>
2121 <P>My plan had covered every conceivable detail, except one, which
2122 didn't occur to me until I was forty minutes into the
2123 pneumatic tube, arms held before me and legs angled back like a
2126 <P>Specifically, how was I going to retrieve my HERF gun from my
2127 back pants-pocket, when I couldn't even bend my elbows?
2128 The HERF gun was the crux of the plan: a High Energy Radio Frequency
2129 generator with a directional, focused beam that would punch up
2130 through the floor of the Hall of Presidents and fuse every goddamn
2131 scrap of unshielded electronics on the premises. I'd
2132 gotten the germ of the idea during Tim's first demo,
2133 when I'd seen all of his prototypes spread out
2134 backstage, cases off, ready to be tinkered with. Unshielded.</P>
2138 He'd been silent during the journey, the sound of his
2139 painful, elbow-dragging progress through the lightless tube my only
2140 indicator of his presence.</P>
2144 “keep the fucking editorial to yourself. Can you reach it
2146 <P>I heard him grunt as he pulled himself up in the tube, then felt
2147 his hand groping up my calf. Soon, his chest was crushing my calves
2148 into the tube's floor and his hand was pawing around my
2149 ass.</P>
2151 said. I could tell from his tone that he wasn't too
2152 happy about my snapping at him, but I was too wrapped up to consider
2153 an apology, despite what must be happening to my Whuffie as Dan did
2154 his slow burn.</P>
2158 asked.</P>
2159 <P>Dan crawled higher, overtop of me, but stuck fast when his
2163 “You'll have to fire it, then.” I held my breath. Would he do it? It was one thing to be my
2164 accomplice, another to be the author of the destruction.</P>
2167 want to hear from you.” I was
2168 boiling with anger—at myself, at Dan, at Debra, at the
2169 whole goddamn thing.</P>
2173 <P>I heard him release the catch, felt a staticky crackle in the
2174 air, and then it was done. The gun was a one-shot, something I'd
2175 confiscated from a mischievous guest a decade before, when they'd
2176 had a brief vogue.</P>
2178 said. I had no intention of leaving such a damning bit of evidence
2179 behind. I resumed my bellycrawl forward to the next service hatch,
2180 near the parking lot, where I'd stashed an identical
2181 change of clothes for both of us.</P>
2182 <HR>
2184 ad-hocs were ranged around the mezzanine inside the Hall of
2185 Presidents, a collection of influential castmembers from other
2186 ad-hocs filling the pre-show area to capacity.</P>
2187 <P>Dan and I filed in just as Tim was stringing the velvet rope up
2188 behind the crowd. He gave me a genuine smile and shook my hand, and
2189 I smiled back, full of good feelings now that I knew that he was
2190 going down in flames. I found Lil and slipped my hand into hers as
2191 we filed into the auditorium, which had the new-car smell of rug
2192 shampoo and fresh electronics.</P>
2193 <P>We took our seats and I bounced my leg nervously, compulsively,
2194 while Debra, dressed in Lincoln's coat and stovepipe,
2195 delivered a short speech. There was some kind of broadcast rig
2196 mounted over the stage now, something to allow them to beam us all
2197 their app in one humongous burst.</P>
2198 <P>Debra finished up and stepped off the stage to a polite round of
2199 applause, and they started the demo.</P>
2200 <P>Nothing happened. I tried to keep the shit-eating grin off my
2201 face as nothing happened. No tone in my cochlea indicating a new
2202 file in my public directory, no rush of sensation, nothing. I turned
2203 to Lil to make some snotty remark, but her eyes were closed, her
2204 mouth lolling open, her breath coming in short huffs. Down the row,
2205 every castmember was in the same attitude of deep, mind-blown
2206 concentration. I pulled up a diagnostic HUD.</P>
2210 <HR>
2211 <P>Offline, I filed out of the Hall of Presidents. Offline, I took
2212 Lil's hand and walked to the Liberty Belle load-zone,
2213 our spot for private conversations. Offline, I bummed a cigarette
2214 from her.</P>
2216 I could tell that. Tears pricked her eyes.</P>
2217 <P>“Why didn't you tell me?” she said, after a hard moment's staring into the
2218 moonlight reflecting off the river.</P>
2220 dumbly.</P>
2224 discuss the matter. Offline, I tried it without help. “I
2228 connection to the past. The world grew up in the Disneys—they
2229 visit this place for continuity as much as for entertainment. We
2232 happened?</P>
2234 nothing in that place that's better than us. Different
2236 spent more time in the Mansion than anyone, you know how much
2237 refinement, how much work there is in there. How can something they
2238 whipped up in a couple weeks possibly be better that this thing
2240 <P>She ground the back of her sleeve against her eyes and smiled.
2242 nose was red, her eyes puffy, her freckles livid over the flush of
2246 meritocracy, right? The best stuff survives, everything else gets
2247 supplanted.</P>
2248 <P>“Oh, shit, I hate how I look when I cry,” she said. “Let's go congratulate
2250 <P>As I took her hand, I was obscurely pleased with myself for
2251 having improved her mood without artificial assistance.</P>
2252 <HR>
2253 <P>Dan was nowhere to be seen as Lil and I mounted the stage at the
2254 Hall, where Debra's ad-hocs and a knot of well-wishers
2255 were celebrating by passing a rock around. Debra had lost the
2256 tailcoat and hat, and was in an extreme state of relaxation, arms
2257 around the shoulders of two of her cronies, pipe between her teeth.</P>
2258 <P>She grinned around the pipe as Lil and I stumbled through some
2259 insincere compliments, nodded, and toked heavily while Tim applied a
2260 torch to the bowl.</P>
2262 laconically. “It was a team effort.” She hugged her cronies to her, almost knocking their heads
2263 together.</P>
2265 <P>Debra started unreeling a long spiel about critical paths,
2266 milestones, requirements meetings, and I tuned her out. Ad-hocs were
2267 crazy for that process stuff. I stared at my feet, at the
2268 floorboards, and realized that they weren't floorboards
2269 at all, but faux-finish painted over a copper mesh—a
2272 casual about working with the shielding off their computers. With my
2273 eye, I followed the copper shielding around the entire stage and up
2274 the walls, where it disappeared into the ceiling. Once again, I was
2275 struck by the evolvedness of Debra's ad-hocs, how their
2276 trial by fire in China had armored them against the kind of
2277 bush-league jiggery-pokery that the fuzzy bunnies in
2280 castmember in the Park outside of Deb's clique with the
2281 stones to stage an assassination. Once I'd made that
2282 leap, I realized that it was only a matter of time until they staged
2283 another one—and another, and another. Whatever they
2284 could get away with.</P>
2286 away. I stopped in front of the backup terminal in the gateway
2287 between Liberty Square and Fantasyland. “When was the
2288 last time you backed up?” I asked
2289 her. If they could go after me, they might go after any of us.</P>
2291 said. She exuded bone-weariness at me, looking more like an
2292 overmediated guest than a tireless castmember.</P>
2294 really back up at night and at lunchtime—with things the
2297 <P>Lil rolled her eyes. I knew better than to argue with her when
2298 she was tired, but this was too crucial to set aside for petulance.
2299 “You can back up that often if you want to, Julius, but
2304 some sleep. I want to do some work on new merch for the
2309 <P>I approached the terminal and cued a backup. Nothing happened.
2310 Oh, yeah, right, I was offline. A cool sweat broke out all over my
2311 new body.</P>
2312 <HR>
2313 <P>Lil grabbed the couch as soon as we got in, mumbling something
2314 about wanting to work on some revised merch ideas she'd
2315 had. I glared at her as she subvocalized and air-typed in the
2316 corner, shut away from me. I hadn't told her that I was
2317 offline yet—it just seemed like insignificant personal
2318 bitching relative to the crises she was coping with.</P>
2320 in fifty years, and often as not the system righted itself after a
2321 good night's sleep. I could visit the doctor in the
2322 morning if things were still screwy.</P>
2323 <P>So I crawled into bed, and when my bladder woke me in the night,
2324 I had to go into the kitchen to consult our old starburst clock to
2325 get the time. It was 3 a.m., and when the hell had we expunged the
2326 house of all timepieces, anyway?</P>
2327 <P>Lil was sacked out on the couch, and complained feebly when I
2328 tried to rouse her, so I covered her with a blanket and went back to
2329 bed, alone.</P>
2330 <P>I woke disoriented and crabby, without my customary morning jolt
2331 of endorphin. Vivid dreams of death and destruction slipped away as
2332 I sat up. I preferred to let my subconscious do its own thing, so
2333 I'd long ago programmed my systems to keep me asleep
2334 during REM cycles except in emergencies. The dream left a foul taste
2335 in my mind as I staggered into the kitchen, where Lil was fixing
2336 coffee.</P>
2339 <P>She had the perky, jaunty quality of someone who could instruct
2340 her nervous system to manufacture endorphin and adrenaline at will.
2341 I felt like punching the wall.</P>
2342 <P>“You wouldn't get up,” I said, and slopped coffee in the general direction of a mug,
2343 then scalded my tongue with it.</P>
2345 cover a shift for me—the merch ideas are really coming
2346 together and I wanted to hit the Imagineering shop and try some
2349 foraged a slice of bread with cheese and noticed a crumby plate in
2350 the sink. Dan had already eaten and gone, apparently.</P>
2352 and my blood started to boil in earnest. I slammed Dan's
2353 plate into the dishwasher and shoved bread into my maw.</P>
2356 <P>Lil reeled. Normally, I was the soul of sweetness in the morning,
2358 wrong, honey?” she said, going into
2359 helpful castmember mode. Now I wanted to hit something besides the
2360 wall.</P>
2364 eat you and your little band of plucky adventurers and pick her
2366 you ever get fucking angry about anything? Don't you
2368 <P>Lil whitened and I felt a sinking feeling in my gut. It was the
2369 worst thing I could possibly have said.</P>
2370 <P>Lil and I met three years before, at a barbecue that some friends
2371 of her parents threw, a kind of castmember mixer. She'd
2373 bubbly, flirty vibe that made me dismiss her, at first, as just
2374 another airhead castmember.</P>
2376 hand, were fascinating people, members of the original ad-hoc that
2377 had seized power in Walt Disney World, wresting control from a gang
2378 of wealthy former shareholders who'd been operating it
2379 as their private preserve. Rita was apparent 20 or so, but she
2380 radiated a maturity and a fiery devotion to the Park that threw her
2382 <P>They throbbed with Whuffie, Whuffie beyond measure, beyond use.
2383 In a world where even a zeroed-out Whuffie loser could eat, sleep,
2384 travel and access the net without hassle, their wealth was more than
2385 sufficient to repeatedly access the piffling few scarce things left
2386 on earth over and over.</P>
2387 <P>The conversation turned to the first day, when she and her pals
2388 had used a cutting torch on the turnstiles and poured in, wearing
2389 homemade costumes and name tags. They infiltrated the shops, the
2390 control centers, the rides, first by the hundred, then, as the hot
2391 July day ticked by, by the thousand. The shareholders'
2392 lackeys—who worked the Park for the chance to be a part
2393 of the magic, even if they had no control over the management
2394 decisions—put up a token resistance. Before the day was
2395 out, though, the majority had thrown in their lots with the raiders,
2396 handing over security codes and pitching in.</P>
2399 mother said, sipping her lemonade. “We kept the Park
2401 chance to fight back without doing it in front of the guests. We'd
2402 prearranged with a couple of airline ad-hocs to add extra routes to
2403 Orlando and the guests came pouring in.” She smiled, remembering the moment, and her features in
2404 repose were Lil's almost identically. It was only when
2405 she was talking that her face changed, muscles tugging it into an
2406 expression decades older than the face that bore it.</P>
2408 Madame Leota's outside the Mansion, gladhanding the
2409 guests while hissing nasties back and forth with the shareholders
2410 who kept trying to shove me out. I slept in a sleeping bag on the
2411 floor of the utilidor, with a couple dozen others, in three hour
2412 shifts. That was when I met this asshole”—she
2414 gotten the wrong sleeping bag by mistake and wouldn't
2415 budge when I came down to crash. I just crawled in next to him and
2421 your parents' courtship, you can either sit somewhere
2422 else or grin and bear it. But you don't get to dictate
2424 <P>Lil gave us adults a very youthful glare and flounced off. Rita
2426 not much fire in that generation,” she
2428 fault—we thought that Disney World would be the best
2429 place to raise a child in the Bitchun Society. Maybe it was,
2430 but…” She
2431 trailed off and rubbed her palms on her thighs, a gesture I'd
2433 enough challenges for them these days. They're too
2434 cooperative.” She laughed and her
2435 husband took her hand.</P>
2437 we didn't have any of this newfangled life-extension
2438 stuff—we took our chances with the cave bears and the
2439 dinosaurs!'” Tom wore
2440 himself older, apparent 50, with graying sidewalls and crinkled
2441 smile-lines, the better to present a non-threatening air of
2442 authority to the guests. It was a truism among the first-gen ad-hocs
2443 that women castmembers should wear themselves young, men old.
2447 telling you what a pack of milksops we are, Julius? When you get
2448 tired of that, why don't you come over here and have a
2449 smoke?” I noticed that she and her
2450 cohort were passing a crack pipe.</P>
2453 bad as all that,” I said, virtually
2454 my first words of the afternoon. I was painfully conscious that I
2455 was only there by courtesy, just one of the legion of hopefuls who
2456 flocked to Orlando every year, aspiring to a place among the ruling
2458 maintaining the Park, that's for sure. I made the
2459 mistake of lifting a queue-gate at the Jungleboat Cruise last week
2460 and I got a very earnest lecture about the smooth functioning of the
2461 Park from a castmember who couldn't have been more than
2468 if I had offended her or what.</P>
2470 after the revolution, can you? Didn't we all struggle so
2472 <P>“Funny you should say that,” Tom said. He had the same considering look on his face.
2473 “Just yesterday we were talking about the very same
2474 thing. We were talking—” he
2475 drew a breath and looked askance at his wife, who nodded—“about
2476 deadheading. For a while, anyway. See if things changed much in
2478 <P>I felt a kind of shameful disappointment. Why was I wasting my
2479 time schmoozing with these two, when they wouldn't be
2480 around when the time came to vote me in? I banished the thought as
2481 quickly as it came—I was talking to them because they
2482 were nice people. Not every conversation had to be strategically
2483 important.</P>
2485 remember that I thought of Dan then, about his views on the
2486 cowardice of deadheading, on the bravery of ending it when you found
2487 yourself obsolete. He'd comforted me once, when my last
2488 living relative, my uncle, opted to go to sleep for three thousand
2489 years. My uncle had been born pre-Bitchun, and had never quite
2490 gotten the hang of it. Still, he was my link to my family, to my
2491 first adulthood and my only childhood. Dan had taken me to Gananoque
2492 and we'd spent the day bounding around the countryside
2493 on seven-league boots, sailing high over the lakes of the Thousand
2494 Islands and the crazy fiery carpet of autumn leaves. We topped off
2495 the day at a dairy commune he knew where they still made cheese from
2497 smells and bottles of strong cider and a girl whose name I'd
2498 long since forgotten but whose exuberant laugh I'd
2499 remember forever. And it wasn't so important, then, my
2500 uncle going to sleep for three milliennia, because whatever
2501 happened, there were the leaves and the lakes and the crisp sunset
2502 the color of blood and the girl's laugh.
2503 </P>
2509 <P>They changed the subject not long thereafter, and I sensed
2510 discomfort, knew that they had told me too much, more than they'd
2511 intended. I drifted off and found Lil and her young pals, and we
2512 toked a little and cuddled a little.</P>
2513 <P>Within a month, I was working at the Haunted Mansion, Tom and
2514 Rita were invested in Canopic jars in Kissimee with instructions not
2515 to be woken until their newsbots grabbed sufficient interesting
2516 material to make it worth their while, and Lil and I were a hot
2517 item.</P>
2519 decision to deadhead. For her, it was a slap in the face, a reproach
2520 to her and her generation of twittering Polyannic castmembers.</P>
2522 fucking angry about anything? Don't you have any
2523 goddamned passion?</P>
2524 <P>The words were out of my mouth before I knew I was saying them,
2525 and Lil, 15 percent of my age, young enough to be my
2526 great-granddaughter; Lil, my lover and best friend and sponsor to
2527 the Liberty Square ad-hocracy; Lil turned white as a sheet, turned
2528 on her heel and walked out of the kitchen. She got in her runabout
2529 and went to the Park to take her shift.</P>
2530 <P>I went back to bed and stared at the ceiling fan as it made its
2531 lazy turns, and felt like shit.</P>
2532 </DIV>
2536 had not come back to the house. If she'd tried to call,
2538 way of answering my phone. As it turned out, she hadn't
2539 been trying to reach me at all.</P>
2541 plotting terrible, irrational vengeance on Debra for killing me,
2542 destroying my relationship, taking away my beloved (in hindsight,
2543 anyway) Hall of Presidents and threatening the Mansion. Even in my
2544 addled state, I knew that this was pretty unproductive, and I kept
2545 promising that I would cut it out, take a shower and some sober-ups,
2546 and get to work at the Mansion.</P>
2549 shocked. I guess I was a bit of a mess, sprawled on the sofa in my
2550 underwear, all gamy and baggy and bloodshot.</P>
2552 <P>He gave me one of his patented wry looks and I felt the same
2553 weird reversal of roles that we'd undergone at the U of
2554 T, when he had become the native, and I had become the interloper.
2555 He was the together one with the wry looks and I was the pathetic
2556 seeker who'd burned all his reputation capital. Out of
2557 habit, I checked my Whuffie, and a moment later I stopped being
2558 startled by its low score and was instead shocked by the fact that I
2559 could check it at all. I was back online!</P>
2564 <P>I jumped up from the couch and did a little happy underwear
2565 dance. “I <EM>was</EM>, but I'm not <EM>now</EM>.” I felt better than I had in days, ready to beat the
2568 the Imagineering labs. I've got a pretty kickass
2570 <HR>
2571 <P>The idea, as I explained it in the runabout, was a preemptive
2572 rehab of the Mansion. Sabotaging the Hall had been a nasty, stupid
2573 idea, and I'd gotten what I deserved for it. The whole
2574 point of the Bitchun Society was to be more reputable than the next
2575 ad-hoc, to succeed on merit, not trickery, despite assassinations
2576 and the like.</P>
2580 had a guy in a suit of armor just past the first Doom Buggy curve,
2581 he'd leap out and scare the hell out of the guests as
2582 they went by. It didn't last long, of course. The poor
2583 bastard kept getting punched out by startled guests, and besides,
2585 <P>Dan chuckled appreciatively. The Bitchun Society had all but done
2586 away with any sort of dull, repetitious labor, and what
2588 Whuffie aplenty and a life of leisure in your off-hours.</P>
2591 every time. It's like the castmembers who spiel on the
2592 Jungleboat Cruise. They've each got their own patter,
2593 their own jokes, and even though the animatronics aren't
2596 castmembers in armor?” Dan asked,
2597 shaking his head.</P>
2598 <P>I waved away his objections, causing the runabout to swerve,
2599 terrifying a pack of guests who were taking a ride on rented bikes
2601 said, flapping a hand apologetically at the white-faced guests.
2602 “Not at all. But what if all of the animatronics had
2603 human operators—telecontrollers, working with waldoes?
2604 We'll let them interact with the guests, talk with them,
2606 existing animatronics, replace 'em with full-mobility
2607 robots, then cast the parts over the Net. Think of the Whuffie! You
2608 could put, say, a thousand operators online at once, ten shifts per
2609 day, each of them caught up in our Mansion…
2610 We'll give out awards for outstanding performances, the
2612 be adding another ten thousand guests to the Mansion's
2613 throughput every day, only these guests will be honorary
2616 flash-baking, but you'll have human interaction,
2620 <HR>
2621 <P>The first order of business was to call Lil, patch things up, and
2622 pitch the idea to her. The only problem was, my cochlea was offline
2623 again. My mood started to sour, and I had Dan call her instead.</P>
2624 <P>We met her up at Imagineering, a massive complex of prefab
2625 aluminum buildings painted Go-Away Green that had thronged with mad
2626 inventors since the Bitchun Society had come to Walt Disney World.
2627 The ad-hocs who had built an Imagineering department in Florida and
2628 now ran the thing were the least political in the Park, classic
2629 labcoat-and-clipboard types who would work for anyone so long as the
2630 ideas were cool. Not caring about Whuffie meant that they
2631 accumulated it in plenty on both the left and right hands.</P>
2632 <P>Lil was working with Suneep, AKA the Merch Miracle. He could
2633 design, prototype and produce a souvenir faster than
2634 anyone—shirts, sculptures, pens, toys, housewares, he
2635 was the king. They were collaborating on their HUDs, facing each
2636 other across a lab-bench in the middle of a lab as big as a
2637 basketball court, cluttered with logomarked tchotchkes and gabbling
2638 away while their eyes danced over invisible screens.</P>
2639 <P>Dan reflexively joined the collaborative space as he entered the
2640 lab, leaving me the only one out on the joke. Dan was clearly
2641 delighted by what he saw.</P>
2643 <P>Instead of pitying me, he just airtyped a few commands and pages
2644 started to roll out of a printer in the lab's corner.
2645 Anyone else would have made a big deal out of it, but he just
2646 brought me into the discussion.</P>
2647 <P>If I needed proof that Lil and I were meant for each other, the
2648 designs she and Suneep had come up with were more than enough.
2650 that stressed the human scale of the Mansion. There were miniature
2651 animatronics of the Hitchhiking Ghosts in a black-light box, their
2652 skeletal robotics visible through their layers of plastic clothing;
2653 action figures that communicated by IR, so that placing one in
2654 proximity with another would unlock its Mansion-inspired
2656 incanted, the singing busts sang. She'd worked up some
2657 formal attire based on the castmember costume, cut in this year's
2658 stylish lines.</P>
2660 mind's eye, I was seeing the relaunch of the Mansion in
2661 six months, filled with robotic avatars of Mansion-nuts the world
2663 with brilliant swag, strolling human players ad-libbing with the
2665 <P>Lil looked up from her mediated state and glared at me as I pored
2666 over the hardcopy, nodding enthusiastically.</P>
2668 <P>I felt a flush creeping into face, my ears. It was somewhere
2669 between anger and shame, and I reminded myself that I was more than
2670 a century older than her, and it was my responsibility to be mature.
2672 <P>“This is fucking fantastic, Lil,” I said. Her look didn't soften. “Really
2673 choice stuff. I had a great idea—” I ran it down for her, the avatars, the robots, the rehab.
2674 She stopped glaring, started taking notes, smiling, showing me her
2675 dimples, her slanted eyes crinkling at the corners.</P>
2677 pretending not to listen in, nodded involuntarily. Dan, too.</P>
2681 It's risky, dangerous. It made her and her ad-hoc
2683 “They can make decisions like this fast, and execute them
2687 have to beat Debra at her own game, out-evolve her ad-hocs.</P>
2688 <P>“I understand what you're saying,” Lil said. I could tell she was upset—she'd
2690 good idea. I think that we stand a good chance of making it happen
2691 if we approach the group and put it to them, after doing the
2692 research, building the plans, laying out the critical path, and
2694 <P>I felt like I was swimming in molasses. At the rate that the
2695 Liberty Square ad-hoc moved, we'd be holding formal
2696 requirements reviews while Debra's people tore down the
2697 Mansion around us. So I tried a different tactic.</P>
2700 <P>Suneep nodded slowly, with a cautious expression, a nonpolitical
2701 animal being drawn into a political discussion.</P>
2703 and asked you to pull together a production schedule—one
2704 that didn't have any review, just take the idea and run
2705 with it—and then pull it off, how long would it take you
2708 before.</P>
2710 said, almost instantly.</P>
2717 do this, and do it. And we can provide you with unlimited, skilled
2719 <P>He rolled his eyes back and ticked off days on his fingers while
2720 muttering under his breath. He was a tall, thin man with a shock of
2721 curly dark hair that he smoothed unconsciously with surprisingly
2722 stubby fingers while he thought.</P>
2724 said. “Barring accidents, assuming off-the-shelf parts,
2725 unlimited labor, capable management, material availability…” He trailed off again, and his short fingers waggled as he
2726 pulled up a HUD and started making a list.</P>
2728 alarmed. “How do you get from five years to eight
2731 Imagineering worked when they were on their own, building prototypes
2732 and conceptual mockups—I knew that the real bottleneck
2733 was the constant review and revisions, the ever-fluctuating
2734 groupmind consensus of the ad-hoc that commissioned their work.</P>
2736 satisfy myself that my plans are good and my buildings won't
2737 fall down, I can make it happen very fast. Of course, my plans
2739 through a project when someone suggests a new flourish or approach
2740 that makes the whole thing immeasurably better. Then it's
2741 back to the drawing board… So I stay at the
2742 drawing board for a long time at the start, get feedback from other
2743 Imagineers, from the ad-hocs, from focus groups and the Net. Then we
2744 do reviews at every stage of construction, check to see if anyone
2745 has had a great idea we haven't thought of and
2746 incorporate it, sometimes rolling back the work.</P>
2749 revision in eight weeks, why not just finish it, then plan another
2756 <P>I felt the surety inside of me, the certain knowledge that I was
2757 right. Ad-hocracy was a great thing, a Bitchun thing, but the
2758 organization needed to turn on a dime—that would be even
2761 looking into her eyes, trying to burn my POV into her. “We
2763 recruit hundreds to come to Florida and work on the rehab. We'll
2764 give every Mansion nut on the planet a shot at joining up, then
2765 we'll recruit them again to work at it, to run the
2766 telepresence rigs. We'll get buy-in from the biggest
2767 super-recommenders in the world, and we'll build
2768 something better and faster than any ad-hoc ever has, without
2769 abandoning the original Imagineers' vision. It will be
2771 <P>Lil dropped her eyes and it was her turn to flush. She paced the
2772 floor, hands swinging at her sides. I could tell that she was still
2773 angry with me, but excited and scared and yes, passionate.</P>
2774 <P>“It's not up to me, you know,” she said at length, still pacing. Dan and I exchanged wicked
2775 grins. She was in.</P>
2777 it was, almost—she was a real opinion-leader in the
2778 Liberty Square ad-hoc, someone who knew the systems back and forth,
2779 someone who made good, reasonable decisions and kept her head in a
2780 crisis. Not a hothead. Not prone to taking radical switchbacks. This
2781 plan would burn up that reputation and the Whuffie that accompanied
2782 it, in short order, but by the time that happened, she'd
2783 have plenty of Whuffie with the new, thousands-strong ad-hoc.</P>
2785 like to study the plans that Imagineering comes through with, do
2787 <P>I started to object, to remind her that speed was of the essence,
2788 but she beat me to it.</P>
2792 me and tell me everything was forgiven, but she bought in, and that
2793 was enough.</P>
2794 <HR>
2795 <P>My systems came back online sometime that day, and I hardly
2796 noticed, I was so preoccupied with the new Mansion. Holy shit, was
2797 it ever audacious: since the first Mansion opened in California in
2798 1969, no one had ever had the guts to seriously fuxor with it. Oh,
2799 sure, the Paris version, Phantom Manor, had a slightly different
2800 storyline, but it was just a minor bit of tweakage to satisfy the
2801 European market at the time. No one wanted to screw up the legend.</P>
2803 been to Disney World any number of times as a guest before I settled
2804 in, and truth be told, it had never been my absolute favorite.</P>
2805 <P>But when I returned to Disney World, live and in person, freshly
2806 bored stupid by the three-hour liveheaded flight from Toronto, I'd
2807 found myself crowd-driven to it.</P>
2809 with. Since I was a punk kid snaking my way through crowded subway
2810 platforms, eeling into the only seat on a packed car, I'd
2811 been obsessed with Beating The Crowd.</P>
2813 blackjack player, a compulsive counter of cards, an idiot savant of
2814 odds. He was a pudgy, unassuming engineer, the moderately successful
2815 founder of a moderately successful high-tech startup that had done
2816 something arcane with software agents. While he was only moderately
2817 successful, he was fabulously wealthy: he'd never raised
2818 a cent of financing for his company, and had owned it outright when
2819 he finally sold it for a bathtub full of money. His secret was the
2820 green felt tables of Vegas, where he'd pilgrim off to
2821 every time his bank balance dropped, there to count the monkey-cards
2822 and calculate the odds and Beat The House.</P>
2824 made his nut, he was dressing up in silly disguises and hitting the
2825 tables, grinding out hand after hand of twenty-one, for the sheer
2826 satisfaction of Beating The House. For him, it was pure
2827 brain-reward, a jolt of happy-juice every time the dealer busted and
2828 every time he doubled down on a deckfull of face cards.</P>
2830 I immediately got his compulsion: for me, it was Beating The Crowd,
2831 finding the path of least resistance, filling the gaps, guessing the
2832 short queue, dodging the traffic, changing lanes with a whisper to
2833 spare—moving with precision and grace and, above all,
2835 <P>On that fateful return, I checked into the Fort Wilderness
2836 Campground, pitched my tent, and fairly ran to the ferry docks to
2837 catch a barge over to the Main Gate.</P>
2838 <P>Crowds were light until I got right up to Main Gate and the
2839 ticketing queues. Suppressing an initial instinct to dash for the
2840 farthest one, beating my ferrymates to what rule-of-thumb said would
2841 have the shortest wait, I stepped back and did a quick visual survey
2842 of the twenty kiosks and evaluated the queued-up huddle in front of
2843 each. Pre-Bitchun, I'd have been primarily interested in
2844 their ages, but that is less and less a measure of anything other
2845 than outlook, so instead I carefully examined their queuing styles,
2846 their dress, and more than anything, their burdens.</P>
2848 efficiently negotiate the complexities of a queue through what they
2849 carry than through any other means—if only more people
2850 realized it. The classic, of course, is the unladen citizen, a
2851 person naked of even a modest shoulderbag or marsupial pocket. To
2852 the layperson, such a specimen might be thought of as a sure bet for
2853 a fast transaction, but I'd done an informal study and
2854 come to the conclusion that these brave iconoclasts are often the
2855 flightiest of the lot, left smiling with bovine mystification,
2856 patting down their pockets in a fruitless search for a writing
2857 implement, a piece of ID, a keycard, a rabbit's foot, a
2858 rosary, a tuna sandwich.</P>
2860 Worrier anytime. Such a person is apt to be carefully slung with
2861 four or five carriers of one description or another, from bulging
2862 cargo pockets to clever military-grade strap-on pouches with
2863 biometrically keyed closures. The thing to watch for is the
2864 ergonomic consideration given to these conveyances: do they balance,
2865 are they slung for minimum interference and maximum ease of access?
2866 Someone who's given that much consideration to their
2867 gear is likely spending their time in line determining which bits
2868 and pieces they'll need when they reach its headwaters
2869 and is holding them at ready for fastest-possible processing.</P>
2870 <P>This is a tricky call, since there are lookalike pretenders,
2872 organizational smarts to figure out what they should
2874 bags and pockets and pouches, but the telltale is the efficiency of
2875 that slinging. These pack mules will sag beneath their loads,
2876 juggling this and that while pushing overloose straps up on their
2877 shoulders.</P>
2878 <P>I spied a queue that was made up of a group of Road Worriers, a
2879 queue that was slightly longer than the others, but I joined it and
2880 ticced nervously as I watched my progress relative to the other
2881 spots I could've chosen. I was borne out, a positive
2882 omen for a wait-free World, and I was sauntering down Main Street,
2883 USA long before my ferrymates.</P>
2884 <P>Returning to Walt Disney World was a homecoming for me. My
2885 parents had brought me the first time when I was all of ten, just as
2886 the first inklings of the Bitchun society were trickling into
2887 everyone's consciousness: the death of scarcity, the
2888 death of death, the struggle to rejig an economy that had grown up
2889 focused on nothing but scarcity and death. My memories of the trip
2890 are dim but warm, the balmy Florida climate and a sea of smiling
2891 faces punctuated by magical, darkened moments riding in OmniMover
2892 cars, past diorama after diorama.</P>
2893 <P>I went again when I graduated high school and was amazed by the
2894 richness of detail, the grandiosity and grandeur of it all. I spent
2895 a week there stunned bovine, grinning and wandering from corner to
2897 <P>The Park became a touchstone for me, a constant in a world where
2898 everything changed. Again and again, I came back to the Park,
2899 grounding myself, communing with all the people I'd
2900 been.</P>
2901 <P>That day I bopped from land to land, ride to ride, seeking out
2902 the short lines, the eye of the hurricane that crowded the Park to
2903 capacity. I'd take high ground, standing on a bench or
2904 hopping up on a fence, and do a visual reccy of all the queues in
2905 sight, try to spot prevailing currents in the flow of the crowd,
2906 generally having a high old obsessive time. Truth be told, I
2907 probably spent as much time looking for walk-ins as I would've
2908 spent lining up like a good little sheep, but I had more fun and got
2909 more exercise.</P>
2910 <P>The Haunted Mansion was experiencing a major empty spell: the
2911 Snow Crash Spectacular parade had just swept through Liberty Square
2912 en route to Fantasyland, dragging hordes of guests along with it,
2913 dancing to the JapRap sounds of the comical Sushi-K and aping the
2914 movements of the brave Hiro Protagonist. When they blew out, Liberty
2915 Square was a ghost town, and I grabbed the opportunity to ride the
2916 Mansion five times in a row, walking on every time.</P>
2917 <P>The way I tell it to Lil, I noticed her and then I noticed the
2918 Mansion, but to tell the truth it was the other way around.</P>
2919 <P>The first couple rides through, I was just glad of the aggressive
2920 air conditioning and the delicious sensation of sweat drying on my
2921 skin. But on the third pass, I started to notice just how goddamn
2922 cool the thing was. There wasn't a single bit of tech
2923 more advanced than a film-loop projector in the whole place, but it
2924 was all so cunningly contrived that the illusion of a haunted house
2925 was perfect: the ghosts that whirled through the ballroom were
2927 ghosts that sang in comical tableaux through the graveyard were
2928 equally convincing, genuinely witty and simultaneously creepy.</P>
2930 hostile eyes worked into the wallpaper's pattern, the
2931 motif repeated in the molding, the chandeliers, the photo gallery. I
2932 began to pick out the words to “Grim Grinning Ghosts,” the song that is repeated throughout the ride, whether in
2933 sinister organ-tones repeating the main theme troppo troppo or the
2934 spritely singing of the four musical busts in the graveyard.</P>
2936 pass through, this time noticing that the overaggressive AC was,
2937 actually, mysterious chills that blew through the rooms as wandering
2938 spirits made their presence felt. By the time I debarked for the
2939 fifth time, I was whistling the tune with jazzy improvisations in a
2940 mixed-up tempo.</P>
2943 seen a dozen castmembers picking up trash that day, seen it so
2944 frequently that I'd started doing it myself. She grinned
2945 slyly at me as I debarked into the fried-food-and-disinfectant
2946 perfume of the Park, hands in pockets, thoroughly pleased with
2948 hunk of art.</P>
2949 <P>I smiled back at her, because it was only natural that one of the
2950 Whuffie-kings who were privileged to tend this bit of heavenly
2951 entertainment should notice how thoroughly I was enjoying her work.</P>
2952 <P>“That's really, really Bitchun,” I said to her, admiring the titanic mountains of Whuffie my
2953 HUD attributed to her.</P>
2954 <P>She was in character, and not supposed to be cheerful, but
2955 castmembers of her generation can't help but be
2956 friendly. She compromised between ghastly demeanor and her natural
2957 sweet spirit, and leered a grin at me, thumped through a zombie's
2960 <P>I groaned appreciatively, and started to notice just how very
2961 cute she was, this little button of a girl with her rotting maid's
2962 uniform and her feather-shedding duster. She was just so clean and
2963 scrubbed and happy about everything, she radiated it and made me
2966 you ghouls off? I'd love to take you out for a Zombie or
2968 <P>Which led to more horrifying banter, and to my taking her out for
2969 a couple at the Adventurer's Club, learning her age in
2970 the process and losing my nerve, telling myself that there was
2971 nothing we could possibly have to say to each other across a
2972 century-wide gap.</P>
2973 <P>While I tell Lil that I noticed her first and the Mansion second,
2975 I never told her this—that the thing I love best about
2976 the Mansion is:</P>
2978 <HR>
2979 <P>Dan and I spent the day riding the Mansion, drafting scripts for
2980 the telepresence players who we hoped to bring on-board. We were in
2981 a totally creative zone, the dialog running as fast as he could
2982 transcribe it. Jamming on ideas with Dan was just about as terrific
2983 as a pass-time could be.</P>
2984 <P>I was all for leaking the plan to the Net right away, getting
2985 hearts-and-minds action with our core audience, but Lil turned it
2986 down.</P>
2987 <P>She was going to spend the next couple days quietly politicking
2988 among the rest of the ad-hoc, getting some support for the idea, and
2989 she didn't want the appearance of impropriety that would
2990 come from having outsiders being brought in before the ad-hoc.</P>
2992 skill I'd never really mastered. Dan was good at it, Lil
2993 was good at it, but me, I think that I was too self-centered to ever
2994 develop good skills as a peacemaker. In my younger days, I assumed
2995 that it was because I was smarter than everyone else, with no
2996 patience for explaining things in short words for mouth-breathers
2999 but I'm hardly a genius. Especially when it comes to
3000 people. Probably comes from Beating The Crowd, never seeing
3002 <P>I never would have made it into the Liberty Square ad-hoc on my
3003 own. Lil made it happen for me, long before we started sleeping
3004 together. I'd assumed that her folks would be my best
3005 allies in the process of joining up, but they were too jaded, too
3006 ready to take the long sleep to pay much attention to a newcomer
3007 like me.</P>
3008 <P>Lil took me under her wing, inviting me to after-work parties,
3009 talking me up to her cronies, quietly passing around copies of my
3010 thesis-work. And she did the same in reverse, sincerely extolling
3011 the virtues of the others I met, so that I knew what there was to
3012 respect about them and couldn't help but treat them as
3013 individuals.</P>
3015 palled around with Lil, and once he arrived, Dan, and with
3016 net-friends around the world. The ad-hocs that I worked with all day
3017 treated me with basic courtesy but not much friendliness.</P>
3018 <P>I guess I treated them the same. When I pictured them in my mind,
3019 they were a faceless, passive-aggressive mass, too caught up in the
3020 starchy world of consensus-building to ever do much of anything.</P>
3021 <P>Dan and I threw ourselves into it headlong, trolling the Net for
3022 address lists of Mansion-otakus from the four corners of the globe,
3023 spreadsheeting them against their timezones, temperaments, and, of
3024 course, their Whuffie.</P>
3027 been sputtering up and down for a couple days now, and I kept
3028 meaning to go to the doctor, but I'd never gotten
3030 of urgency when I remembered that this meant my backup was
3031 stale-dating, but the Mansion always took precedence.</P>
3033 <P>I tapped the display. “See these?” It was a fan-site, displaying a collection of animated 3-D
3034 meshes of various elements of the Mansion, part of a giant
3035 collaborative project that had been ongoing for decades, to build an
3037 used those meshes to build my own testing fly-throughs.</P>
3039 said. “That guy must be a total <EM>fiend</EM>.” The meshes' author had painstakingly modeled,
3040 chained and animated every ghost in the ballroom scene, complete
3041 with the kinematics necessary for full motion. Where a “normal” fan-artist might've used a standard human
3042 kinematics library for the figures, this one had actually written
3043 his own from the ground up, so that the ghosts moved with a spectral
3044 fluidity that was utterly unhuman.</P>
3045 <P>“Who's the author?” Dan asked. “Do we have him on our list yet?”</P>
3049 submitted the designs a week before my assassination.</P>
3050 <P>“What do you think it means?” I asked Dan, though I had a couple ideas on the subject
3051 myself.</P>
3056 <P>Had I asked him to hang out with Debra? As I remembered it, it
3057 had been his suggestion. Too much to think about.</P>
3059 try to recruit him? Or is he the one that'd convinced
3062 that she wants to take over the Mansion. I know Debra, all she wants
3063 to do is turn ideas into things, as fast and as copiously as
3064 possible. She picks her projects carefully. She's
3065 acquisitive, sure, but she's cautious. She had a great
3066 idea for Presidents, and so she took over. I never heard her talk
3074 taking over, goddamn it, and I'm the only one who seems
3076 <HR>
3077 <P>I came clean to Lil about my systems that night, as we were
3078 fighting. Fighting had become our regular evening pastime, and Dan
3079 had taken to sleeping at one of the hotels on-site rather than
3080 endure it.</P>
3082 going to get killed if we don't get off our asses and
3083 start the rehab,” I said, slamming
3084 myself down on the sofa and kicking at the scratched coffee table. I
3085 heard the hysteria and unreason in my voice and it just made me
3086 madder. I was frustrated by not being able to check in on Suneep and
3087 Dan, and, as usual, it was too late at night to call anyone and do
3088 anything about it. By the morning, I'd have forgotten
3089 again.</P>
3091 doing what I can, Jules. If you've got a better way,
3095 your job to get the ad-hocs ready for it, but you keep telling me
3099 fucking make it happen. What are you doing all day, anyway? Working
3100 shifts at the Mansion? Rearranging deck chairs on the Great Titanic
3103 I've spoken to every goddamn one of them at least twice
3112 <P>“Oh, no you <EM>don't</EM>,” she said, stalking into the room, fuming. “You
3113 can't call me a liar and then refuse to look at the
3114 evidence.” She planted her hands on
3115 her slim little hips and glared at me. She'd gone pale
3116 and I could count every freckle on her face, her throat, her
3117 collarbones, the swell of her cleavage in the old vee-neck shirt
3120 She looked ready to wring my neck.</P>
3122 admitted, not meeting her eyes.</P>
3125 <P>Her expression shifted to one of puzzlement when she failed to
3136 that. Too much to do, and the only times I remembered to call
3137 someone, I was too far from a public terminal or it was too late or
3138 too early. My systems came online a couple times, and I was too busy
3139 with the plans for the Mansion. Lil grew accustomed to the drifts of
3140 hard copy that littered the house, to printing out her annotations
3141 to my designs and leaving them on my favorite chair—to
3142 living like the cavemen of the information age had, surrounded by
3143 dead trees and ticking clocks.</P>
3144 <P>Being offline helped me focus. Focus is hardly the word for
3146 brought home all day, every day, crunching plans, dictating
3147 voicemail. People who wanted to reach me had to haul ass out to the
3149 <P>I grew too obsessed to fight, and Dan moved back, and then it was
3150 my turn to take hotel rooms so that the rattle of my keyboard
3151 wouldn't keep him up nights. He and Lil were working a
3152 full-time campaign to recruit the ad-hoc to our cause, and I started
3153 to feel like we were finally in harmony, about to reach our goal.</P>
3154 <P>I went home one afternoon clutching a sheaf of hardcopy and burst
3155 into the living room, gabbling a mile-a-minute about a wrinkle on my
3156 original plan that would add a third walk-through segment to the
3157 ride, increasing the number of telepresence rigs we could use
3158 without decreasing throughput.</P>
3159 <P>I was mid-babble when my systems came back online. The public
3160 chatter in the room sprang up on my HUD.</P>
3162 clothing and jump you.</EM></P>
3166 <P>My eyes closed, shutting out everything except for the glowing
3167 letters. Quickly, they vanished. I opened my eyes again, looking at
3168 Lil, who was flushed and distracted. Dan looked scared.</P>
3169 <P>“What's going on, Dan?” I asked quietly. My heart hammered in my chest, but I felt
3170 calm and detached.</P>
3172 then gave up and looked at Lil.</P>
3173 <P>Lil had, by that time, figured out that I was back online, that
3174 their secret messaging had been discovered.</P>
3176 asked.</P>
3182 to get out of it. I'll see you at work
3190 out, not bothering to close the door behind me.</P>
3191 <HR>
3192 <P>Dan showed up at the hotel ten minutes after I did and rapped on
3193 my door. I was all-over numb as I opened the door. He had a bottle
3196 <P>He sat down on the bed and stared at the logo-marked wallpaper. I
3197 took the bottle from him, got a couple glasses from the bathroom and
3198 poured.</P>
3203 see you, you freaked her out. Snapping at her. Arguing. Insulting
3206 said.</P>
3214 come out here and tell you it was all a mistake, that you were just
3216 <P>We sat in silence for a long time. I refilled his glass, then my
3217 own.</P>
3221 <P>“I don't need a doctor,” I snapped. The liquor had melted the numbness and left
3222 burning anger and bile, my constant companions. “I need a
3223 friend who doesn't fuck my girlfriend when my back is
3225 <P>I threw my glass at the wall. It bounced off, leaving
3226 tequila-stains on the wallpaper, and rolled under the bed. Dan
3227 started, but stayed seated. If he'd stood up, I
3230 dead pretty soon,” he said. He gave
3232 rehab should take it up over the top. I'll be ready to
3235 Dan, my good friend Dan, was going to kill himself.</P>
3236 <P>“You're going to do it,” I said, sitting down next to him. It hurt to think about it.
3237 I really liked the bastard. He might've been my best
3238 friend.</P>
3239 <P>There was a knock at the door. I opened it without checking the
3240 peephole. It was Lil.</P>
3241 <P>She looked younger than ever. Young and small and miserable. A
3242 snide remark died in my throat. I wanted to hold her.</P>
3243 <P>She brushed past me and went to Dan, who squirmed out of her
3244 embrace.</P>
3246 stood up and sat on the windowsill, staring down at the Seven Seas
3247 Lagoon.</P>
3249 plans on being dead in a couple months,” I
3252 <P>Tears streamed down her face and she seemed to fold in on
3254 <P>I choked on a knob of misery, and I realized that it was Dan, not
3255 Lil, whose loss upset me the most.</P>
3258 thought.</P>
3259 </DIV>
3262 <P>Lying on my hotel bed, mesmerized by the lazy turns of the
3263 ceiling fan, I pondered the possibility that I was nuts.</P>
3265 Society, and even though there were cures, they weren't
3266 pleasant.</P>
3268 I was living for nothing but joy. Her name was Zoya, and I called
3269 her Zed.</P>
3271 famed low-gravity sybarites. Getting staggering drunk is not much
3272 fun at one gee, but at ten to the neg eight, it's a
3274 you're bouncing in a sphere full of other bouncing,
3275 happy, boisterous naked people, things get deeply fun.</P>
3276 <P>I was bouncing around inside a clear sphere that was a mile in
3277 diameter, filled with smaller spheres in which one could procure
3278 bulbs of fruity, deadly concoctions. Musical instruments littered
3280 snag one, tether it to you and start playing. Others would pick up
3281 their own axes and jam along. The tunes varied from terrific to
3282 awful, but they were always energetic.</P>
3283 <P>I had been working on my third symphony on and off, and whenever
3284 I thought I had a nice bit nailed, I'd spend some time
3285 in the sphere playing it. Sometimes, the strangers who jammed in
3286 gave me new and interesting lines of inquiry, and that was good.
3287 Even when they didn't, playing an instrument was a fast
3288 track to intriguing an interesting, naked stranger.</P>
3289 <P>Which is how we met. She snagged a piano and pounded out
3290 barrelhouse runs in quirky time as I carried the main thread of the
3291 movement on a cello. At first it was irritating, but after a short
3292 while I came to a dawning comprehension of what she was doing to my
3294 musicians.</P>
3295 <P>We brought the session to a crashing stop, me bowing furiously as
3296 spheres of perspiration beaded on my body and floated gracefully
3297 into the hydrotropic recyclers, she beating on the 88 like they were
3298 the perp who killed her partner.</P>
3299 <P>I collapsed dramatically as the last note crashed through the
3300 bubble. The singles, couples and groups stopped in midflight coitus
3301 to applaud. She took a bow, untethered herself from the Steinway,
3302 and headed for the hatch.</P>
3303 <P>I coiled my legs up and did a fast burn through the sphere,
3304 desperate to reach the hatch before she did. I caught her as she was
3305 leaving.</P>
3309 <P>She reached out with both hands and squeezed my nose and my unit
3310 simultaneously—not hard, you understand, but playfully.
3312 squirmed through the hatch while I gaped at my burgeoning chub-on.</P>
3313 <P>I chased after her. “Wait,” I called as she tumbled through the spoke of the station
3314 towards the gravity.</P>
3316 arms and hands that stretched for impossible lengths, and she used
3317 them with a spacehand's grace, vaulting herself forward
3318 at speed. I bumbled after her best as I could on my freshman
3319 spacelegs, but by the time I reached the half-gee rim of the
3320 station, she was gone.</P>
3322 done and I went to the bubble to try it out on an oboe. I was just
3323 getting warmed up when she passed through the hatch and tied off to
3324 the piano.</P>
3325 <P>This time, I clamped the oboe under my arm and bopped over to her
3326 before moistening the reed and blowing. I hovered over the piano's
3328 time and I-IV-V progressions, in a feel that swung around from blues
3329 to rock to folk, teasing at the edge of my own melodies. She noodled
3330 at me, I noodled back at her, and her eyes crinkled charmingly
3331 whenever I managed a smidge of tuneful wit.</P>
3332 <P>She was almost completely flatchested, and covered in a fine, red
3333 downy fur, like a chipmunk. It was a jaunter's style,
3334 suited to the climate-controlled, soft-edged life in space. Fifty
3335 years later, I was dating Lil, another redhead, but Zed was my
3336 first.</P>
3337 <P>I played and played, entranced by the fluidity of her movements
3338 at the keyboard, her comical moues of concentration when picking out
3339 a particularly kicky little riff. When I got tired, I took it to a
3340 slow bridge or gave her a solo. I was going to make this last as
3341 long as I could. Meanwhile, I maneuvered my way between her and the
3342 hatch.</P>
3343 <P>When I blew the last note, I was wrung out as a washcloth, but I
3344 summoned the energy to zip over to the hatch and block it. She
3345 calmly untied and floated over to me.</P>
3347 been staring into all afternoon, and watched the smile that started
3348 at their corners and spread right down to her long, elegant toes.
3349 She looked back at me, then, at length, grabbed ahold of my joint
3350 again.</P>
3352 said, and led me to her sleeping quarters, across the station.</P>
3354 <HR>
3355 <P>Zoya had been an early network engineer for the geosynch
3356 broadband constellations that went up at the cusp of the world's
3357 ascent into Bitchunry. She'd been exposed to a lot of
3358 hard rads and low gee and had generally become pretty transhuman as
3359 time went by, upgrading with a bewildering array of third-party
3360 enhancements: a vestigial tail, eyes that saw through most of the RF
3361 spectrum, her arms, her fur, dogleg reversible knee joints and a
3362 completely mechanical spine that wasn't prone to any of
3363 the absolutely inane bullshit that plagues the rest of us, like
3364 lower-back pain, intrascapular inflammation, sciatica and slipped
3365 discs.</P>
3367 on Zed. She only talked when honking and whistling and grabbing and
3368 kissing wouldn't do, and routinely slapped upgrades into
3369 herself on the basis of any whim that crossed her mind, like when
3370 she resolved to do a spacewalk bare-skinned and spent the afternoon
3371 getting tin-plated and iron-lunged.</P>
3372 <P>I fell in love with her a hundred times a day, and wanted to
3373 strangle her twice as often. She stayed on her spacewalk for a
3374 couple of days, floating around the bubble, making crazy faces at
3375 its mirrored exterior. She had no way of knowing if I was inside,
3376 but she assumed that I was watching. Or maybe she didn't,
3378 <P>But then she came back through the lock, strange and wordless and
3379 her eyes full of the stars she'd seen and her metallic
3380 skin cool with the breath of empty space, and she led me a merry
3381 game of tag through the station, the mess hall where we skidded
3382 sloppy through a wobbly ovoid of rice pudding, the greenhouses where
3383 she burrowed like a gopher and shinnied like a monkey, the living
3384 quarters and bubbles as we interrupted a thousand acts of coitus.</P>
3386 followed it up with an act of our own, and truth be told, that was
3387 certainly my expectation when we started the game I came to think of
3388 as the steeplechase, but we never did. Halfway through, I'd
3389 lose track of carnal urges and return to a state of childlike
3390 innocence, living only for the thrill of the chase and the giggly
3391 feeling I got whenever she found some new, even-more-outrageous
3392 corner to turn. I think we became legendary on the station, that
3393 crazy pair that's always zipping in and zipping away,
3394 like having your party crashed by two naked, coed Marx Brothers.</P>
3395 <P>When I asked her to marry me, to return to Earth with me, to live
3396 with me until the universe's mainspring unwound, she
3399 <P>I took her home to Toronto and we took up residence ten stories
3400 underground in overflow residence for the University. Our Whuffie
3401 wasn't so hot earthside, and the endless institutional
3402 corridors made her feel at home while affording her opportunities
3403 for mischief.</P>
3404 <P>But bit by bit, the mischief dwindled, and she started talking
3405 more. At first, I admit I was relieved, glad that my strange, silent
3406 wife was finally acting normal, making nice with the neighbors
3407 instead of pranking them with endless honks and fanny-kicks and
3408 squirt guns. We gave up the steeplechase and she had the doglegs
3409 taken out, her fur removed, her eyes unsilvered to a hazel that was
3410 pretty and as fathomable as the silver had been inscrutable.</P>
3411 <P>We wore clothes. We entertained. I started to rehearse my
3412 symphony in low-Whuffie halls and parks with any musicians I could
3413 drum up, and she came out and didn't play, just sat to
3414 the side and smiled and smiled with a smile that never went beyond
3415 her lips.</P>
3417 <P>She shat herself. She pulled her hair. She cut herself with
3418 knives. She accused me of plotting to kill her. She set fire to the
3419 neighbors' apartments, wrapped herself in plastic
3420 sheeting, dry-humped the furniture.</P>
3421 <P>She went nuts. She did it in broad strokes, painting the walls of
3422 our bedroom with her blood, jagging all night through rant after
3423 rant. I smiled and nodded and faced it for as long as I could, then
3424 I grabbed her and hauled her, kicking like a mule, to the doctor's
3425 office on the second floor. She'd been dirtside for a
3426 year and nuts for a month, but it took me that long to face up to
3427 it.</P>
3428 <P>The doc diagnosed nonchemical dysfunction, which was by way of
3429 saying that it was her mind, not her brain, that was broken. In
3431 <P>You can get counseling for nonchemical dysfunction, basically
3432 trying to talk it out, learn to feel better about yourself. She
3434 <P>She was miserable, suicidal, murderous. In the brief moments of
3435 lucidity that she had under sedation, she consented to being
3436 restored from a backup that was made before we came to Toronto.</P>
3437 <P>I was at her side in the hospital when she woke up. I had
3438 prepared a written synopsis of the events since her last backup for
3439 her, and she read it over the next couple days.</P>
3441 while I was making breakfast in our subterranean apartment. She
3442 sounded so serious, so fun-free, that I knew immediately that the
3445 setting out plates of bacon and eggs, steaming cups of coffee.</P>
3447 to an older version.” She had a
3448 shoulderbag packed, and she had traveling clothes on.</P>
3449 <P><EM>Oh, shit.</EM> “Great,” I said, with forced cheerfulness, making a mental inventory
3450 of my responsibilities dirtside. “Give me a minute or
3452 <P>She shook her head, and anger blazed in her utterly scrutable
3455 <P>It hurt, bad. I had loved the old, steeplechase Zed, had loved
3456 her fun and mischief. The Zed she'd become after we wed
3457 was terrible and terrifying, but I'd stuck with her out
3459 <P>Now she was off to restore herself from a backup made before she
3460 met me. She was going to lop 18 months out of her life, start over
3461 again, revert to a saved version.</P>
3463 <P>I went back to the station a month later, and saw her jamming in
3464 the sphere with a guy who had three extra sets of arms depending
3465 from his hips. He scuttled around the sphere while she played a jig
3466 on the piano, and when her silver eyes lit on me, there wasn't
3468 <P>I died some, too, putting the incident out of my head and
3469 sojourning to Disney World, there to reinvent myself with a new
3470 group of friends, a new career, a new life. I never spoke of Zed
3471 again—especially not to Lil, who hardly needed me to
3472 pollute her with remembrances of my crazy exes.</P>
3473 <HR>
3475 that Zed had gone. It was a slow, seething, ugly nuts that had me
3476 alienating my friends, sabotaging my enemies, driving my girlfriend
3479 run the rehab past the ad-hoc's general meeting. I had
3480 to get my priorities straight.</P>
3482 the Monorail station in the main lobby. The platform was jammed with
3483 happy guests, bright and cheerful and ready for a day of steady,
3484 hypermediated fun. I tried to make myself attend to them as
3485 individuals, but try as I might, they kept turning into a crowd, and
3486 I had to plant my feet firmly on the platform to keep from weaving
3487 among them to the edge, the better to snag a seat.</P>
3488 <P>The meeting was being held over the Sunshine Tree Terrace in
3489 Adventureland, just steps from where I'd been turned
3490 into a road-pizza by the still-unidentified assassin. The
3491 Adventureland ad-hocs owed the Liberty Square crew a favor since my
3492 death had gone down on their turf, so they had given us use of their
3493 prize meeting room, where the Florida sun streamed through the slats
3494 of the shutters, casting a hash of dust-filled shafts of light
3495 across the room. The faint sounds of the tiki-drums and the spieling
3496 Jungle Cruise guides leaked through the room, a low-key ambient buzz
3498 <P>There were almost a hundred ad-hocs in the Liberty Square crew,
3499 almost all second-gen castmembers with big, friendly smiles. They
3500 filled the room to capacity, and there was much hugging and
3501 handshaking before the meeting came to order. I was thankful that
3503 circle-of-chairs, so that Lil was able to stand at a podium and
3504 command a smidge of respect.</P>
3506 brightly. The weepy puffiness was still present around her eyes, if
3507 you knew how to look for it, but she was expert at putting on a
3508 brave face no matter what the ache.</P>
3509 <P>The ad-hocs roared back a collective, “Hi, Lil!” and laughed at their own corny tradition. Oh, they sure were
3510 a barrel of laughs at the Magic Kingdom.</P>
3511 <P>“Everybody knows why we're here, right?” Lil said, with a self-deprecating smile. She'd
3512 been lobbying hard for weeks, after all. “Does anyone
3513 have any questions about the plans? We'd like to start
3515 <P>A guy with deliberately boyish, wholesome features put his arm in
3516 the air. Lil acknowledged him with a nod. “When you say ‘right away,’ do you mean—”</P>
3518 on an eight-week production schedule, and the sooner we start, the
3520 <P>The crowd murmured, unsettled. Lil shot me a withering look. I
3521 shrugged. Politics was not my game.</P>
3523 here, a really streamlined process. The good part is, the process is
3525 working for us. If it's not, hey, we can turn it around
3527 not spending as much time planning as we usually do. It won't
3528 take five years for the idea to prove out, so the risks are
3533 been that hot. But I'm concerned about all these new
3539 The offer we're making to the telepresence players is
3542 <P>Another castmember stood. I recognized him: Dave, a heavyset,
3543 self-important jerk who loved to work the front door, even though he
3544 blew his spiel about half the time. “Lillian,” he said, smiling sadly at her, “I think you're
3545 really making a big mistake here. We love the Mansion, all of us,
3546 and so do the guests. It's a piece of history, and
3547 we're its custodians, not its masters. Changing it like
3548 this, well…” he
3550 If the guests wanted to walk through a funhouse with guys jumping
3552 they'd go to one of the Halloween Houses in their
3556 delivered essentially the same polemic a thousand times—in
3559 red inside.</P>
3564 his custodianship be taken away from him, or whether he does
3565 everything he can to make sure that he's still around to
3566 ensure that his charge is properly cared for. Good custodianship
3569 crowd was getting darker, the faces more set. I resolved not to
3570 speak again until the meeting was done, no matter what the
3571 provocation.</P>
3572 <P>Lil smoothed my remarks over, and fielded a dozen more, and it
3573 looked like the objections would continue all afternoon and all
3574 night and all the next day, and I felt woozy and overwrought and
3575 miserable all at the same time, staring at Lil and her harried smile
3576 and her nervous smoothing of her hair over her ears.</P>
3577 <P>Finally, she called the question. By tradition, the votes were
3578 collected in secret and publicly tabulated over the data-channels.
3579 The group's eyes unfocussed as they called up HUDs and
3580 watched the totals as they rolled in. I was offline and unable to
3581 vote or watch.</P>
3582 <P>At length, Lil heaved a relieved sigh and smiled, dropping her
3583 hands behind her back.</P>
3588 eyes, a meaningful glance between new lovers, and I saw red.
3589 Literally. My vision washed over pink, and a strobe pounded at the
3590 edges of my vision. I took two lumbering steps towards them and
3591 opened my mouth to say something horrible, and what came out was
3593 went numb and my leg slipped out from under me and I crashed to the
3594 floor.</P>
3595 <P>The slatted light from the shutters cast its way across my chest
3596 as I tried to struggle up with my left arm, and then it all went
3597 black.</P>
3598 <HR>
3601 clean and white and decorated with posters of Jiminy Cricket in
3602 doctors' whites with an outsized stethoscope. I came to
3603 on a hard pallet under a sign that reminded me to get a check-up
3604 twice a year, by gum! and I tried to bring my hands up to shield my
3605 eyes from the over bright light and the over-cheerful signage, and
3606 discovered that I couldn't move my arms. Further
3607 investigation revealed that this was because I was strapped down, in
3608 full-on four-point restraint.</P>
3610 again.</P>
3612 along with a serious-looking doctor, apparent 70, with a Norman
3614 <P>“Welcome back, Julius. I'm Doctor Pete,” the doctor said, in a kindly voice that matched the face.
3615 Despite my recent disillusion with castmember bullshit, I found his
3616 schtick comforting.</P>
3617 <P>I slumped back against the pallet while the doc shone lights in
3618 my eyes and consulted various diagnostic apparati. I bore it in
3619 stoic silence, too confounded by the horrible Waaagh sounds to
3620 attempt more speech. The doc would tell me what was going on when he
3621 was ready.</P>
3622 <P>“Does he need to be tied up still?” Dan asked, and I shook my head urgently. Being tied up
3627 <P>Dan protested, but stopped when the doc threatened to send him
3628 out of the room. He took my hand instead.</P>
3629 <P>My nose itched. I tried to ignore it, but it got worse and worse,
3630 until it was all I could think of, the flaming lance of itch that
3631 strobed at the tip of my nostril. Furiously, I wrinkled my face,
3632 rattled at my restraints. The doc absentmindedly noticed my
3633 gyrations and delicately scratched my nose with a gloved finger. The
3634 relief was fantastic. I just hoped my nuts didn't start
3635 itching anytime soon.</P>
3636 <P>Finally, the doctor pulled up a chair and did something that
3637 caused the head of the bed to raise up so that I could look him in
3638 the eye.</P>
3641 problem. Your friend here tells me your systems have been offline
3642 for more than a month. It sure would've been better if
3644 <P>“But you didn't, and things got worse.” He nodded up at Jiminy Cricket's recriminations:
3646 son, but what's done is done. You were restored from a
3647 backup about eight weeks ago, I see. Without more tests, I can't
3648 be sure, but my theory is that the brain-machine interface they
3649 installed at that time had a material defect. It's been
3650 deteriorating ever since, misfiring and rebooting. The shut-downs
3651 are a protective mechanism, meant to keep it from introducing the
3652 kind of seizure you experienced this afternoon. When the interface
3653 senses malfunction, it shuts itself down and boots a diagnostic
3654 mode, attempts to fix itself and come back online.</P>
3656 in cases like this, it's bad news. The interface has
3657 been deteriorating steadily, and it's only a matter of
3661 mouth?</EM></P>
3663 try. The interface has locked up, and it's taken some of
3664 your voluntary nervous processes with it. In time, it'll
3665 probably shut down, but for now, there's no point.
3667 were thrashing pretty hard when they brought you in, and we didn't
3670 this forever. I started shaking.</P>
3671 <P>The doc soothed me, stroking my hand, and in the process pressed
3672 a transdermal on my wrist. The panic receded as the transdermal's
3673 sedative oozed into my bloodstream.</P>
3676 you a new clone and refresh it from your last backup. Unfortunately,
3677 that backup is a few months old. If we'd caught it
3678 earlier, we may've been able to salvage a current
3679 backup, but given the deterioration you've displayed to
3683 it all, never happened. My assassination, the new Hall of Presidents
3684 and my shameful attempt thereon, the fights with Lil, Lil and Dan,
3685 the meeting. My plans for the rehab! All of it, good and bad, every
3686 moment flensed away.</P>
3688 the only one who understood how it had to be done. Without my
3689 relentless prodding, the ad-hocs would surely revert to their old,
3690 safe ways. They might even leave it half-done, halt the process for
3691 an interminable review, present a soft belly for Debra to savage.</P>
3693 <HR>
3694 <P>I had two more seizures before the interface finally gave up and
3695 shut itself down. I remember the first, a confusion of
3696 vision-occluding strobes and uncontrollable thrashing and the taste
3697 of copper, but the second happened without waking me from deep
3698 unconsciousness.</P>
3699 <P>When I came to again in the infirmary, Dan was still there. He
3700 had a day's growth of beard and new worrylines at the
3701 corners of his newly rejuvenated eyes. The doctor came in, shaking
3702 his head.</P>
3704 drawn up the consent forms for the refresh and the new clone will be
3705 ready in an hour or two. In the meantime, I think heavy sedation is
3707 retire this body for you and we'll be all finished
3711 thrilled in my restraints: my voice was back under my control!</P>
3713 doc lost his bedside manner, let his exasperation slip through.
3715 come to me when it all started, well, we might've had
3716 other options. You've got no one to blame but
3720 <P>Dan put his hand on mine. I tried to jerk out from under it, but
3723 <P>“I'm not going to let you kill me,” I said, through clenched teeth. His fingertips were callused,
3724 worked rough with exertion well beyond the normal call of duty.</P>
3725 <P>“No one's killing you, son,” the doctor said. Son, son, son. Who knew how old he was? He
3727 opposite: we're saving you. If you continue like this,
3728 it will only get worse. The seizures, mental breakdown, the whole
3735 <HR>
3736 <P>The irony! Once the doc knew I was serious, he sent Dan out of
3737 the room and rolled his eyes up while he placed a call. I saw his
3738 gorge work as he subvocalized. He left me bound to the table, to
3739 wait.</P>
3740 <P>No clocks in the infirmary, and no internal clock, and it may
3741 have been ten minutes or five hours. I was catheterized, but I
3742 didn't know it until urgent necessity made the discovery
3743 for me.</P>
3744 <P>When the doc came back, he held a small device that I instantly
3745 recognized: a HERF gun.</P>
3747 the Hall of Presidents. This one was smaller, and better made, with
3748 the precise engineering of a surgical tool. The doc raised his
3749 eyebrows at me. “You know what this is,” he said, flatly. A dim corner of my mind gibbered, <EM>he
3751 know. That episode was locked in my mind, invulnerable to backup.</P>
3754 penetrate the interface's shielding and fuse it. It
3756 the best I can do. If this fails, we will restore you from your last
3757 backup. You have to sign the consent before I use it.” He'd dropped all kindly pretense from his voice,
3758 not bothering to disguise his disgust. I was pitching out the
3759 miracle of the Bitchun Society, the thing that had all but obsoleted
3760 the medical profession: why bother with surgery when you can grow a
3761 clone, take a backup, and refresh the new body? Some people swapped
3762 corpuses just to get rid of a cold.</P>
3763 <P>I signed. The doc wheeled my gurney into the crash and hum of the
3764 utilidors and then put it on a freight tram that ran to the
3765 Imagineering compound, and thence to a heavy, exposed Faraday cage.
3766 Of course: using the HERF on me would kill any electronics in the
3767 neighborhood. They had to shield me before they pulled the trigger.</P>
3768 <P>The doc placed the gun on my chest and loosened my restraints. He
3769 sealed the cage and retreated to the lab's door. He
3770 pulled a heavy apron and helmet with faceguard from a hook beside
3771 the door.</P>
3773 pull the trigger. I'll come back in five minutes. Once I
3774 am in the room, place the gun on the floor and do not touch it. It
3775 is only good for a single usage, but I have no desire to find out
3777 <P>He closed the door. I took the pistol in my hand. It was heavy,
3778 dense with its stored energy, the tip a parabolic hollow to better
3779 focus its cone.</P>
3780 <P>I lifted the gun to my temple and let it rest there. My thumb
3781 found the trigger-stud.</P>
3783 the interface forever, paralyzing me, turning me into a thrashing
3784 maniac. I knew that I would never be able to pull the trigger. The
3786 convincing me to let him do that restore.</P>
3787 <P>I opened my mouth to call the doc, and what came out was
3789 <P>The seizure started. My arm jerked and my thumb nailed the stud,
3790 and there was an ozone tang. The seizure stopped.</P>
3792 <HR>
3793 <P>The doc looked sour and pinched when he saw me sitting up on the
3794 gurney, rubbing at my biceps. He produced a handheld diagnostic tool
3795 and pointed it at my melon, then pronounced every bit of digital
3796 microcircuitry in it dead. For the first time since my twenties, I
3797 was no more advanced than nature had made me.</P>
3798 <P>The restraints left purple bruises at my wrists and ankles, where
3799 I'd thrashed against them. I hobbled out of the Faraday
3800 cage and the lab under my own power, but just barely, my muscles
3801 groaning from the inadvertent isometric exercises of my seizure.</P>
3802 <P>Dan was waiting in the utilidor, crouched and dozing against the
3803 wall. The doc shook him awake and his head snapped up, his hand
3804 catching the doc's in a lightning-quick reflex. It was
3805 easy to forget Dan's old line of work here in the Magic
3806 Kingdom, but when he smoothly snagged the doc's arm and
3807 sprang to his feet, eyes hard and alert, I remembered. My old pal,
3808 the action hero.</P>
3809 <P>Quickly, Dan released the doc and apologized. He assessed my
3810 physical state and wordlessly wedged his shoulder in my armpit,
3811 supporting me. I didn't have the strength to stop him. I
3812 needed sleep.</P>
3816 boarded the waiting tram.</P>
3818 the Contemporary, and brought me up to my door. He keycarded the
3819 lock and stood awkwardly as I hobbled into the empty room that was
3820 my new home, as I collapsed into the bed that was mine now.</P>
3821 <P>With an apologetic look, he slunk away, back to Lil and the house
3823 <P>I slapped on a sedative transdermal that the doc had given me,
3824 and added a mood-equalizer that he'd recommended to
3826 </DIV>
3829 <P>The meds helped me cope with the next couple of days, starting
3830 the rehab on the Mansion. We worked all night erecting a scaffolding
3831 around the facade, though no real work would be done on it—we
3832 wanted the appearance of rapid progress, and besides, I had an idea.</P>
3833 <P>I worked alongside Dan, using him as a personal secretary,
3834 handling my calls, looking up plans, monitoring the Net for the
3835 first grumblings as the Disney-going public realized that the
3836 Mansion was being taken down for a full-blown rehab. We didn't
3837 exchange any unnecessary words, standing side by side without ever
3839 really feel awkward around Dan, anyway. He never let me, and besides
3840 we had our hands full directing disappointed guests away from the
3841 Mansion. A depressing number of them headed straight for the Hall of
3842 Presidents.</P>
3844 screed about the Mansion to appear. Dan read it aloud off his HUD:
3845 “Hey! Anyone hear anything about scheduled maintenance at
3846 the HM? I just buzzed by on the way to the new H of P's
3848 castmembers swarming in and out, see the pic. I hope they're
3849 not screwing up a good thing. BTW, don't miss the new H
3854 and she's on the list. Good Whuffie, lots of Mansion
3858 in costume, and put 'em up on the scaffolds. Give them
3859 outsized, bat-adorned tools and get them to play at construction
3860 activity in thumpy, undead pantomime. In time, Suneep and his gang
3861 would have a batch of telepresence robots up and running, and we'd
3862 move to them, get them wandering the queue area, interacting with
3863 curious guests. The new Mansion would be open for business in 48
3864 hours, albeit in stripped-down fashion. The scaffolding made for a
3865 nice weenie, a visual draw that would pull the hordes that thronged
3866 Debra's Hall of Presidents over for a curious peek or
3867 two. Buzz city.</P>
3869 <HR>
3870 <P>Dan paged this Kim person and spoke to her as she was debarking
3871 the Pirates of the Caribbean. I wondered if she was the right person
3872 for the job: she seemed awfully enamored of the rehabs that Debra
3873 and her crew had performed. If I'd had more time, I
3874 would've run a deep background check on every one of the
3876 <P>Dan made some small talk with Kim, speaking aloud in deference to
3877 my handicap, before coming to the point. “We read your
3879 first one to notice it, and we wondered if you'd be
3880 interested in coming by to find out a little more about our
3883 <P>Reflexively, I tried to pull up a HUD with my files on the
3884 Mansion fans we hoped to recruit. Of course, nothing happened. I'd
3885 done that a dozen times that morning, and there was no end in sight.
3886 I couldn't seem to get lathered up about it, though, nor
3887 about anything else, not even the hickey just visible under Dan's
3888 collar. The transdermal mood-balancer on my bicep was seeing to
3891 Cemetery, two cast members, male, in Mansion costumes. About
3895 in a hipster climate-control cowl that clung to and released her
3896 limbs, which were long and double-kneed. All the rage among the
3898 <P>But the resemblance to my killer ended with her dress and body.
3899 She wasn't wearing a designer face, rather one that had
3900 enough imperfections to be the one she was born with, eyes set close
3901 and nose wide and slightly squashed.</P>
3902 <P>I admired the way she moved through the crowd, fast and low but
3903 without jostling anyone. “Kim,” I called as she drew near. “Over here.”</P>
3904 <P>She gave a happy shriek and made a beeline for us. Even charging
3905 full-bore, she was good enough at navigating the crowd that she
3906 didn't brush against a single soul. When she reached us,
3908 Kim!” she said, pumping my arm with
3909 the peculiar violence of the extra-jointed. “Julius,” I said, then waited while she repeated the process with Dan.</P>
3916 <P>I laughed, and so did Dan. It was a polite, castmembery sort of
3918 better explain it to you first,” I
3919 said.</P>
3921 said, and gave my hand another squeeze.</P>
3922 <P>I let go of her hand and ran down an abbreviated version of the
3923 rehab plans, leaving out anything about Debra and her ad-hocs. Kim
3924 drank it all in greedily. She cocked her head at me as I ran it
3925 down, eyes wide. It was disconcerting, and I finally asked, “Are
3928 starting a new Mansion scrapbook. I have one for every ride in the
3931 ad-hoc business was tabu inside Park, so much so that it hadn't
3932 occurred to me that the new castmembers we brought in would want to
3933 record every little detail and push it out over the Net as a big old
3934 Whuffie collector.</P>
3936 said. She looked worried, and I really started to grasp how
3937 important the Mansion was to the people we were recruiting, how much
3938 of a privilege we were offering them.</P>
3942 <P>We led Kim into a utilidor and down to costuming. She was
3943 half-naked by the time we got there, literally tearing off her
3944 clothes in anticipation of getting into character. Sonya, a Liberty
3945 Square ad-hoc that we'd stashed at costuming, already
3946 had clothes waiting for her, a rotting maid's uniform
3947 with an oversized toolbelt.</P>
3948 <P>We left Kim on the scaffolding, energetically troweling a
3949 water-based cement substitute onto the wall, scraping it off and
3950 moving to a new spot. It looked boring to me, but I could believe
3953 <HR>
3954 <P>By lunchtime, there were ten drilling, hammering, troweling new
3955 castmembers around the scaffolding, pushing black wheelbarrows,
3958 said to Dan. I was exhausted and soaked with sweat, and the
3959 transdermal under my costume itched. Despite the happy-juice in my
3960 bloodstream, a streak of uncastmemberly crankiness was shot through
3961 my mood. I needed to get offstage.</P>
3962 <P>Dan helped me hobble away, and as we hit the utilidor, he
3963 whispered in my ear, “This was a great idea, Julius.
3965 <P>We jumped a tram over to Imagineering, my chest swollen with
3966 pride. Suneep had three of his assistants working on the first
3967 generation of mobile telepresence robots for the exterior, and had
3968 promised a prototype for that afternoon. The robots were easy
3970 the costumes and kinematics routines were something else. Thinking
3971 about what he and Suneep's gang of hypercreative
3972 super-geniuses would come up with cheered me up a little, as did
3973 being out of the public eye.</P>
3975 tornado. Imagineer packs rolled in and out with arcane gizmos, or
3976 formed tight argumentative knots in the corners as they shouted over
3977 whatever their HUDs were displaying. In the middle of it all was
3978 Suneep, who looked like he was barely restraining an urge to shout
3979 Yippee! He was clearly in his element.</P>
3980 <P>He threw his arms open when he caught sight of Dan and me, threw
3981 them wide enough to embrace the whole mad, gibbering chaos. “What
3982 wonderful flumgubbery!” he shouted,
3983 over the noise.</P>
3986 <P>Suneep waved absently, his short fingers describing trivialities
3988 put that team onto something else, a kinematics routine for a class
3989 of flying spooks that use gasbags to stay aloft—silent
3991 coming tremendously. Take a look!” He
3992 pointed a finger at me and, presumably, squirted some data my way.</P>
3994 reminded him gently.</P>
3995 <P>He slapped his forehead, took a moment to push his hair off his
3996 face, and gave me an apologetic wave. “Of course, of
3997 course. Here.” He unrolled an LCD
3998 and handed it to me. A flock of spooks danced on the screen,
3999 rendered against the ballroom scene. They were thematically
4000 consistent with the existing Mansion ghosts, more funny than scary,
4001 and their faces were familiar. I looked around the lab and realized
4004 said, rubbing his hands together. “A very good joke,
4007 said, carefully. “But I really need some robots up and
4008 running by tomorrow night, Suneep. We discussed this, remember?” Without telepresence robots, my recruiting would be limited
4009 to fans like Kim, who lived in the area. I had broader designs than
4010 that.</P>
4012 it. I don't like to stop my people when they have good
4015 <P>Dan turned to greet someone, and I looked to see who it was. Lil.
4016 Of course. She was raccoon-eyed with fatigue, and she reached out
4019 with studied casualness.</P>
4021 Suneep. He fired his finger at her—the flying ghosts, I
4022 imagined. Lil's eyes rolled up for a moment, then she
4023 nodded exhaustedly at him.</P>
4025 said. “I just heard from Lisa. She says the indoor crews
4026 are on-schedule. They've got most of the animatronics
4027 dismantled, and they're taking down the glass in the
4028 Ballroom now.” The Ballroom ghost
4029 effects were accomplished by means of a giant pane of polished glass
4030 that laterally bisected the room. The Mansion had been built around
4034 <P>A pocket of uncomfortable silence descended on us, the roar of
4035 the Imagineers rushing in to fill it.</P>
4037 said, at length.</P>
4041 and my shoulders and squeezed. He smelled of an exotic cocktail of
4042 industrial lubricant, ozone, and fatigue poisons.</P>
4046 <P>Dan met my eye and shook his head apologetically. I squirmed out
4047 from under Suneep's arm and thanked him quietly, then
4048 slunk off to the Contemporary for a hot tub and a couple hours of
4049 sleep.</P>
4050 <HR>
4051 <P>I came back to the Mansion at sundown. It was cool enough that I
4052 took a surface route, costume rolled in a shoulderbag, instead of
4053 riding through the clattering, air-conditioned comfort of the
4054 utilidors.</P>
4055 <P>As a freshening breeze blew across me, I suddenly had a craving
4057 up with in Toronto. It was October, for chrissakes, and a lifetime
4058 of conditioning told me that it was May. I stopped and leaned on a
4059 bench for a moment and closed my eyes. Unbidden, and with the
4060 clarity of a HUD, I saw High Park in Toronto, clothed in its autumn
4061 colors, fiery reds and oranges, shades of evergreen and earthy
4062 brown. God, I needed a vacation.</P>
4063 <P>I opened my eyes and realized that I was standing in front of the
4064 Hall of Presidents, and that there was a queue ahead of me for it,
4065 one that stretched back and back. I did a quick sum in my head and
4066 sucked air between my teeth: they had enough people for five or six
4069 working the turnstiles in Betsy Ross gingham, and she caught my eye
4070 and snapped a nod at me.</P>
4071 <P>I stalked off to the Mansion. A choir of zombie-shambling new
4072 recruits had formed up in front of the gate, and were groaning their
4073 way through “Grim Grinning Ghosts,” with a new call-and-response structure. A small audience
4074 participated, urged on by the recruits on the scaffolding.</P>
4075 <P>“Well, at least that's going right,” I muttered to myself. And it was, except that I could see
4076 members of the ad-hoc looking on from the sidelines, and the looks
4077 weren't kindly. Totally obsessive fans are a good
4079 kind of a pain in the ass, too. They lipsynch the soundtrack, cadge
4080 souvenirs and pester you with smarmy, show-off questions. After a
4081 while, even the cheeriest castmember starts to lose patience,
4082 develop an automatic distaste for them.</P>
4083 <P>The Liberty Square ad-hocs who were working on the Mansion had
4084 been railroaded into approving a rehab, press-ganged into working on
4085 it, and were now forced to endure the company of these grandstanding
4086 megafans. If I'd been there when it all
4088 been able to massage their bruised egos, but now I wondered if it
4089 was too late.</P>
4090 <P>Nothing for it but to do it. I ducked into a utilidor, changed
4091 into my costume and went back onstage. I joined the
4092 call-and-response enthusiastically, walking around to the ad-hocs
4093 and getting them to join in, reluctantly or otherwise.</P>
4094 <P>By the time the choir retired, sweaty and exhausted, a group of
4095 ad-hocs were ready to take their place, and I escorted my recruits
4096 to an offstage break-room.</P>
4097 <HR>
4099 week, and told me that it would be another week before I could have
4100 even five production units. Though he didn't say it, I
4101 got the sense that his guys were out of control, so excited by the
4102 freedom from ad-hoc oversight that they were running wild. Suneep
4103 himself was nearly a wreck, nervous and jumpy. I didn't
4104 press it.</P>
4105 <P>Besides, I had problems of my own. The new recruits were
4106 multiplying. I was staying on top of the fan response to the rehab
4107 from a terminal I'd had installed in my hotel room. Kim
4108 and her local colleagues were fielding millions of hits every day,
4109 their Whuffie accumulating as envious fans around the world logged
4110 in to watch their progress on the scaffolding.</P>
4112 to plan was that the new recruits were doing their own recruiting,
4113 extending invitations to their net-pals to come on down to Florida,
4114 bunk on their sofas and guest-beds, and present themselves to me for
4115 active duty.</P>
4116 <P>The tenth time it happened, I approached Kim in the break-room.
4117 Her gorge was working, her eyes tracked invisible words across the
4118 middle distance. No doubt she was penning yet another breathless
4119 missive about the magic of working in the Mansion. “Hey,
4122 <P>She held up a single finger, then, a moment later, gave me a
4123 bright smile.</P>
4129 quite firm about her turning it in to the laundry every night
4130 instead of wearing it home.</P>
4131 <P>Reluctantly, she stepped into a change-room and switched into her
4132 cowl. We took the utilidor to the Fantasyland exit and walked
4133 through the late-afternoon rush of children and their adults, queued
4134 deep and thick for Snow White, Dumbo and Peter Pan.</P>
4137 the best time of my life, really! A dream come true. I'm
4138 meeting so many interesting people, and I'm really
4139 feeling creative. I can't wait to try out the
4142 and your friends are up to here. You're working hard,
4143 putting on a good show. I like the songs you've been
4145 <P>She did one of those double-kneed shuffles that was the basis of
4146 any number of action vids those days and she was suddenly standing
4147 in front of me, hand on my shoulder, looking into my eyes. She
4148 looked serious.</P>
4156 my excuse, then?</EM></P>
4158 just something I wanted to discuss with you. The people you-all have
4159 been bringing down to work for me, they're all really
4163 hours in the day for me to stay on top of the new folks, the rehab,
4164 everything. Not to mention that until we open the new Mansion,
4165 there's a limited number of extras we can use out front.
4167 someone on stage without proper training, or that we're
4168 going to run out of uniforms; I'm also concerned about
4169 people coming all the way here and discovering that there aren't
4173 Debra, over at the Hall of Presidents, and she says she can pick up
4175 could even rotate back and forth!” She
4176 was clearly proud of her foresight.</P>
4177 <P>My ears buzzed. Debra, one step ahead of me all along the way.
4178 She probably suggested that Kim do some extra recruiting in the
4179 first place. She'd take in the people who came down to
4180 work the Mansion, convince them they'd been hard done by
4181 the Liberty Square crew, and rope them into her little Whuffie
4182 ranch, the better to seize the Mansion, the Park, the whole of Walt
4183 Disney World.</P>
4185 to that,” I said, carefully.
4188 <P>Kim cocked quizzical, but let it go. I bit my tongue. The pain
4189 brought me back to reality, and I started planning costume
4190 production, training rosters, bunking. God, if only Suneep would
4191 finish the robots!</P>
4192 <HR>
4195 won't fly. The group is already upset that all the glory
4196 is going to the new people, they'll never let us bring
4197 more in. They also won't stop working on the rehab to
4198 train them, costume them, feed them and mother them. They're
4199 losing Whuffie every day that the Mansion's shut up, and
4204 rehab in the meeting. Of course he'd gone over. Lil and
4205 Dan stood side by side on the porch of the house where I'd
4206 lived. I'd driven out that night to convince Lil to sell
4207 the ad-hocs on bringing in more recruits, but it wasn't
4208 going according to plan. They wouldn't even let me in
4209 the house.</P>
4212 manage her. Take some goddamn responsibility for once in your
4215 apologetic look. Lil glared a moment longer, then went into the
4216 house.</P>
4218 Biggest thing ever. Flash-baking is taking off in nightclubs, dance
4219 mixes with the DJ's backup being shoved in bursts into
4224 agreeing.</P>
4225 <P>Driving back to the hotel, I decided I needed to talk to Kim. She
4226 was a problem I didn't need, and maybe a problem I could
4227 solve. I pulled a screeching U-turn and drove the little runabout to
4228 her place, a tiny condo in a crumbling complex that had once been a
4230 <P>Her place was easy to spot. All the lights were burning, faint
4231 conversation audible through the screen door. I jogged up the steps
4232 two at a time, and was about to knock when a familiar voice drifted
4233 through the screen.</P>
4235 never really thought about using streetmosphere players to liven up
4236 the queue area, but you're making a lot of sense. You
4240 <P>I heard Kim and her young friends chatting excitedly, proudly.
4241 The anger and fear suffused me from tip to toe, and I felt suddenly
4242 light and cool and ready to do something terrible.</P>
4244 <HR>
4246 <P>I almost chortled over the foolproof simplicity of my plan as I
4247 slipped in through the cast entrance using the ID card I'd
4248 scored when my systems went offline and I was no longer able to
4249 squirt my authorization at the door.</P>
4250 <P>I changed clothes in a bathroom on Main Street, switching into a
4251 black cowl that completely obscured my features, then slunk through
4252 the shadows along the storefronts until I came to the moat around
4253 Cinderella's castle. Keeping low, I stepped over the
4254 fence and duck-walked down the embankment, then slipped into the
4255 water and sloshed across to the Adventureland side.</P>
4256 <P>Slipping along to the Liberty Square gateway, I flattened myself
4257 in doorways whenever I heard maintenance crews passing in the
4258 distance, until I reached the Hall of Presidents, and in a twinkling
4259 I was inside the theater itself.</P>
4260 <P>Humming the Small World theme, I produced a short wrecking bar
4262 <P>The primary broadcast units were hidden behind a painted scrim
4263 over the stage, and they were surprisingly well built for a first
4264 generation tech. I really worked up a sweat smashing them, but I
4265 kept at it until not a single component remained recognizable. The
4266 work was slow and loud in the silent Park, but it lulled me into a
4267 sleepy reverie, an autohypnotic swing-bang-swing-bang timeless time.
4268 To be on the safe side, I grabbed the storage units and slipped them
4269 into the cowl.</P>
4270 <P>Locating their backup units was a little trickier, but years of
4271 hanging out at the Hall of Presidents while Lil tinkered with the
4272 animatronics helped me. I methodically investigated every nook,
4273 cranny and storage area until I located them, in what had been a
4274 break-room closet. By now, I had the rhythm of the thing, and I made
4275 short work of them.</P>
4276 <P>I did one more pass, wrecking anything that looked like it might
4277 be a prototype for the next generation or notes that would help them
4281 that she could get up and running in a few days. I wasn't
4282 doing anything permanent, I was just buying myself a day or two.</P>
4283 <P>I made my way clean out of the Park without being spotted, and
4284 sloshed my way into my runabout, shoes leaking water from the moat.</P>
4286 <HR>
4288 temperament for Machiavellian shenanigans, and I left a trail a mile
4289 wide, from the muddy footprints in the Contemporary's
4290 lobby to the wrecking bar thoughtlessly left behind, with my cowl
4291 and the storage units from the Hall, forgotten on the back seat of
4292 my runabout.</P>
4294 Grinning Ghosts” as I made my way
4295 from Costuming, through the utilidor, out to Liberty Square, a few
4296 minutes before the Park opened.</P>
4297 <P>Standing in front of me were Lil and Debra. Debra was holding my
4298 cowl and wrecking bar. Lil held the storage units.</P>
4300 the emotion I felt was unmuffled, loud and yammering.</P>
4302 <P>I ran past them, along the road to Adventureland, past the Tiki
4303 Room where I'd been killed, past the Adventureland gate
4304 where I'd waded through the moat, down Main Street. I
4305 ran and ran, elbowing early guests, trampling flowers, knocking over
4306 an apple cart across from the Penny Arcade.</P>
4308 outrun Lil and Debra and all my problems. I'd thought
4309 wrong. They were both there, a step behind me, puffing and red.
4310 Debra held my wrecking bar like a weapon, and she brandished it at
4311 me.</P>
4312 <P>“You're a goddamn idiot, you know that?” she said. I think if we'd been alone, she
4317 right, you are an idiot. The ad-hoc's meeting in
4320 feeling belligerent. “You going to honor me for all my
4326 did it, and now we're fighting each other instead of
4329 Julius,” Debra said, quietly and
4333 <P>I barked a humorless laugh. Guests were starting to stream into
4334 the now-open Park, and several of them were watching intently as the
4335 three costumed castmembers shouted at each other. I could feel my
4336 Whuffie hemorrhaging. “Debra, you are purely full of
4337 shit, and your work is trite and unimaginative. You're a
4338 fucking despoiler and you don't even have the guts to
4340 <P>“That's <EM>enough</EM>, Julius,” Lil said, her face hard, her rage barely in check. “We're
4342 <P>Debra walked a pace behind me, Lil a pace before, all the way
4343 through the crowd to Adventureland. I saw a dozen opportunities to
4344 slip into a gap in the human ebb and flow and escape custody, but I
4345 didn't try. I wanted a chance to tell the whole world
4347 <P>Debra followed us in when we mounted the steps to the meeting
4349 be here, Debra,” she said in
4350 measured tones.</P>
4356 <P>It was SRO in the meeting room, packed to the gills with the
4357 entire ad-hoc, except for my new recruits. No work was being done on
4358 the rehab, then, and the Liberty Belle would be sitting at her dock.
4359 Even the restaurant crews were there. Liberty Square must've
4360 been a ghost town. It gave the meeting a sense of urgency: the
4361 knowledge that there were guests in Liberty Square wandering
4362 aimlessly, looking for castmembers to help them out. Of course,
4365 doubt in my mind that I was in deep shit. Even Dan, sitting in the
4366 front row, looked angry. I nearly started crying right then.
4367 Dan—oh, Dan. My pal, my confidant, my patsy, my rival,
4368 my nemesis. Dan, Dan, Dan. I wanted to beat him to death and hug him
4369 at the same time.</P>
4370 <P>Lil took the podium and tucked stray hairs behind her ears.
4372 said. I stood to her left and Debra stood to her right.</P>
4374 get this done quickly. We all have important work to get to. I'll
4375 run down the facts: last night, a member of this ad-hoc vandalized
4376 the Hall of Presidents, rendering it useless. It's
4377 estimated that it will take at least a week to get it back up and
4378 running.</P>
4380 isn't acceptable. This has never happened before, and it
4383 be done on the Mansion until the Hall of Presidents is fully
4386 only one working at the Hall that week. “Disney World
4388 said. “All the different ad-hocs work together, and we do
4389 it to make the Park as good as we can. We lose sight of that at our
4392 something,” I said, as calmly as I
4393 could manage.</P>
4396 <P>I took a deep breath. “I did it, all right?” I said. My voice cracked. “I did it, and I don't
4397 have any excuse for having done it. It may not have been the
4398 smartest thing I've ever done, but I think you all
4399 should understand how I was driven to it.</P>
4401 competition with one another here, but we all know that that's
4402 just a polite fiction. The truth is that there's real
4403 competition in the Park, and that the hardest players are the crew
4406 to engineer the distraction, they <EM>murdered</EM> me!” I heard the shriek creeping into my voice, but I couldn't
4407 do anything about it.</P>
4409 same side is fine. It lets us work together in peace. But that
4410 changed the day they had me shot. If you keep on believing it,
4411 you're going to lose the Mansion, the Liberty Belle, Tom
4412 Sawyer Island—all of it. All the history we have with
4415 and replaced with the sterile, thoughtless shit that's
4416 taken over the Hall. Once that happens, there's nothing
4417 left that makes this place special. Anyone can get the same
4418 experience sitting at home on the sofa! What happens then, huh? How
4419 much longer do you think this place will stay open once the only
4423 I know I'm not a member of this group, but since it was
4424 my work that was destroyed last night, I think I would like to
4426 mind.” She paused, but no one spoke
4427 up.</P>
4429 hold you responsible for what happened last night. We know who was
4430 responsible, and he needs help. I urge you to see to it that he gets
4431 it.</P>
4434 side of the Park. This is a special place, and it couldn't
4435 exist without all of our contributions. What happened to Julius was
4436 terrible, and I sincerely hope that the person responsible is caught
4437 and brought to justice. But that person wasn't me or any
4438 of the people in my ad-hoc.</P>
4440 generous offer of assistance, and we'll take you up on
4441 it. That goes for all of you—come on by the Hall,
4443 running in no time.</P>
4445 and for all: neither me nor my ad-hoc have any desire to take over
4446 the operations of the Mansion. It is a terrific attraction, and
4448 doing. If you've been worrying about it, then you can
4455 ask you all a favor, first. I'd like us to keep the
4456 details of last night's incident to ourselves. Letting
4457 the guests and the world know about this ugly business isn't
4460 tabulated on the HUDs, then Lil gave them a million-dollar smile.
4463 <HR>
4464 <P>I spent the day at the hotel, listlessly scrolling around on my
4465 terminal. Lil had made it very clear to me after the meeting that I
4468 that meant.</P>
4469 <P>By noon, the news was out. It was hard to pin down the exact
4470 source, but it seemed to revolve around the new recruits. One of
4471 them had told their net-pals about the high drama in Liberty Square,
4472 and mentioned my name.</P>
4473 <P>There were already a couple of sites vilifying me, and I expected
4474 more. I needed some kind of help, that was for sure.</P>
4475 <P>I thought about leaving then, turning my back on the whole
4476 business and leaving Walt Disney World to start yet another new
4477 life, Whuffie-poor and fancy-free.</P>
4479 repute before, not so long ago. That first time Dan and I had palled
4480 around, back at the U of T, I'd been the center of a lot
4481 of pretty ambivalent sentiment, and Whuffie-poor as a man can be.</P>
4482 <P>I slept in a little coffin on-campus, perfectly climate
4483 controlled. It was cramped and dull, but my access to the network
4484 was free and I had plenty of material to entertain myself. While I
4485 couldn't get a table in a restaurant, I was free to
4486 queue up at any of the makers around town and get myself whatever I
4487 wanted to eat and drink, whenever I wanted it. Compared to 99.99999
4488 percent of all the people who'd ever lived, I had a life
4489 of unparalleled luxury.</P>
4490 <P>Even by the standards of the Bitchun Society, I was hardly a
4491 rarity. The number of low-esteem individuals at large was
4492 significant, and they got along just fine, hanging out in parks,
4493 arguing, reading, staging plays, playing music.</P>
4495 pal around with, a rare high-net-Whuffie individual who was willing
4496 to fraternize with a shmuck like me. He'd stand me to
4497 meals at sidewalk cafes and concerts at the SkyDome, and shoot down
4498 any snotty reputation-punk who sneered at my Whuffie tally. Being
4499 with Dan was a process of constantly reevaluating my beliefs in the
4500 Bitchun Society, and I'd never had a more vibrant,
4501 thought-provoking time in all my life.</P>
4502 <P>I could have left the Park, deadheaded to anywhere in the world,
4503 started over. I could have turned my back on Dan, on Debra, on Lil
4504 and the whole mess.</P>
4507 </DIV>
4510 <P>Doctor Pete answered on the third ring, audio-only. In the
4511 background, I heard a chorus of crying children, the constant
4512 backdrop of the Magic Kingdom infirmary.</P>
4514 <P>“Hello, Julius. What can I do for you?” Under the veneer of professional medical and castmember
4515 friendliness, I sensed irritation.</P>
4517 really sure. I wanted to see if I could talk it over with you. I'm
4529 I've got important things to do here. Are you sure this
4538 hated how pathetic I sounded. “Can you make an exception?
4541 have to get someone to cover for me. Let's not make a
4546 cautiously.</P>
4550 <P>He surprised me, then, and made me remember why he was still my
4551 friend, even after everything. “Do you want me to come
4556 said, and rang off.</P>
4557 <HR>
4558 <P>He found me on my patio, looking out at the Castle and the peaks
4559 of Space Mountain. To my left spread the sparkling waters of the
4560 Seven Seas Lagoon, to my right, the Property stretched away for mile
4561 after manicured mile. The sun was warm on my skin, faint strains of
4562 happy laughter drifted with the wind, and the flowers were in bloom.
4563 In Toronto, it would be freezing rain, gray buildings, noisome rapid
4564 transit (a monorail hissed by), and hard-faced anonymity. I missed
4565 it.</P>
4566 <P>Dan pulled up a chair next to mine and sat without a word. We
4567 both stared out at the view for a long while.</P>
4571 said. “I want to say something before the doc comes by,
4575 in the first place, and I'm not proud of myself. If you
4576 two were breaking up, that's none of my business, but I
4579 I was too drained for emotion.</P>
4588 <P>He bustled in, his smile lines drawn up into a sour purse and
4589 waited expectantly. I left Dan on the patio while I took a seat on
4590 the bed.</P>
4591 <P>“I'm cracking up or something,” I said. “I've been acting erratically,
4594 rehearsed the speech, but it still wasn't easy to choke
4595 out.</P>
4596 <P>“We both know what's wrong, Julius,” the doc said, impatiently. “You need to be
4597 refreshed from your backup, get set up with a fresh clone and retire
4603 limited resources to allocate. There's a perfectly good
4609 son. All that meds will do is mask the symptoms, while you get
4610 worse. I can't tell you what you want to hear,
4611 unfortunately. Now, If you're ready to take the cure, I
4612 can retire this clone immediately and get you restored into a new
4615 to help me—I can't lose all this.” I couldn't admit my real reasons for being so
4616 attached to this singularly miserable chapter in my life, not even
4617 to myself.</P>
4619 got the Whuffie to make it worth anyone's time to
4620 research a solution to this problem, other than the one that we all
4621 know about. I can give you mood-suppressants, but that's
4625 dope for the rest of your life, son. Eventually, something will
4628 refreshed from your backup. The longer you wait, the more traumatic
4632 mind. Every passing day made it harder to take the cure. To lie down
4633 and wake up friends with Dan, to wake up and be in love with Lil
4634 again. To wake up to a Mansion the way I remembered it, a Hall of
4635 Presidents where I could find Lil bent over with her head in a
4636 President's guts of an afternoon. To lie down and wake
4637 without disgrace, without knowing that my lover and my best friend
4639 </P>
4641 </P>
4643 restored myself from my old backup, I'd lose my last
4649 scrip, then. I could've done that without coming out
4652 understand it until he was gone and I told Dan what had happened.</P>
4654 doctors as highly trained professionals—all that
4655 pre-Bitchun med-school stuff, long internships, anatomy drills...
4656 Truth is, the average doc today gets more training in bedside manner
4658 technician, not an MD, not the way you and I mean it. Anyone with
4659 the kind of knowledge you're looking for is working as a
4660 historical researcher, not a doctor.</P>
4662 supposed to be the authority on medical matters, even though he's
4663 only got one trick: restore from backup. You're
4664 reminding Pete of that, and he's not happy to have it
4666 <HR>
4667 <P>I waited a week before returning to the Magic Kingdom, sunning
4668 myself on the white sand beach at the Contemporary, jogging the Walk
4669 Around the World, taking a canoe out to the wild and overgrown
4670 Discovery Island, and generally cooling out. Dan came by in the
4671 evenings and it was like old times, running down the pros and cons
4672 of Whuffie and Bitchunry and life in general, sitting on my porch
4673 with a sweating pitcher of lemonade.</P>
4674 <P>On the last night, he presented me with a clever little handheld,
4675 a museum piece that I recalled fondly from the dawning days of the
4676 Bitchun Society. It had much of the functionality of my defunct
4677 systems, in a package I could slip in my shirt pocket. It felt like
4678 part of a costume, like the turnip watches the Ben Franklin
4679 streetmosphere players wore at the American Adventure.</P>
4680 <P>Museum piece or no, it meant that I was once again qualified to
4681 participate in the Bitchun Society, albeit more slowly and less
4682 efficiently than I once may've. I took it downstairs the
4683 next morning and drove to the Magic Kingdom's castmember
4684 lot.</P>
4685 <P>At least, that was the plan. When I got down to the
4686 Contemporary's parking lot, my runabout was gone. A
4687 quick check with the handheld revealed the worst: my Whuffie was low
4688 enough that someone had just gotten inside and driven away,
4689 realizing that they could make more popular use of it than I could.</P>
4690 <P>With a sinking feeling, I trudged up to my room and swiped my key
4692 lit up, “Please see the front desk.” My room had been reassigned, too. I had the short end of the
4693 Whuffie stick.</P>
4694 <P>At least there was no mandatory Whuffie check on the monorail
4695 platform, but the other people on the car were none too friendly to
4696 me, and no one offered me an inch more personal space than was
4697 necessary. I had hit bottom.</P>
4698 <HR>
4699 <P>I took the castmember entrance to the Magic Kingdom, clipping my
4700 name tag to my Disney Operations polo shirt, ignoring the glares of
4701 my fellow castmembers in the utilidors.</P>
4702 <P>I used the handheld to page Dan. “Hey there,” he said, brightly. I could tell instantly that I was being
4703 humored.</P>
4705 asked.</P>
4707 <P>In front of the Hall of Presidents. I worked the handheld, pinged
4708 some Whuffie manually. Debra was spiked so high it seemed she'd
4709 never come down, as were Tim and her whole crew in aggregate. They
4710 were drawing from guests by the millions, and from castmembers and
4711 from people who'd read the popular accounts of their
4712 struggle against the forces of petty jealousy and sabotage—i.e.,
4713 me.</P>
4714 <P>I felt light-headed. I hurried along to costuming and changed
4715 into the heavy green Mansion costume, then ran up the stairs to the
4716 Square.</P>
4717 <P>I found Dan sipping a coffee and sitting on a bench under the
4718 giant, lantern-hung Liberty Tree. He had a second cup waiting for
4719 me, and patted the bench next to him. I sat with him and sipped,
4720 waiting for him to spill whatever bit of rotten news he had for me
4723 coffee. Then he stood and strolled over to the Mansion. It wasn't
4724 rope-drop yet, and there weren't any guests in the Park,
4725 which was all for the better, given what was coming next.</P>
4727 lately?” he asked, finally, as we
4728 stood by the pet cemetery, considering the empty scaffolding.</P>
4729 <P>I started to pull out the handheld but he put a hand on my arm.
4732 gang is number one with a bullet. Ever since word got out about what
4733 happened to the Hall, they've been stacking it deep.
4735 <P>My stomach tightened and I found myself grinding my molars.
4738 Tim emerged from the Mansion, wearing a light cotton work-smock. He
4739 had a thoughtful expression, and when he saw us, he beamed his elfin
4740 grin and came over.</P>
4743 I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.</P>
4745 <P>“I haven't told him yet,” Dan said, with forced lightness. “Why don't
4748 admit. We've learned some stuff from the Hall that we
4749 wanted to apply, and at the same time, we wanted to capture some of
4751 <P>I opened my mouth to object, but Dan put a hand on my forearm.
4757 so that it can flash-bake. We've got some high-Whuffie
4758 horror writers pulling together a series of narratives about the
4759 lives of each ghost: how they met their tragic ends, what they've
4760 done since, you know.</P>
4762 stream through the ride pretty much the way they do now, walking
4763 through the preshow and then getting into the ride-vehicles, the
4765 all down</EM>. We trade off throughput for intensity, make it more
4766 of a premium product.</P>
4768 unload zone, you're being chased by these ghosts, these
4770 got Suneep's concept artists going back to the drawing
4771 board, hitting basic research on stuff that'll just
4772 scare the guests silly. When a ghost catches you, lays its hands on
4773 you—wham! Flash-bake! You get its whole grisly story in
4774 three seconds, across your frontal lobe. By the time you've
4775 left, you've had ten or more ghost-contacts, and the
4776 next time you come back, it's all new ghosts with all
4779 put his hands behind his back and rocked on his heels, clearly proud
4780 of himself.</P>
4782 been an ugly decade or so in ride design. Imagineering found a
4783 winning formula for Spaceship Earth, the flagship ride in the big
4784 golf ball, and, in their drive to establish thematic continuity,
4785 they'd turned the formula into a cookie-cutter, stamping
4786 out half a dozen clones for each of the “themed” areas in the Future Showcase. It went like this: first, we
4787 were cavemen, then there was ancient Greece, then Rome burned (cue
4788 sulfur-odor FX), then there was the Great Depression, and, finally,
4789 we reached the modern age. Who knows what the future holds? We do!
4790 We'll all have videophones and be living on the ocean
4791 floor. Once was cute—compelling and inspirational,
4792 even—but six times was embarrassing. Like everyone, once
4793 Imagineering got themselves a good hammer, everything started to
4794 resemble a nail. Even now, the Epcot ad-hocs were repeating the sins
4795 of their forebears, closing every ride with a scene of Bitchun
4796 utopia.</P>
4797 <P>And Debra was repeating the classic mistake, tearing her way
4798 through the Magic Kingdom with her blaster set to flash-bake.</P>
4800 hearing the tremble in my voice. “I thought you said that
4801 you had no designs on the Mansion, that you and Debra wouldn't
4802 be trying to take it away from us. Didn't you say
4811 “Kim and some of the other rehab cast went to Debra
4812 yesterday and asked her to do a design review of the current rehab
4813 and suggest any changes. She was good enough to agree, and they've
4814 come up with some great ideas.” I
4815 read between the lines: the newbies you invited in have gone over to
4816 the other side and we're going to lose everything
4817 because of them. I felt like shit.</P>
4819 said, carefully. Tim's grin came back and he clapped his
4821 could have been on our side, if we had only played it all right.</EM></P>
4822 <HR>
4823 <P>Dan and I took to the utilidors and grabbed a pair of bicycles
4824 and sped towards Suneep's lab, jangling our bells at the
4826 authority to invite Debra in,” I
4827 panted as we pedaled.</P>
4830 they were probationary members right from the start. They weren't
4833 <P>Suneep gave us both a chilly look when we entered his lab. He had
4834 dark circles under his eyes and his hands shook with exhaustion. He
4835 seemed to be holding himself erect with nothing more than raw anger.</P>
4836 <P>“So much for building without interference,” he said. “We agreed that this project wouldn't
4837 change midway through. Now it has, and I've got other
4838 commitments that I'm going to have to cancel because
4841 believe me, I'm just as upset about this as you are. We
4843 <P>He harrumphed. “We had a deal, Julius,” he said, hotly. “I would do the rehab for you and
4844 you would keep the ad-hocs off my back. I've been
4845 holding up my end of the bargain, but where the hell have you been?
4847 along with them. I can't just leave the Mansion
4851 going to stop it. You can help. Just stonewall them—tell
4852 them they'll have to find other Imagineering support if
4853 they want to go through with it, that you're booked
4855 <P>Dan gave me one of his long, considering looks, then nodded a
4862 go and find someone else to do it, and that person gets all the
4863 credit for the work my team's done so far. I just flush
4865 <P>“It won't come to that,” I said quickly. “If you can just keep saying no
4869 <P>Suneep ran his stubby fingers through his already crazed hair.
4871 morosely.</P>
4873 <HR>
4875 <P>I sat in the back of the Adventureland conference room while Dan
4876 exhorted.</P>
4879 tended it responsibly for years. She's got no right to
4882 <P>No castmember likes confrontation, and the Liberty Square bunch
4883 were tough to rouse to action. Dan had turned down the air
4884 conditioning an hour before the meeting and closed up all the
4885 windows, so that the room was a kiln for hard-firing irritation into
4886 rage. I stood meekly in the back, as far as possible from Dan. He
4887 was working his magic on my behalf, and I was content to let him do
4888 his thing.</P>
4890 with a sour expression: sit in the front, near Dan, or in the back,
4891 near me. She'd chosen the middle, and to concentrate on
4892 Dan I had to tear my eyes away from the sweat glistening on her
4893 long, pale neck.</P>
4894 <P>Dan stalked the aisles like a preacher, eyes blazing.
4900 grabbed a castmember by her hand and looked into her eyes. “Is
4901 it true?” he said so low it was
4902 almost a whisper.</P>
4904 said.</P>
4906 it true?” he demanded, raising his
4907 voice, slightly.</P>
4909 said, his voice unnaturally loud after the whispers. A nervous
4910 chuckle rippled through the crowd.</P>
4912 said, striding to the podium, shouting now.</P>
4914 roared.</P>
4916 back.</P>
4918 take it! You can fight back, carry on with the plan, send them
4922 <HR>
4923 <P>Bitchun wars are rare. Long before anyone tries a takeover of
4924 anything, they've done the arithmetic and ensured
4926 have a hope of fighting back.</P>
4928 gracefully and salvage some reputation out of the thing—fighting
4929 back will surely burn away even that meager reward.</P>
4932 <P>It was the second year of my undergrad, taking a double-major in
4933 not making trouble for my profs and keeping my mouth shut. It was
4934 the early days of Bitchun, and most of us were still a little
4935 unclear on the concept.</P>
4936 <P>Not all of us, though: a group of campus shit-disturbers, grad
4937 students in the Sociology Department, were on the bleeding edge of
4938 the revolution, and they knew what they wanted: control of the
4939 Department, oustering of the tyrannical, stodgy profs, a bully
4940 pulpit from which to preach the Bitchun gospel to a generation of
4941 impressionable undergrads who were too cowed by their workloads to
4942 realize what a load of shit they were being fed by the University.</P>
4944 seized the mic at my Soc 200 course said, that sleepy morning
4945 mid-semester at Convocation Hall. Nineteen hundred students filled
4946 the hall, a capacity crowd of bleary, coffee-sipping time-markers,
4947 and they woke up in a hurry when the woman's strident
4948 harangue burst over their heads.</P>
4949 <P>I saw it happen from the very start. The prof was down there on
4950 the stage, a speck with a tie-mic, droning over his slides, and then
4951 there was a blur as half a dozen grad students rushed the stage.
4952 They were dressed in University poverty-chic, wrinkled slacks and
4953 tattered sports coats, and five of them formed a human wall in front
4954 of the prof while the sixth, the heavyset one with the dark hair and
4955 the prominent mole on her cheek, unclipped his mic and clipped it to
4956 her lapel.</P>
4958 called, and the reality of the moment hit home for me: this wasn't
4959 on the lesson-plan.</P>
4961 University of Toronto Department of Sociology is under new
4962 management. If you'll set your handhelds to
4964 new lesson-plans momentarily. If you've forgotten your
4965 handhelds, you can download the plans later on. I'm
4966 going to run it down for you right now, anyway.</P>
4968 for you. You'll probably hear this a couple times more
4969 today, in your other classes. It's worth repeating. Here
4970 goes:</P>
4972 this Department. We demand bully pulpits from which to preach the
4973 Bitchun gospel. Effective immediately, the University of Toronto
4975 high-relevance curriculum with an emphasis on reputation economies,
4976 post-scarcity social dynamics, and the social theory of infinite
4977 life-extension. No more Durkheim, kids, just deadheading! This will
4980 she'd been drilling her lecture for a while.
4981 Periodically, the human wall behind her shuddered as the prof made a
4982 break for it and was restrained.</P>
4984 her every word. Instead of trudging out and ambling to our next
4985 class, the whole nineteen hundred of us rose, and, as one, started
4986 buzzing to our neighbors, a roar of “Can you believe
4987 it?” that followed us out the door
4988 and to our next encounter with the Ad-Hoc Sociology Department.</P>
4989 <P>It was cool, that day. I had another soc class, Constructing
4990 Social Deviance, and we got the same drill there, the same stirring
4991 propaganda, the same comical sight of a tenured prof battering
4992 himself against a human wall of ad-hocs.</P>
4993 <P>Reporters pounced on us when we left the class, jabbing at us
4994 with mics and peppering us with questions. I gave them a big
4996 <P>The profs struck back the next morning. I got a heads-up from the
4997 newscast as I brushed my teeth: the Dean of the Department of
4998 Sociology told a reporter that the ad-hocs' courses
4999 would not be credited, that they were a gang of thugs who were
5000 totally unqualified to teach. A counterpoint interview from a
5001 spokesperson for the ad-hocs established that all of the new
5002 lecturers had been writing course-plans and lecture notes for the
5003 profs they replaced for years, and that they'd also
5004 written most of their journal articles.</P>
5005 <P>The profs brought University security out to help them regain
5006 their lecterns, only to be repelled by ad-hoc security guards in
5007 homemade uniforms. University security got the message—anyone
5009 <P>The profs picketed. They held classes out front attended by
5010 grade-conscious brown-nosers who worried that the ad-hocs'
5011 classes wouldn't count towards their degrees. Fools like
5012 me alternated between the outdoor and indoor classes, not learning
5013 much of anything.</P>
5014 <P>No one did. The profs spent their course-times whoring for
5015 Whuffie, leading the seminars like encounter groups instead of
5016 lectures. The ad-hocs spent their time badmouthing the profs and
5017 tearing apart their coursework.</P>
5018 <P>At the end of the semester, everyone got a credit and the
5019 University Senate disbanded the Sociology program in favor of a
5020 distance-ed offering from Concordia in Montreal. Forty years later,
5021 the fight was settled forever. Once you took backup-and-restore, the
5022 rest of the Bitchunry just followed, a value-system settling over
5023 you.
5024 </P>
5026 objected, but, hey, they all died.</P>
5027 <HR>
5028 <P>The Liberty Square ad-hocs marched shoulder to shoulder through
5029 the utilidors and, as a mass, took back the Haunted Mansion. Dan,
5030 Lil and I were up front, careful not to brush against one another as
5031 we walked quickly through the backstage door and started a
5032 bucket-brigade, passing out the materials that Debra's
5033 people had stashed there, along a line that snaked back to the front
5034 porch of the Hall of Presidents, where they were unceremoniously
5035 dumped.</P>
5036 <P>Once the main stash was vacated, we split up and roamed the ride,
5037 its service corridors and dioramas, the break-room and the secret
5038 passages, rounding up every scrap of Debra's crap and
5039 passing it out the door.</P>
5040 <P>In the attic scene, I ran into Kim and three of her giggly little
5041 friends, their eyes glinting in the dim light. The gaggle of
5042 transhuman kids made my guts clench, made me think of Zed and of Lil
5043 and of my unmediated brain, and I had a sudden urge to shred them
5044 verbally.</P>
5046 <P>No. That way lay madness and war. This was about taking back what
5047 was ours, not punishing the interlopers. “Kim, I think
5050 made you boss?” she said. Her
5051 friends thought it very brave, they made it clear with
5052 double-jointed hip-thrusts and glares.</P>
5054 longer you wait, the worse it will be for you and your Whuffie. You
5055 blew it, and you're not a part of the Mansion anymore.
5058 <P>Ever. Be cast out of this thing that you love, that you obsess
5060 <P>They sauntered into the graveyard, hissing vitriol at me. Oh,
5061 they had lots of new material to post to the anti-me sites, messages
5062 that would get them Whuffie with people who thought I was the scum
5063 of the earth. A popular view, those days.</P>
5064 <P>I got out of the Mansion and looked at the bucket-brigade,
5065 followed it to the front of the Hall. The Park had been open for an
5066 hour, and a herd of guests watched the proceedings in confusion. The
5067 Liberty Square ad-hocs passed their loads around in clear
5068 embarrassment, knowing that they were violating every principle they
5069 cared about.</P>
5070 <P>As I watched, gaps appeared in the bucket-brigade as castmembers
5071 slipped away, faces burning scarlet with shame. At the Hall of
5072 Presidents, Debra presided over an orderly relocation of her things,
5073 a cheerful cadre of her castmembers quickly moving it all offstage.
5074 I didn't have to look at my handheld to know what was
5075 happening to our Whuffie.</P>
5076 <HR>
5077 <P>By evening, we were back on schedule. Suneep supervised the
5078 placement of his telepresence rigs and Lil went over every system in
5079 minute detail, bossing a crew of ad-hocs that trailed behind her,
5080 double- and triple-checking it all.</P>
5081 <P>Suneep smiled at me when he caught sight of me, hand-scattering
5082 dust in the parlor.</P>
5086 masterful it was, but we got the job done, and that's
5089 I've seen them since this whole business started. I know
5091 <P>My partners? Oh, yes, Dan and Lil. How happy were they, I
5092 wondered. Happy enough to get back together? My mood fell, even
5093 though a part of me said that Dan would never go back to her, not
5096 couldn't have done it without you, and it looks like
5100 <P>Party? Probably something the Liberty Square ad-hocs were putting
5101 on. I would almost certainly be persona non grata. “I
5105 <P>He chided me for working too hard, but once he saw that I had no
5106 intention of being dragged to the party, he left off.</P>
5108 the next morning, dozing in a backstage break room when I heard a
5109 commotion from the parlor. Festive voices, happy and loud, and I
5110 assumed it was Liberty Square ad-hocs coming back from their party.</P>
5113 gear. I got ready to shout something horrible at them, and that's
5114 when Debra came in. I moderated the shout to a snap, opened my mouth
5115 to speak, stopped.</P>
5117 years in their canopic jars in Kissimmee.</P>
5118 </DIV>
5122 ceremony. I saw them just before they went in, when they stopped in
5123 at Lil's and my place to kiss her goodbye and wish her
5124 well.</P>
5125 <P>Tom and I stood awkwardly to the side while Lil and her mother
5126 held an achingly chipper and polite farewell.</P>
5132 their backups. When they woke, this event—everything
5135 <P>“When are you coming back?” I asked, keeping my castmember face on, carefully hiding away
5136 the disgust.</P>
5138 a digest dumped to us. When things look interesting enough, we'll
5139 come on back.” He waggled a finger
5146 just getting out of the way for a while, letting you-all take a run
5149 <P>Lil and her mom kissed one last time. Her mother was more
5150 affectionate than I'd ever seen her, even to the point
5151 of tearing up a little. Here in this moment of vanishing
5152 consciousness, she could be whomever she wanted, knowing that it
5156 some wonderful times ahead of you—between Lil and the
5157 Park, you're going to have a tremendous experience, I
5158 just know it.” She was infinitely
5160 <P>Still smiling, they got into their runabout and drove away to get
5161 the lethal injections, to become disembodied consciousnesses, to
5162 lose their last moments with their darling daughter.</P>
5163 <HR>
5164 <P>They were not happy to be returned from the dead. Their new
5165 bodies were impossibly young, pubescent and hormonal and doleful and
5166 kitted out in the latest trendy styles. In the company of Kim and
5167 her pals, they made a solid mass of irate adolescence.</P>
5169 doing?” Rita asked, shoving me hard
5170 in the chest. I stumbled back into my carefully scattered dust,
5171 raising a cloud.</P>
5173 away. Your actions are totally indefensible. Keep your mouth shut
5175 <P>I held up a hand, tried to wave away his words, opened my mouth
5176 to speak.</P>
5180 evil look on her face.</P>
5182 goddamn it no. You're going to hear me out, and then
5185 <P>We stared at each other across the dim parlor. Debra made a
5186 twiddling motion and the lights came up full and harsh. The expertly
5187 crafted gloom went away and it was just a dusty room with a fake
5188 fireplace.</P>
5190 said. Rita folded her arms and glared.</P>
5191 <P>“I did some really awful things,” I said, keeping my head up, keeping my eyes on them. “I
5193 forgive them. But that doesn't change the fact that
5194 we've put our hearts and souls into this place, and
5196 have one constant corner of the world, one bit frozen in time for
5197 the people who love it that way? Why does your success mean our
5198 failure?</P>
5200 carrying on your work? That we're tending a legacy you
5203 asked.</P>
5208 goddamn fault that you decided that your stupidity was on my behalf,
5212 stupid, deluded asshole,” she said,
5213 softly. “You totter around, pissing and moaning about
5214 your little murder, your little health problems—yes,
5216 things the way they are. You need some perspective, Julius. You need
5217 to get away from here: Disney World isn't good for you
5218 and you're sure as hell not any good for Disney
5221 conclusion myself, somewhere along the way.</P>
5222 <HR>
5223 <P>I found the ad-hoc at a Fort Wilderness campsite, sitting around
5224 a fire and singing, necking, laughing. The victory party. I trudged
5225 into the circle and hunted for Lil.</P>
5226 <P>She was sitting on a log, staring into the fire, a million miles
5227 away. Lord, she was beautiful when she fretted. I stood in front of
5228 her for a minute and she stared right through me until I tapped her
5229 shoulder. She gave an involuntary squeak and then smiled at herself.</P>
5233 <P>For the first time in an age, she looked at me softly, smiled
5234 even. She patted the log next to her. I sat down, felt the heat of
5235 the fire on my face, her body heat on my side. God, how did I screw
5236 this up?</P>
5237 <P>Without warning, she put her arms around me and hugged me hard. I
5238 hugged her back, nose in her hair, woodsmoke smell and shampoo and
5242 and pulled away.</P>
5244 eyes shining. She was stoned, I saw that now.</P>
5251 <P>She hung her head and her shoulders shook, and I tentatively put
5252 an arm around her. She shook it off and sat up. She was crying and
5255 <HR>
5256 <P>I sat in the back of the ferry with Dan, away from the confused
5257 and angry ad-hocs. I answered his questions with terse, one-word
5258 answers, and he gave up. We rode in silence, the trees on the edges
5259 of the Seven Seas Lagoon whipping back and forth in an approaching
5260 storm.</P>
5261 <P>The ad-hoc shortcutted through the west parking lot and moved
5262 through the quiet streets of Frontierland apprehensively, a funeral
5263 procession that stopped the nighttime custodial staff in their
5264 tracks.</P>
5265 <P>As we drew up on Liberty Square, I saw that the work-lights were
5266 blazing and a tremendous work-gang of Debra's ad-hocs
5267 were moving from the Hall to the Mansion, undoing our teardown of
5268 their work.</P>
5270 parents, sleeves rolled up, forearms bulging with new, toned muscle.
5271 The group stopped in its tracks and Lil went to them, stumbling on
5272 the wooden sidewalk.</P>
5273 <P>I expected hugs. There were none. In their stead, parents and
5274 daughter stalked each other, shifting weight and posture to track
5275 each other, maintain a constant, sizing distance.</P>
5276 <P>“What the hell are you doing?” Lil said, finally. She didn't address her mother,
5278 <P>He dipped forward, the shuffle of his feet loud in the quiet
5283 side, not saying anything, just standing there.</P>
5284 <P>Wordlessly, Tom hefted the box he was holding and headed to the
5285 Mansion. Lil caught his arm and jerked it so he dropped his load.</P>
5293 sob, saw her collapse in on herself. Her mother took her in her
5294 arms, rocked her. I felt like a voyeur, but couldn't
5295 bring myself to turn away.</P>
5297 said, a sibilant sound that matched the rustling of the leaves on
5300 <P>They held the embrace and held it still. Lil straightened, then
5301 bent again and picked up her father's box, carried it to
5302 the Mansion. One at a time, the rest of her ad-hoc moved forward and
5303 joined them.</P>
5304 <HR>
5306 hotel room and you power up your handheld and it won't
5307 log on. You press the call-button for the elevator and it gives you
5308 an angry buzz in return. You take the stairs to the lobby and no one
5309 looks at you as they jostle past you.</P>
5312 room, when I knocked at his door, louder and harder than I meant, a
5313 panicked banging.</P>
5314 <P>Dan answered the door and I saw his eyes go to his HUD, back to
5318 happened, what happened to me?</P>
5321 said.</P>
5322 <P>This is how you hit bottom in Walt Disney World, in a hotel with
5323 the hissing of the monorail and the sun streaming through the
5324 window, the hooting of the steam engines on the railroad and the
5325 distant howl of the recorded wolves at the Haunted Mansion. The
5326 world drops away from you, recedes until you're nothing
5327 but a speck, a mote in blackness.</P>
5328 <P>I was hyperventilating, light-headed. Deliberately, I slowed my
5329 breath, put my head between my knees until the dizziness passed.</P>
5331 said.</P>
5332 <P>Driving together, hammering cigarette after cigarette into my
5333 face, I remembered the night Dan had come to Disney World, when
5338 <P>It was enough. We found Lil in an underground break-room, lightly
5339 dozing on a ratty sofa. Her head rested on Tom's lap,
5341 had a long night.</P>
5342 <P>Dan shook Lil awake. She stretched out and opened her eyes,
5343 looked sleepily at me. The blood drained from her face.</P>
5345 said, coldly.</P>
5347 <P>“Were you going to tell me?” I asked, quietly. “Or were you just going to kick
5350 said.</P>
5351 <P>“Then I've saved you some time.” I pulled up a chair. “Tell me all about it.”</P>
5352 <P>“There's nothing to tell,” Rita snapped. “You're out. You had to
5360 couldn't let it go on the way it was. We owed it to
5363 said.</P>
5365 said, absently.</P>
5367 not being fair to him,” he said. At
5368 least someone was on my side.</P>
5369 <P>“We've been more than fair,” Lil said. “You know that better than anyone, Dan.
5370 We've forgiven and forgiven and forgiven, made every
5373 <P>“You could be his friend,” Dan said. The light-headedness was back, and I slumped in my
5374 chair, tried to control my breathing, the panicked thumping of my
5375 heart.</P>
5377 him. You could stick with him, the way he stuck with you. You
5381 a month. In Kissimmee. A motel. I'll pick up his network
5383 <P>“It's more than fair,” Rita said. Why did she hate me so much? I'd been
5384 there for her daughter while she was away—ah. That might
5386 warranted. If you want to take care of him, sir, you can. It's
5388 <P>Lil's eyes blazed. “Let me handle this,” she said. “All right?”</P>
5389 <P>Rita stood up abruptly. “You do whatever you want,” she said, and stormed out of the room.</P>
5390 <P>“Why are you coming here for help?” Tom said, ever the voice of reason. “You seem
5393 at the end of the week,” Dan said.
5399 asked, a throb in her voice.</P>
5401 <P>In a dreamlike buzz, I stood and wandered out into the utilidor,
5402 out through the western castmember parking, and away.</P>
5403 <P>I wandered along the cobbled, disused Walk Around the World, each
5404 flagstone engraved with the name of a family that had visited the
5405 Park a century before. The names whipped past me like epitaphs.</P>
5406 <P>The sun came up noon high as I rounded the bend of deserted beach
5407 between the Grand Floridian and the Polynesian. Lil and I had come
5408 here often, to watch the sunset from a hammock, arms around each
5409 other, the Park spread out before us like a lighted toy village.</P>
5410 <P>Now the beach was deserted, the Wedding Pavilion silent. I felt
5411 suddenly cold though I was sweating freely. So cold.</P>
5412 <P>Dreamlike, I walked into the lake, water filling my shoes,
5413 logging my pants, warm as blood, warm on my chest, on my chin, on my
5414 mouth, on my eyes.</P>
5415 <P>I opened my mouth and inhaled deeply, water filling my lungs,
5416 choking and warm. At first I sputtered, but I was in control now,
5417 and I inhaled again. The water shimmered over my eyes, and then was
5418 dark.</P>
5419 <HR>
5421 restraints around my wrists and ankles, a tube in my nose. I closed
5422 my eyes, for a moment believing that I'd been restored
5423 from a backup, problems solved, memories behind me.</P>
5424 <P>Sorrow knifed through me as I realized that Dan was probably dead
5425 by now, my memories of him gone forever.</P>
5426 <P>Gradually, I realized that I was thinking nonsensically. The fact
5427 that I remembered Dan meant that I hadn't been refreshed
5428 from my backup, that my broken brain was still there, churning along
5429 in unmediated isolation.</P>
5430 <P>I coughed again. My ribs ached and throbbed in counterpoint to my
5431 head. Dan took my hand.</P>
5440 on record refusing restore from backup after having it recommended
5441 by a medical professional. No one would have restored me after that.
5442 I would have been truly and finally dead. I started to shiver.</P>
5445 you've got a cracked rib or two from the CPR, but
5447 <P>“No <EM>additional</EM> brain damage,” Doctor Pete said, swimming into view. He had on his
5448 professionally calm bedside face, and it reassured me despite
5449 myself.</P>
5450 <P>He shooed Dan away and took his seat. Once Dan had left the room,
5451 he shone lights in my eyes and peeked in my ears, then sat back and
5452 considered me. “Well, Julius,” he said. “What exactly is the problem? We can get
5453 you a lethal injection if that's what you want, but
5454 offing yourself in the Seven Seas Lagoon just isn't good
5457 talk about it and he'd told me to go to hell, and now he
5458 changes his mind? But I did want to talk.</P>
5462 <P>“I wasn't trying to die,” I protested. “I was trying to—” What? I was trying to… <EM>abdicate</EM>.
5463 Take the refresh without choosing it, without shutting out the last
5464 year of my best friend's life. Rescue myself from the
5465 stinking pit I'd sunk into without flushing Dan away
5468 acting. It was an episode or something. Does that mean I'm
5472 about one thing at a time. You can die if you want to, that's
5473 your right. I'd rather you lived, if you want my
5474 opinion, and I doubt that I'm the only one, Whuffie be
5476 record you saying so, just in case. We have a backup of you on
5480 no other option.” It was true. I
5484 a happy man. Now, are you nuts? Probably. A little. Nothing a little
5490 <HR>
5491 <P>Dan took me back to the room and put me to bed with a transdermal
5492 soporific that knocked me out for the rest of the day. When I woke,
5493 the moon was over the Seven Seas Lagoon and the monorail was silent.</P>
5494 <P>I stood on the patio for a while, thinking about all the things
5495 this place had meant to me for more than a century: happiness,
5496 security, efficiency, fantasy. All of it gone. It was time I left.
5497 Maybe back to space, find Zed and see if I could make her happy
5498 again. Anywhere but here. Once Dan was dead—God, it was
5499 sinking in finally—I could catch a ride down to the Cape
5500 for a launch.</P>
5501 <P>“What's on your mind?” Dan asked from behind me, startling me. He was in his boxers,
5502 thin and rangy and hairy.</P>
5507 said. “Just going somewhere else, starting over. Getting
5512 <P>“It may be none of my business,” he said, “but why the fuck not? Jesus, Julius,
5519 <P>After the room-service bot had left, we cracked the beers and
5520 pulled chairs out onto the porch.</P>
5526 year,’” he said.
5530 things, but hard to figure out you are not. I have something to say
5531 that might help you make the decision. If you want to hear it, that
5534 my mind, I was on a shuttle headed for orbit, away from all of this.</P>
5536 said. “Debra asked me to, and I set it up. You were right
5538 <P>The shuttle exploded in silent, slow moving space, and I spun
5539 away from it. I opened and shut my mouth.</P>
5541 proposed it. We were talking about the people I'd met
5542 when I was doing my missionary work, the stone crazies who I'd
5543 have to chase away after they'd rejoined the Bitchun
5544 Society. One of them, a girl from Cheyenne Mountain, she followed me
5545 down here, kept leaving me messages. I told Debra, and that's
5546 when she got the idea.</P>
5548 disappear. Debra would give me Whuffie—piles of it, and
5549 her team would follow suit. I'd be months closer to my
5552 smell of rejuve and desperation in our little cottage, and Dan
5553 plotting my death.</P>
5555 a backup—no memory of the event, just the Whuffie for
5558 would work. Plan a murder, kill yourself, have yourself refreshed
5559 from a backup made before the plan. How many times had Debra done
5560 terrible things and erased their memories that way?</P>
5563 it, too—I have my backup, and I can get Jeanine to tell
5564 it, too.” He drained his beer.
5566 tell Lil and her folks, Kim and her people, the whole ad-hoc. A
5573 into…” They
5577 me I needed help. Doctor Pete, telling me I needed refresh from
5578 backup, me saying no, no, no, not wanting to lose my last year with
5579 Dan.</P>
5582 the absolute worst. You helped me and I betrayed you. I'm
5586 friend and my murderer. “Dan,” I croaked. I couldn't make any sense of my mind.
5587 Dan, taking care of me, helping me, sticking up for me, carrying
5588 this horrible shame with him all along. Ready to die, wanting to go
5589 with a clean conscience.</P>
5593 asked.</P>
5596 <HR>
5597 <P>I went in through the Main Gate, not a castmember any longer, a
5598 Guest with barely enough Whuffie to scrape in, use the water
5599 fountains and stand in line. If I were lucky, a castmember might
5600 spare me a chocolate banana. Probably not, though.</P>
5601 <P>I stood in the line for the Hall of Presidents. Other guests
5602 checked my Whuffie, then averted their eyes. Even the children. A
5603 year before, they'd have been striking up conversations,
5604 asking me about my job here at the Magic Kingdom.</P>
5605 <P>I sat in my seat at the Hall of Presidents, watching the short
5606 film with the rest, sitting patiently while they rocked in their
5607 seats under the blast of the flash-bake. A castmember picked up the
5608 stageside mic and thanked everyone for coming; the doors swung open
5609 and the Hall was empty, except for me. The castmember narrowed her
5610 eyes at me, then recognizing me, turned her back and went to show in
5611 the next group.</P>
5613 the replay entered.</P>
5615 <P>I was staring at the girl, seeing her smirk as she pulled the
5616 trigger on me, seeing her now with a contrite, scared expression.
5617 She was terrified of me.</P>
5621 <P>Her hand was cold, and she took it back and wiped it on her
5622 pants.</P>
5625 Really. No hard feelings.” I
5626 stopped short of offering to get her a glass of water.</P>
5632 <P>By the time I came back, the whole gang was there. Debra, Lil,
5634 now one united team. Soon to be scattered.</P>
5635 <P>Dan took the stage, used the stageside mic to broadcast his
5636 voice. “Eleven months ago, I did an awful thing. I
5637 plotted with Debra to have Julius murdered. I used a friend who was
5638 a little confused at the time, used her to pull the trigger. It was
5639 Debra's idea that having Julius killed would cause
5640 enough confusion that she could take over the Hall of Presidents. It
5642 <P>There was a roar of conversation. I looked at Debra, saw that she
5643 was sitting calmly, as though Dan had just accused her of sneaking
5644 an extra helping of dessert. Lil's parents, to either
5645 side of her, were less sanguine. Tom's jaw was set and
5646 angry, Rita was speaking angrily to Debra. Hickory Jackson in the
5647 old Hall used to say, <EM>I will hang the first man I can lay hands
5650 planned it,” Dan went on, as though
5651 no one was talking. “I was supposed to do the same, but I
5653 can examine it. Right now, I'd like to bring Jeanine up,
5655 <P>I helped Jeanine take the stage. She was still trembling, and the
5656 ad-hocs were an insensate babble of recriminations. Despite myself,
5657 I was enjoying it.</P>
5659 softly. She had a lovely voice, a lovely face. I wondered if we
5660 could be friends when it was all over. She probably didn't
5661 care much about Whuffie, one way or another.</P>
5662 <P>The discussion went on. Dan took the mic from her and said,
5663 “Please! Can we have a little respect for our visitor?
5665 <P>Gradually, the din decreased. Dan passed the mic back to Jeanine.
5667 and flinched from the sound of her voice in the Hall's
5669 killed Julius, a year ago. Dan asked me to, and I did it. I didn't
5671 that Julius would make a backup a few minutes before I shot him, and
5672 that he could get me out of the Park without getting caught. I'm
5673 very sorry.” There was something
5674 off-kilter about her, some stilt to her stance and words that let
5675 you know she wasn't all there. Growing up in a mountain
5676 might do that to you. I snuck a look at Lil, whose lips were pressed
5677 together. Growing up in a theme park might do that to you, too.</P>
5679 said, taking back the mic. “You can have a seat now.
5681 and I have had our own discussions in private. If there's
5683 <P>The words were barely out of his mouth before the crowd erupted
5684 again in words and waving hands. Beside me, Jeanine flinched. I took
5685 her hand and shouted in her ear: “Have you ever been on
5689 love it,” I said, and led her out
5690 of the Hall.</P>
5691 </DIV>
5694 <P>I booked us ringside seats at the Polynesian Luau, riding high on
5695 a fresh round of sympathy Whuffie, and Dan and I drank a dozen
5696 lapu-lapus in hollowed-out pineapples before giving up on the idea
5697 of getting drunk.</P>
5698 <P>Jeanine watched the fire-dances and the torch-lighting with eyes
5699 like saucers, and picked daintily at her spare ribs with one hand,
5700 never averting her attention from the floor show. When they danced
5701 the fast hula, her eyes jiggled. I chuckled.</P>
5703 waded into the Seven Seas Lagoon and breathed in the blood-temp
5704 water, I could see Cinderella's Castle, across the
5705 lagoon, I could see the monorails and the ferries and the busses
5706 making their busy way through the Park, shuttling teeming masses of
5707 guests from place to place. Dan toasted me with his pineapple and I
5708 toasted him back, drank it dry and belched in satisfaction.</P>
5709 <P>Full belly, good friends, and the sunset behind a troupe of
5710 tawny, half-naked hula dancers. Who needs the Bitchun Society,
5711 anyway?</P>
5712 <P>When it was over, we watched the fireworks from the beach, my
5713 toes dug into the clean white sand. Dan slipped his hand into my
5714 left hand, and Jeanine took my right. When the sky darkened and the
5715 lighted barges puttered away through the night, we three sat in the
5716 hammock.</P>
5717 <P>I looked out over the Seven Seas Lagoon and realized that this
5718 was my last night, ever, in Walt Disney World. It was time to reboot
5719 again, start afresh. That's what the Park was for, only
5720 somehow, this visit, I'd gotten stuck. Dan had unstuck
5721 me.</P>
5723 <P>“So, tell me what you think of this,” he said, hauling away on a glowing cigarette.</P>
5726 injection? I mean, I may be done here for now, but why should I make
5732 magnanimously.</P>
5735 how long can I deadhead for? There are folks who go down for a
5739 thinking too small, son. Try this on for size: the heat death of the
5743 and I sensed his grin in the dark. “Ten to the hundred
5745 when all the black holes have run dry and things get, you know,
5751 canopic jar, mass enough to feed it—say, a trillion-ton
5752 asteroid—and a lot of solitude when the time comes
5753 around. I'll poke my head in every century or so, just
5754 to see what's what, but if nothing really stupendous
5755 crops up, I'll take the long ride out. The final
5761 <HR>
5763 after Debra left in Whuffie-penury and they started to put the
5764 Mansion back the way it was. Tim called me to say that with enough
5765 support from Imagineering, they thought they could get it up and
5766 running in a week. Suneep was ready to kill someone, I swear. <EM>A
5768 Lincoln used to say at the Hall of Presidents.</P>
5769 <P>I packed three changes of clothes and a toothbrush in my
5770 shoulderbag and checked out of my suite at the Polynesian at ten
5771 a.m., then met Jeanine and Dan at the valet parking out front. Dan
5772 had a runabout he'd picked up with my Whuffie, and I
5773 piled in with Jeanine in the middle. We played old Beatles tunes on
5774 the stereo all the long way to Cape Canaveral. Our shuttle lifted at
5775 noon.</P>
5777 been through decontam and orientation, it was suppertime. Dan,
5778 nearly as Whuffie-poor as Debra after his confession, nevertheless
5779 treated us to a meal in the big bubble, squeeze-tubes of heady booze
5780 and steaky paste, and we watched the universe get colder for a
5781 while.</P>
5782 <P>There were a couple guys jamming, tethered to a guitar and a set
5785 gone to space with her folks after Dan had left the mountain, but it
5786 was in a long-haul generation ship. She'd abandoned it
5787 after a year or two and deadheaded back to Earth in a support-pod.
5788 She'd get used to life in space after a while. Or she
5792 his laconic drawl. He smiled.</P>
5795 I brushed them away, setting them adrift in the bubble. I'd
5796 developed some real tender, brother-sister type feelings for her
5797 since I'd watched her saucer-eye her way through the
5798 Magic Kingdom. No romance—not for me, thanks! But
5799 camaraderie and a sense of responsibility.</P>
5800 <P>“See you in ten to the hundred,” Dan said, and headed to the airlock. I started after him, but
5801 Jeanine caught my hand.</P>
5804 watched him go.</P>
5805 <HR>
5806 <P>The universe gets older. So do I. So does my backup, sitting in
5807 redundant distributed storage dirtside, ready for the day that space
5808 or age or stupidity kills me. It recedes with the years, and I write
5809 out my life longhand, a letter to the me that I'll be
5810 when it's restored into a clone somewhere, somewhen.
5811 It's important that whoever I am then knows about this
5812 year, and it's going to take a lot of tries for me to
5813 get it right.</P>
5815 with a little bit of “Grim Grinning Ghosts,” and a nod to “It's a Small World After
5822 </DIV>
5825 <P>I could never have written this book without the personal support
5826 of my friends and family, especially Roz Doctorow, Gord Doctorow and
5827 Neil Doctorow, Amanda Foubister, Steve Samenski, Pat York, Grad
5828 Conn, John Henson, John Rose, the writers at the Cecil Street
5829 Irregulars and Mark Frauenfelder.</P>
5830 <P>I owe a great debt to the writers and editors who mentored and
5831 encouraged me: James Patrick Kelly, Judith Merril, Damon Knight,
5832 Martha Soukup, Scott Edelman, Gardner Dozois, Renee Wilmeth, Teresa
5833 Nielsen Hayden, Claire Eddy, Bob Parks and Robert Killheffer.</P>
5834 <P>I am also indebted to my editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden and my
5835 agent Donald Maass, who believed in this book and helped me bring it
5836 to fruition.</P>
5837 <P>Finally, I must thank the readers, the geeks and the Imagineers
5838 who inspired this book.</P>
5842 </DIV>
5845 <P>Cory Doctorow is Outreach Coordinator for the Electronic Frontier
5846 Foundation, www.eff.org, and maintains a personal site at
5847 www.craphound.com. He is the co-editor of the popular weblog Boing
5849 month. He won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer at the
5850 2000 Hugo Awards. Born and raised in Toronto, he now lives in San
5851 Francisco. He enjoys using Google to look up interesting facts about
5852 long walks on the beach.</P>
5853 </DIV>
5856 <UL>
5859 from Four Walls Eight Windows in fall 2003, with an introduction by
5860 Bruce Sterling
5861 </P>
5864 Rael Dornfest, J. Scott Johnson, Shelley Powers, Benjamin Trott and
5865 Mena G. Trott
5866 </P>
5869 co-written with Karl Schroeder
5870 </P>
5871 </UL>
5872 </DIV>
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5875 xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#">
5876 <Work rdf:about="http://craphound.com/down">
5877 <dc:title>Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom</dc:title>
5878 <dc:date>2003-1-9</dc:date>
5879 <dc:description>A novel by Cory Doctorow:
5881 Jules is a young man barely a century old. He's lived long enough to see the cure for death and the end of scarcity, to learn ten languages and compose three symphonies...and to realize his boyhood dream of taking up residence in Disney World.
5883 Disney World! The greatest artistic achievement of the long-ago twentieth century. Now in the care of a network of volunteer "ad-hocs" who keep the classic attractions running as they always have, enhanced with only the smallest high-tech touches.
5885 Now, though, it seems the "ad hocs" are under attack. A new group has taken over the Hall of the Presidents and is replacing its venerable audioanimatronics with new, immersive direct-to-brain interfaces that give guests the illusion of being Washington, Lincoln, and all the others. For Jules, this is an attack on the artistic purity of Disney World itself. Worse: it appears this new group has had Jules killed. This upsets him. (It's only his fourth death and revival, after all.) Now it's war: war for the soul of the Magic Kingdom, a war of ever-shifting reputations, technical wizardry, and entirely unpredictable outcomes.
5887 Bursting with cutting-edge speculation and human insight, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom reads like Neal Stephenson meets Nick Hornby: a coming-of-age romantic comedy and a kick-butt cybernetic tour de force.
5888 </dc:description>
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5890 <dc:title>Cory Doctorow</dc:title>
5891 </Agent></dc:creator>
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5893 <dc:title>Cory Doctorow</dc:title>
5894 </Agent></dc:rights>
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